Sex and Nuns : Hindemith Sancta Susanna

Paul Hindemith's opera Sancta Susanna still has the power to scandalize. Nearly 100 years after it was written, (January/February 1921) it's still a shocker in many ways. It's a psycho-drama, where the emotions of the protagonists are thrown into extreme focus, the music emphasizing psychic trauma.  Sancta Susanna bends musical form, pushing the borders of tonality, just as the narrative pushes the boundaries of convention. Sister Susanna is praying in a convent chapel, as nuns are supposed to do. But it's May, it's warm, and the open windows let in the perfume of lilac blossom.  Then, strange other sounds. "It's the organ" says Sister Klementia, and we do hear an organ  exhaling. But why is an organ being played at midnight ?

Hindemith's music is ambiguous. Though tonal, it's fundamentally untamed, like the breathing of a wild animal  that might turn savage if roused.  Which is very much what the opera is dealing with : the explosion of sub-conscious instinct in circumstances of repressive order. The Zeitgeist of the early 20th century, to which early psychology gave vocabulary, but which has, of course, existed since the beginning of mankind.  And thus we hear a melody on solo flute, as lovely and as lyrical as something the Greeks would have played in a mythical Arcadia.  Is it the voice of the Nightingale, another age-old symbol ?  Against this loveliness, angular blocks of sound and increasing dissonance.   John Fulljames's production, with designs by Johan Engels,  lets the music speak. The stage is dark - as in a chapel at midnight - crucial details spotlighted as if by moonlight. We see the crucifix towering above, shining white, as if it were porcelain, hard and impermeable, yet easily broken.  Below, the altar, a simple grey plinth that could be a tombstone as much as a table for offerings.  Or a bed.

For the sounds Susanna hears come from a young couple copulating outside a window.  Fulljames depicts this by using acrobats who hang, suspended from the ceiling, their bodies naked, yet held in by black straps.  Not bondage gear, but a reminder that society holds sexuality in check  through moral bonds and ropes. The acrobats move like dancers, writhing in frenzy.  I thought about Renaissance sculpture, where voluptuous bodies contort, yet are held frozen in stone.  Like statues of Jesus, whose agonies are not sexual, but stylized in art.  And nuns, who contemplate religious intensity but are restrained by vows of chastity. Sister  Susanna doesn't know what sex is, but she knows it has an effect on her.  What happens when a nun's love turns to physical lust ?  Naked bodies, blood and upturned eyes, the sensuality of flowers and incense, the singing of angels real or unreal : It's hardly surprising that some can get carried away. Sister Beate was entombed for her sin. That doesn't stop Sister Susana , who rips off her white garment, revealing a body built for the enjoyment of pleasure. She's covered in arcane writings and drawings, as if some ancient curse was embedded onto her skin.  Other nuns appear, in black shrouds like niqab.  they hold their hands up in horror, like denizens of a Greek tragedy. But they, too, have arcane inscriptions on their hands and faces.  Sister Susanna mounts the altar. She doesn't rip the loincloth off the image of Jesus, as the original stage instructions suggested.  Nor do we need to see a spider crawling over her - the ensemble of nuns move like a monstrous spider. It's enough that she lies with he legs apart as the statue on the crucifix miraculously, blasphemously, moves down towards her. 

Bernhard Kontarsky conducted the Orchestra de l'Opéra de Lyon. The soloists were Agnes Selma Weiland - Susanna,  and Magdalena Anna Hofmann - Klementia.  Hindemith's vocal lines are impressionistic, phrases cut off hardly completed, ominous rumbles and flights up the register which  are nothing now but were something in 1921/2.   Superlatively detailed acting helps a lot. Fulljames inspires the singers so their body language expresses what their words can barely articulate. Wonderful close ups, tiny gestures, for this is very much "inner drama".

Sancta Susanna  was one of a triptych of operas Hindemith write based on the plays of August Stamm (1878-1915)  the other two being Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen op. 12 (1921), and Das Nusch-Nuschi op. 20 (1921) . The common thread: a fascination with morbid psychopathology, ofetn with exotic, erotic connotations. Absolutely the Spirit of the Age,  manifesting in the paintings of the Munich Secession, in literature, film and music. Santa Susanna's cousins are Salome, Elektra, Ewartung, the operas of Franz Schreker and Rudi Stephan's bizarre Die ersten Menchen, which like Sancta Susanna premiered in Frankfort, but a year earlier.  Cinema can depict things that can't be done on stage. Thus the masterpiece movies of the early 1920's like The Cabinet of Dr Caligari,   Der Vampyr and a host of other films some of which I've written about here (see the labels Weimar and movies silent)

Ground-breaking The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny Royal Opera House

Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Royal Opera Hall absolutely breaks new ground, revealing the sophisticated layers of meaning inherent in the opera. Yes, it's political, yes it's about capitalism, consumerism, greed, materialism and false values and the way such things wreak havoc, like the typhoon that flattens Benares. Why Benares, the "Holy City",and not wicked Mahagonny ?

For the first time I realized this had deeper meaning than simply irony.  In a world where "you choose to kick or be kicked", Jenny Smith chickens out and kicks Jimmy McIntyre. Yet he bears no resentment. When Kurt Streit sang Jimmy's death cell soliloquy,  I thought of Billy Budd, redeemed because he dies without rancour.. Some will scream in rage at the execution, where Jimmy hangs as if crucified, but it's  a perfectly valid reading of the score. Brecht and Weill lived in a supposedly Christian society which didn't practice the principal tenets of the faith. Three years after the opera was completed, Weimar descended into the Third Reich. Untrammeled excess and its counterpart of evil. It's not for nothing Weill writes hymn-like tunes into the music. The people of Mahagonny worship Mammon. It's also not for nothing that the three founders of the city pull the strings. As the man behind me perceptively said "The un-Holy Trinity", one of whom is actually called Trinity Moses, a dig at other religions, too.  This Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is not only true to Brecht and Weill but confronts the very evil that makes societies corrupt. Far more danderous than just another parable about greed.

