Opera in Depth Summer 2024: the human comedy

Dante's Divina Commedia was Puccini's model for the trajectory of his most comprehensive masterpiece, even if the subject-matter is quite different for the most part. You can, of course, take Il tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi separately, or put the individual operas alongside other one-acters, but it's reassuring to see the trilogy most often presented these days as the composer intended (and no, IMO it is NOT acceptable to reverse the orders of the convent drama and the Florentine comedy). 

The beauty of it is that each is a supreme masterpiece of timing and atmosphere on its own terms.  Each makes use of finely observed vignettes in the first third of the drama before the screw begins to turn. There is something hellish about the barge couple's existence in Il tabarro, but it's offset by an almost Debussyan impressionism and gently comic vignettes. Puccini surely drew some of the details of cloistered life from meeting with his sister in her monastic community. And the better I know my Dante - THE big revelation of recent years since the free course with Alessandro Scafi and John Took at the Warburg Institute - the more pleasure I can take from the passing references to so many Dantean names and places in Schicchi, even though its source is a mere line and a bit in Inferno.

Then each opera packs its punch (and never more so than in Richard Jones' Royal Opera production - we'll be referring to the above regularly). Suor Angelica is the most heartbreaking, on a level with Madama Butterfly; Gianni Schicchi is laugh-out-loud funny tinged with youthful romantic love. It will always be a desert island opera for me since it was on an Edinburgh Fringe week of performing it with the Rehearsal Orchestra that my so far 35-year-old relationship with other half, later civil partner and husband, began. 

I'm hoping the infinitely generous and warm Ermonela Jaho can be persuaded to join us after her unforgettable visit to the Butterfly course (when we also had two hours of Antonio Pappano, but I guess he's even busier now. Just got a proof copy of his autobiography and there's wisdom on every page). Meanwhile, here's the flyer for the forthcoming term with full details of how to join - click to enlarge.

For the last four Mondays I can't wait to revisit John Adams's Nixon in China - for me, the best opera of the last 40 years, though there are comic rivals to Schicchi in Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest and Alice's Adventures Under Ground). One plus since the last time is that other productions have appeared since Peter Sellars' initial hit toured the world (partner and I saw its UK premiere in the Edinburgh Festival at the aformentioned time). To return to operas I'd studied in live classes is never to repeat; I don't look at the old notes. Picture below by Ken Howard from the Met staging of the Sellars production.

How fresh and wondrous we all found Salome and Carmen this past term.  The most rainbow-hued of Strauss's operatic scores is surely also his most perfectly structured. And seeing it a week after the last class in Bruno Ravella's so richly-layered Irish National Opera production in Dublin was a wonder (image below by Patricio Cassinoni for INO). 

Hpw delighted I am that it will be appearing on the superlative free OperaVision website (YouTube connected) later this month, with Ravella's unsurpassably well-cast Garsington Ariadne auf Naxos). How lucky we were, too, with tie visit of Bruno and conductor Fergus Sheil just before the production opened.

Bizet's instrumental and harmonic felicities in Carmen seem limitless: surely this has to be the opera to take a newcomer to if the performances nail it. And I don't think we'll ever see or hear surpassed the duo of Elīna Garanča and Roberto Alagna in Richard Eyre's Metropolitan Opera production*. 

I used scenes from other productions, but no central relationship goes to the edge in its visceral quality as this one does. I've previously state that the DVD of Glyndebourne's Janáček Jenůfa should be the first port of call for anyone who comes to opera from the world of theatre; for the perfect mix of aria, duet and ensemble form with high drama, the 2010 Met Carmen should be the one.

*UPDATE: Damiano Michieletto's new Royal Opera production comes nowhere near, alas, or certainly not with its first cast, marvellous though Aighul Akhmetshina is. And of course I wanted it to succeed, but the review has to tell the truth.

Rachvelishvilimania

How many true Verdi mezzos are there in a generation? There was Olga Borodina, just a little contained but the real deal, and Luciana D'Intino stole the show, as the best Amnerises have a habit of doing, in a Zurich Aida. Some years later, along came Ekaterina Semenchuk, whose Azucena was subtle as well as bold and inflammatory in the Royal Opera Trovatore (in an inventive production I liked, as many did not). Now we learn that Elīna Garanča, who started out with Rossini and 18th century coloratura, is heading towards Eboli in Don Carlo, and from the evidence of her stunning Wigmore recital last Sunday, that sounds completely plausible. I haven't heard Georgian Anita Rachvelishvili in the rep, but from witnessing her on stage for the first time, diva to the life, in Rachmaninov songs with Antonio Pappano and the Royal Opera Orchestra the other Friday, I have no doubt that she'll cut the Verdian mustard, as she seems to be doing mostly at the Met.

