Britten Billy Budd, ROH reviewed by Claire Seymour

Jacques Imbrailo as Billy Budd, Royal Opera House -  Photo: Catherine Ashmore 2019

Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd at the Royal Opera House with Jacques Imbrailo, Toby Spence and Brindley Sherratt, thoughtfully reviewed by Claire Seymour who wrote the book The Operas of Benjamin Britten : Expression and Evasion (2007) .  Read the full review here in Opera Today - seriously good analysis of an opera which is anything but just a jolly jig. 

"Director Deborah Warner, whose production of Billy Budd (a co-production with Madrid’s Teatro Real and Rome Opera) is the first for twenty years to grace the stage of the Royal Opera House, seems to be in accord with the views that Benjamin Britten expressed in a 1960 radio interview. For, it is Vere’s moral dilemma which dominates her interpretation. She makes no attempt to, as Britten’s librettist E.M. Forster put it in The Griffin in 1951, tidy up Vere’:........."

"The homoerotic sub-currents of both Melville’s novella and Forster’s libretto remain submerged in Warner’s production, and it is the opera’s religious allegory which is brought to the fore. There’s no doubting the answer to Vere’s desperate questions in the Prologue: “Who has blessed me? Who has saved me?” Just as Warner, in interview, described Claggart as a “fallen angel”, so this Billy is unambiguously seraph-like. Forster noted (in The Griffin) that some critics had surmised that Billy’s ‘almost feminine beauty’ and ‘the absence of sexual convulsion at his hanging’ indicate that Melville intended him as a ‘priest-like saviour’, but while he professed to have striven to emphasise Billy’s masculinity and ‘adolescent roughness’, Forster couldn’t resist portraying Billy’s hanging as a Christ-like sacrifice.

Read the full review here in Opera Today - seriously good analysis 

Elgar The Apostles Barbican Davis BBCSO Imbrailo Sherratt

Hearing Elgar'sThe Apostles (op 49, 1902-3) at the Barbican Hall, was a superb experience. The piece was conceived on a grand scale with over a hundred choristers, a huge orchestra and  team of soloists (who can be augmented if needed). Any live performance is a major event to be cherished. The BBC has the forces to pull it off  on a grand scale, as with this performance conducted by Andrew Davis with the BBC SO, the BBC Singers Symphony Chorus and a star list of soloists.

But perhaps the key to The Apostles (and to The Kingdom) lies in its connection to The Dream of Gerontius (op 38, 1900), performed by the same forces at the Barbican last week. Although Elgar never completed the ambitious trilogy he dreamed of, The Apostles and The Dream of the Gerontius  benefit from being heard together. The Dream of Gerontius tells of one man's journey from physical life to the life everlasting. (read more here). The Apostles deals with the very nature of that faith..  Hence the inherent contradiction that sometimes confuses The Apostles with overblown Edwardian public declarations of Christianity.

The Apostles unfolds in a series of seven tableaux, held together by male and female narrators. This structure allows a surprising degree of intimacy, concentrating on the interaction between  Jesus and the people around him. Judas, Peter and John are gearing up for their mission to spread the gospels to the world. The chorus exults and the brass plays the glorious fanfare, which seems to stretch over vast distances. The huge kettledrums beat out a ceremonial march. Splendid! Yet it is the quiet voice of Jesus which rises above the tumult. "He who receiveth you, receiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me, receiveth Him who sent Me",  Jacques Imbrailo is the Jesus of choice these days. He is unique - confident in its baritonal quality, yet haloed by a tenor-like glow. His voice seems lit with inner light, giving an almost miraculous purity. When Jesus  reveals the Beatitudes in By the Wayside, Imbrailo makes the words ring with sincerity and conviction, not by forcing sound, but by simple, sincere conviction. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth". Meekness isn't weakness, though, for Jesus hints at persecutions to come. Imbrailo's timbre is natural and unforced,  but its centre is very strong.