The un-Holy Trinity jump out of a truck, itself a metaphor for consumerism, a machine that keeps moving but that's hollow and can be filled by anything, including fugitives.   The truck is in Brecht's original libretto but lends itself to modern imagery. The backdrop of multi-coloured boxes looks like a container park. Think Sangatte, in Calais, where illegal immigrants hide, smuggling themselves into trucks in the hope of a better life. Wetbacks have usually paid bribes to escape, and often end up worse than whence they came. So Jimmy and his friends from Alaska arrive in Mahagonny with briefcases as shiny as their dreams.

This production also makes far more of Alaska than usual, and for good reason. Alaska stands for pure, unspoiled Nature, where hardship leads to rewards, not only in terms of money but in terms of the true riches of friendship. Sparkly objects flutter down from the ROH ceiling: images of fool's gold, snowfall, and the cleansing nature of the typhoon rainstorm.  We see glimpses of Alaska in the background, pristine in black and white, in contrast the feverish, unnatural neon of Mahagonny, where night and day merge in a drunken haze.There's plenty of colour in Mahagonny.  This set can be a visual feast for the eyes, but, like gluttony, this feast is poisoned. The men watch the girls dance  in a box lit in lurid hues, with fake palm trees and a Liberace pianist who "tickles the ivories" rather than plays. It's all a con to separate men from their money. The woman make money, but pay an even more savage price, invisibly. But all that matters to the crowd is delusion. "Ah ! that's what I call Eternal Art".Unfortunately, some audiences prefer tack to real art.

In Mahagonny, even the Seven Deadly Sins are shortchanged. Like crap commercial advertising, the guiding principles are reduced to four, gluttony, lust, fighting and alcoholic stupor, each neatly vignetted. A particularly vivid Fatty from Peter Hoare in a fat suit. Alaska Wolf Joe is a comically puny-looking  Neal Davies. His moment doesn't last long. He's wiped out in seconds by Trinity Moses (Willard White), who wields a big red punching glove. The game is rigged. Besides, the real fight is not fisticuffs, but the Trial, equally rigged. Killing people is a lesser crime than not paying for three bottles of whiskey. And so Jimmy must die.

This production, directed by John Fulljames and his team, Es Devlin, Christina Cunningham, Bruno Poet , Finn Ross and Arthur Pita, operates on so many different levels., and so radically that it puts to shame the appallingly superficial Los Angeles production which seems to treat the opera as some kind of LA in-joke.  The La Fura dels Baus production, from Madrid five years ago, at least had an edge, and is definitely the better choice. Calixto Bieito, with his political acuiity, could do something really disturbing.  But for ROH audiences, John Fulljames delivers an intelligent interpretation which shows genuine understanding of Brecht and  Weill and their insistence that opera should deal with real issues even though the setting is fantasy.  This is a Rise and fall of Mahagonny which anyone seriously interested in Brecht and Weill could learn a lot from.

Musically, though, this was a bumpy ride.  Mark Wigglesworth's conducting veered from very good to less clearly defined. Weill uses a variety of genres to illustrate the universal relevance of the story, just as Brecht mixes Mahagonny with Benares, Alabama and Havana, Katmandu and Pensacola.

Anne Sofie von Otter has long specialized in singing cabaret, as well as classical, and her Weill songs are highly regarded.  Deservedly, she landed the part of Leocadia, Widow Begbick. She does the spikey, spider-like body language perfectly. But like Leocadia, her voice isn't what it used to be. Sometimes she sings extremely well, getting the slime in the legato. She saved her best work for the ending when the character's venality is at last revealed.  Willard White has been singing Trinity Moses probably more than anyone else in the business now, but his voice,too, is a shadow of what it once was. Neither Brecht nor Weill were bothered about showpiece singing, so it doesn't matter all that much. Suffice that we were  again able to hear and see von Otter and White and respect them for what they could do.

Kurt Streit's Jimmy varied, too, but for good reason. He was superb in his transcendent last soliloquy, rather less forceful earlier on. Yet that, too, is part of Jimmy's personality. He seems like a wimp at first but reveals his true colours when everything's against him. It's not the butch who are strong, but the meek.  I was also impressed with Christine Rice, normally a bit too upper class to be playing a whore. Yet her froideur worked extremely well for Jenny, who does sex for a living, not for pleasure. She could save Jimmy, but like Judas Iscariot, betrays him in his hour of need.

Darren Jeffery sang Bank Account Bill, Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts sang Jack O'Brien, Robert Clark was the piano player, Hubert Francis was Toby, and the booming voiceover was Paterson Joseph. The Girls were Anna Burford, Lauren Fagan, Anush Hovhannisyan, Stephanie Marshall, Meeta Raval and Harriet Williams.

Francesconi Quartett Linbury Royal Opera House

Luca Francesconi's Quartett has at last made it to Britain. Francesconi is hardly obscure. His music has long been championed by Irvine Arditti and the Arditti Quartet , and is regularly heard in European new music circles. There's even a Francesconi premiere at this year's BBC Proms (apparently cancelled some weeks ago, see below).  Maybe the British don't like intellect. But any serious art requires an element of intellectual and emotional input. Surely that cannot be beyond us?

What kind of minds dismiss a culture whose language and mores they don't understand  Quartett may not appeal  to the G&S set, or the G&T set for that matter, but that doesn't make it invalid. There are many - even in London - who know Francesconi's language but yet again, the British media seem more concerned about themselves than about music. Daily Mail aesthetics are not mandatory!

Quartett might seem gruesome but no more so than the original story, which was written in 1782. In Choderlos de Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses Valmont and Merteuil play kinky mind games. They manipulate other people , and pride themselves on their cynical lack of emotional engagement. They're specially drawn to good people like Madame de Tourvel, because they get a special kick from destroying genuinely good and sincere people. The original book is so well known that it should be part of basic education, but there's also a summary on Wikipedia and a Meryl Streep movie.

