Philip Glass Akhnaten ENO

Philip Glass Akhnaten with the ENO, at the Coliseum, London, in a new production directed by Phelim McDermott, who created the extraordinary Glass Satyagraha, one of ENO's great hits, regularly revived.  Akhnaten is even better known than Satyagraha, and has received many productions over the years, so if this one succeeds, it will be a good thing.

Akhnaten, is part of a trilogy about conceptual ideas,: it's more than narrative entertainment, and needs to be assessed from that perspective. What's scary about conceptual thinking?

All three operas deal with the minds of men (and women) who changed the way we think to a degree : In Einstein on the Beach (read my review HERE and Why I defend Bianca Jagger HERE)   Glass dealt with Einstein, an ordinary man whose ideas made him a celebrity even though most didn't really understand what he was doing. In Satyagraha, Glass showed how Gandhi scrapped pamphleteering for direct action. Read my numerous pieces on Satyaghara HERE and HERE. In Akhnaten, Glass picked the one Pharoah in millennia who tried to substitute a single, unitary God for a complex of mythological entities.

Akhnaten is possibly the strongest, musically, of the whole trilogy. The texts are sung in Eygptian, Hebrew and Akkadian without English translations for a very good reason. Akhnaten believed in an abstract God who couldn't be defined in narrow terms. As we listen to the incantations in languages we don't understand we respond as an abstract experience. Anyone who grew up with the Latin Mass shouldn't have any problem connecting spirituality with mystery. As Gandhi discovered, there are ideas that go beyond words.

Hence the importance of listening . Sure, the repetitions can be soporific. When Glass is opaque,  eg the awful The Perfect American (read my review HERE) he can be mind-numbingly dull.  But when Glass connects form to meaning, as in In the Penal Colony, he can produce taut works of near genius. Read my pieces on In the Penal Colony HERE and HERE. Listen to that audio CD of In the Penal Colony to appreciate how the music itself tells the story, drilling itself painfully into your subconscious, just as the infernal machine drills itself into its victim.  It's not easy listening, but when you focus, you can hear the myriad, tiny, changes of inflection and colour. At least in a Phelim McDermott production, there's lots to look at.

Thus to Akhnaten as music.   There are long stretches where no-one sings anything at all.  But once again, listen attentively. It's almost a piano concerto in that a piano weaves through the orchestral textures, sometimes assertively, sometimes concealed. It is the voice of purity, the voice of a young Pharoah who believes in a single God of Faith while multiple godheads chatter around him, often with menace. Hence the use of counter tenor, a voice type at once vulnerable and assertive. Akhnaten gets wiped from history, but his basic idea applies in other systems of belief.  Are human beings  programmed to prefer graven images and idols  When Nabucco was done at the Royal Opera House, |(my reviews here and here)  there were many in the audience who were enraged because the set was so abstract and so austere.  Surely  some of the booing mob might have realized that the Hebrews worshipped an invisible God and rejected graven images, however golden? Verdi knew. He'd read the Bible and respected Judaism. Nabucco is also a subtle dig at religions that verge on idolatory.  Hopefully, when this Nabucco is revived later this season, audiences will appreciate it better.

Please see also  the ENO chorus and the death of 1000 cuts plus numerous other posts i've written on the ENO crisis and on British arts policy (or the lack thereof) 

Music Theatre Wales goes international

Music Theatre Wales goes international!  Britain's most adventurous smaller opera company presents two productions, on the same day on opposite sides of the world. On April 2nd, Philip Glass The Trial opens at Theater Magdeburg, Germany, while Mark Anthony Turnage's Greek opens at the 2015 Tongyeong International Music Festival, South Korea  Both pieces are classic MTW. Glass wrote The Trial  (reviewed here) specially for the company, who have championed his work almost since the company started more than 25 years ago, including outstanding productions like In the Penal Colony (reviewed here). Turnage's Greek is also a MTW classic. Greek was shocking in 1988/9 because it was a primal scream of protest. Although it's set in the East End of London, it's based on Oedipus, a drama so universal that it's inspired many retellings.  Korea should have no problems connecting.

Two productions 5000 miles apart ?  Ever resourceful, MTW divided the work between two conductor/directors. Michael McCarthy's directing The Trial , with Hermann Dukek conducting, and Michael Rafferty's conducting Greek, with Rhian Hutchings as revival director. Both McCarthy and Rafferty have worked on both productions, so they'll be good.  Here's a link to the Music Theatre Wales website, for more information.

Philip Glass : The Trial, Music Theatre Wales Linbury ROH

Music Theatre Wales presented the world premiere of Philip Glass The Trial (Kafka) last night at the Linbury, Royal Opera House. Music Theatre Wales started doing Glass in 1989. Their production of Glass's In the Penal Colony in 2010 was such a success that Glass conceived The Trial specially for the company. Auspicious prospects indeed. Music Theatre Wales did Glass proud with an excellent production, sensitively attuned to the nuances of Glass's idiosyncratic idiom.

Kafka's The Trial, has such iconic status that any opera based on it carries huge expectations. The atmosphere of the novel is so unusual that it doesn't lend itself readily to ordinary operatic treatment. Glass's music, however, operates on the surreal dissociation that pervades the spirit of the novel. As we listen to the repeated sequences, our minds become innured to patterns. Glass's music expresses the existential angst of mechanical, impersonal systems. If Glass and his librettist, Christopher Hampton, had used the German title "Der Prozess" , the connection would be even more clear. Josef K (Johnny Herford) wakes up one morning and everything starts to go out of synch.  He knows something's wrong but goes along with things until he becomes part of what he didn't believe in.  It's reasonable that his Uncle (Michael Druiett) should help  but why strange women like Leni (Amanda Forbes) and a painter (Paul Curievici)?  Or oddballs like Block (Michael Bennett)  who any reasonable person wouldn't trust? As we become familiar with the cadences in the music, our minds start to follow almost by auto-pilot, and we're mesmerized, too.  K's problems start on his 30th birthday. A year later, he's dead. Or perhaps he's at last succumbed to the long slow death that is conformity to systems that have no real meaning. Once he slips into habits of non-logic, the process takes control.  Perhaps that's the real Trial Josef K is undergoing.  He hasn't committed a crime, he's just part of the irrational scheme of things.

