From Undine to Rusalka: truth in fairytales

How Dvořák must have loved his sad water-spirit (Sally Matthews depicted in the latest revival of Melly Still's unforgettable Glyndebourne production above by Tristram Kenton): there isn't a bar that palls in his Rusalka, and I was very reluctant to let the opera go in the fourth and last Opera in Depth class on it last Monday afternoon. Curious that so fantastical a tale, differently treated in many variants, should have brought forth such deep responses from so many of the masters who touched it, otherwise Hans Christian Andersen in The Little Mermaid, Mendelssohn in his Overture The Fair Melusine and, least known these days, Henri de la Motte, Baron Fouqué, in the seminal tale, Undine, of 1811 (illustrated below in a later edition by Arthur Rackham).

No wonder Goethe loved it so much. Undine is no wan angel; when we first meet her she's capricious and wilful (not bad traits for a heroine by today's standards), only later transformed by love for her Prince Huldbrand. What's remarkable, though, is the author's human understanding of the love triangle which develops in the royal realm.

The fascination of Dvořák and Kvapil's second act is how the sudden appearance of the Foreign Princess to challenge the mute-among-mortals seems hallucinatory to the Prince: she even has some of Rusalka's music, like a kind of Black Swan, representing the sexual desire lacking in the protagonist (Robert Carsen's superb Paris production makes her and witch Jezibaba into aspects of Rusalka). In Fouqué, the unhappiness develops over time; at first Princess Bertalda becomes Rusalka's confidante for real once the prince has ridden back through the forest with his love back to his domain (painting below by Daniel Maclise, 1843).

The situation is complicated by the fact that she turns out to be the mortal child snatched away by the water spirits from the fisherman and his wife who have since brought up Rusalka as their own. At the beginning of Chapter XIII ('How they lived at Castle Ringstetten') we get this:

The writer of this story, both because it moves his own heart, and because he wishes it to move that of others, begs you, dear reader, to pardon him, if he now briefly passes over a considerable space of time, only cursorily mentioning the events that marked it. He knows well that he might portray skilfully, step by step, how Huldbrand's heart began to turn from Undine to Bertalda; how Berthalda more and more responded with ardent affection to the young knight, and how they both looked upon the poor wife as a mysterious being rather to be feared than pitied; how Undine wept, and how her tears stung the knight's heart with remorse, without awakening his former love, so that though he at times was kind and endearing to her, a cold shudder would soon draw him from her, and he would turn to his fellow mortal, Bertalda. All this the reader knows might be fully detailed, and perhaps ought to have been so; but such a task would have been too painful, for similar things have been known to him by sad experience, and he shrinks from their shadow even in remembrance. You know probably a like feeling, dear reader, for such is the lot of mortal man. Happy are you if you have received rather than inflicted the pain, for in such things it is more blessed to receive than to give.

How this affected the author precisely is not known, though I hazard a guess from the fact that he was was twice married (I've found nothing about the first wife). But how truthful, and - in the uncredited translation I have - how much more telling than the discreetly erotic drawings that accompany it.

I note that Fouqué provided the libretto for Hoffmann's opera on the subject; what a shame that the music is so much more pedestrian than either the novella or Hoffmann's literary tales.

In the end I used nothing from the Hoffmann opera to illustrate the classes, though there was plenty from Mendelssohn, Weber, Tchaikovsky (the four surviving numbers from his Undine, including the love duet which became the Act 2 Pas d'action with violin and cello solos replacing soprano and tenor in Swan Lake), Sullivan (yes, the magic/spooky music of Iolanthe is worth taking seriously) and Dvořák's other operas (chiefly The Devil and Kate and Armida, chronologically either side of Rusalka).

As for the opera itself, we had mostly what we needed in two CD sets and two films. On disc, there's the Supraphon Rusalka from Neumann with the unsurpassably luminous Gabriela Beňačková, whose Song to the Moon is peerless, or at least first equal with Lucia Popp's - this is actually from a desert island arias disc -

and Mackerras's, also with the Czech Philharmonic. starring Fleming and Heppner, never better. The last duet is overwhelming in what for me is maybe the greatest, Liebestod-ish end of any opera. This excerpt comes in a tad too late for my liking, but you get the idea.

The DVDs are of Carsen's production mentioned above, again with Fleming, and the late, lamented Sergey Larin as the Prince, and another going way back to Pountney's Victorian nursery fantasia for English National Opera, which is still heartbreaking in the final scene (Eilene Hannan and John Treleaven). So much so that one student had to run out of the room at the end so that we didn't hear her sobs. I had that the first time I saw the film, though I don't remember the live performance having quite the same effect. Alas, Eilene Hannan died in 2014 at the age of 67 - best remembered as an intense presence on stage in everything she did.

Meanwhile, for next season, academic year, call it what you will, I've decided that we'll devote the autumn term to three, rather than two, operas, one a stage work: Handel's Agrippina, Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice and Weill's Der Silbersee. The spring term will see the third instalment of our four-year Ring journey with Siegfried, while the summer bring Strauss's Elektra and one more TBC. All tending to the Germanic, I know, but that's what the London rep is offering in 2019-20. Let me know in a message here if you're interested, complete with e-mail; I won't publish it, but I'll be sure to reply.