The tension between grand forces and simplicity gives The Apostles much of its  appeal. Elgar describes the storm on the Sea of Galilee, and Davis whips the orchestra into a turmoil. "It is I, Be not afraid!" sings Imbrailo, decorating the "I" with shimmering rubato so the very word seems to shine like a lighthouse.  Elgar's Jesus favours sinners, like Mary Magdalene (Sarah Connolly), Peter the Doubter, (Gerald Finley) and Judas Iscariot (Brindley Sherratt). Indeed, Elgar gives Judas more space than the others, suggesting his sympathy with those who question. Brindley Sherratt is as singularly exceptional in this part as Imbrailo is in his. Together they bring out a more unconventional element in the drama.  Sherratt's bass isn't brutal, but intelligently nuanced: he conveys genuine  concern where the other Apostles obey blindly. When Judas recognizes his mistake, Sherratt sings with anguish so intense that it takes on a strange, noble dignity. In the long passage that starts "Our life is short and tedious", Sherratt expresses such a range of emotions that he manages to make us feel compassion. This is a Judas with whom modern people can identify. We cannot judge, but remember the Beatitude "Blessed are the merciful!".  As Sherratt was singing, I remembered how he had sung Judas  on this very subject earlier in the piece.  A singer who can shed such insights deserves huge respect.

It's also interesting how Elgar goes swiftly from Golgotha to the Ascencion, as if drawn forwards by the musical vision of Angels singing "Alleluia!". The string writing is pastoral, yet luminous,  another insight, connecting Jesus's "rebirth" with his Nativity. The BBC Symphony Chorus sang The Mystic Chorus with beautiful clarity. In The Apostles, Elgar writes for voice as if he were writing for different elements in an orchestra. He weaves together lines for the orchestra, choir and soloists to form an immaculate, shining wall of sound. Imbrailo doesn't sing but the memory lingers, imprinted on the listener. ""And lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world".

Mark Elder conducted Elgar's The Apostles at the Proms in 2012, and his recording with the Hallé is so good it will stand as a benchmark, even taking into account Adrian Boult's recording from 1973. Elder gets much greater lucidity from the Hallé than Davis did with the BBCSO, though they were very good. It's just that the Hallé, one of  Elgar's favourite bands, have an unparalleled Elgar pedigree which no other orchestra can quite reach. Imbrailo, Sherratt and Paul Groves sing for Elder (with Alice Coote and Rebecca Evans). Davis has big names like Connolly and Gerald Finley, and lovely though consonant-lite Nicole Cabell. On balance, I prefer Elder, but any chance to hear The Apostles is welcome.

Jacques Imbrailo Wigmore Hall

I'll be at The Royal Opera House Wagner Parsifal  Monday. Review here. But first: Jacques Imbrailo at the Wigmore Hall, with pianist Alisdair Hogarth.The programme didn't look promising in theory but Imbrailo is the kind of artist who can make anything interesting and individual.  At the end I was so glad I came that I didn't miss the rush at Covent Garden!

What thread would connect the songs of Liszt, Vaughan Williams, George Butterworth and Stephen Hough? Imbrailo's choices revealed great intelligence and sensitivity. He began with RVW's early Songs of Travel, unfortunately marred because latecomers were allowed in while he was singing.T he ushers at WH are kind hearted but it's really not fair on the audience and on the performer. Luckily the RVW songs are not the composer's finest works but served to highlight what was to come. Imbrailo sang them with his customary warmth. When Terfel and Roderick Williams sing these songs they sound robust, the kind of "Muscular Christianity" that appealed to Late Victorians. When Imbrailo sings them, his lighter, more lyrical voice broiught out something more sensitive. His "Let Beauty Awake", "Youth and Love" and "Whither must I wander?" felt like sincere songs of love and regret. RVW ends the cycle with  " I have tread the upward and the downward slope", where the piano describes clodhopping footseps : Hogarth played them with a flexible touch, to match Imbrailo's gentleness.

