Il re Tony

You can truly be called a king of music if, having nurtured every aspect of the Royal Opera's work for an incredibly long and unstintingly successful time, you move on to take up the post of the London Symphony Orchestra's chief conductor (in 2023-4, a season in which Antonio Pappano will be at the helm of both institutions). We may be losing Simon Rattle to Munich, but we keep Pappano (pictured above at the most recent of the Royal Opera Jette Parker Young Artists concerts). And I'm glad to say that the three LSO concerts I've heard him conduct have been five-star unforgettables. 

All three have asserted British symphonies as blazing masterpieces (which we knew, but when done at this level, the impression is indelible). There was an Elgar Two with an incredibly refreshing interpretation of Beethoven's Violin Concerto from Nikolaj Znaider back in May 2016. More recently, the two hardest-hitting Vaughan Williams symphonies had knockout impact under very different circumstances: the Fourth in mid-December 2019, when its angry mood chimed with election night anxiety (merited, as it turned out), the Sixth on 15 March 2020. Consider that date: it was the last evening before all concert and theatre venues were shut down the following afternoon at 5.30pm. Those of us still foolhardy to turn up knew the blow would fall shortly; everybody, audience and players alike, felt the dying falls of Britten's Violin Concerto and the symphony's eerie epilogue as metaphors to what was to come. 

When Pappano visited my Opera in Depth Zoom course on Madama Butterfly and stayed for over two hours, having arrived in Italy and about to set off from home in the Val d'Orcia to Rome's Parco della Musica for the first rehearsals of an Accademia di Santa Cecilia Beethoven cycle, he had much to say about the three livestreamed Royal Opera events and that last full-orchestral concert. I've transcribed his comments about it.

It’s funny you mention that because we were all wondering why we were still performing; it was clear what was going to happen, but it was scheduled and people came out to hear us and see us. There was just this special feeling on stage throughout the evening, and also a sense of defending one’s right to make music at such an exalted level, like 'we're going to show whatever negativity is out there, whatever devil, whatever scourge, that we have the fight in us'. People from the orchestra came up to me right after the concert and said how extraordinary it was.

The LSO Live disc of those Vaughan Williams 4 and 6 performances is shortly to be released. I asked Michael Beek, reviews editor of BBC Music Magazine, if he'd let me cover it, and I was delighted that he said yes. I thought I'd put this up before listening, because although I know what I thought of the concerts, it's only fair not to pre-empt the CD review. 

At the same time I sent Pappano a congratulatory message about the new appointment, also still needing his address for the gift I wanted to send him as thanks for his generous Zoom time - Yoko Kawaguchi's Butterfly's Sisters (Yale), which a previous visitor, Ermonela Jaho, was very happy to receive. I thought there was no harm in mentioning that I could only think of one successor who would pay as much attention to every department of the Royal Opera as he does, Mark Wigglesworth. His very friendly reply didn't comment on that - it would have been undiplomatic to do so - but I hope that in 2024 we have two great conductors in place in London.

Zooming the woods with Siegfried

This should have been the third September of taking my Ring course to the amazing Gartmore estate in the Trossachs near Stirling, courtesy of the Wagner Society of Scotland. For obvious reasons that won't be happening. How I shall miss the possibility of waking up to misty mornings like this

followed by days of blazing sunshine. Well, that was last September, and Scotland's second heatwave of 2019, so probably it won't be repeated. But I would have been swimming regularly in a pool of the Forth I discovered on my last day.

No matter; next year is already booked, though whether it will be for Götterdämmerung - probably most participants are more likely to want to join my autumn term Opera on Focus course, since that will almost certainly revert to Zoom , too - or Tristan und Isolde remains to be seen.

In the meantime, though it's run under the aegis of the Wagner Society of Scotland, anyone can still sign up for the Zoom Siegfried course, due to start this Wednesday afternoon at 2.30pm, running until (approximately, since Zoom time gives us luxury to over-run) 4.30pm, and then for nine more Wednesdays. It's a bargain at £100 for the whole term. If you'd like to join, just email me at david.nice@theartsdesk.com.