Immortal Sir Charles

We can't stop talking about the great Mackerras and/or playing the encyclopedic music dear to him: after last year's blockbuster memorial concert, there's going to be an ENO operatic spectacular at the London Coliseum on 26 June, and next season the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment will be dedicating its 4 November performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis to his memory*. The above photo by the wonderful Clive Barda is just as so many remember the man in his last year - the radiant smiles came thick and fast for both the OAE and the Philharmonia.

I was so delighted to be asked to talk to three of the OAE's players about him before a concert he had been scheduled to conduct last Wednesday (shame on me; owing to Arts Desk duties I sloped over after the interview to the Festival Hall for Christine Brewer and Jurowski conducting the LPO; no way would I have deserted the other bunch if Mackerras had still been at the helm). Having already experienced this team's generosity of spirit when I had the daunting task of lecturing them on Tchaikovsky two seasons back, I was confident in advance that we'd engage and that they'd have plenty to say.

In the end it was the effervescent Chi-chi Nwanoku, most expressive of double-bass players and an experienced Radio 3 presenter, who said she was nervous just before we went on. Here's one of those wacky publicity shots the OAE releases from time to time. Sadly was too involved chatting to think of photographing the team, so she'll have to be the figurehead (and well chosen, by the way, as one of the 100 on the Independent's Happy list, a feelgood antidote to another paper's World's Richest. Other candidates include a retired sniffer dog, the cuckoo, Juliet Stevenson and Miriam Margolyes).


And we'd had such a lovely, slightly waspish four-way chat backstage, some of it not for the public platform (let's say it involved a certain tenor and a certain heavier-handed Mozartian conductor), that I did inwardly think we might lose the spontaneity in front of an audience.

But we didn't. The contrasting temperaments certainly helped: the other speakers were violinist Catherine Weiss, quietly sincere, more than able to hold her own, and that splendid anecdotalist (and a hero of mine as an oboist whose example I only wish I'd ever been able to emulate) Anthony Robson. I started out by focusing on each in turn: Catherine on the finale run of Cosis at Glyndebourne last summer, not long before Sir Charles's death; Anthony on first encountering him in the D'Oyly Carte Orchestra, tales of which, given my G&S mania, I could have happily have kept running for the rest of the half-hour; and Chi-chi on a performance which meant the most to her, an early (1989) Haydn Creation like no other, about which she talks so eloquently in the excellent little OAE book by Helen Wallace.


You'll eventually be able to hear the talk when the OAE puts up the recording on its website in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I have to say that the greatest delight came with the questions, when we were discussing the possible existence of rehearsal footage. And a lady in the audience said, 'I believe there's quite a bit from his work in Prague. I'm Catherine, Charles's daughter, by the way'. And there she was with Lady Judy, his wife, and, as it turned out a fair swathe of the Mackerras/Briger clan. I'd heard there was a possibility they might be coming, but didn't see any of them until that point. Cue a cheerful QEH foyer shot.


Pictured are Sir Charles's nephew Ambrose Hall, who'd come and spoken to me about Martinu after a BBCSO pre-performance talk, his mother Joan - can't you see the resemblance to brother Charles? - and husband Graham Hall, niece Christina de Briger, Frances Edwards (stepdaughter of a brother of Charles), Lady Judy Mackerras and daughter Catherine.

Have had an e-mail correspondence with the very friendly Christina, sister of conductor Alex Briger who did such a splendid job at the memorial concert and whom we hope will be able to conduct the complete Pineapple Poll at the Proms (I'm working on it). She's given me permission to reproduce some of her comments about beloved Uncle Charlie: 'still can't believe that he has gone - feel he's simply on tour somewhere and will be returning soon...he was SO present and giving to us all in the family, not just musically but through his love and care, always there in times of ups and downs.'

Catherine later added that he was still full of quotes and quips in the final weeks - on the ambulance to the hospital in Elba when he was taken ill again, she told him she wouldn't abandon him, and he mock-melodramatically declaimed 'Sola, perduta, abandonnata'. Apparently kept the other folk in the hospital amused with his operatic Italian. I miss him as well, though not in a painful way, and I wasn't even a member of the family. As I observed to Christina, there was always something of a longing for the father figure he became during our many 'tutorials' (a different subject each time: Beethoven's Leonore, Martinu's The Greek Passion, his work on Pineapple Poll, Mozart's operas etc) at Hamilton Terrace.

*The family also tells me that Alex's big project, the Australian World Orchestra, will dedicated its inaugural concert in Sydney on 26 August to his uncle's memory. Sir Charles was due out there to conduct the AWO's Beethoven Nine. It's still on the list, with a fine team of soloists.

And still they go

O numi, o ciel, what a year it's been for distinguished deaths: many of them in the natural order of things as we so equably acnowledged in the stunningly energetic Mackerras memorial concert on Thursday, the inevitable few untimely. Just as I'd finished my homage to Rudolf Barshai for The Arts Desk, I flipped over to Parterre and found that glorious Shirley Verrett had died at the age of 79.