Had as a result to hear her new CD, images for which by Gregory Regini are featured above. Star discs of bits and pieces don't usually hold much of a thrill, but when it's the music being served rather than just the singer, there can be exceptions. And this is one such special case from Sony, with a slight studio gloss but good partners in the RAI Symphony Orchestra and Giacomo Sagripanti. A light and very French sounding Carmen - kicking myself for not bothering to go and see another revival here with her in it - sits compellingly alongside the explosions of Azucena and Massenet's Charlotte. The inward spell she cast so beguilingly in the Rachmaninov sequence bewitches in the mostly unaccompanied song, Lyubasha's party turn in Act 1 of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride. This looks like a Tcherniakov production, though I'm not sure.

You want the blood and thunder? Rachvelishvili apparently stole the show - from the never quite spot-on Anna Netrebko - at the Met earlier this year as the fiery Princesse de Bouillon in Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur. This, her electrifying first appearance, explains why.

I was very sceptical of even looking at a YouTube clip of the mezzo tackling 'Summertime', but in this version with fine jazz musicians and the Georgian Philharmonic, she absolutely gets the nightclub style. Do give it a try.

So, very much the complete artist already. That I heard her and then Garanča in little over a week made me feel very privileged indeed. Great times - but then aren't there always great singers around, whatever the nostalgists might say? And how to account for the innate gift that goes with all the hard work? It's still a mystery.

Birthplace of the rose-bearer

Strictly speaking, it should have been to salute Wagner's Dresden era in his anniversary year that I returned to the Semperoper (pictured above) after 23 years; I last saw Joachim Herz's so-so production of The Love for Three Oranges here, and still have one of the foam oranges chucked at the audience to prove it. That was a bonus to a recording-session visit for Gramophone; the occasion was Haitink's EMI recording of Der Rosenkavalier in the Lukaskirche, with Kiri te Kanawa and Anne Sofie von Otter (the highlight for me was getting to talk to the Staatskapelle Dresden's then first horn, Peter Damm, whose Kempe recording of the Strauss concertos I'd long adored). Subject for another entry must be the transformation of this once-beleaguered city that's taken place in the interim.

My Strauss Leibsoper - or is that Ariadne auf Naxos or Intermezzo or Daphne, I can't decide - had its first performance here in 1911, and this time we had a chance to catch it at home. Below, Robert Sterl's painting of Ernst von Schuch conducting at the opening run.

The prompt was our good friend Peter Rose, giving his latest showing of the role which has truly become his own, Baron Ochs; but he'd have to have paid my air fare and hotel to see him, say, with Simone Young conducting - as she so often seems to be, and I'm truly sorry not to think more highly of one of the few maestras on the scene - or a less than diamond cast. But the Marschallin was the glorious Anne Schwanewilms, her Octavian Elina Garanča (whom I also saw in Vienna years ago when Peter should also have been singing, but had to pull out). Thielemann was conducting, too, and he knows the score inside out.

So what could go wrong? Well, truth to tell, not enough to matter to the essentials, but all-round perfection, alas, it was not. By no means the biggest drawback was that the sets had got stuck in the floods and for some reason I didn't understand never made it even for the second performance. Elbe waters were still high after the heroic salvation of the city the previous week by sandbagging Dresdeners, but all else seemed back to normal and the locals were breathing huge sighs of relief by drinking and/or picnicking on the riverbanks during two perfect summer evenings.

I don't think we missed a great deal, having seen Uwe Eric Laufenberg's underanimated production WITH the sets on DVD; the 1950s costumes are the thing, and everyone wears them with style. Only occasionally was the perfunctory back wall, globe lamps above and shabby doors beneath, a liability. In the first act it helped throw the action forward, giving three fine singer-actors space to operate and impress. Photographer Klaus Gigga's images for the Semperoper often capture that superbly.

Garanča is such a hyper-feminine mezzo that she seemed more in her element as 'Mariandel' than Octavian, though always singing with that unique and connected upper-range fullness that makes her one of the world's top opera stars (and, for me, THE best Carmen). Peter has enlarged his repertoire of grins and tricks, making Ochs a more than usually lovable country cousin in his rustic get-up while singing the parlando with incredible elegance and beauty of tone when the opportunity arose. He told us he'd added some business with the naughty pugs in the levee scene mainly for our benefit, and sure enough I laughed so loud that the dowdy Dresden bourgeoisie around us cast disapproving looks. Below: cutting short the Italian tenor (Bryan Hymel, not visible here but excellent, though having to be followed by the orchestral players rather than following them) with 'Als Morgengabe!'