Francesconi's  setting, based on a play by Heiner Mueller, predicates on the idea that Merteuil and Valmont  are alone in an apocalyptic wasteland. It doesn't really matter what disaster has befallen them, save that they've lost the wealth and privileges that let them get away with so much for so long.  Perhaps they're in Purgatory, forced to face the consequences of what they have done. Can there be any greater hell for two people who have wiggled out of responsibility all their lives  At first we see a woman ( Kirsten Chávez) in the tatters of an 18th century noblewoman's gown, her corset still tightly laced. Despite what's around her all she can think of is sex. "The skin remembers touch", she groans, "whether hand or claw". At least she's facing one aspect of her depravity. Significantly, the word "Tourvel" intrudes on her consciousness. Tourvel, the virtuous wife Merteuil challenged Valmont to seduce. Tourvel gave into Valmont out of warped Christian generosity  because she thought her love might redeem him: the complete opposite of Merteuil  Thus Meretuil is obsessed with her memory

Les Liaisons damgereuses is a collection of letters, reputedly exchanged by Merteuil and Valmont as they plot their stratagems and taunt one another. In a modern novel, we read multiple points of view, and the author's commentary. In letter-novels we have only the letter writers' perspective: we have to guess between the lines how other people feel. The structure of Francesconi's Quartett replicates this  anomie, so fundamental to the emotional disengagement Merteuil and Valmont seek to achieve.

The epistolary nature of the original also influences Francesconi's dramatic form. Miniature  scenes progress seamlessly, ideas and persona changing back and forth.  The vocal lines are arch, like the tone in the letters. In the opera, Leigh Melrose sings great falsetto! Valmont and Merteuil act out different scenarios, like method actors, trying to find their way into an experience. They switch rapidly between personas, sometimes reversing  parts. Francesconi's mentor was the late Karl-Heinz Stockhausen. Hence Fransceoni's use of spatial relationships in the performing space, and his use s of electronic media. Sometimes the singers stand silent, listening to recordings of their own voices singing other parts, reflecton on "themsleves" but not themselves. . Perhaps that's why the opera is called "Quartett", though there are only two players. It may also refer to the chamber music upon which Francesconi's reputation was built, where players interact with each other in intricate formation.

Andrew Gourlay conducted the London Sinfonietta. This isn't easy music to play although it's so atmospheric that it sets the background to the story. The orchestra murmurs comment, and screams in frustration, suggesting the unseen voices of people whom Valmont and Merteuil block out of their consciences. Quartett is much more sophisticated and satisfying than much of what the
London Sinfonietta has been doing in recent years.

Gradually Valmont and Merteuil  get deeper into the wider implications of what they have done.  Valmont and Merteuil  think of Cécile, the young virgin straight from convent whom Valmont seduced, and ruminate on the idea of sin and the church, They ponder the irony that the parts they pollute once gave them life.  Do they find wisdom ?  In the book, Valmont is thrown off his scams because he developed genuine feelings for Tourvel. Merteuil had to acknledge that she had feelings for him under her tough exterior. Perhaps, as Valmont sings, they'll get together in hell. Thus he willingly drinks poison, while Mereteuil looks on, waiting.

John Fulljames's staging highlights the psychic dislocation. Soutra Gilmour's simple panels of fabric hang down from the ceiling, giving a vertical dimension to the horizontal stage. With intelligent lighting (the wonderful Bruno Poet) the fabric can resemble torn lace, or mountains, or reversed, black flames reaching upwards from Hell.  Sounds Intermedia mixed the electronics. Ravi Deepres created the video projections. Mark Stone and Angelica Voje sing in the second cast.

Please also read Susana Malkki on Francesconi 

Also read Leila Josefowicz, on Francesconi's Duende, which was commissioned for her. She did the world premiere in February. Apparently, she is pregnant and has had to cancel engagements until November. For contractual reasons no other soloist can do the piece, so the BBC has had to rustle up a replacementwork for Prom 28, so the announcement was made only last week.

Photos Copyright Stephen Cummisky, Royal Opera House
This review appears in Opera Today

ROH 2013-2014 Linbury Studio Theatre

The Royal Opera House main hall season 2013-2014 is good. The more you delve the more intriguing it gets. Same, too, for the 2013-2014 season in the Linbury Studio Theatre. Real cutting edge stuff coming up, but tried and trusted too. What a pity that the Linbury is too small to accomodate the audience it could attract. Plus, the seating is so cramped that anyone over 40 or 5 foot 6 cannot sit in comfort. Perhaps ROH should be thinking like Nicholas Kenyon at the Barbican, who is outsourcing medium sized events outside the main building.  The Linbury is fine for bijou miniatures, but some of the performances here are important enough, and popular enough, to merit the performance spaces they deserve.

First off : The Wasp Factory, based on Iain Banks's cult novel, with a libretto by David Pountney.  It describes "the disturbing acts of a psychopathic teenager ..... as part of a self-invented warrior cult, he uses a home made apparatus called the Wasp Factory to determine whom he will kill next and how.". Composer and director is Ben Frost.  This is a co-production with Bregenz, Hebbel-am-Ufer, The Holland Festival and the Cork Midsummer Festival, which sounds promising.

Then a really big double bill: Mark-Anthony Turnage's Greek and Salvatorre Sciarrino's The Killing Flower (Luci mie traditrici) which tells the story of  Carlo Gesualdo, artist and murderer.  Sciarrino is one off the biggest names in contemporary music, His music is beautifully poised and magical. Don't let the subject matter deter you any more than the subject matter of George Benjamin's Written on Skin. (reviewed HERE).  Sciarrino is a sensitive and very well informed composer, so it's quite possible the work will be filled with references to Gesualdo's music, interpreted through a modern perspective. Read more about Sciarrino HERE. That's him in the photo above. Cool dude!

Another reason Sciarrino's The Killing Flower should not be missed is that it's being produced by Music Theatre Wales, the innovative company that specializes in interesting new music, like Philip Glass's Into the Penal Colony (reviewed HERE) which Glass liked so much that he's written a new opera specially for them, also based on Kafka. The Trial is in the pipeline for 2015. We're truly lucky that they have an arrangement with ROH. The only other place they're doing this double bill is at the Buxton Festival. The Killing Flower is being paired with Mark-Anthony Turnage's Greek, not in the original production but a relatively new Music Theatre Wales exclusive from 2011.  This is the opera that made Turnage's name when he was an angry young man. Read more about it HERE. Music Theatre Wales is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a good touring programme. More about that HERE. 