Only ten years separate Vaughan Williams's Songs of Travel from George Butterworth's Six Songs from a Shropshire Lad but the two cycles are worlds apart. The Songs of Travel bear the heavy, suffocating hand of Charles Villiers Stanford, from whom RVW only escaped when he went to France and studied with Ravel. Butterworth was only 13 years younger than RVW but his mindset was radically different. When Butterworth was a student at Oxford, one of the dons remarked "There goes more Red Revolution than in all Russia". Considering that the remark was made after the Uprising of 1905, this was not small talk. Butterworth was also far more upper crust and Establishment than RVW. He was an Eton man, not easily intimdated by Stanford, Cambridge and the Royal College of Music. This year, with so much attention on Britten's alternative British music, we should be reassessing Butterworth more deeply.

A E Housman's poems from A Shropshire Lad were set by Butterworth and RVW a mere two years apart. Anyone seriously interested in the composers would do well to compare them. It's not my job here in this review, but I might write more sooner or later. There is more on Butterworth on this site than most anywhere else, and some first-hand research. Please explore.

Imbrailo's "Loveliest of Trees" was thoughtfully phrased. He lingered on the words "stands about the woodland ride" so one thought about the tree, rooted to its soil. Then, when Imbrailo sang "wearing white for Eastertide", his voice glowed with beauty. Men grow old, but each Spring, the cherry tree blossoms and grows anew. English singers tend to stress vocal lines at the expense of more abstract musical values  Imbrailo, with his extensive opera experience, showed masterful control of the legato in "Look not into my eyes", revealing the beautiful structure of the song. Like the Grecian lad, its beauty is elusive : danger lies in those seductive lines.

Butterworth's "The Lads in their Hundreds" has become connected with the mass slaughter of the 1914-18 war partly because the composer himself was a casualty (Please read my account of his death in battle). Housman, however, was writing about the Boer War, and the terrible waste (to him)  of handsome young men. But the Boer War was gruesome. It saw mass ethnic cleansing and the invention of concentration camps. We would do well to ponder the Boer War as a prototype of what was to happen in Europe, in the mass public "celebrations" that start next year.  When Imbrailo sang "The Lads in their Hundreds", he sang with such poignant tenderness, that he made me think of the wide-scale human tragedy that lies beneath the song. My partner's eyes filled with tears. We've all heard this song s often that we forget what it really means.

"We couldn't follow A Shropshire Lad" with something upbeat, said Imbrailo, in his usual understated way, introducing his first encore. So he sang My Sarie Marais, an Afrikaans folk song referring to the Great Trek, the mass migration of the Boer people across Southern Africa, and the wars which followed. The song has been adopted by military marching bands, which is ironic. Imbrailo, however, sang it with exquisite tenderness, so it felt poignantly personal.  As music, the song is naive, but Imbrailo's performance gave it emotional power greater than the "art" folk songs RVW and his peers collected. Sincerity makes all the difference!


Imbrailo's many fans had come to hear him sing the gloriously Italianate star turns he does so well. With Franz Liszt's Three Petrach Sonnets S270/1 (1842-6) he delivered.  Exceptionally lyrical singing, richly coloured and resonant. Yet, being the opera singer he is, Imbrailo doesn't simply make beautiful sounds, but infuses them with meaning. "E nulla stringo, tutto l'mondo abbracio" he sang.  His technical control is superb - this is how rubato should properly be used. His chest opened out and soared so you could feel "i sospiri e le lagrime e 'l desio" welling up from deep within. The piano lines are almost more beautiful, delicately sculpted by Hogarth. He and Imbrailo are an excellent team.

Like Liszt, Stephen Hough is a pianist who writes song. Imbrailo and Hogarth premiered Hough's Herbstlieder at the Oxford Lieder Festival in 2010. Please see my detailed review here.  Hearing it a second time, I could appreciate the subtle images, diminuendos like falling leaves and mists settling on a landscape. Curling lines that circulate like autumn breezes, smoky lines that blur. As a mood piece, it's atmospheric. Yet there's suppressed pain here, too. "Welcher wie ein weisses Stadt" leapt high up the register like a scream of anguish. Hogarth's piano pounded like an oncoming train "Bestürz tmich, Musik, mit rythmischen Zürnen" sang Imbrailo. A good performance, but what weill remain with me is the meory of Imbrailo singing Butterworth and My Sarie Marais.