Glass's music wonderfully captures the mindless numbness of the processes around us. In In the Penal Colony (also based on a story by Kafka), an infernal machine drills words into the flesh of a prisoner. The concise nature of chamber opera intensifies the effect of Glass's music,  creating unbearable tension,  so concentrated that it might explain why some listeners switched off, emotionally. Please read my review of  In the Penal Colony HERE and my review of the audio-only recording HERE.  The Trial is more diffuse, involving more characters and covers a longer time span, So the impact is less extreme. The story is more or less familiar to all, which helps make it more accessible. The opera unfolds over ten scenes in two acts, in fairly symmetrical form, which also helps to distance the audience from the human tragedy. In the Penal Colony is a masterpiece, possibly Glass's finest work, but The Trial should prove much more popular.  By Glass's standards, the music is more concrete than usual, with many good "special effects" like  booming trumpet figures illustrating The Uncle, followed by wailing trombone illustrating young K. There are quirky jazzy waltzes and delightful figues on celeste and xylophone. Moderrn miusic without too much fear, but enough intelligence and integrity to satisfy high standards.

Johnny Herford sings Josef K. It can't be easy to create a character disintegrating from a rational man into automaton, but Herford is convincing. His voice has a good balance of rugged manliness and plaintive vulnerability. Even in the throes of his confusion, this K can break off for a quick snog!  Amanda Forbes sings Fräulein Bürstner/Leni, roles which make her switch from prim repression to  voluptuousness.  Forbes's sensual timbre makes one hear the woman behind the compulsive wanton. Leni sleeps with anyone. She's funny,  yet also someone deeply flawed, forced to play a role defined by men. she's not given to reflection, but Forbes shows her fragility by employing a good edgy tension to  her singing. Good performances too from Michael Druiett (Inspector/Uncle), Michael Bennett (Guard/Block), Nicholas Folwell (Guard/ Usher/Clerk/Priest), Rowan Hellier (Frau Grubach/Washerwoman) and Gwion Thomas (Magistrate /Lawyer). Paul Curievici (Painter/Flogger/Student) stands out in small roles: he's one of the better character tenors of his generation.  Michael McCarthy directed, with sets by Simon Banham. Wonderfully idiomatic playing by the Music Theatre Wales Ensemble, conducted by Michael Rafferty.

Philip Glass The Trial is a joint commission between the Royal Opera House, Scottish Opera and Theater Madgeburg.. Music Theatre Wales will perform it again in London until 18th October, and will then take it on tour. (More details here).  Glass's The Trial will also be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 om 25th October (available also online and internationally). Highly recommended !

photos : Clive Barda, courtesy Royal Opera House (details embedded)

ENO Satyagraha - puppets with purpose

Why is the ENO Philip Glass Satyagraha in Sanskrit? Why are the intertitles in turgid Victorian prose? What's the point of an opera where words have no meaning? But that's exactly the point Philip Glass is making. Words, in themselves, have no meaning.  What really matters is communication. In his early life, Gandhi wrote in newspapers, endlessly churning out words that had no impact. Once he dropped verbiage for direct action, he changed the world. When he swapped his three-piece suit for a dhoti, he made a statement. Material things and the power structures that rest on them are meaningless. What matters is purity of spirit. The juggernaut of Empire was felled by humble peasants and non-violence.

Philip Glass's music is maddeningly repetitive but once you stop trying to make sense of it, it kicks in. Many cultures employ repetitive chant because it works. Self consciousness and self awareness contradict each other..Chant keeps the body occupied so the soul can run free. Freedom, though, is  a dangerous concept, which is why many resist it, preferring the certainity of social constructs. Loosen up, guys!   Read what I wrote here about Bianca Jagger being sharper than "clever" folk . As has been said by persons wiser than us, it's harder for a rich man to enter heaven. Glass's structure connects to the epic saga of the Mahabharata but you don't need to know that in detail. Millions have got the ancient story without mastering the literature. Perhaps it's best to approach Satyagraha in the same way. Listen past the language of text and music, not to it, and relax.

 Puppets abound throughout this brilliantly theatrical staging by Improbable, Phelim McDermot's innovative company. Puppets are representations, not reality : inaminate objects that don't exist until manipulated by others. The turgid intertitles are claptrap designed to confuse readers. Just like puppets, we should be able to see through them.  Arjuna and his foes from the Mahabarata loom like ghosts in the first act. Giant grotesques loom over Gandhi and his colleagues. But they're just paper. Later the puppeteers dispense with puppets altogether, walking across the stage with strips of transparent tape, gradually creating cats cradles. The sticky filaments could tie them down and choke them, but from the maze they create a vaguely humanoid monster that rises upwards. Once it's served its purpose a puppeteer crushes it, and it becomes, once again, a worthless mess. What a metaphor for the way we are manipulated by the media and by society!

At one point, the chorus sits stretched across the stage, singing hahahahahahaha. They're reading newspapers, expecting the "natives" to wipe their boots, As an image of power, it's very effective. But the joke is on the rich, not the poor. Gandhi showed that humble people don't need to play games. During his lifetime, he knew Tolstoy and Tagore. He inspired Martin Luther King, whom we see in the final act. Gandhi and King were assassinated. Perhaps they were threatening because they represented an alternative to traditional power structures.  As the actor playing King addresses the heavens, Gandhi (Alan Oke) sings a surprisingly beautiful series of songs.  We don't know what he's saying, but he conveys more complex meanings through abstract sound and nuance than words might articulate. Should we shoot Satyagraha down because we don't like its implications?

 Alan Oke has grown into the role over the years. Although there aren't great florid technical displays in this music, it isn't easy to sing. Miss one bar and it falls out of synch. The purity of Oke's voice is ideal for the part, and now, with experience, he imbues his singing with intuitive confidence and dignity. He might be too tall and too pink to be a facsimile of Gandhi, but he creates the idealized personality in the opera. An "athlete of the spirit", whatever that might mean. His avatars, Arjuna (Eddie Wade) and Krishna (Nicholas Masters) are very good, bringing individual character to the roles. Wade's cockinesss is particularly well thought through.