For the Christmas/New Year season, a family opera from Julian Philips, whose The Yellow Sofa is a big hit at Glyndebourne Touring Opera. Philips used to be a fixture at the Wigmore Hall, a genuinely erudite and perceptive man, of whom there are far too few. His music is good, too, accessible and stimulating. When he writes for kids he doesn't write "down" at all. This is how you capture the imagination of future audiences : give them good work and all else follows  How the Whale Became, to a libretto by Edward Kemp, is based on Ted Hughes's  The Dreamfighter and Other Creation Tales.

In February, a curiosity, Tippett's King Priam paired with Britten's Paul Bunyan. Tippett and Britten aren't natural bedfellows, and one might say this combines the best of Tippett and worst of Britten.  Anyone familiar with both operas will gasp at the logistics, particularly in a place like the Linbury. There's something so strange about this that a friend suggested that each might be done on different nights, which makes sense, but why do both?  I won't speculate as uninformed guesswork is the enemy of good sense. The English Touring Opera toured with King Priam (on its own) last year.

Luke Bedford's F4u5T sounds like a big departure from his usual style.  It was devised as a companion piece to Gounod's Faust which will be on at the Main House in April 2014, so it might be a humorous experiment rather than a through-composed new opera. Working with electronic sound artist Matthew Herbert, F4u5t is about a composer frustrated by convention, who is seduced by Mefistofeles in the form of a super computer. "Soon he is using his music to manipulate and physically control the world with thrilling but deadly consequences". Probably witty and this time not above the heads of the London press.

ROH is collaborating with the Aldeburgh Music Festival and Opera North for another double bill, featuring as yet un-named operas by Elspeth Brooker and Francisco Coll.  This will be Brooke's biggest ever break. Coll is a protégé of Thomas Adès who calls him "strikingly individual". But the libretto is by Meredith Oakes, so the Adès connection may weigh heavily.

Luca Francesconi's Quartett  will have its UK premiere at the Linbury in June 2014. This is a major work, premiered at the Salzburg Festival  in 2011 and then at Teatro alla Scala, Milan. It was produced by La Fura dels Baus no less.  This will, however, be a completely new production co-produced with the London Sinfonietta  and Opéra de Rouen, directed by ROH Associate Director John Fulljames. That alone guarantees it will be good.  Quartett is loosely based on a play itself based on Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses, which isn't a novel so much as a series of letters through which the tightly plotted strategems are revealed. I think it would suit Francesconi, whose chamber music is exqusitely detailed and tightly constructed, The Arditti Quartet champion his work: he's very good indeed. Surprisingly, Tony Pappano is another fan, which ups his street cred no end. Although the opera is as compact as the story, this will be one of the most important new music events in years: the Linbury just doesn't have the capacity to give this opera the space its audience needs.  Why this isn't at Snape or QEH or even Spitalfields, I don't know. It needs only two singers but "a vast symphony orchestra and chorus" plus recorded samples over live music.

Linbury 2013-2014 ends on a fun note with HK Gruber's Gloria - a pigtail. Anyone who knows HK Gruber will know how eclectic his inventions can be, mixing genres with wit and dark humour.  Gloria is the story of "a pig princess looking for love who is dazzled and wooed by a prince who turns out to be a butcher but at the last moment is saved from the chop by Rudi The Wild Boar".   Shades of Gesualdo thru Austrian comic book?  The director will be Frederic Wake-Walker, the production by The Opera Group, Fulljames' original company. Again, their work is so good that this will be a season highlight.  

Broader view - Royal Opera House 2013-20

Yesterday, the Royal Opera House announced its new works and relationships for 2013-2020. I got the news out quickly (read more here). Now's the time for more reflection. First, the announcement covers only new works and relationships, it's not the whole programme for the next seven years. It's not replacing anything but extending ROH's involvement in other forms of opera. Second, it's not cost cutting, but a consolidation of ROH's position vis-a-vis the rest of the opera community in UK and beyond. No new Chief Executive  has been announced yet, but Kaspar Holten and Tony Pappano have been thinking ahead for quite some time, guided by Tony Hall's support. What's the long-term broader view ?

Not all opera is grand scale. So much repertoire - new and old - is better suited to smaller performance spaces. Late 19th century houses do not define opera. The Met mindset, for example, with its emphasis on expense and ostentation creates expectations which aren't necessarily in line with art. Obviously ROH is never going to abandon core repertoire, because large houses can, in theory, do it better than anyone else, and can afford the kind of top-quality singers that maker revivals such a pleasure. ROH has been instrumental in bringing good new work to the stage, like Harrison Birtwistle's The Minotaur, Thomas Adès The Tempest and George Benjamin Written on Skin. Not everything works as well as those do. But since when did every new opera emerge as a timeless classic ?  Thousands fall by the wayside, for every one that becomes standard rep. And vice versa. But the main thing is that ROH keeps the genre revitalized. They could also be doing more early music and baroque. As I've said many times, the Linbury is too small. Perhaps ROH will think "outside the building"?

Chamber opera carries less financial risk but it's also good from an artistic perspective, because it concentrates the mind.  If a composer can say something in intensive close-up, then he or she develops the skill to create something more ambitious. George Benjamin's Written on Skin wouldn'tbe possible without Into the Little Hill. Or Adès The Tempest without Powder her Face. Thank goodness we have Holten and Pappano to keep our minds focussed on opera as art form. How easy it would be to abandon ideals for short-term populist gratification.

Last year, Holten announced that ROH would forge closer partnerships with the smaller, independent companies, which are often cutting edge. That's John  Fulljames's background, impossible to underestimate. Already we've seen the shift from in-house productions to opted in imports such as from Music Theatre Wales who are so good that their In the Penal Colony inspired Philip Glass to write The Trial for them. MTW also has a partnership with Scottish Opera, which also has a programme supporting new opera. Earlier this year, ROH supported Scottish Opera's season, by giving them a presence in London. (read more here) .