FANTASTIC Billy Budd Prom 60 Davis

Astonishingly good Benjamin Britten  Billy Budd, Prom 60, from Glyndebourne. Definitely BBC Prom of the Year, it's THAT good. Exceptionally powerful performance all round, even in the minor parts. Not a weak link, and Andrew Davis conducts one of the most vivid, intense performances ever.  Musically,  this 2013 revival leaves the 2010 original for dead on every count. What a pity Glyndebourne invested so much in filming 2010. It's this 2013 version that should be preserved for posterity. Glyndebourne (and the BBC Proms) should figure out ways of making this available, because there will be huge underground demand.

Jacques Imbrailo's Billy Budd completely redefines the opera. Captain Vere has spent a lifetime trying to figure out what Billy meant. Strictly speaking, Billy Budd is about Captain Vere and his dilemmas.  If anything, this time Imbrailo's even better because he's developed more aspects of Billy's personality. Imbrailo is unique. Quite likely no-one else will ever create the role as perceptively as this. We'll probably go back to straightforward Beautys or Thomas Allen Billys, but Imbrailo has shown us what Vere might mean when he spies a ship in a vision  and "knows where she's heading".

Starry Vere lives in the realm of the intellect, thinking in terms of Greek allusion. Billy's a creature of instinct who lives so much in the present that he's overwhelmed by the gift of hard biscuit even when he's about to die. Thetre's another Billy inside which he doesn't reveal, even perhaps, to himself. Notice the delicate lyricism that Imbrailo gives lines like "Nights, I was a-dreaming under the sea", even when evil surrounds him

Fundamentally Billy is a good person, but the stutter traps him when he needs to speak. He strikes out instinctively and kills.  Somewhere deep inside Billy, there's a volcano  "I'm strong, and I know it, and I'll stay strong" A comic book action man doesn't need to remind himself. Imbrailo's Billy makes us realize that Billy's goodness hasn't come as easily as we might think. This Billy is mortal, and all the greater for that because he's no plaster saint. When Imbrailo sang "Through the port comes moonshine astray”, I could hardly breathe, I was so moved. Imbrailo suggests some unknown pain in Billy's past. He does not want to die. But he faces what's coming to him with transcendant grace.

After Billy dies, the orchestra explodes, rumbling with menace, as if the very universe were muttering "Mutiny, Mutiny" like the men. Andrew Davis conducts with surprising ferocity, emphasizing the savagery beneath the notes. Billy Budd is an opera of protest, most certainly not a jolly sea shanty. Orchestrally, Davis's Billy Budd is close to the cosmic violence that Daniel Harding conjured up. We don't need to "see" the sea. It's everywhere in the music. Like the intrigues aboard ship, the sea's moods are deceptive and subject to sudden, radical changes. When fog descends, an eerie inertia descends on the Indomitable, trapped in a miasma of ominous chords. When Davis conducts the battle engagement, the cross-currents in the music reflect not only the high-adrenalin confusion of war but also barbarism.

Mark Padmore gives the finest performance of his career, sacrificing elegance for psychological truth. He takes much greater risks, so they bristle and cut. Vere is neither weak nor effete. Only an "English tenor" can really create that sense of horror that haunts Britten's innermost psyche. Padmore will hate me, but he's sounding more like Ian Bostridge than ever, but to good effect. That takes courage. Full credit to Padmore. John Mark Ainsley, in 2010, was just too angelic.

The other great revelation of Davis's Billy Budd is Brindley Sherratt. Sherratt's background in oratorio must help, because he sings Claggart as if he were a force oif evil of truly Biblical dimensions. Sherratt's Claggart slithers malevolently like the Serpent in Eden. "I will destroy you" Sherratt growls, as if he were the Devil himself. "His name is", Sherratt tells Padmore "Billy Budd", spitting out each syllable with poisonous precision. Not every bass can sing with such lethal clarity. Like Imbrailo's Billy, Sherratt's Claggart will be the stuff of legend for years to come.

