One crazy day

Referring, of course, to the action packed world of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, currently running at Glyndebourne in a very classy touring version of Michael Grandage’s production, rather than the Study Day before it, masterminded by Sarah Lenton with a pair of excellent actors (Anna Brecon and Marcus Hutton) to take on multiple roles and in which I played my part as the morning's musical guide. In the afternoon's session, singers who will take over the roles of Susanna and Figaro later in the tour, Ellie Laugharne and Derek Welton, were joined by Marcellina Jean Rigby for a guided tour around some of the treasures.

Preparing to condense the joys of Figaro into one hour (!) only made me fall head over heels in love again with this most flawless of all musical comedies – though I wasn’t expecting so much from the Grandage show as revived by Ian Rutherford; production photos suggested a facile disjunction between the late 60s costumes and the crumbling elegance of a Moorish palace (fabulously designed by Christopher Oram and often evocatively lit by Paule Constable).

While I’m not convinced that the chosen era and its fashions went much beyond the decorative, I did suspend my disbelief at the whole shifting of the class boundaries from social to financial – ‘l’argent fait tout’, as Marcellina sings, in this bohemian world – and thought the evocation of the time added mostly a sense of fun. Jiving and twisting lent a groovy weirdness to the behaviour of Bartolo (Andrew Slater, most amusing) as well as a delightful exuberance to the wedding fandango. Floppy hats made the ladies’ disguises in Act Four more plausible than usual, despite the difference in their heights. And a terrific wig + Zapata moustache + funky flares + flowery shirts + a nice array of waistcoats dolled up the Count to make him a mixture of sexiness and absurdity.

American John Moore, who plays Almaviva until the tour shifts base, couldn’t have been better: an assured actor, reining in any caricatural aspect by striking a fine balance between preening and insecurity, and as a singer of impressive control never overdoing or forcing the big vengeance aria in Act Three. Which was where, in this musically brilliant and up until then pacy Figaro, we finally took a breather and allowed the aristocratic characters their display.

Layla Claire’s Countess, drifting around in floaty dresses and platform shoes, was more than equal to hers, drawing on luscious resources of colour and ornamental prowess so that you felt she could do anything in ‘Dove sono’: likewise, a finer Rosina I’ve not seen on stage (though Dorothea Röschmann at the Royal Opera was wonderful on a bigger scale; but Glyndebourne's is really the ideal for this work - no need to test the singers' projection any further).

Joélle Harvey, a petite Susanna with excellent eyes for comedy, followed the distinction of Claire's set piece with a heavenly Act Four serenade. Taking the Study Day folk through it, I’d mixed and matched Reri Grist (regal for very slow Klemperer), Barbara Bonney and Lucia Popp, but Harvey had her own subtle charms to rival them all, including a last-minute gem of gorgeous ornamentation. Only the Figaro pictured with her above, Guido Loconsolo, fell behind the other three principals – and behind conductor Jonathan Cohen’s vigilant beat; the only times in the whole evening where energy levels dropped were in his ‘Non piu andrai’ and ‘Aprite un po’ quegli occhi’. I must say I didn’t mind the Marcellina and Basilio arias being cut from Act Four; to have heard them would have marred what felt like structural perfection. And, as we'd discussed earlier, it makes you realise all the more how Mozart and Da Ponte raise the servants to the level of their masters when their arias stand in similar relief.

Cohen did a superlative job of making the numbers flow so that the first two acts dazzled with their action: fast tempi, very often, but with plenty of breathing expression from strings and wind. And the deftness of the Overture was well worth keeping down the curtain for (in the main season, the Count and Countess drove up to Aguas Frescas in a sports car - not a touring option, if you see what I mean, and the revolve which revealed the different rooms of the palace had to go, too. Optional-opulent extras both, I'm guessing).

So much depends, in comic terms, on the right pace from the conductor: I got goosebumps of sheer pleasure when the music slowed to reveal Cherubino hiding, or Susanna stepping mock-innocently out of the closet. The recits were delivered with gilding style from fortepiano continuo player Ashok Gupta, and such quick-witted meaning from the singers that you’d have thought all the members of the cast were native Italian speakers (whom to credit most? Grandage? Rutherford? The conductor? The language coach?)

Kathryn Rudge may not have been quite the most quicksilver of Cherubinos, but Cohen got such a spring from the furtive ecstasy of pizzicato strings lining ‘Voi che sapete’ that the spirit of delight steered us happily through. The superhuman happiness of the great Sextet and the Countess’s pardon rose to the heights, too. Not much more to ask, then (except a stronger Figaro); and if the production found no novel ways of expressing the ensemble oppositions and the comic twists, then we were fairly comfortable with that since the singers all seemed happy in their characters’ skins.

Glyndebourne rehearsal standards had clearly wrought the usual high-level results. The work's the thing, and thanks especially to Cohen, his Count, Countess and Susanna, we all came out reeling afresh at Mozart’s comic genius.

