A Brno Advent dozen

On 1 December, having just returned from an exhilarating weekend seeing two productions by the opera/theatre director I consider one of the most visionary in the world, Jiří Heřman, and steeped in the spirit of a very Czech advent weekend in Brno's centre, I thought I'd mark each December day up to Christmas with an image on LinkedIn from that glorious city. Now that I've reached a dozen, I'll be reverting to London and Dublin, but I thought I might preserve the dozen here. I started above with the big wooden crib outside the New Town Hall. I'll use the original captions for the rest.

2: the people of Czechia's second biggest city love their animals. Dogs everywhere, but in the Zelný trh (which translates inelegantly as 'Vegetable Market', literally 'green', now given over to Xmas stalls) I also saw a gentleman with two cats - a Persian on his back, another in a basket. He eventually set them down to have a stroll around - the crowds parted and looked on in amusement.

This, by the way, was at the start of a very lovely Sunday spent with friend and Opera in Depth Zoom class student Barbara, who came up on the train from Bratislava. I've added one here above she took of my trying to talk to the unbiddable Persian. Another friend, Juliet, will be amused, because this cat was the spit of one looked after in Jerusalem when she and her partner Rory were there, name of Zorah, always addressed with 'so naughty!'

3:  back to the wooden-figure crib in front of the New Town Hall. Walk behind and you'll be rewarded with these splendid goats (?) and storks.

4: more hustle and bustle in Zelný trh, and this time from cats to dogs, which the citizens walk around the centre in large numbers. Note the eyeing up of the wee black creature by the canine on the right.

5: third shot of the wooden Nativity - elephant's eye view, looking across to church of St. Michael.

6: barrel organ player in Zelný trh. I remember being struck by the quaint sounds around the streets on my previous visit - a very characterful fellow used to turn the wheel outside the Jesuit Church.

7: returning to Zelný trh after a walk with Barbara to the Augustinian abbey where Janáček received his schooling - covered in a previous post here -  and Mendel made his discoveries (and excellent duck and cabbage pancakes at Skanseen).

8: the rainbow light shimmer in front of the National (Janáček) Theatre, stunningly renovated, has been temporarily replaced by snowflakes. Walking back after Heřman's sunning production of 'From the House of the Dead/Glagolitic Mass', which I urge you to watch for free on OperaVision.

I can take another diversion from the advent 12 just to show you one stand of the exhibition in the foyer relating to both works, taking in some of the audience looks at the same time.

9:  the beautifully-proportioned Mahen Theatre = 140 years old, recently refurbished and still playing host to smaller-scale National Theatre productions - is where all Janáček's late operas were first performed. Nicky Spence's performance with Julius Drake of The Diary of One Who Disappeared was a highlight of this year's Janáček Festival.

10: expert choral sounds emerged from a small 1931 shopping precinct as I walked towards the National Theatre for a performance of Nabucco. These young people were rehearsing with their choir master - superb. Music is everywhere in Brno.

11: street cleaners taking a break in Náměstí Svobody, Freedom Place, known affectionately as Svoboďák. The Christmas tree here springs from a tradition established by the writer Rudolf Těsnohlídek, of Cunning Little Vixen fame, and a rather extraordinary story of a baby girl he found in the woods which led to the founding of a strikingy designed children's home. Full details here: https://lnkd.in/ecadynam 

I found another edition of Těsnohlídek's novelized Vixen, complete with Stanislav Lolek's charming illustrations in the original newspaper serialisation, in Brno's No. 1 bookshop, Janáček ordered up his music here.

12:  this very short tram which travels the centre is so beautifully lit up for Xmas - I'm afraid I didn't snap it twinkling in the dark, but you get the gist. Images 13-25 will first return us to London, then move on to more shining lights in Dubin. 

Previous posts on Janáček in Brno here, the city's churches here and its amazing functional 1920s and 30s architecture here. My last article on the big city festival is here on theartsdesk. Post on the latest operatic experiences due there soon.

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.

Puccini's Café Momus at the Frontline Club

...where the food is possibly better. One of the delights of hosting my Opera in Depth course at the marvellous Frontline is that we can choose our menu from the downstairs restaurant, open to the public, and consume it in the comfort of the club room, with maître d' Tomas, for whom nothing is too much trouble, to tend to our every need. Pictured above: Simona Mihai's Musetta presents her knickers to Mariusz Kwiecień's Marcello at Covent Garden, image by Catherine Ashmore.