I never saw her on stage - not sure there was much opportunity this side of the pond, at least when I had grown to opera-going maturity - but I always loved her Verdi tigresses: few mezzos had a more redoubtable chest-voice. The obvious choice is this, delivered in a tacky studio set and with just a teensy bit too much lingering, but at least the emotions have time to tell.



And thanks to the Parterre punter who drew my attention to this:



So let's have a lollipop encore to lower the emotional temperatures. As one of my students said last night, Yan Pascal Tortelier's latest, slightly OTT appearance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra yielded a 'real peach of a concert', pure delight from the Hindemith we'd so keenly anticipated through the cheerful burble of Debussy's early Fantaisie to the Ravel Pavane and his unsurpassable orchestration of Musorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (every segue, every tempo perfectly judged, I thought).

But the surprise gem was Jean-Efflam Bavouzet's encore. I didn't recognise it, and nor did orchestral pianist Liz Burley. I guessed French, I guessed toccata, so I was about as right as you can be without knowing the piece. Here it is played (not quite so humanly, but impressively enough) by Aldo Ciccolini.

Charlie for aye

No, I never called him that, and 'Jack' Lanchbery was the only colleague of his I've met who did know him as the legendary 'Charlie Mackerras', but on the other hand he never insisted on the 'Sir' either. The most comprehensive conductor of our time, and to my mind the world's greatest Mozart interpreter without any shadow of a doubt, has died at the age of 84. It was no shock - that came when I phoned last Summer and Lady M told me candidly that Charles was down in Dartington being treated for his terminal myeloma. I hadn't known, so that was upsetting.

The only surprise was that he went without fulfilling all the engagements in his diary (still pencilled in for the Proms and next season). But miraculously, or perhaps simply naturally and humanly, I believe he did conduct every one of his Cosi performances at Glyndebourne. He'd had to withdraw from the Ariadne-in-English recording for Chandos and from what was advertised as his last Beethoven Ninth with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, but conserved enough strength to see through Janacek's Cunning Little Vixen at the Garden. Characteristically brisk and colourful, it did, I think, show a few signs of waning power, but then the recording remains, and always has been since I first heard it, a Desert Island Disc.


Ismene Brown just summed it all up perfectly in an e-mail: 'He is the Forester in Vixen - knows better than anybody how life is
fulfilled and then ends'. He felt it painful that his illness wouldn't allow him the stamina to get through complete Wagner operas in the last years, but there was no need to apologise for bleeding chunks at his Wagner concert with the Philharmonia and the divine Christine Brewer last December.

Visiting Hamilton Terrace, I always felt like a student attending a tutorial with a very wise professor (or, let's face it, a son in search of a father). Each time we talked about a specific work or composer: Beethoven's Leonore/Fidelio, Mozart's Magic Flute and Cosi, his Sullivan potpourri-ballet Pineapple Poll, Janacek, Britten's Gloriana. If he was testy - and he could be a bit of a martinet back in the 1950s, I'm told - I never saw it; only total collegial enthusiasm. Prize memory: sitting in with him and Felicity Lott during Edinburgh recording sessions for Cosi as they tried out alternative ornamentations for Fiordiligi's 'Per pieta'. Since she's such a modest lady, too, they asked me which I liked best. And that, in fact, was the one they used on the recording, though I've no idea whether my choice had anything to do with it in the end.

Here, finally, then, is the rest of the postcard from which I took the above sign-off. I'd sent him a card from Janacek's Hukvaldy, so Smetana seemed like a good riposte.



It's all I have from him in writing, though I was going to pay a visit and get him to sign my old LP of Pineapple Poll and the New Janacek Edition score of Katya Kabanova. He did say two priceless things in interview: in passing he talked about 'people like you, who are publicists for music', which is a nice way of looking at a critic, and at the end of one occasion, he said how much he liked the Gramophone interviews we'd done: 'I don't usually read interviews with myself - but yours I do read, because they give a sense of the person'.

But this is becoming All About Me - hell, if I can't stick it here, where else can I? I loved that man, anyway, and his recordings will be with us always. This morning I remembered him with the jolly Prague Mozart 41 and another Jupiter - the one in Strauss's Die Liebe der Danae, which he recorded with BBC forces and Norman Bailey.

A listening postscript - what makes me sadder than remembering a life well lived to its natural end is how many of the great singers on Mackerras's recordings died before their time. Lorraine Hunt Lieberson on his Idomeneo. Jerry Hadley on his Flute and Cosi. Lucia Popp on The Cunning Little Vixen. Philip Langridge on the Gloriana. But, again, at least we have them caught forever. I'm off to listen to the Idomeneo quartet now.

A second listening postscript - thanks to 'Tannengrin' on Parterre for linking to this YouTube sound-only track. I didn't know where to start for Mackerras recordings, but Bryn's rather stylish appropriation of tenor Jupiter's (that name again!) 'Where'er you walk' from Handel's Semele, with our late master conducting the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, makes a perfectly well-tempered farewell.