Who knows whom we will be able to entice as special guests this time? My summer courses have been on such a roll. Cue namedrop: Ermonela Jaho, Sirs Antonio Pappano and Mark Elder for Madama Butterfly (Tony, as we can call him, had so much of wondrous interest to say that I didn't get my stint in, so am more than happy to offer an extra class this afternoon) plus Susan Bullock on Elektra; for the symphony classes, Vladimir Jurowski, Paavo Järvi, Vasily Petrenko and Mark Wigglesworth among the megastars plus equally fascinating contributions from conductors Catherine Larsen-Maguire, Kristiina Poska, Jonathan Bloxham, Andres Kaljuste and Ian Page. This Thursday Elizabeth Wilson of the superlative Shostakovich: A Life Remembered and violinist/leader/conductor Peter Manning join us for thoughts on the master's Fifteenth Symphony. This has been a rare time, and the fact that I've been able to live and breathe the music of both courses in between classes has been an extra boon,

Elektra's death-dance, Butterfly's flight

For much of my Opera in Depth Zoom classes on Richard Strauss's Elektra - three out of five - we have been incredibly lucky and honoured to have the insights of Susan Bullock, one of the world's great performers of the role (pictured below at the Royal Opera by Clive Barda), who's since entered what she calls 'a whole new world of weird' - the strange territory of mother Clytemnestra's suppurating conscience.

And now, on the Monday after next, Ermonela Jaho will join us for the third class on Puccini's Madama Butterfly.

Ermonela was to have repeated her triumph in the role at the Royal Opera (pictured above by Bill Cooper) this summer, but sadly it's not to be; though you can catch her equally heartbreaking Suor Angelica in the screening of the Trittico as vividly realised by Richard Jones in the company's next weekly offering. She'll be there next Monday to talk about the challenges in the first part of Act Two, Puccini's longest and most intense psychological study (and it includes 'Un bel di').

Sue was there throughout our second and third sessions (there she is on the first of two screens above, second row down on the left. You may need to click to enlarge). When she wasn't able to attend the last Elektra class - online coaching has now taken over at the Royal Academy of Music's request - she sent what amounted to three wonderful essays on the Recognition Scene, Elektra's encounter with Aegisth and the turbulent finale. It made me think she should write a book on, say, five or six heroines she knows inside out - Brünnhilde, Isolde, Salome, Elektra, Madama Butterfly, perhaps Katya Kabanova - from her performing perspective. Always going in-depth with the marriage of words and music, text and dynamics - what she had to say about Schoenberg's Erwartung in the second class was fascinating - she could fill a real need, and weave in the crucial autobiography around it. Any publishers out there? I'll do some canvassing.

I am also indebted to Sue for putting me on to her admiration for a great (the greatest?) Elektra, Astrid Varnay. My allegiance, recordings and performance wise, has been to Nilsson (of course), Behrens,  Ibge Borkh,  Erna Schlüter, but now I'm a convert to Varnay's recordings with Mitropoulos live and Richard Kraus in the studio (where her sister Chrysothemis is sung by Leonie Rysanek, later Elektra in the Götz Friedrich film to Varnay's Clytemnestra).

The Mitropoulos experience is a live 1949 New York concert performance which plonks an interval at the end of Clytemnestra's short-lived triumphal interlude and goes on to omit the second Elektra-Chrysothemis scene. The sound is fairly dim for the orchestra, but what pacing and textural clarity! The end is wackier than usual; Varnay decides to go up to a top for her final note (tan-zen, a B, not a low F sharp) and the woodwind hang on before the final two-note thwack.The Kraus sounds much better, and he was a good conductor, but it doesn't quite have that level of visceral excitement. But it is complete.

That final scene wasn't the only end-of-class experience to leave me all worked up and discombobulated. It wasn't until we had the introductory class to Butterfly that I realised we'd left a suffocating, brilliantly-lit house for the open air and a chance to soar into blue skies (for at least the first act and half of the second).

I loved excursions into Saint-Saëns's La princesse jaune and Messager's Madame Chrysanthème (I've just started reading Pierre Loti's memoir-novella which was the basis for that pretty operette); and only just realised what really connects Madama Butterfly with The Mikado beyond the use of the same folksong and the japonaiserie - Smetana's Overture to The Bartered Bride. Coasting with Pavarotti, Robert Kerns and Karajan from 'America for ever!' to the arrival of Butterfly put me back into that peculiar lyric ecstasy in which Puccini is unsurpassed. And he was, of course, just as consummate an orchestrator as Strauss. Happy days ahead.

Meanwhile, the course on the symphony from Haydn to Adams has taken on a hue I hadn't anticipated, which is to say distinguished guests on a weekly basis; not sure I can keep it up for every class. I mentioned in the introductory post (all 11 classes duly listed there) having the gift of Jonathan Bloxham and Ian Page to comment on Haydn and Mozart, then Mark Wigglesworth with Jonny for Beethoven. It was a real bonus that Nicholas Collon was able to join us for half an hour at the beginning of the class on Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique (his performance with the Aurora Orchestra from memory is still there on their website, as is their 'Eroica' and now their 'Pastoral').