Anyway, it's finally time for the new 'academic year', starting later than usual this time - on Monday afternoon, the 9th, to be precise, the first term then running straight through to before Christmas. Richard Jones's Royal Opera production of Puccini's La bohème has been in full spate for some time now, but I chose to spend five weeks on it (again!) because he's vouchsafed to come and talk to us (also again, after fascinating chats on Die Meistersinger, Gloriana, Der Rosenkavalier and Boris Godunov). I hope he still will since in my Arts Desk review, I had to be honest and say that, in the first-cast realisation at least, this didn't strike me as one of his more unusual shows. I know he believes, as any director with any sense should, that Puccini and his librettist leave the minutes details for the scenario and you shouldn't mess with that. But there were some less than fully realised characterisations in the first run, and the Momus act was - again, very surprisingly - a bit of a mess. Troubles with lack of lighting rehearsals, I understand, didn't help.

My second choice in the Autumn term, Musorgsky's Khovanshchina, was made on the strength of realising for the first time what a total masterpiece Shostakovich's performing version is, thanks to Semyon Bychkov's magnificent Proms performance, with a superb cast - possibly my favourite Prom of the year, though it's been very hard to choose (Bychkov pictured above at that Prom by the peerless Chris Christodoulou - don't miss his annual gallery of conductors in action on The Arts Desk). Students can see the WNO production if they're prepared to travel.

Spring operas: the first of four January Ring instalments to tie in with Jurowski's Wagner cycle at the Royal Festival Hall. Das Rheingold will take us into February, and then - finally! - I get to cover Janáček's From the House of the Dead since it's being staged at the Royal Opera for the first time (WNO also has a production coming soon). Best news of all is that Mark Wigglesworth is to conduct in place of the capricious Teodor Currentzis, so we can (I hope) welcome Mark back quicker than we expected.

Summer will see plenty of moonshine in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Strauss's Salome, for which I have renewed appetite having been very impressed by the theatrical room devoted to it, and Dresden in 1905, in the Victoria & Albert Museum's stunning exhibition Opera: Passion, Power and Politics. There's the room below, picture courtesy of the V&A, but read my review on The Arts Desk today to find out why everything works.

It's been a long time away from lecturing, but to warm up I got to talk to members of the Art Fund at the Royal Over-Seas League last night. This was in connection with the V&A show, but by the time I had to give a clear theme, the details of the exhibition weren't clear. So I thought a general look at how opera swung from strict dramatic principles to display, and back and forth until the end of the 19th century, would allow me to sneak in something of Strauss's Capriccio before homing in on the difference between two Otellos: Rossini's in 1816, and Verdi's in 1887: from bel canto to pure music-theatre. The two scene settings, Willow Songs with Prayers and very different treatments of the fatal last encounter between Otello and Desdemona followed by Otello's suicide would permit some interesting comparisons - not always to Rossini's detriment, though Verdi's penultimate opera is, as we rediscovered with awe during our five weeks on it for Opera in Depth, the perfect masterpiece.

 
This Opera Rara set is a good resource - negatively for wicked entertainment, showing how not to depend on a tenor who may have the very high notes needed for the daft role of Rodrigo but no musicality whatsoever, positively for Bruce Ford and Elizabeth Futral, and for including an appendix which even gives us the later lieto fine or happy ending drawn from a duet and an ensemble in other Rossini operas.

Needless to say there wasn't nearly enough time to play all the examples I'd intended, but it was crucial to end with the very fine filming of Elijah Moshinsky's Royal Opera Otello with Domingo and Kiri. Not possible to go and see Kaufmann when we were focusing on Domingo on the opera course earlier this summer - and it's very hard for anyone to come anywhere near to Domingo, who simply owned the part.

As I think audiences on both occasions very much agreed. This is the only Otello you'll ever want on DVD, though the choice is wide indeed when it comes to CD (Toscanini, Levine, Karajan with Vickers and Freni, live Carlos Kleiber for starters).

If you're still interested in attending the Opera in Depth course either this term or later, do drop me a note by way of a comment here - I won't publish it, and if you leave me your e-mail, I'll respond.