Listen to the broadcast on BBC Radio 3 here and pray that it will be available in some form forever. Please also read Claire Seymour;s review of the Glyndebourne Festival production. She's the person who wrote the book on Britten's operas..

Glyndebourne Billy Budd revisited

Britten's Billy Budd is being revived at Glyndebourne. Eveyone loves this production, directed by Michael Grandage, because it's so straightforward. Assuming, of course, that Billy Budd is a straightforward sea shanty about life on the ocean wave. Perhaps productions like these are popular because they castrate the opera and minimize its more disturbing meanings. Like Tim Albery's 1988 production with Thomas Allen, Grandage's Billy Budd could have been made for pre-watershed TV costume drama, where brutality, sodomy and moral contradictions have no place.  It's very dark and claustrophobic, which is true to the opera, but the emphasis is on Billy, not on Captain Vere, whose dilemmas should really be central.

Glyndebourne's Billy Budd will be immortal, however, for Jacques Imbrailo. He is so exceptionally perfect in the role that he outshines everything else. His portrayal is so charismatic that he shifts the whole balance of the opera from Vere to Billy. Imbrailo glows, as if lit by inner light. He's like a beacon in that fetid, prison-like underworld below decks.  Sometimes the role has been played as if it's a cipher, for no-one really knows where Billy is "coming from". Captain Vere has spent decades trying to figure him out, without success. Imbrailo, however, inhabits the part so fully that he turns the opera on its head. Imbrailo's Billy exudes genuine goodness and purity, borne of deeeply intuitive conviction. “Through the port comes moonshine astray” isn’t the usual lyrical magic but a kind of spiritual apotheosis. “I’m strong, and I know it, and I’ll stay strong!” Imbrailo’s “Beauty” isn’t a passive “Baby” but an assertive force of life.

Imbrailo's Billy is also deeply sympathetic. Imbrailo understands the psychological importance of Billy's stutter. Vere is intellectual. Billy, on the other hand, is instinctive, physical, direct. Imbrailo lives the part in his body. No makeup can turn his face red so quickly, no costume can create the tense, twisted coil of his frame. Imbrailo’s Billy is musically astute, as stammer is integral to Britten’s music. The mutiny, in Billy Budd, is in the music. So echoes of Billy’s stammer burst out in recurrent staccato in the orchestra, disruptive protests against the rigidity of naval life. The sailors don’t mutiny, but Billy’s stammer comes to affect the rhythms in other voices, even Claggart’s. Like Billy, Britten expresses himself in abstract sound, rather than relying on words alone. Orchestration as protagonist. In Billy Budd, Britten shows why he didn’t need to write symphonies.

Claire Seymour, author of The Operas of Benjamin Britten, will be reviewing it in Opera Today.  I was at the premiere in 2010, which is also available on DVD and will be broadcast this year in cinemas and online. 

Read the full review from 2010 HERE. 

Britten Owen Wingrave Imbrailo broadcast

A rare chance to hear Jacques Imbrailo sing Owen Wingrave in Britten's spooky anti-militarist opera, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Thursday, available for a week. This is a recording of a live performance at the Linbury, Royal Opera House in 2007. Imbrailo was then in his first year as a Jette Parker Young Artist, but already it was obnvious that he had something exceptional to offer. This performance isn't available on the open market, so listen carefully. Imbrailo's portrayal is imbued with natural purity: his voice seems to glow from within.  So many productions focus on the Wingrave family and their rigid traditions, so Owen can come over as a cipher in comparison. But Imbrailo suggests that the mystery of Owen Wingrave is cryptic. Is Owen like Billy Budd, evoking  metaphysical forces? Does he represent love (not necessarily marriage) in its purest form?