On Thursday I made the acquaintance of Berlin-based conductor Catherine Larsen-Maguire (pictured above by David Beecroft), 15 years a bassoonist with the great orchestras and under the best conductors (Abbado, Haitink, Kirill Petrenko, Rattle, not a bad list). I'm so grateful to Aude-Marie Auphan of Victoria Rowsell Management, with its roster of selectively excellent artists, for putting us in touch.

Catherine (top row centre above; as with the Elektra class Zoom image, click to enlarge) was brilliant and vivacious on every point, and she induced in me a Sehnsucht to go and live in Berlin. Heck, what a dream: a country where music, and the arts in general, matter to so many more people than they do here, where the orchestral musicians are still on full pay, where there's been a civic and governmental responsibility to the C-19 crisis lacking, at least from our disastrous leadership, here. As our stumbling, irresponsible government in Westminster, in marked contrast to the real leaders in Scotland and Wales, plunges us into another vortex, the thought of joining a responsible society has become very pressing. There have been serious discussions at home; watch this space.

In the meantime, this coming Thursday's class has a double whammy: Paavo Järvi to discuss the unique finale of Brahms's Fourth, Vladimir Jurowski on the endgame genius in Tchaikovsky's Pathétique. Musicians on the continent are now beginning to go back to their full schedules again - for Vladimir it's a series of challenging programmes with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (listen here to the first), for Paavo work before the second season with his Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich and, yes, the Pärnu Festival in July. which I hope and pray to attend because it's my favourite in the world - so we're very lucky to have had this window of opportunity.

UPDATE: I must write more about this anon, but Paavo is joining us this coming Thursday for Mahler 3, Vladimir Jurowski was with us for two hours on Brahms 4 and Tchaikovsky 6 - revelatory - and Ermonela Jaho for two and a half hours yesterday, including a full hour-long masterclass on 'Un bel di'. These are such exceptional human beings as well as top musicians.

SECOND UPDATE (22/6): This is going to look like bragging, but I'm very proud and happy about the latest developments. Vasily Petrenko joined the symphony class last Thursday to talk about Mahler, Elgar, the musical philistinism of British politicians and adapting to smaller forces post-crisis. Mark Elder is visiting the Butterfly class today, while Antonio Pappano has pledged to Zoom in for our grand finale next Monday. More developments expected...

Myths and monsters: Opera in Depth 2019-20

The new season is upon us - at the Royal Opera, it's kicked off  with two revivals of very flawed productions which may yield good singing, but I'll give 'em a miss - and on 7 October I and my loyal students, along with a few new members, reconvene in splendid Pushkin House, Bloomsbury Square, for more journeys through the rich and rare.

In October, we depart from the most usual format of two operas split each 10-week tern with five Monday afternoons on each. This time we start with three classes on Handel's early cornucopia of brilliant ideas Agrippina, to coincide with a new production at the Royal Opera House starring Joyce DiDonato (if it's half as good as the ENO staging with Sarah Connolly, Christine Rice and Lucy Crowe, among others - Crowe returns here - I'll be happy). Moving forwards in time for the following five classes, the focus is on Gluck's incomparably concise balance of classical restraint and romantic emotion in Orfeo ed Euridice - undoubtedly the greatest of English National Opera's chosen operas on the theme of the Greek poet in music. We'll also be taking sideways glances at Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld and Harrison Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus. For the last two Mondays, we get to grips with the music of Berlin-era Weill to coincide with English Touring Opera's rare staging of his acidic fable Der Silbersee (Silverlake).

January sees us resume our four-year journey through Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, in tandem with Vladimir Jurowski's annual performances with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall. We go into the woods and up a mountain with Siegfried, the most fairy-tale-like of the tetralogy.

Summer begins in blood-soaked ancient Mycenae with Strauss's Elektra - the ultimate development of the Wagnerian line, also pointing the way forwards to a more concise form of searing music-theatre. The season needs one hundred-per-cent Italian opera, and it was time to return to the miracle of exquisite orchestration and dramatic timing that is Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Both operas are in the Royal Opera's repertoire - Elektra in a new production starring the phenomenal Nina Stemme, Butterfly a revival witnessing the return of Ermonela Jaho.

If you're interested in joining us, leave a message with your email; I won't publish it but I will respond. 

So, off next to Gartmore House in the Trossachs to resume my Ring course for the Wagner Society of Scotland over four Septembers with Die Walküre. I wrote a bit about last year's fun if exhausting experience here. This time sunshine is forecast for a day or two - last year, after the above sunset on arrival, it rained on and off for the whole weekend - so I'll be making the most of my few afternoon hours off between some of the 13 (!) lectures in three and a bit days.