Relationships with European houses and festivals are also very important. The Barbican has a connection to the Holland Festival, which is how we get so many interesting ventures via Pierre Audi.  The Welsh National Opera "British Firsts" series from 2013-18 connects to Amsterdam (read more HERE)  It's very interesting that WNO is doing Unsuk Chin's Alice through the Looking Glass in 2017 while ROH is doing it in 2018/19. Will they be different productions? Will the same score be used? The Santa Fe version this summer was reorchestrated, which might be an advantage as I found the original Munich version  rather too verbose. These days, joint productions offer economies of scale and extended coverage, so they are the way forward.  ROH is working with Oper Frankfurt and Deutsche Oper Berlin. The more I read about Georg Friedrich Haas Morning and Evening, the more I'm looking forward to it in London in 2015. 

Daring and purpose - Royal Opera House 2012-2013

Fascinating Royal Opera House 2012-13 season mixes daring with prudence – passionate. "Opera is an emotional fitness centre", says Kasper Holten, Director of Opera, because it exercises many different feelings. Through opera, we engage with the drama of being human. Running an opera house is more than just business. Its "product" is creativity. If opera houses scale back and play safe, they lose the vision that makes opera thrilling in the first place. Holten's strategy for straitened times is daring. Grow the audience from strength, giving patrons something to get excited about, whether they're new to the genre or not.

Six new opera productions, higher profile revivals and an ambitious programme of external events that will expand the reach of the Royal Opera House far beyond Covent Garden.  More live HD broadcasts, so ROH premieres can reach wider audiences. More links with smaller, independent companies. Even an experimental pricing structure. The whole atmosphere is a buzz, reflecting Holten's dual responsibilties as manager and as creative artist.

Obviously the big Wagner Ring will dominate the autumn season. It's sold out, despite sky-high prices, but Wagner's anniversary is most definitely a special occasion. This production is aimed at a more general audience than a core of Wagner aficionados. Bryn Terfel, Susan Bullock and other stars ensure its success. This is a new Keith Warner production, conducted by Antonio Pappano. Wagner is always interesting and the sheer sense of occasion is part of the attraction. It takes the Met to really destroy the Ring. The ROH Ring should keep the house afloat for years.

In December, Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert Le Diable makes its first London appearance since around 1890.  Once, Robert Le Diable was un succès fou, a sensation to which all Europe flocked, for it marked a new style in French opera. Heinrich Heine attended, incorporating it into his poetry "Es ist ein großes Zauberstück, Voll Teufelslust und Liebe" (read the full story here).  The painting at right is Degas, Ballet from Robert le Diable (1876). Some of the arias are very well known, since Joan Sutherland was very fond of them. So hearing it in context is a great opportunity. There's a renaissance in 19th century French opera, and the ROH has been on the crest, with Massenet, Berlioz and Gounod. The cast is superb. Brian Hymel who so impressed as the Prince in Rusalka, will be singing with Diana Damrau, Marina Poplavskaya, John Relyea and Jean-François Borras. This repertoire diverges from the Italianate style so fashionable at present, so  it's good news for opera adventurers exploring "new" perspectives.

Benjamin Britten's centenary falls in November 2013, so the eyes of the world will be on how Britain honours the greatest opera composer it has produced. Britten often visited the ROH (he used to eat at Bertorelli's) but he wasn't really part of the ROH in-crowd then. So it's good that the Royal Opera House is giving him his due, and with a twist Britten would have appreciated.  Had the ROH been boring and played safe, we'd get another Peter Grimes. Instead, Holten has chosen the extremely rare Gloriana, which even Britten true believers don't know well. This is thrilling, as Gloriana is problematic to stage, for Britten experiments with Elizabethan form.  There's only one recording (dull) and an Opus Arte DVD with Opera North (brilliant) which treats the work in cinematic style, which is an excellent solution. (review here). It would be hard to top that but the Royal Opera House has resources few other have, and Richard Jones as director could make it work. Strong British cast:: Susan Bullock, Kate Royal, Toby Spence, Mark Stone and other stalwarts, conducted by Paul Daniel. Definitely a "historic event".

Three of the most important British composers are highlighted this year. Britten, Harrison Birtwistle and George Benjamin, "The 3 B's" quips Holten. Perhaps the most significant British opera in recent years, Harrison Birtwistle's The Minotaur, is revived at last in January. Get to this, since the DVD is inertly filmed, something I hope Holten will address at some stage, since film is the next frontier in bringing opera to audiences outside the house. Like any other part of staging it needs to be done well. John Tomlinson, Christine Rice, Andrew Watts and Johan Reuter return, and Alan Oke sings the part created by Philip Langridge (read the interview I did with him here about The Minotaur and about Birtwistle, his close friend).

George Benjamin's new opera, Written on the Skin, premieres March 8 2013. This is a very important occasion indeed, and will be heard in eight European cities. Benjamin's not a fast writer, but painstakingly scrupulous, and this is his most ambitious large work to date. The libretto is by Martin Crimp, with whom Benjamin created the masterpiece Into the Little Hill. Read more about that here. The plot's dramatic. A rich man hires an artist to illuminate a manuscriipt. The rich man kills the artist when the latter falls in love wuth the former's wife and has him baked into a pie and served for dinner. Barbara Hannigan sings the wife,  which means the part will be fiendishly inventive and demanding. That's Hannigan's speciality (read about her singing Boulez here on this site). Obviously a countertenor role to match, this time Bejun Mehta. Benjamin is a quinessentially European composer, so it's good that Written on the Skin will be broadcast live, internationally in HD.

The Royal Opera House has always been good for Verdi. The new season brings a Verdi Immersion, three operas in sucession, a sort of Verdi Ring, since his anniversary coincides with Wagner's. The series starts, appropriately, with Nabucco, in a new production by Daniele Abbado and Alison Chitty. Plácido Domingo and Leo Nucci alternate Nabucco. Domingo's presence alone will make this an attraction. He's an icon as much as a singer. Acting isn't affected by age. Domingo can project character, which is what this role needs.  Since it's Nabucco, the Royal Opera House chorus will be in their element. and they're so good they could carry the show. Nabucco is followed by Don Carlos in May and Simon Boccanegra in June/July. Although the latter are revivals, if they're worth doing, they're worth doing well, so the ROH is are injecting high-quality standards worthy of the best new productions. Antonio Pappano is taking over the conducting and Verdi is his speciality. Absolutely top quality singers - Harteros, Kaufmann, Kwiecień, Furlanetto, Halvarson, Hampson. Even if you've seen these umpteen tmes before, this time they will sound fresh.