What also makes this performance interesting is that it's transcribed for smaller orchestral forces by . David Matthews, who worked closely with Britten, and understands his idiom well .The original opera was made for TV, so it's perfectly reasonable to make alterations for stage performance. The result is a sharper, more chamber-like focus, which concentrates the mind. Britten makes a lot of the militarism, but a few fanfares and drum rolls can go a very long way. The sparser textures throw more emphasis on the lyrical ballad, reminiscent of folk music. It is “Owen’s theme” reflecting his music. It also emphasises the impression that the legend of the ghost is as ancient as the Wingrave family, depicted in Elizabethan portraits, one of which sports an incongruous Pickelhaube – surely this cannot be a mistake? The nature of the ballad also recalls Britten’s earliest protest music, particularly the remarkable Our Hunting Fathers to texts by W H Auden. “They are our past…..and our future” is surprisingly apposite: listen to it and think about Owen Wingrave.  It was Auden who radicalised Britten. Britten was a conscientious objector during the Second World War, as was Pears – whose brother was a prisoner of the Japanese.
 
 Thus, there are many reasons why Britten would think of Owen Wingrave in terms of an anti-military statement. However, perhaps that’s what explains the weakness of the drama. The opera assumes war is a game: toy soldiers and horses abound in this production. But as the Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke, genuinely descended from an ancient military family, said, “No one hates war more than a soldier”. They know reality, politicians don’t. Von Moltke’s descendant, incidentally, rejected the Army, but gave his life opposing Hitler. Perhaps that’s the significance of the Pickelhaube portrait that featured in the staging in 2007?

 The Wingrave family certainly don’t know reality, but live in a miasma of blind duty, propelled by a warped fascination with death. Miss Wingrave got her dominant status because of the deaths of her brother and fiancé. Kate thinks Owen’s death in battle would bring her glory: it’s not the man she wants to marry, but the social cachet. Mrs Julian is complicit, too, by moving in with the family, though as an officer’s widow surely she would have had a home of her own. Something’s very odd here. When this household sings the funeral march in unison, their solidarity is more terrifying than the lines they sing. Spencer Coyle, the man who tutored Owen for Sandhurst and presumably knows lots more about what the military means, is much more sanguine about the situation. He doesn’t get nearly as violently upset as the Wingraves. Why are they so hysterical at the prospect of change? What really motivates them? Britten emphasises the role of the house itself. “Listen to the house!” goes a line in the libretto, as if Paramore were a living, active presence. It makes it easy to explain why Owen dies in the haunted room, but why he goes there in the first place isn‘t quite so clear. What has a non-violent man to fear from the ghost of a boy who refused to fight? (the ghost presumably killed his bullying father). Owen Wingrave is the quintessentail Britten innocent, who routs the deviousness around him by the sheer example of his goodness.
 
photo: Sim Canetty Clarke

The misfortune of Miss Fortune - Royal Opera House

An absurd plot has never stood in the way of a good opera. Unfortunately, Judith Weir's Miss Fortune  at the Royal Opera House isn't much of an opera. It's an anomaly in an otherwise fertile career which has made Weir one of the significant British composers of our time. Every composer has dry spells. It's just bad luck that while Weir is getting maximum attention, Miss Fortune does not show her at her best. Better a revival of A Night at The Chinese Opera or Blond Eckbert than this mishap.

The surmise is reasonable enough. Billionaire parents instantly lose all they have. "I'll work, I'll live, I'll eat" sings Tina (Emma Bell) their daughter, "I'll find my way on the street". Perhaps, but the hardships she comes across are so sanitized that they're hard to take seriously. Of course this is a fairy tale, but real fairy tales have bite. Miss Fortune is so shallow you couldn't drown a gnat.

So don't come expecting real emotions in this opera, and certainly no element of social analysis. The whole opera predicates on the idea of Fate in the form of a doppelgänger in a natty tie-dyed dressing gown. "I'm with you everywhere" sings Andrew Watts, trying his utmost to sound convincing, but there's so little substance in this text that even he can't bring out the malevolent possibilities in the character. Fate isn't fair, it's insane. Countertenors have the range to madden and confound, but the music here is so even-tempered that it makes little impact.  When one of the breakdancers spins dangerously on the top of his head, risking his neck and spine, he expresses more about the nature of fate than anything in this music. It's not a good sign when a choreographer can say more about the meaning of an opera than a composer. Wonderful dancing, however. These men (members of the Soul Mavericks) were so good that they almost rescued the whole show.

