Don Giovanni: treasure trove

Referring specifically to the very surprising new Sony recording with a crack cast and the maverick Teodor Currentzis conducting the Perm Opera Orchestra which goes by the name of Musicaeterna; and more widely to the succession of great recordings we've heard of the ensembles, duets and arias throughout the past six weeks of my Opera in Focus class at the Frontline Club (other choices here).


I hadn't heard the two previous instalments in Currentzis's Mozart-Da Ponte cycle, and approach him warily. Much of what he says in the booklet interview is plain wrong, facts included. And I don't buy it for a minute.

But, as with the Stravinsky Rite of Spring, which has embarrassing poetry by our polymath to accompany it, what matters -the performance - is amazing. Working my way through the opera scene by scene, I was constantly looking for the best, the liveliest, the most fine-tuned to this difficult drama. And though the Currentzis set only arrived unsolicited by the time of Class 3, I found myself pressing it into service time and again.

It was invaluable, in short, for the fizziest 'Fin ch'han dal vino' (as much for the orchestral bristling as for Dimitris Tiliakos), the funniest and most vivid representation of the three orchestras in the Act One finale - full of ornaments as well as pointedly sour tuning-up - and the earlier part of Act Two, with two mandolins participating in the Serenade. Most of the big set-piece arias have their moments, and interesting ornamentation in da capos, but perhaps only one is up there with the considerable best on disc - tenor Kenneth Tarver's 'Il mio tesoro'.

Here are both sweetness and Italianate ardour. It's also the only recording I know where the singer actually manages 68 notes in a row at the midpoint - albeit many of them semiquavers - in a single breath (Tauber actually breaks halfway through, despite received wisdom, though maybe McCormack does it - need to check that) and stylish adornments on the return.

That's now my absolute favourite. There are other clear front-runners for various highlights: Sutherland for Giulini in 'Or sai che l'onore', a fusion of Popp and Freni in the two Zerlina arias, Kiri te Kanawa for Davis in 'Mi tradi'. Nicolai Ghiaurov and Walter Berry are both essentially basses, so when you add Franz Crass's Commendatore into the mix, the Klemperer recording is jet-black vocally and hair-raising orchestrally. I've come back round to admiring that indomitable master's clarity and energy even in his later performances, so much so that I ordered up the big EMI box set of the symphonic canon which I loved so much at university. It's been a constant source of nourishment in these dark days.

Giulini, for all his slightly old-fashioned aristocratic stateliness, gives the best Act 1 Quartet and Finale Trio as well as the Act 2 Sextet; I always get shivers at the modulation to the Anna-Ottavio entry. Desert island tracks all, and with Schwarzkopf, no less, usually a bête (or should that be tête) noire of mine.

Tomorrow we conclude with the statue scene and its aftermath, enriched as much was last week by sideways looks at the Gazzaniga version with the Bertati libretto which Da Ponte used as his model. There's a very lively recording of that, sans recits, by Bruno Weil and his Tafelmusik ensemble. Then in sweeps the hero of the hour, and the year, Mark Wigglesworth, to cover Mozart, Berg and Shostakovich. If you'd like to drop in for this one-off - which may well be Mark's last talk as ENO Music Director - as he still is until the end of the Lulu run, at least in my books, just as surely as Obama remains in the Oval Office. There are comparisons to be made between the micro- and macrocosms.

Tcherniakov: redeemed by Macbeth

To be fair, it was already a draw from my perspective: two productions which created their own, consistent visions and two which were a bit of a dog's dinner. Now the balance has swung back in favour of Dmitri Tcherniakov, in my view the most interesting opera director to have emerged since Richard Jones (and his design sense is singular, too).

Tcherniakov first stunned us with a Eugene Onegin in which the heroine comes across as a manic-depressive and the duel's a nasty accident in a dining room with a gun (all the action takes place around tables) and a production of Prokofiev's The Gambler set in a blue, contemporary hotel and every inch as compelling as Jones's more kaleidoscopic Covent Garden staging. Then he lost me at times with Don Giovanni from Aix as a family saga (Donna Anna is Zerlina's ma, so out with all the class distinctions) and the recent Simon Boccanegra at ENO, good in the early stages but seeming to lose the plot towards the end.

So how glad I was to have reconvened the City Lit Opera in Focus group on Monday for a free end-of-term screening of this Paris Opera Macbeth (production shots via the company and Ruth Walz). Tcherniakov's 2009 Verdi is certainly more of a piece than this year's Boccanegra and veers between a grim small-town square full of locals (not witches) and the Macbeth mansion; aerial shots on a screen establish where we are and, later, how order has broken down.

The crowd scenes don't appear to work at first; why no weird sisters, why have the men mime the lines of the women's chorus too? But they begin to take off as Banquo is murdered in the thick of the crowd and Macbeth comes back for a consultation, only to be presented with the return of bobble-hatted little Fleance.


The 'Patria oppressa' chorus, though not as well sung as some, is as dramatically moving as it can be, with the people bringing with them treasured objects from their deserted homes and then Macduff (Stefano Secco, excellent) tearing his heart out from a child's play pen.

In fact all of the set-pieces work superbly as dramatic monologues. Lady Macbeth - and there can be none better or more assured than the never-disappointing Violeta Urmana - delivers her two imperious cabalettas to her husband, setting up the relationship between them more assuredly than Verdi officially permits. She does party tricks to the Brindisi, with increasing desperation (who knew this woman could act? She's normally seen in tatty old revivals where she only has to stand and deliver). And 'Pieta, rispetto, amore' really is done in extremis by Dimitris Tiliakos, who starts with an over-pronounced vibrato but quickly gets better and better: this is a real characterisation, which is more than can be said for Simon Keenlyside's inexplicably muted performance in the recent Covent Garden revival.


The last two scenes take place in the despoiled mansion; Lady M's somnambulistic antics involve doctor and lady in waiting much more than usual, with all the earlier gestures and party-tricks brought back meaningfully, while Macbeth gets his 'Mal per me' from 1847 in an otherwise 1860s edition (no ballet) and is forced to hear the choruses proclaim victory offstage.


There's a rumour that Tcherniakov couldn't get the chorus to act, so left them in the wings and replaced them with actors who then couldn't mime, and in turn replaced those with twelve extra singers...but you couldn't fit a full chorus in the Macbeth room anyway, and it makes dramatic sense. So I don't buy that, unless you accept that the Paris Opera Chorus isn't up to much and he made the most of that. Otherwise, it's musically resplendent, though young Teodor Currentzis does like extremes and tosses his locks rather more often than is seemly in a disciplined maestro. On the evidence of this and his work on the world premiere of Weinberg's The Passenger - pity he isn't conducting the ENO staging in September - he's a major talent.