The ENO chorus are in excellent form, so well drilled by chorus master Philip White in Glass's strange cadences that they make the music seem oddly natural. Stuart Stratford conducted: an act of concentration above and beyond the call of duty. Miss one bar or repeat and the whole opera goes awry. To my surprise, I was humming the "tunes" all the way home. Clare Eggington sang Miss Schlesen, Janis Kelly Mrs Naidoo ,with Stephanie Marshall, Nicholas Folwell and Sarah Pring in other roles. I don't know if I could cope with Satyagraha audio-only but live it works, thanks tp  Phelim McDermot, Peter Relton and the Improbable troupe of multi taskers.  Perhaps Glass might have jazzed things up in waltz time, but Improbable and Alan Oke make Satyagraha worthwhile as theatre.

Plenty more on this site about Philip Glass who can be very good (In the Penal Colony) or not as the case might be (The Perfect American) 

photos : Alastair Muir, courtesy ENO

Silent film? Glass Perfect American ENO

Philip Glass's The Perfect American at the ENO Coliseum is a visual treat, but the libretto is mind-numbingly anodyne.  This is not classic Glass, but some plastic imitation. Walt Disney's life would make fantastic drama.  Phelim McDermott and Improbable give us wonderful visual images. But Glass and his librettist Rudy Wurlitzer seem to have lost the plot. The Perfect American should have been a silent movie.

As Disney discovered, cartoon characters come alive when they tell a good story. Cartoons are static images, thousands of frames meticulously drawn by hand. They only come alive when a machine runs them in sequence. Movement is illusion. Glass's music can work as drama. His whirring repetitions suggest the mechanical processes used in film. We can "hear" whirring of the camera, and imagine the way individual cells of film are transformed when the projector rolls. Glass makes the connection between cartoons and trains. Both run on tracks, both are inanimates transformed by machine. Thousands of illustrators worked on Disney's films but their work only became art when he processed it. In theory, Philip Glass could have made good music to fit the subject. But even by his own standards, The Perfect American feels like a tired rerun.

There's nothing wrong with repetition per se, but here it's an excuse to pad out a marginal story line. The Perfect American might work as drama if it were cut down to, say, 60 minutes, distilling it down to the essentials. Glass's In the Penal Colony was powerful because it was so tightly written. You felt like you were inside the infernal machine operated by a demonic entity. It even works as pure music, though the Music Theatre Wales staging was superb. (Read my reviews here and here). This is minimalism free of danger or meaning. It's quite pleasant in its own way, an ideal alternative to sleeping pills or a shot of whisky before bed. But Glass needs focus to concentrate his mind from wandering. Listening to The Perfect American without visuals would, I think, be torture.

The Disney Corporation refused to allow the use of Disney images in the production, but Phelim McDermott gets round this by showing the camera. Its round reels look like Mickey's ears. The projection shaft looks like a mouth.. Just as Disney anthromorphised animals, McDermott turns machine into Mouse. Improbable's group sequences are always notable. The chorus moves like a  single organism made from many parts. The chorus helps the figure of Abraham Lincoln move, like a puppet on strings. The political allusions are valid, but curiously undeveloped. The libretto flits from idea to idea without depth or perception.

If Glass were to save The Perfect American as drama, he's be wise to stick to a few strong images and ditch the less relevant. Lincoln (extremely well realized by Zachary James) is worth keeping because McDermott shows him so well, but Disney and Ronald Reagan are innocent indeed compared with the machinations of modern politics. Andy Warhol (John Easterlin) is a character worth saving because Warhol and Disney had so much in common.  If Glass's focus is on Disney as visionary artist, there's a lot of potential.  But the libretto is fatally diffuse.

Christopher Purves sings Walt and David Soar sings Roy Disney. Good performances but the script lets them down. Both singers have enough musical nous to sing their lines so they flow better than what's in the subtitles. Sometimes, Glass's problems with text work out fine because they emphasize meaning. Mechanical expression squashes human speech. In The Perfect American, the text is just plain dumb. These roles are central. Both Disney brothers were visionaries in their own ways. Whether you like multinational corporations or not, they helped create the genre.  Perhaps Glass and his librettist were inhibited by fear of litigation. But the Disneys were remarkable people: the Disney Corporation has nothing to fear. Especially not from a work as inept as this. There is one spark of perception in the text. The Disneys are "hiding behind a mouse and a duck". But that's all. Then the moment is gone.

Soar is an interesting singer, much admired since his early days at WNO. Hopefully we'll hear more of him at the ENO. Donald Kaasch sings William Dantine, the employee fired for organizing a union. As "evidence" that Disney mistreated his employees, it's pretty weak, since far worse things happened and happen still. The Lucy/Josh character (Rosie Lomas) is bizarre. If Lucy is an apparition based on the ghost of an owl Disney killed as a child, there's potential in that too, but the role is so badly drawn (by the librettist, not the singer) that it's a waste of time. We don't really need to know so much about how Disney loved nature. But as my friend exclaimed. "Disney wasn't Janáček!".

An opera that would have been better as silent film? The irony would not have been lost on Walt and Roy.  It doesn't matter how you tell a story as long as you have a story to tell in the first place.

A full review and cast list is in Opera Today

Anna is back! Royal Opera House 2013-2020

Announced 20 minutes ago,  plans for the Royal Opera House for 2013-2020. Run-in times for any production at a house like Covent Garden are long, so it's hardly surprisinmg that they have a good idea of what they're planning to do years in advance. Kaspar Holten is adamant. "New work is not and should not be at the periphery of our programme, but right at the core of what and who we are." as ever the case in opera  in the past.  Even classic staples were once "new". Those who want endless revivals of old productions will still get their fill, but ROH is doing its bit to keep the art alive with new work and new commissions.  Please see also my latests piece analysin g the situation more broadly HERE.

For really new work, the run-in time is even longer. For 2020, ROH plans to "challenge leading European composers Kaija Saariaho (Finland), Mark-Anthony Turnage (UK), Luca Francesconi (Italy) and Jörg Widmann (Germany) to create large scale new operas. The vision is for four distinct operas, each one in part inspired by the composer’s response to a set of questions developed in collaboration with the philosopher Slavoj Žižek: “What preoccupies us today? How do we represent ourselves on stage? What are the collective myths of our present and future?”

Scandal is nothing new to opera. Think of the extremely hostile reception of Carmen.  After the initial shock of Mark Anthony Turnage's Anna Nicole wore off, the opera and production grew on me. I think I'll get a lot more out of next time round in 2014/15. (read what I wrote of the premiere and aftermath).