It's good that the Royal Opera  House has in Holten a director who is a hands-on theatre person, because that ensures he's on the ball as an artist. February brings his first ROH production, Tchaikovsky's  Eugene Onegin.  Partly Russian cast with Simon Keenlyside for popular appeal. Robin Ticciati, the new incumbent at Glyndebourne, conducts. Since the ROH will be working more with other houses like the innovative Music Theatre Wales, what might this signify, if it means anything at all? Chances are that this time the audience won't mindlessly applaud the scenery as they did at the ENO, but instead pay attention to the music.

Also an indicator of new creative times is Gioachino Rossini La Donna del Lago in May, a new production directed by John Fulljames, Associate Director  This is significant because it was to have been a co-production, but the Royal Opera House pulled out and created their own.  This is radical, but it's much better to do good work than regurgitate a turkey. Operas have a long run in time, so it's a wonder this doesn't happen more often and save more reputations, time and money. Holten describes Fulljames as the ROH "dramaturge", an artistic philospher with very strong theatre skills, as anyone familiar with his work over the years will recognize. Fulljames's new production was put together efficiently, using pre-existing technical resources for new purposes. This isn't recycling, but resourcefulness, as it takes a genuinely creative mind to work round difficulties. Much trickier than working from a blank canvas. Perhaps this is a good way forward at a time of budget restraint?  The cast includes Joyce DiDonato, Juan Diego Flórez, specialists in this repertoire, so for singing alone, this new La Donna del Lago will be intriguing.

The more you look into the Royal Opera House 2012-13 season, the more there is to look forward to! Further details on the ROH website HERE and on Opera Today.
photo: Peter Suranyi

Judith Weir, Blond Eckbert

Judith Weir's Miss Fortune starts tonight at the Royal Opera House. She's written many operas in the past, because she's a natural story teller. One of my favourites is Blond Eckbert (1993) which premiered at the ENO and was last staged in London at the Linbury Theatre, ROH in 2006  It was staged by John Fulljames, now Kaspar Holten's associate at the Royal Opera House, with the innovative company The Opera Group, without whom much modern British opera would be undervalued.  This is what I wrote at the time:

"The dark, wild forests of Germany were powerfully symbolic in folklore. Hidden in the forest, strange, elemental forces operated and in the “realm of the night” anything could happen. Fairy tales were a kind of ancient folk imagination, subverting the rational orderliness of society. Little wonder then that the Romantics, breaking away from classical sensibility, found inspiration in peasant folklore for it was like a code for exploring complex feelings, in an era before psychology give us terms to articulate them. We owe “the forest” a lot and tonight’s concert showed how powerful the symbolism still remains.

On a plain black set, a singer in white tells a story from the Brothers Grimm. Thus starts Hesketh’s Small Tales, Tall Tales. The music follows the narrative closely, just discordant enough to remind the listener that all is not what it seems. The piece flows naturally into Weir’s Really ?...and other stories. They have a natural affinity, like Ewartung and Bluebeard’s Castle. They could easily become popular staples of music theatre as they are accessible enough to appeal to a wide audience, and not too technically difficult for non-specialist performance. Hesketh’s music is inventive and filled with telling detail, such as a reference to the demented music in the murder scene in Wozzeck. Schlauraffenland, the third section, might translate as “The Land of Milk and Honey” ie. a place too good to be true. One tall tale is surpassed by the next, the delusion ending with cockcrow at dawn……..or does it ?

In Blond Eckbert, what we see as reality turns out to be total delusion, except that we don’t know where, when and how the balance shifts. The story comes from Ludwig von Tieck’s tale about a man who lives in a remote part of the Harz Mountains (heavily wooded and mysterious in those days before roads and cars). He and his wife live in isolation, independent, they think, of ties to the world. Weir originally wrote this hour long opera for large orchestra, but here the orchestration was sharply reduced to only ten players. Surprisingly, the transcription works as well as the larger version, which has been filmed and is available on CD (NMC D106). Leaving out percussion and big brass, Weir focuses on instruments that bring out a soundworld closer to early Romantic music. She doesn’t actually quote, but I kept hearing echoes of Weber, Mendelssohn, Loewe, Schumann and Brahms. It’s no accident, since Brahms also set Die schöne Magelone, undoubtedly the best known musical version of any Tieck text. This is beautiful, musically astute writing. It captures with exquisite sympathy the magical world of early German opera and Singspiele. Yet Weir’s music is unequivocally contemporary in its adventurous form and phrasing, the shifting dissonances adding wordless voices to comment on the narrative so that the ghosts in the tale seem to be in the pit as well as on stage. In his paranoia, Eckbert hears voices accusing him as “murderer”, and “criminal” and it’s brilliantly imaginative that the orchestra should add to the unsettling hysteria. The scoring for harp is exquisite and warm, and follows the voices, yet it, too, conveys an air of deceptive calm.

The chamber transcription is excellent because it works better with the mood of oppressive claustrophobia. Anyone understanding the symbolism of folktale can recognise that the dark expanse of stage that keeps Eckbert’s home squashed into a corner, is a symbol of the universal “forest”, the subconscious. The use of blinds to screen out the world from the “moderation” of his home is brilliant. It is a metaphor for repression, for keeping the unruly inner demons of the forest outside. Eckbert can pace nervously up and down, pulling at the blinds, as if dimly aware that the “temperance” that governs his life hangs by a thread – or the string of a Venetian blind.

The sense of being hemmed in is powerfully potent, for ultimately, Eckbert and Berthe cannot escape from what happened long ago in the dense woods, even if they don’t understand why. The mysterious exotic bird (sung by Claire Wild) has the freest, most soaring music, as well as being free to move about all over the stage: “ O Waldeinsamkeit!” she sings. The isolation of the woods reflects the isolation of the soul which Eckbert experiences in his mental collapse. Yet is it just Eckbert who goes stir crazy ? Is he Berthe’s brother or is that another tall story ? Or does he exist at all ? Is he a projection of Berthe’s troubled subconscious ? Berthe (Heather Shipp) may not have many lines to sing, but the whole plot hinges on her past, and her role is critical. Yet is she real, either ? That wig and 1950’s plastic stiffness may imply that she is but a projection of Eckbert’s psyche.