I complimented Peter first on the apparent rapport with Thielemann, but he told me they'd got by on just one rehearsal. Can you imagine? The conductor's one of the very best, but collegiality would not seem to be a forte; he barely acknowledges his singers offstage and sometimes trips them up with the marvellous but seemingly capricious flexibility for which he's famous (this information not from Peter, by the way, who got the thumbs up from the pit on more than one occasion). It's standard for continental repertory opera - not so the EXTRA rehearsal with the orchestra alone - but contrasts markedly with the Glyndebourne Ariadne, for which Jurowski was present from the first at the seven week of rehearsals.

Schwanewilms, anyway, was beyond sublime in the Marschallin's Monologue - phrases so delicately inflected that you strained to catch them - drawing an audience in is always a much greater art than reaching out - and such pointing of the German text that I never expect to hear it bettered. She certainly brought on the heartbreak and the tears in her changed-mood misalliance with her uncomprehending Quinquin.

Well, what can I say? Wanderer (see previous blog entry; and see now - 22/6 - his own take on the evening, capturing far more eloquently than mine the essence of heavenly Anne, which I should have highlighted more) and I couldn't stop blubbing in the interval. It's singing-acting on a level very few achieve. And throughout the interval we had the balmy Dresden evening to enhance the bittersweetness,  not to mention the astonishing view across the Theatrerplatz to Augustus the Fat's Hofkirche - an unpopular Catholic riposte to the citizens' Frauenkirche, about which more anon - the Residenzschloss and the Hausmann Tower, a great ensemble complemented by the Zwinger Palace out of sight to the right.

The location gave as much to gawp at as the crowds (though I have to say I've never encountered a more frigid audience, which seemed more local than international. They did, it's true, give a standing ovation at the end).

Oh, we were so anticipating the Presentation of the Rose, but from the minute the Sophie opened her mouth I knew we had a liability on our hands. Ungainly of phrase, lacking charm in sound and appearance, useful only for her top notes, Daniela Fally was not on the level of her colleagues. And frankly, you do need a bit of scenic glitz - even if it's nouveau-riche Faninal bling - for the famous Hofmannsthal-concocted ritual. At least the splendid Irmgard Vilsmaier, whose Hänsel Mother had made such an impact at Glyndebourne and who is also a Brünnhilde as you could tell, made some amends as a full-voiced Marianne Leitmetzerin (pictured on the right here).

Bit parts were a mixed blessing. Apparently Thielemann had sacked some of the house singers on a single hearing, putting the Dresden admin in a funk to find international replacements double-quick. For every plus there was a minus: vivacious Helene Schneiderman as a stylish Annina was let down by her unfunny, self-conducting Valzacchi (no name needed). The Faninal (also nnn) was a cipher; the Police Commissar in Act Three, house bass Peter Lobert, more than stood up to Peter vocally and demonstrated how threatening this usually saggy bit of the drama could be if it were moved back from Laufenberg's setting to the 1940s. Excellent pint-sized tavern owner from Dan Karlström; the footmen at the end of Act 1 the usual gabbled mess. The extras in the Lerchenau retinue wambled around grotesquely and without discipline.

But the main thing is that without a sympathetic Sophie, in effect the Marschallin's younger self who escapes the older woman's fate of a loveless arranged marriage, you do miss the senior soprano for an act and a half. Her comeback in Act Three was, naturally, highly emotional, and Peter made the most of Ochs's dashed hopes in that fascinating disentanglement before his waltz-exit: his 'mit dieser Stund' vorbei' gave the final threesome's entanglement a run for its money.

Trio? To be fair, Fally sang well enough and was even rather touching as a forlorn schoolgirl standing apart; Schwanewilms crowned it with hyper-pathos and Garanca provided lustre, though I inwardly groaned when she missed a big phrase - Thielemann-anxiety, perhaps? - and the magic took a while to return. Again, I just don't think this sort of thing would happen given Glyndebourne or even Covent Garden preparation time. You have to hand it to these international singers, exposing their reputations to an audience who knows nothing of the rollercoaster circumstances. Although Thielemann still gets results, and no-one does late-romantic rubato quite as easily as he does, the collegial way is surely better.