Music Theatre Wales is back with a new commission for Philip Glass based on Franz Kafka's The Trial, also 2014/15. This should be a major event if it's anywhere near asd good as Glass's In the Penal Colony (reviews here and here), whose success inspired Glass to work again with Music Theatre Wales, one of Britain's most innovative smaller companies. What a pity the Linbury Studio Theatre is so small and cramped. Hopefully, they'll do a longer run to compensate. If only there were a mid-size theatre at ROH! Could they not do a deal with somewhere else?

The Royal Operas House doesn't go out on a limb alone but works with other houses like Bregenz, Opera North., Houston and the wonderful Holland Festival. So we can look forward to Ben Frost’s adaptation of Iain Banks’s cult novel The Wasp Factory, and Luca Francesconi’s Quartett, (a new version directed by John Fulljames and co-produced with The London Sinfonietta and Opéra de Rouen after the piece's 2010 premiere at La Scala Milan).  A new opera from Luke Bedford, too, who is one of the most interesting of all youngerr British composers.  Read what I wroite about his Seven Angels here and here - another opera completely misunderstood by some, which also deserves to be heard again. Really good things need time to percolate past first impressions. Bedford's new opera is on the theme of Faust which shouldn't be too hard to take on board. A new Christmas opera from Julian Philips, whose The Yellow Sofa was a huge hit for Glyndebourne Touring. And we''ll get Unsuk Chin's Alice in Wonderland hot on the heels of the WNO.

Lots more to read - HERE is the press release. .

Philip Glass Einstein on the Beach Barbican London

How does Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach shape up, thirty-seven years after it premiered?  At the Barbican Theatre, London, we got a chance to hear how Glass and director Robert Wilson present it now. As theatre, it's stunning, even though the escalators didn't work at all and the cloud effects were less than remarkable. As music? It makes us realize just how far Glass has since progressed. Despite the glorious theatrics, Einstein on the Beach is  redolent of the 1970's.

Fantastic theatre, though  Pairs and parallels, symmetries and counter symmetries. The dance sequences show the patterns in the music in "pure" form, but the staging overall is very well thought out, expressing the musical logic. Breath taking visual effects. Beautifully luminous sets. Lots of tunes, too, which may have helped make  the piece (relatively) popular. The long saxophone riff, for example, and the fugue for electronic organ. The tunes serve as familiar landmarks in the amorphous confluences of Glass's music. Famously, he composed with a formal structure in mind, based on images Wilson suggested

But with too-frequent snatches of pop songs that weren't that good to start with, the whole is uncomfortably  close to quasi-musical. Perhaps once that was necessary, to dispel the idea that new music is difficult, and to establish the idea that Einstein was trendy, for a generation that listened to Carole King and  made Mr Bojangles top of the hit parade. Fortunately, the Barbican audience seemed too young to have memories associated with 70's hip values. One day maybe these songs will just be quaint curiosities. At present, they distract, adding layers of meaning which are interesting but distract from the figure of Einstein himself. Nowadays, Glass is writing with much more discipline. Witness In the Penal Colony, staged last year at the Linbury, where music and meaning are totally integrated. Read my review of the subsequent CD, which shows how Glass's oscillating cadences express the psychosis in the plot.

In Einstein on the Beach, the repetitions seem to exist for their own sake, continuing far too long after they have made their point. Perhaps Glass and Wilson are describing mathematical calculations, which can be mechanical. But at Einstein's level, mathematics is conceptual.. Mathematicians wax rhapsodic about the "elegance" of inspired proofs, not about mindless number crunching. As an "ideas" drama, Einstein on the Beach isn't especially coherent. Einstein appears marginally, sawing a violin, possibly listening to Bach. Several different references to writing on blackboards, including the striking image of a  figure in a redbrick tower, witha mechanical hand that moves up and down. But what matters isn't the blackboard but what the ideas represent. Einstein on the Beach isn't nearly as intellectually rigorous as Satyagraha where Mahatma Gandhi's radical ideas are treated seriously and understood. (read more here and here). Perhaps the pointillism of Glass's music suggests the infinity of the universe, but it doesn't deal with the implications of Einstein's theories. If "I feel the earth move" stands for the Atom Bomb, it's pretty shallow.

Arguably, Einstein on the Beach isn't about Einstein and his ideas so much as an experiment. The work flows like stream of consciousness, ideas glimpsed as if in a dream, their meaning obscure. This is good, because Wilson knows how visual images can mean many different things at the same time : it's up to the onlooker to process and interpret. Visual literacy is an undervalued skill, which many don't know even exists. The first few hours are thrilling exercises in reading images, almost too much to take in. But the piece takes itself too seriously, labouring almost identical scenes and sounds til they outstay their welcome. You can walk in and out and doze (which is useful because the images work well when your mind in in zen-like receptive mode). Better, though, to depend less on formal structure and more on inherent drama. Einstein on the Beach is important because it's a first step in Glass's evolution as dramatist. Listen to Glass's  more recent work, like In The Penal Colony (easier to cope audio-only than the brilliant, but distressing staging). Look forward to The Perfect American, Glass's latest character study, based loosely on Walt Disney, premiering also in the Barbican Theatre in June 2013, under the auspices of the ENO.  But get to the Barbican now and experience this amazing staging, with idiomatic performances.

Fantastic ENO season 2012-2013 TOP PICKS

Fantastic new ENO season for 2012/13! The most adventurous in years, totally justifying the Outstanding Achievement Olivier the ENO received for "breadth and diversity" of its programme. This is such an amazing season. Full schedule on the ENO site here. Not all the goodies are obvious! So, my top picks below, with explanations why.

Walt Disney changed the world.  One of the many highlights of the ENO's fantastic new season 2012-2013 will be Philip Glass's The Perfect American, a surreal exploration of Disney's imagination.  Opera is fantasy, so Disney's a great subject. Since there was a lot more to Disney than cartoons, the story could be good. The production is by Phelim McDermott whose brilliant puppets and set made Satyagraha genius theatre. (Read more about that here and here). Walt Disney the opera won't come round til next June, but book as soon as you can. Tickets will be gold dust.