And then there's Walther, Eckbert’s only friend. This demanding part involves, literally, shape shifting. Has he been the mysterious old woman in the woods all along ? Is he Eckbert’s alter ego ? Is Eckbert’s realisation that he “longs to disclose” his secrets, the catalyst for all that is to come ? How does Walther become Hugo ? Owen Gilhooly’s Eckbert and Mark Wilde’s Walther are a pair. Both parts have the most innovative music, and are far more demanding than either of the female roles. I suspect too, that the more restrained orchestration has a lot to do with shifting the balances and bringing out new levels of meaning. Gilhooly and Wilde are very convincing performers, whatever it is they’re meant to “be”.

Expressing this fundamental ambiguity is Weir’s great achievement. She understands that the forest and the folktales that lurk in its depths are a symbol of the human soul. Nothing is quite what it seems. We don’t know the convoluted paths through the woods and probably never will. But as Herder, Tieck, the Brothers Grimm, Brentano and von Arnim and other Romantics intuited, you can keep the forest at bay but you can’t get ever get away from it completely. Blond Eckbert is Ewartung and Bluebeard’s Castle in one, and with a distinctive twist.

Luke Bedord Seven Angels full review Linbury BCMG

As promised here is a link to my full, formal review of Luke Bedford's Seven Angels which premiered in Birmingham and reached London on 12th July. I hope this opera will be heard again, in concert form and revived, because it is a lot deeper than most reports might suggest. It's not an "easy" work as it's deliberately ambiguous. Because the climactic scene is the Conference, where authority figures shout platitudes, it's easy to think that that's what the opera is about. But since when did politicians shouting slogans mean what they say ? So beware ! As in life, you can follow slogans or you can think.
photo credit : Alastair Muir

Luke Bedford Seven Angels BCMG London - first thoughts

FULL formal review HERE.   These are/were my first thoughts. What you put into any experience affects what you get out. That's the message of Luke Bedford's Seven Angels and one which audiences should remember too. Don't come expecting Mamma Mia. Seven Angels isn't the musical equivalent of fast food. Instead, it works its way outwards from an inner core of musical depth. A tone poem with voices.Seven Angels is a work by a musician that reveals itself as music taking opera form, just as the angels come to earth to act out characters in a role play. 

Seven Angels is allegory, and like allegory,  it works obliquely through images.  The starting point is John Milton's Paradise Lost but don't make the mistake of expecting a literal, or even literary traverse. There are huge hints in the staging (John Fulljames, The Opera Group). Books everywhere, hundreds of them, and projections behind of pages. Millions of words, some legible, some not. A veritable cacophony of written text.

But what are words, when you think about it? They're just expressive markings for communication, not communication itself. The Prince consumes books, stuffing pages torn straight from their covers, until he looks like he's going to burst. Consume is the operative word. It's only when his plate is empty that he sees himself reflected in the shining metal. Later, members if the Conference gather to discuss the evils of overconsumption at a table made from piles of books. Like the Tower of Babel, it collapses. Words alone are delusion. So listen to Bedford's Seven Angels  as a musical evolution whose secrets are encoded in the orchestration, vocal and instrumental.

Seven Angels starts with a mysteriously opaque murmur that gradually takes shape: a metaphor for the chemical forces that existed before the creation of the universe. Just as the Bible describes Seven Days of Creation, the music moves in plateaux, ideas developing in groups, then moving onwards to new planes. The dark brooding primordial sweep gives way to brightness and sharp, rhythmic ostinato. The pulse is quickening. Very subtle and imaginative musical writing. In fact, I think Seven Angels should be heard in concert performance, to focus on the musical logic. The visuals are extremely important but this is a work that needs to unfold on different levels.  Like George Benjamin's Into the Little Hill, Bedford's Seven Angels needs to be absorbed slowly : it's not at all superficial, and can't be gobbled up in one sitting!

The angels are trying to figure out how the world became the way it is. Instinctively, they recreate the earth's imagined history by acting out the narrative we see on stage. Significantly, they don't know the answers. They're doing role play to stimulate ideas which they don't get from reading books. So, too, the way into Bedford's Seven Angels is intuitive.  Don't get distracted by the earnest allusions to eco-politics and G20 banquets where politicians talk, stuffing themselves while the poor starve. The ranting here comes from the angels pretending to be "politicians". Politcian-speak, words without meaning. You can choose whethervto take it at face value. Seven Angels is a reminder that the real riches of existence aren't to be taken for granted.  The Garden of Eden isn't about apple trees but about deeper values. That's why the tree in this production is paper, a cardboard cut-out that pops out of a book. The real fruit of Seven Angels is the sensitivity you can get from letting it work on your soul.

Musically, Seven Angels is very strong indeed. Small ensemble, but extremely unusual and used in inventivce, creative ways. The piano creates a sort of framework like an inner mertronome over which undulations of low winds and strings palpitate. It feels like the breathing of a living organism. Then, angular agitation, sharp rhythmic ostinato: the organism jerking into action, perhaps. The orchestration is subtle. What is that strange wailing you hear in the second half ? Contrabassoon as solo voice, horribly unsettling, but beautiful in a strange, ethereal way. Very strong integration between vocal and non-vocal forces. The four low violas rumble, a singer snores. The angels stand in line, snapping the pages of books, so the sound becomes another form of percussion. It's remarkably effective, and might be an element of staging that survives into future productions. When the angels return where they came ftrom, the orchestra creates howling concentric patterns of sound, whirring like a clock being wound backwards. Extraordinarily vivid.

This libretto, by Glyn Maxwell, "sings" even on the page, for text that is sung is music, not mere shapes on a page. Bedford translates it extremely sensitively. Each angel is distinctive, and lines can be heard clearly when needed, retreating into the orchestration  as instruments do, when a more diffuse effect is neeeded. No heroic feats of gymnastic singing needed. These angels are feeling their way into human situations.  The lines are semi-conversational, with occasional flights of wild fantasy (the queen in particular - a telling psychological touch). This gives it surprising freedom and must make it a pleasure to sing.  I can imagine what Seven Angels might be like with truly top rank singers, but these communiucate well. It's almost an anachronism to refer to these singers as "cast" because they function as part of the whole orchestration, like the individual musicians of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Ensemble. Nicholas Collon conducts.