As for Glyndebourne, it was looking especially enchanting on a sunny Sunday morning, when I arrived for the soundchecks: dew on the lawns and mist on the fields. Something of that brilliance had faded by the time I took these pictures in the late afternoon, but the essence of the early autumn mood down by the lake remains.

All production photos by Bill Cooper for Glyndebourne

The tragic crown

It goes, I think - and I find, to my surprise, that there are folk who think otherwise - to Derek Jacobi for a Donmar King Lear I was so desperate to see that I completely forgot to book for it, had to pass on a matinee ticket offered at the last minute two Thursdays ago (Berlioz Romeo examples were still filling my time and mind - coronation results below) and only just caught in the live screening at the Gate Notting Hill - one of hundreds, I gather, worldwide - a week later. All photos of the Donmar production here by Johan Persson for the company.

The singular circumstances of that event I rather opportunistically captured, hopefully to the greater glory of the actors' professionalism, on The Arts Desk. But I ought to enumerate, if only for my own memory (as if I could forget), the range and breadth of Jacobi's greatest challenge. There was a potent sense of time passing for me, as his Hamlet was the first I saw, aged 15 (with my dear old dad just departed, coincidentally enough, and a tricky stepfather not so far in the future) at the Old Vic in 1977. I knew then, without comparisons to make, that it was the greatest, and so it has always remained in my mind. Forgive the fuzzy image of the programme here - mine is still buried in the maternal attic, I hope.


There's one objective truth here - that no living actor I've ever encountered has produced a wider vocal compass or more extreme dynamics (Alex Jennings and William Houston - where on earth is he these days? - came close). That makes for an operatic experience in which the music is all in the voice, and which veers between theatricality and heart-stopping truthfulness. And much as I will always remember Kathryn Hunter's Lear as the best I'd seen on stage up to this one, Jacobi led me to the somewhat sexist conclusion that even an actress can't do so much across the octaves. Because, of course, Jacobi has access to the falsetto too. Which he uses to highlight not only the old-womanish, verging-on-senility of the foolish, fond old man but also the heartbreak of 'O, let me not be mad' (who didn't want to weep at that point, I wonder?) and the banshee terror of 'howl, howl, howl!'

Speeches lit up, as did everything in Grandage's crystal-clear, blinding-white production, like I've never heard before - the quiet desperation of 'O reason not the need', the disarming crescendo of the curse on Goneril, the coup of a whisper after the soundscape storm in 'Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks'. And 'Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are' was one of many revelatory turning points - perhaps the most crucial, the first point at which true understanding of the lives of others seemed to strike home. The mad scene, which is where our transmission broke up, forcing Paul Jesson's Gloucester and Gwilym Lee's Edgar to repeat their Dover cliff duet with greater intensity, came across with exemplary crispness.


All this would have been less shattering had it not been conducted in tandem with a superb group among the actors, above all Ron Cook's Fool who made every 'riddle' intelligible (just seen him burnt to a cinder in Simon Pegg's surprisingly hilarious cop movie spoof Hot Fuzz).


You understood the two elder sisters not so much as ugly by name and nature but as warped daughters of a capricious father, with superb differentiation between Gina McKee's cold 'un Goneril (right) and Justine Mitchell, perhaps the more interesting characterisation, as a Regan with banked hysteria bursting out in terrifying degrees.


The Cordelia, Pippa Bennett-Warner, spoke the verse beautifully, fine promise for an eloquent leading lady in waiting.


Even the handful of weaker actors never quite let the side down: Grandage's pace and clarity always kept the focus where it was supposed to be. So while I felt his Glyndebourne Billy Budd restricted the possibilities and dimensions of Britten's psychological study, this was surely a liberation for the actors and the limitless possibilities of Shakespeare's text.

So. You may now have heard the Saturday Library choice for Berlioz's Romeo et Juliette - six days left on the BBC iPlayer to listen, if not - unShakespearean in the sung word but never in spirit. The gold crown, one of three, went to Gardiner's comprehensively vivid survey.


As yet there's a degree of confusion over its download status, but I was assured at the time that there were places on the net where that was possible. Apparently Universal rectifies the situation tomorrow, though this is a case where I'd like to have the CDs with their booklet for clarification of the various alternatives*. Anyway, I still have equal fondness for Sir Colin's first performance, another download-only; it was only the uniform first-class quality of JEG's soloists and Monteverdi Choir which tipped the balance.


In such programmes, the final choice is the sop to the public; but it's never so clear-cut. Truth to tell, I'd like my Romeo Alone movement from Monteux, the Love Scene from Davis in Vienna and the Mab Scherzo from Boulez (with Munch, so unexpectedly ham-fisted elsewhere, a close second). I also lay claim to my copy of the Toscanini NBC performance, too. Surely never was there a work offering so many different stylistic choices, movement by movement. Every orchestral work I hear after it seems a bit overstuffed at the moment.

*I'm told this is feasible, at the standard price, from ArkivMusic.com.