Anyway, we filed out with hearts tugged at, though not so much as in Act One, and wafted past the 19th century homages to Roman grottesco style in the foyers

down the stairs to the bust of Wagner (I wanted to find another to Strauss, but the attendants denied knowledge of one),

out into the fragrant Dresden summer night

and on to a meal with Peter and co. Our Dresden experience had only just begun - I have much more to write about the bewildering treasures we saw the next day - but our reason for being there was already fully vindicated.

In the meantime, my very long eulogy on Richard Jones's Royal Opera staging of Britten's Gloriana yesterday evening - a well-nigh perfect entertainment from first to last - is  up on The Arts Desk. Shame I didn't make it to Aldeburgh for an against-the-odds amazing Peter Grimes beach show on Monday, but a migraine peaked at just the wrong time, and it was a fair old trek to north London for the press bus - shudder - and back in the wee small hours.

From Bronze to Carmen

It was one of those embarrassingly rich London days, preceded by a convivial evening (drinks at the Garrick, the perfect meal at Terroirs). Our dear friend and terrific artist Ruth Addinall had come down from Edinburgh to see us and catch the Royal Academy’s Bronze exhibition before it closes on Sunday. So I took most of Tuesday off and accompanied her around town. The exhibition at  the RA and the opera at the Coliseum were our two mainstays, though the unplanned interludes turned out to be fun – Ruthie trying on trousers and jumpers, and I searching in vain for more bright blue moleskins, in Cording’s, and snatching a falafel in Gaby’s (reprieved, it seems, from its threatened demise).

Sculptor Jon Edgar, whom we've come to know through Ruth, joined us for the exhibition, and it was good to have his expert knowledge, though once past the first big room we went our separate ways. The keynote piece at the start would be worth the price of the admission alone. In the late 1990s, Sicilian fisherman dredged up first a leg and, a year later, the torso of what is known as the Dancing Satyr (though as Bryan Sewell points out, since the foot is not a goat’s hoof it is much more likely a human follower of Dionysus). It would be exciting to accept the attribution to Praxiteles and date it to the fourth century BC, though probably it's Hellenistic. The flowing-haired beauty is skilfully lit and comes alive in his celebration from every angle you look.

Follow that? Well, the first room did pretty well with the human figure, mixing up centuries and races with delicious abandon. A noble Roman towers over a Nigerian bowman. A stick-thin figure looks like a Giacometti; it turns out to be an Etruscan votive figure from the second century BC. The giant ensemble of Rustici’s John the Baptist preaching to a Levite and a Pharisee stands at the end of the room alongside a cast of Cellini’s Perseus, their monumentality gently mocked by Donatello’s tiny Putto with Tambourine.

To the left of the big saloon is a crystal-clear exposition of the process from wax model to treated bronze (I won’t attempt to précis the technique); to the right the exhibition continues with a slight diminishing of interest in the subject matter, from animals to functional objects, though the Etruscan Chimera of Arezzo is a fabulous sight

and it’s fun to have a Louise Bourgeois spider (IV)on the wall.

In between the feral animate and the inanimate is a room of group figures, again ranging from the monumental to a real miniature beauty, Riccio’s tender Satyr and Satyress. The scope expands to early wonders like the 14th century BC Chariot of the Sun from Denmark, Chola bronzes and Buddhist figures. Those look especially handsome in the Gods and Goddesses room, eastern ascetics sitting alongside elegant Renaissance divinities; en route, the reliefs section has Adriaen de Vries’s magnificent muscled blacksmiths at work in Vulcan’s forge.

The last room rises to the heights again with heads of all ages. I’m at one with Ruth and J in adoring the Ife brass Head with Crown, its fascination compounded by striated lines down the face.

Hard to say which object to take away, this or the Dancing Satyr – probably the latter,  if I’m to be true to myself and let an ideal of male beauty take the palm.

So onwards, eventually, to the Coli. Calixto Bieito’s production of Carmen, which had quite a few attractive masculine torsos on show, arrives at English National Opera bronzed and polished after ten years doing the rounds. I enjoyed it far, far more than I expected after the aimless shenanigans of his Don Giovanni – I was bored rather than shocked by the mess he made of the Act One Finale – and his Ballo in maschera, which started well but suffered from the law of diminishing returns in its random sexual violence. There was probably too much not terribly convincing prodding and fondling in the first half of this Carmen, a few non-readable ideas (the man in white at the start, for instance – fateful controller? He turned out to be Lillas Pastia, king of the gypsies, but I wouldn’t have known that without reading the programme). Nor was Bieito's avowed period, Franco's Spain in the late 1970s, evoked by the action as far as I could see.