The new ENO season starts with fantasy, too. Bohuslav Martinů's Julietta, based on the Paris Opéra production which Edward Gardner fell in love with. If it can inspire him like that, it sounds good. It's a gorgeous opera, last heard in London with Magdalena Kožená, conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek. (more about it here) Listen to the recordings, and catch the magic. This production's directed by Richard Jones, who won the Olivier Award for best director.

Even more daring - the ENO takes on Ralph Vaughan Williams The Pilgrim's Progress (from 5/11) staged for the first time since its premiere in 1951. It's not an "easy" opera,  and needs a director who understands stylized allegory. The reason that this will be important is the choice of director, Yoshi Oida. Oida is astoundingly sensitive. His Britten Death in Venice was exceptional. (read more here). It ran within a month of the ENO Deborah Warner Death in Venice. Two drastically opposite approaches.Warner's was high on glossy fashion shoot glamour, Aschenbach relegated to the sidelines in every way. Oida's approach was psychological, with Aschenbach foremost, action happening around him and in his mind. Although Aschenbach thinks he's a disinterested observer, in fact, he's caught up in his own fantasies. Oida shows Venice as a mirror of Aschenbach's mind. Claustrophic walls, dank, dangerous waters, a place where everything's nebulous.  Deep in every sense. Exactly the spirit of the music.
 
Oida was chosen to stage Britten in Aldeburgh because his Britten track record is exemplary. Back in 1989 he stunned Aix-en-Provence with his Britten Curlew River. It's preserved on DVD, watch it if you can. He's an inspired choice for The Pilgrim's Progress, which needs a director who understands stylized allegory. Kill for tickets to this, though it will be nothing like the ENO Riders to the Sea which was so literal the music wasn't able to speak. Oida is spiritually as well as musical astute. If anyone can make The Pilgrim's Progress work as theatre, it's Oida. Martyn Brabbins conducts, another reason why this will be a must.

Calixto Bieito? -- the tabloids might scream. Get past the shock value, for Bieito is a very serious director. In his Carmen (from 21/11) he shows the gypsies as marginalized underclass, utterly relevant to modern Europe. In Barcelona (read what I wrote here), it dealt with migrant workers and the "colonization" of Catalunya by foreigners. In London, the focus will shift to more British concerns. Maybe the tabloids will be right. Incendiary stuff ! But these are issues we can't blank out.  Bizet was right on the mark. What's more, Ruxandra Donose is singing Carmen - she's magnificent.

Even more shocking, Peter Konwitschny comes to London! This will have the tabloid mind set foaming at the mouth, especially as he's directing Verdi La Traviata. "My Traviata", he says in the promo video, "is short". And to the point. Ten years ago he did a Meistersinger that confronted the German audience with the implications of the final act. To this day I remember what Tim Ashley wrote then (find it here). Violetta is a strong personality, as she has to be in her profession, but she also trumps Papa Germont at his own game. There are levels and levels in this opera that are rarely touched. Read what Tim Ashley said of Konwitschny's La Traviata in Graz last year here,

The ENO's always been good with baroque. Christopher Curnyn, who conducted an excellent Rameau Castor and Pollux (review here) last year is conducting Charpentier's Medea ifor the ENO in  February, in a new production by David McVicar. Lots of Charpentier around these days, it seems,  and David et Jonathas (William Christie) features in Edinburgh and in Paris later this year. 

More baroque too - Handel's Julius Caesar (from 1/10) in a "fresh, theatrical" new staging by Michael Keegan-Dolan, who brought us the ENO Rite of Spring. He's a choreographer (hence the ballet) so it will be interesting how he makes a Handel opera move. Strong cast - Lawrence Zazzo, Anna Christy and Christian Cumyns, specialist conductor.

Another adventurous new production, Michel van der Aa's The Sunken Garden, in the Barbican Theatre (not the Coliseum) in April.  It's a joint venture between the Holland Festival , the ENO, the Barbican, Toronto and Lyon. Van der Aa's works have been heard in London several times before, so he's not unknown so much as misunderstood as he mixes music and singing with theatre and film. Pierre Audi respects him highly. Together they did a fascinating concert called Liebestod which creatively re-imagined Alban  Berg's relationship with Hanna Fuchs-Robettin (review here). That was conceptual but not too difficult, definitely worth hearing again. If we ever get the chance! The Sunken Garden is an "occult mystery film opera" with Roderick Williams, who also sang in van der Aa's Before Life at the Barbican (see review here) and will be singing in The Sunken Garden.  Roddy, as he's affectionately known, is grossly undervalued. he's easily the first choice English baritone in modern repertoire (and in other repertoire too - remember his Pollux?

Many revivals like the Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, and a new production of Wozzeck in May, conducted by Edward Gardner (no singer details yet). Lots more interesting things to emerge as time goes by.

photos courtesy Getty Images and ENO
photo of Yoshi Oida copyright  Victor Pascal
A more formal version of this will appear soon in Opera Today

Philip Glass - In the Penal Colony CD

At last, Philip Glass's In the Penal Colony is available on CD. In a strange penal colony, prisoners are tortured by a bizarre machine. A visitor arrives, determined not to be involved. But the horror is so great that his resolve is breached. When the Officer is confronted, he cannot cope. His whole psyche is trapped in this psychotic system of arcane ritual.  In extremes of obsessive compulsive disorder, insane things seem mperfectly logical to those trapped within. It's also a paradigm of totalitarian society, where authority isn't questioned.

When Music Theatre Wales performed In the Penal Colony at the Linbury Theatre at ROH in 2010,  (review here) the experience was profoundly shattering. As it should be, given the subject matter and the intensity of the performance. What normal person could feel otherwise? The audio recording cauterizes some of that pain, and allows more detailed listening.

Now we can really appreciate Glass's oscillating cadences and how well they express the psychosis in the tale. The whole penal colony operates like an infernal machine, where everything is regulated, and everyone mechanically obeys ritual, no matter how insane. The Officer himself is a prisoner, for he's compelled beyond reason to carry on what his predecessor did, even though the machine is falling apart. Glass's oscillations whirr and churn., like a machine, yet they adapt to fine gradations of nuance. Nothing is actually mechanical, or repeated without purpose. A powerful current moves under this music, drilling its way into your unconscious, just as the psychosis infected the penal colony. Glass's music is telling us to beware. Listen perceptively and hear the pulse behind the mechanical drone. Hear the "human heartbeat" within and you won't be hypnotized.