For an opera where musical values mean so much, The Opera Group's staging is integral to the production. I specially loved the images of the cosmos, white specks of light flickering in darkness, replicated in filmed projections and in the costumes the singers wear. Star People, yes! Grey jackets, like the ash on the barren desert they visit. Books are lined up in rainbow colours : another image of the Paradise that's been lost. Luke Bedford's Seven Angels is how opera should be done, libretto and staging growing with the music from an early stage. It's an extremely rewarding experience, much more emotionally satisfying than a lot of recent new opera. So what if it's not quick-fix. The finest meals are the ones that nourish, not the ones that come in fancy plastic packaging.(and I don't mean Mark Antony Turnage who's OK)

And exactly as I've said, I've ruminated and read the work over, and have written a much more interesting piece than this ! HERE it is in Opera Today.
Photos copyright Alastair Muir. Christopher Lemmings as The Prince, Rhona McKail as The Waitress, Owen Gilhooly as the General, Keel Watson as The King, Emma Selway as the Queen, Joseph Shovelton as the Industrialist.

New directions at the ROH

Many changes at the Royal Opera House. Elaine Padmore retires, and Kaspar Holten takes over. John Fulljames appointed Associate Director of Opera. Artistic and day to day management get sorted. And the big question : Who, after Tony Pappano leaves? Please read the article here in Opera Today.

Friends have seen Juan, Holten's film based on Don Giovanni - interesting reprorts! I'll post something soon.

Luke Bedford Seven Angels - first glimpse!

Luke Bedford's Seven Angels premieres in Birmingham on 18th June,then tours, and comes to the Linbury, London on 12 July. Anything Bedford writes is an event, because he's one of the best British composers around. He's especially good at writing for voice. Get to it if you can. It sounds intriguing. (My first review is just up HERE)
Opera Today carries a big interview with Bedford about Seven Angels. A scoop - nothing as detailed as this so far. Bedford talks about the opera and its music, and also about its genesis from concept to production. Writing for the stage is different to writing for the concert hall, so read how Bedford goes about doing it. Glyn Maxwell's libretto is so poetic it seems to sing off the page. Director is John Fulljames of The Opera Group. "He has a deep and sensitive understanding of what I'm trying to do", says Bedford.

Since no-one but those involved has yet heard Seven Angels, the Opera Today article is good background. Amazing story..Click on the link, which leads to other links about the production, The Opera Group, BCMG and the Royal Opera House. Below is a a clip courtesy of The Opera group. (Luke Bedford's photo copyright Ben Ealovega)

John Fulljames - why he's Good News for ROH

Exciting  news that John Fulljames has been appointed Associate Director for Opera at the Royal Opera House. He'll be working with Kaspar Holten who becomes Director from September 2011.  Fulljames is a daring, but inspired choice. This is significant news because it might mean a shift towards a more creative approach to opera.

As Anthony Pappano says in the press release, "we're constantly striving to present the very best on our stages". What that may translate to, who knows? But it's better than endless revivals of safe repertoire aimed at the West End market rather than at opera aficionados. I've wriiten about Holten before. Read here about his Copenhagen Ring which is interesting enough to stimulate Wagnerites and accessible enough to engage new audiences. A friernd has also written me about his movie Juan, based on Don Giovanni - more about that soon ! (there's a video clip on this site already, from March).  Fulljames is a daring, brilliant choice because he's close to cutting edge but isn't self indulgent. Look at the photo (Courtesy Johan Persson, BCMG).  Fulljames is looking at the singers while following a score !  

Think on that. In theory, everyone's supposed to work from the score. In practice we get abominations like Monty Python Faust. Fulljames got a First in Physics at Cambridge but all along has also been a musician. He even sang, for a while, so he understands voice. Each production he's made grows from understanding what's unique in whatever opera he's staging. This makes his work so stimulating because he seems to hear things with fresh ears. I adored his George Benjamin Into the Little Hill  last year. Read in detail about it at Aldeburgh and at the Linbury, ROH. Quite detailed description but read it to see why Fulljames's work is such a unique fusion of musical and visual expression. Berlow is a photo of Fulljames and Claire Booth preparing Into the Little Hill.(Courtesy BCMG, Katie Leedale) Again, the score is the star!

Fulljames is currently working on Luke Bedford's new opera Seven Angels with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and the Opera Group.  It's Bedford's first opera, eagerly anticiapted because he's perhaps the brightest young hope in British music, and one with a natural gift for writing for voice. Writing for stage is different to writing for the concert hall, so Bedford worked right from the start with Glyn Maxwell the poet. The text is ravishing, and so is what I've heard of the music. BE THERE. Bedford also worked with Fulljames and artist Takamine Tadasu almost from the onset, so the production grows organically from the music. "He has a deep and sensitive understanding of what I'm trying to do", says Bedford.

Fulljames's recent productions for The Opera Group include George Benjamin’s Into the Little Hill, Kurt Weill’s Street Scene, Jonathan Dove’s The Enchanted Pig and Galt MacDermot's Human Comedy (all three with the Young Vic), Elena Langer's The Lion's Face, Varjak Paw, The Shops, Blond Eckbert and Shostakovich The Nose. Street Scene recently won the “Best Musical” award at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. Recent productions elsewhere include The Excursions of Mr Broucek, Romeo et Juliette and Hansel and Gretel (Opera North), Gianni Schicchi, Zemlinsky Florentine Tragedy and Mavra (Greek National Opera), Von Heute auf Morgen (Lyon) Tobias and the Angel (Young Vic), Nabucco (Opera Holland Park). In 2008, John directed Rimsky-Korsakov’s Snegurochka for Wexford Festival which opened the new opera house in Wexford, Ireland. John’s previous productions in Ireland were Susannah (Wexford) and The Emperor of Atlantis (OTC) both of which won the Best Opera Production Award at the Irish Theatre Awards. He's worked with many of the great directors in Europe and even directed The Ring in Bilbao and Seville.

More detail to follow in an article in Opera Today.