Acts Three and Four, though, were much the best I’ve seen in the opera house (Ruxandra Donose as Carmen and Adam Diegel as Don José in both the above pictures). The five Mercedes – six, as has been often pointed out, if you include Carmen’s girl-friend and add the French accents – were terrific props to animate a scene where all you normally get is brooding gypsies hunkering on a dimly lit stage. And the silhouette bull sign looked good at the back of Alfons Flores’s often unencumbered arena (huge variety of lighting, too, from Bruno Poet).

The act also contained the two musical highlights: Donose, possessed of a beautiful if not tonally very varied mezzo instrument she takes some time to engage, rose to the most dignified Card Scene aria I’ve heard. Then there was Elizabeth Llewellyn’s powerful Micaela, hints of Leontyne Price honey at the top of the voice. Shame her characterization was ill defined by Bieito – first she’s too forward with José in Act One, then too timid, and the fuck-you gesture to Carmen as she goes off with him to the supposedly dying mother didn’t work.

Musically, there was good co-ordination between soloists, chorus and orchestra. On Tuesday night the conductor was ENO Head of Music Martin Fitzpatrick. I’d hazard a guess that he pulled out more stops than Ryan Wigglesworth, responsible for the worst conducted concert I’ve heard in a long time (a couple of years back with the BBC Symphony Orchestra). But the less accomplished of the two Wigglesworths – no way to be confused with the masterly Mark – may have improved since then.

Hunky Duncan Rock’s Corporal Morales (pictured above with the fabulous Llewellyn) and Leigh Melrose’s slightly seedy bullfighter Escamillo should probably have swapped roles, since Rock’s voice is more ample; but Melrose is an excellent musician and played with the phrases rather well. American tenor Diegel as Don José has a slightly nervy, raw sound which came into its own for the nailbiting final duet, though before that he sang flat too often for comfort and didn't unbend enough for the physical violence. Promising sounds came from the Mercédès, mezzo Madeleine Shaw. As with Bronze, Sunday is the last day to catch the show, though no doubt it will be back for a good many seasons: I'm glad that ENO has at last hit on a lively production for a core component of its more pack-em-in rep.

My apprehension about going to see it at all was based on how spoiled we’d been throughout the seven glorious Opera in Focus classes we spent on Carmen at the City Lit. It’s a hell of a role to pitch at the right level between sex and dignity. On disc the voice can do it alone: of the Habaneras we compared – from Supervia, Dusolina Giannini, Troyanos, Obraztsova, Moffo, Callas, de los Angeles  and a young Marilyn Horne dubbing Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones – de los Angeles (pictured below) and Moffo were the most liked by the students, Giannini the least, while Troyanos tended to steal the show in the Seguidille and the Card Scene.

Yet having never seen a totally convincing Carmen on stage, I and the students were knocked for six by Elina Garanca in the DVD of Richard Eyre’s Metropolitan Opera production. You know what it feels like when the ideal for a role pops up once in a lifetime – Gheorghiu in her first Covent Garden Traviata, Bryn as Hans Sachs? Garanca is in that league. Though she’s a natural blonde, she looks utterly convincing all dusked up. The voice is vibrant and utterly consistent from top to bottom of the register – actually in that respect the same could be said of Donose – and as sexual predator she’s dangerous, wild and funny without being tarty. There’s real electricity between her and Alagna’s compelling José. Judge for yourselves in the final scene, though do try to get to see the characterization as a whole.

Credits: all ENO Carmen photographs by Alastair Muir

Bronze images kindly supplied by the Royal Academy (except for the top picture which is mine) with the following credit details:

Dancing Satyr, Greek, Hellenistic perios, 3rd - 2nd centuries BC Museo del Satiro, Church of Sant'Egidio, Mazaro del Vallo

Photo Sicily, Regione Siciliana - Assessorato Regionale dei Beni Culturali e dell'identita Siciliana/© 2012. Photo Scala, Florence

Donatello, Putto with Tambourine, 1429

© Staaliche Museen zu Berlin - Preussicher Kulturbesitz, Skulpturensammlung und Museum fur Byzantische Kunst, J P Anders, Berlin

Chimera of Arezzo, Etruscan, c. 400 BC

Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Toscana

Photo Antonio Quattrone, Florence

Louise Bourgeois, Spider IV, 1996

The Easton Foundation, courtesy Hauser & Wirth and Cheim & Read

Photo Peter Bellamy/ © Louise Bourgeois Trust

Adriaen de Vries, Forge of Vulcan, 1611
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich
Photo © Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Walter Haberland

Head with Crown, Nigeria, Ife, 14th - early 15th centuries

National Museum, Lagos, National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Nigeria

©  2012. Photo Scala, Florence