Glass describes mind-numbing situations, but his music only numbs if that's how you respond. In Satyagraha (see reviews here and here), Gandhi is overwhelmed by Empire and colonialist values. He breaks through when he rejects industrialism and the machine values it represents. Thanks to mass communications and technology, we're more controlled by machines than any other society before. That's why Satyagraha and In the Penal Colony are much more than brilliant pieces of music theatre. They are timely warnings of what it means to be human. Get this recording - it's an investment in staying sane. Read more about Music Theatre Wales here. They won an award for their oustanding Mark Anthony Turnage Greek, and are one of the more innovative music theatre ensembles in the country. As you will hear on this CD.

Turnage Greek - back with a vengeance

Mark Anthony Turnage's Greek hits the streets again. Thursday it's at the Cheltenham Festival as part of a tour. It's Turnage's first opera, written at the age of 28 when he was mean, lean and thornily edgy (and maybe still is). Good pedigree - it was commissioned by Hans Werner Henze, no less, for the Munich Bienniale. Henze taught Turnage briefly so knew what he was letting himself in for. Greek, in typical punchy Turnage mode, is based on the Stephen Berkoff hit play Oedipus the King, itself based on Greek legend.

This will be worth catching as it's produced by Music Theatre Wales. They're an innovative company, who achieve great results. Remember their In the Penal Colony (Philip Glass), at the Linbury Theatre, ROH,  last year ? (review HERE). Music, subject and staging drilled precisely  together, so painful it was almost impossible to watch. Which is what Kafka intended. Turnage, on the other hand, can be surprisingly lyrical sometimes, so don't be put off by image.

Greek was shocking in 1988/9 because it was a primal scream of protest. Those were the last, anguished years of Thatcherite Britain. The Oedipus story was a frame for rebellion. It wasn't coincidence that Thatcher's sex caused more resentment than any male politican might get. There have been far more unethical politicans since, but protest was/is curiously mute. Anyway, Greek is set in the urban jungle of East End London. Tough Eddy kills a man, marries his wife and takes over the pub (kingdom). Years later Eddy discovers that Wife is his long lost mother....  maybe 80's misogyny has deep roots.

HERE is a link to Music Theatre Wales's website where there a video about the production and lots more detail. "Turnage had no qualms in tearing up the rule book and producing a ground-breaking contemporary classic: an opera fizzing with high voltage energy and raw emotion."  If ENO really wanted to be radical, they'd could do worse than revive early Turnage.

New Greek by Young Turk Turnage

Vintage Turnage returns! Music Theatre Wales, which produced the shocking Philip Glass In the Penal Colony last year, is reviving Mark-Anthony Turnage's Greek. It's a "re-working of the Oedipus myth for the age of discontent".

Commissioned by Hans Werner Henze in 1988, it's an angry protest against Thatcher's Britain. What followed Thatcher, however, makes anything she did seem oddly innocent in comparison,  even selfless, if misguided. At least she read policy briefings and didn't deliberately invent things to please George W. Invading the Falklands was a no-brainer compared with invading Iraq, Afghanistan etc. Greek was the piece that helped make Turnage's name, so it will be interesting to compare it with Turnage's new Anna Nicole, premiering next month at the Royal Opera House. The inspiration for that was Beyoncé.

The New Greek by the Young Turk Turnage is being directed by the same team who did In the Penal Colony, headed by director Michael McCarthy. Simon Banham designs and Michael Rafferty conducts. On past form this should be good. Music Theatre Wales is small, but impressive. Singers include Marcus Farnworth, Sally Silver and Louise Winter. The tour starts in Brecon, Wales, on 2nd July then moves to the Cheltenham Festival on 7th July, and thence to the Buxton Festival. Possible London dates in the autumn? Incidentally, Music Theatre Wales is working together with Philip Glass on a new piece based on Kafka The Trial. If In the Penal Colony was anything to go by, The Trial from this team should be gripping.

Barbican 2011-2012 Opera and vocal

That's Einstein on the beach. Note the natty pose, the shorts and his darling sandals!  The Philip Glass opera Einstein on the Beach  is a joint production between the Barbican, de Nederlandse Opera (big recommendation) and others. High profile, but tickets don't go on sale until April 2011 though the performances aren't til May 2012 - and look at the prices! (which is why you want to get in while cheap seats exist).

Gergiev conducts Wagner Parsifal with the Mariinsky on 3 April 2012, concert staging, which might be OK, and one night only. Nothing like Haitink, I suspect. He's conducting Stravinsky Oedipus Rex on 15/5 which he does wonderfully and The Soldiers Tale and Renard two days before - a good package, I think. Weber, Der Freischütz 19-21 April might be interesting but a real must is Louis Langree Mozart La Clemenza di Tito on 22/2. Excellent cast - Schade, Garanca, and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie. The Barbican is well suited to intimate opera, as this year's current baroque opera series demonstrates. They: should play to this strength by doing more.

Lots of wonderful choral works, the best being Szymanowski's Song of the Night, I think, with Boulez on 8th May, but lots of competition.  One of this year's Total Immersion Days features Arvo Pärt, so we can be sure of divine harmonies. Simon Keenlyside sings in Mendelssohn's Elijah on 7/3/12 with the Britten Sinfonia. Gerald Finley in Walton's Belshazzar's Feast and Bostridge in Britten's War Requiem. Other opera, too, such as Opera North's Tchaikovsky Queen of Spades and Jonathan Harvey's Wagner Dream, during the Harvey total Immersion. This was featured at the Holland Festival some years ago, mixed reviews. Lots of other vocal treats - recitals by Hvorostovsky, Borodina and Andreas Scholl.

But there are more things that really shouldn't be missed, not because they're starry, but because they're rare. First, on 4/11, Arthur Honneger's dramatic oratorio from 1935, Joan of Arc at the Stake, (Jeanne d'Arc au bucher), then on 6/11, music to accompany Carl Th Dreyer's 1928 movie The Passion of Joan of Arc. It's an amzing film, thought lost for many years. It pre-dates his spooky Vampyr (1932) but in some ways it's more innovative with its dramatic angles and close-ups. Marin Alsop conducts.

Also a must will be Anton Dvořák Jakobin (The Jacobin), complicated plot, rarely performed. If anyone can carry it off and make it convincing, Jiří Bělohlávek is the man. He chooses his singers well and doesn't compromise. Since the performance isn't til 4th February 2012, there'll be lots of time to prepare beforehand. Just because bookings open so early, there's no compulsion to buy everything at once. There is so much going on in London all year that the detailed Barbican programme is a boon. You can organize your diary around it and prepare by listening and learning in advance. PLEASE SEE my summary of the Barbican 2011-2012 ORCHESTRAL programme.

Experience In the Penal Colony

Although it's been a week since Philip Glass's In the Penal Colony hit the Linbury Studio, London, I'm still reeling. It was traumatic but not something anyone with a conscience can casually walk away from.  Does any end justify such means? It's on tour throughout the UK - Oxford, Manchester, several places in Wales, Edinburgh. See a link to Music Theatre Wales website here for details. It's unforgettable. A reminder why we can't ever be complacent and shallow.  A production like this needs to be experienced. Please click on this link here for a more technical discussion of the opera  and its musical logic.

In the Penal Colony Glass Kafka

Impossible to relax after experiencing Philip Glass's In the Penal Colony at the Linbury Studio Theatre of the Royal Opera House, (Music Theatre Wales production). This isn't an opera anyone could "like" but anyone who can't be moved, disturbed or unsettled isn't fully human.

A Visitor arrives in a remote penal colony. He's completely neutral, insisting his opinions don't count because he's not involved. But he's asked to witness an execution, where words are drilled into a prisoner's body. Much too horrific to describe here. Read the Kafka story. It's just completely insane.

The Visitor tries to avoid emotional engagement or any form of moral responsibility. The condemned man is so conditioned to brutality that he accepts his fate mindlessly, like an animal. The Officer is so obsessed with the former Camp Commandant that he thinks of the execution machine as semi-religious duty. Crimes and non-crimes are irrelevant, the only reality is the killing machine.

Glass's music whirls,unearthly sounds projected over a string quintet, mechanical merging with live music, as precisely as cogs in a machine. The endless repetitions fit the plot as tightly as a straitjacket. "Efficient, quiet, anonymous", as the Visitor explained he'd like to be. You're half-hypnotized by this strange semi-trance music, just as the protagonists are numbed into accepting their circumstances.

Yet the repetitions move with a crazy logic, sometimes up a notch, sometimes disintegrating into cacophony (such as when the Officer thinks of his homeland - a last glimpse of the man he once was). Pay close attention to the subtle gradations. Like good film music they affect emotions subliminally. You understand how people in the penal colony become machines.

Omar Ebrahim, who sings The Officer is extremely experienced in contemporary music theatre. His vocal range is prodigious, though not used here where the monotony of the music is part of the plot. Nonetheless,Ebrahim brings surprising lyricism to the part. Some passages shimmer with the fervour of Bach. The Officer's dedication to his old Commander and to the machine demands total sacrifice. Blasphemy, perhaps, but in the insane world of the penal colony, there's crazy logic to the idea that the Officer should offer himself to the machine as it falls apart.

It would be so easy to lean back and say, it's Glass, it's gloomy, therefore no need to bother. No need to get engaged with the ideas here because they're too bizarre. Nod off and think about something  twee. But that's how barbarities like those in the Penal Colony happen. People don't get involved, don't take responsibility. Once you trivialize emotion, you lose your humanity.You end up like the Officer who thinks that because he's got status, he doesn't have to think. And because he's lost the ability to think and feel, he loses himself. Scarily, the Prisoner is well on the way down that route, too.

Get to Into the Penal Colony while it lasts. The short run ends Sunday and you'll have to brave the Papal crowds to get there. You won't enjoy it, I guarantee. But if you're not moved and disturbed, or confronted mentally and emotionally, I just don't know. I spent years researching war crimes and thought nothing would scare me. But this does, because the implications are that we're all in Penal Colonies if we don't question or act. Formal, "proper" review HERE with more detail on the music .

Photo : Music Theatre Wales, Philip Glass : In the Penal Colony, Omar Ebrahim, The Officer, credit Clive Barda (copyright, used with permission, please do not copy)

Satyagraha ENO Glass 2010 London - review

Please note a proper formal review will shortly appear in Opera Today which will be different to these - pithier ! It's a good site, please visit as it's crammed with repertoire commentary and downloads.

Philip Glass's Satyagraha at the English National Opera, at the Coliseum, London, proves that modern minimalism can be extraordinarily moving. The secret is to open your soul, as Gandhi did, when he searched the Baghavad-Gita for inspiration.

Glass's repetitive cadences vary little, so you worry that the musicians will get RSI. Yet listen carefully, and the repeats vary in microtones, gradually shifting gears into different cadences. This unrushed monotony is as natural as breathing. Hindus chant the word "Om" endlessly, until the vibration enters their bodies, allowing their minds to float, beyond consciousness. So it is with Glass's music, informed by other and older traditions than western music.

Once you break free of any dependence on conventional musical form, Glass's strange, hypnotic cadences start operating on you with you hardly being aware. Your focus shifts inwards, beyond outward form. There was exceptionally idiomatic playing from the ENO orchestra, conducted by Stuart Stratford. When the orchestra took their bows, parts of the audience went wild with enthusiasm. Clearly an audience that knows new music, or accepts it on its own terms. Satyagraha is the biggest selling contemporary opera the ENO has produced, and possibly the best.

The text is in Sanskrit, which most people, including Indians, don't understand. This is deliberate because what Gandhi discovered was that words and meaning aren't the same thing. Hence the scene from the epic myth of Arjuna. The hero's enemies are puppets, men with sticks who crumble when moved. Scene titles appear, like chapter headings in books, but what unfolds on stage isn't narrative. Tolstoy and Tagore appear in panels above the stage. You don't really need to know who they are: the idea is that you'll want to find out more, later, when you're "outside the box" of the performance.

There are so many amazing images in this production that it's hard to take them all in at once. Some are striking, like the giant puppets that descend menacingly on Gandhi, corralled by bigots singing hahahaha. Others are elusive, like the fish which materializes in the second act. It doesn't matter if we don't get them all. Like words, images are hints of meaning, not meaning in themselves. Rarely have I ever seen a staging that expresses the spirit of an opera so well. Because Glass's music is so unusual, and his text obscure, staging in this opera is even more important than usual. Phelim McDermott, Julian Crouch and Improbable and their team have created a theatrical masterpiece which is sensitive and well-informed.

The staging is so atmospheric that the simple clean lines of the Third Act come as quite a shock. Gandhi sits front stage while a man ascends a ladder. The reference is Martin Luther King. who adapted the principles of Satyagraha to the Civil Rights Movement. At the premiere in 2007, I thought this act was too abrupt a change from the sepia-tinted mystery that had gone before, and that the image of King waving to the clouds was contrived, as if designed for American audiences who might not care who Gandhi was. Since then, Barack Obama has become President, espousing similar non-violent methods. No government in the world has coped with the global meltdown or the war in the Middle East. Yet somehow people expect Obama to have solved all that and more in barely a year. Reading some of the hate directed at him makes you remember that we haven't really "reached the mountain top".

On the other hand, the spareness of this Act hones in on Alan Oke as Gandhi. Perhaps it's significant that until this stage in the opera, Oke sings with an ensemble or remains relatively quiet. Now he's centre focus. He sings two extended "arias", the first with its references to "athletes of the spirit" who hold steadfast unto death. The second is more lyrical for he's expressing transcendence. Oke has matured into the part, and is singing with greater depth and dignity than three years ago. He's in his element now. You don't need to know the exact words he's singing, because he conveys their sense with such conviction. Also more comfortable, in the role of Miss Schlesen, is Elena Xanthoudakis: some lovely flights of lyrical beauty. This production is musically even better than before, superb performances all round. Photo credits : Alastair Muir/ENO Please note, these photos are COPYRIGHT and used with permission

Glass Satyagraha ENO preview

See REVIEW above !
After experiencing Koyaanisqatsi twice, I thought I was inoculated against Philip Glass. However, a friend, who knows the opera insisted that Satyagraha was different, and good. Since my friend's tastes are more conservative than mine, it was a recommendation to act on. We went to the 2007 premiere at the Coliseum. He was absolutely right: Satyagraha is amazing! The ENO production, directed by Phelim McDermott, was streets ahead of the Stuttgart production my friend had enjoyed before.

Satyagraha doesn't sound promising in theory, because it's sung in Sanskrit and Glass's repetitive monotones drone on shapelessly. But for once, that's the whole point, that words alone are meaningless. Real change is brought about when people think and act. The story is set in Mahatma Gandhi's youth, when he still believed that conventional, middle class ideas could change things. While he lived in South Africa, he was a facsimile of the British middle class intellectual, agitating through the press, hoping thus to change the entrenched colonial system.

His big breakthrough came when he switched to direct action. By swapping his tweed three-piece suit for a simple cotton loincloth, he was making a truly radical statement: you don't change the power structure by playing its own games. So no more pamphlets and newspapers, no more polite posturing. The Empire wasn't going to budge an inch. "Satyagraha" means firm conviction in one's beliefs, not pitting violence against violence, but changing the way people think on a much deeper level. It's still a radical approach, and applies today and to many aspects of life.

That's why in the ENO production shreds of newsprint fall from the skies, tying the stage up in knots. Indian peasants couldn't read, but they knew what their livelihood came from. Textile mills in Northern England prospered, marginalizing traditional Indian commerce. Gandhi's battleground was boycotting Manchester and supporting cottage industry in Indian villages. In iteself, that's no big deal, but it symbolizes a truly radical shift in the power structure. So that's why Philip Glass's libretto's in Sanskrit. You have to let go of "words" in order to reach deeper, intuitive understanding. But as the saying goes, "it's easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter Heaven" - ie you've got to ditch the material to reach the spiritual. So Gandhi with no possessions other than his begging bowl brought down the might of the British Empire.

Gandhi's inspiration came from Ancient Sanskrit texts. Appropriately in this production, a primeval battle scene is enacted by gigantic puppets, evoking the juggernauts of Indian tradition. They tower over the stage, and are extremely elaborate and detailed. They are meant to “shock and awe” . But puppets they are, however formidable. As the puppeteers step down from their stilts, the giants disintegrate, and we see that they are hollow constructs made by ordinary men.The image is extremely powerful, and important, because it captures the soul of Gandhi’s struggle.

Moreover, the puppets are made of newsprint. The printed word was important, and Gandhi’s journal Indian Opinion was widely read. Throughout this production, images of newsprint appear – banners of paper, as if fresh off a printing press, papier maché creations, images of newspaper headlines superimposed on the backdrop. The images appear relentlessly but ultimately, words alone are meaningless. “Action”, says Gandhi, is a form of “spiritual exercise”. The Satyagraha movement revolved around simple living, focused on idealistic communes where humble tasks were shared by all, regardless of race or status. Later in the opera, as the movement gains momentum through strikes and civil action, festoons of newsprint are torn to shreds, the debris swept away by bands of actors with small brooms – just like peasants in India. Even more striking is the scene where the stage is criss-crossed with what seem to be shining ribbons of light, carefully woven into a maze-like pattern. It’s visually stunning, but the lines are then revealed as sticky tape, transparent but impossible to unravel.

Even Glass’s minimalist technique seems to work in this particular context. The very repetitiveness of it means that a listener doesn’t need to focus on every note. Instead, the imagination can float “over” the notes, so to speak, the better to concentrate on meaning. It’s very similar to Buddhist chanting where single sounds are repeated over and over until they blend into the subconscious, freeing the mind from temporal concerns. It’s not a technique unique to Buddhism, of course, but it works. On closer examination, though, Glass’s music is surprisingly natural, rather like the normal rhythm of breathing. Accordingly, the vocal parts, while demanding, are not forced. Indeed, some sections are quite beautifully lyrical, such as the long aria (if you can call it that) for Gandhi in the Final Act.

In the final act, cadences rise ever higher, “climbing a ladder” aspirationally, just as the Martin Luther King character does on stage. It’s also tricky music to perform, as missing a bar, or fluffing a note would disrupt the organic flow.

Once word gets round that Glass is not to be feared, this production will be appreciated for what it is. I sincerely hope so, because its complicated philosophic content may well be more difficult for audiences to cope with than Glass’s music per se. But it’s an excellent production and deserves to be a hit. Photo credits : Alastair Muir/ENO Please note these photos are copyright and used with permission