Lord and Lady Fortune (Alan Ewing and Kathryn Harries) have parts to sing that are more slapstick panto than depth, and Weir's writing for them is very good, setting each at counterpurposes to the other, which expresses personality. But poor Tina! She's such an inept cipher that Emma Bell hardly has to do much more than follow the notes. Hassan (Noah Stewart) and Donna (Anne-Marie Owens) are stock characters too, dutifully realized. .

The problem lies in the libretto. Judith Weir is brilliant at writing atmospheric, descriptive music, but such music needs something to hang on to, like flesh needs a skeleton (another image of Fate).This libretto is so weak, it's embarrassing. The banality of the text follows the banality of the narrative, and the music doesn't rise above it.  For example, sharp-suited Simon the Yuppie (Jacques Imbrailo) comes down from his office ("it's not far away") to tell Donna the Laundromat Lady that his shirt is the best laundered and best ironed he's ever worn. That's about the level of discourse in this opera. The Deus ex machina is a lottery ticket which may or may not change Fate, but it's so artificial we don't really care. Imbrailo's singing was by far the finest singing of all, exquisitely shaped and warmed with sincerity. Imbrailo is such a genuinely nice person in real life that perhaps  he can identify with the better aspects of Simon. But the beauty of his singing was at odds with pedestrian vocal demands in the score. If only the part had been written with more substance, doing justice to this level of singing.

The staging on the other hand was superb. Wonderful set by Tom Pye, based on two triangular objects suspended above the stage, onto which were projected  a fantastic array of light effects and videos (Scott Zielinski, Leigh Sachwitz, Flora and Faunavisions). This was truly magical.  Inventive costumes (Han Feng) and strong direction by Chen Shi-zheng, who injects the proceedings with a charm lacking in the music. You could have spent the whole evening marvelling at this staging.  Miss Fortune and Rusalka are mirror opposites, one wuith good music and dull staging, the other with wonderful staging and uninvolving music. But we shouldn't go to the opera to enjoy the scenery, even when it's as good as this. It's the characters that make an opera, and their feelings, as brought out in the music.

Paul Daniel is an excellent and much underrated conductor who made his name in the ENO glory days when Weir and Turnage were in their prime. He has experience and inspired good playing from this orchestra, better than several conductors we've heard in recent months. Hopefully, he'll be back again soon - he's an asset.

There were so many positives about this production. It would be hard to imagine a better range of resources utilized to make it work. But Miss Fortune is fatally flawed because it just isn't very dramatic. I longed for Mark Anthony Turnage's Anna Nicole, which has grown on me with time. Anna Nicole had its dull moments, but its grotesqueries were so engrossing that they held attention, even if they made you want to scream.

More, with full cast and more photos to come in Opera Today
Photos : Bill Cooper, courtesy Royal Opera House

Opera - Best of 2010

Lists bother me.  How do you compare a fish to a pinecone? But looking back at 2010 opera is a good exercise because it makes you think "why" things appeal or don't.

At the top, several Royal Opera House productions proving that it's one of the greatest houses of all, however how some enjoy picking nits. Where would we be otherwise? How we've been enriched by Francesco Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur! What an experience, visually, musically, intellectually! This was a production where everything pulled together - stars, comprimario, designs, orchestra, conceptual ideas. Brilliant and not just because it looked good. This production had brains behind it (please see several different posts).

Next Niobe, Regina di Tebe. This generated extreme responses, understandably so, as it was baroque, unknown and given completely innovative treatment. Baroque audiences wanted spectacle, excitement, extravagance and wit. That's why Niobe was a hit with specialist European audiences. Too bad if some London audiences didn't get it. Perhaps too many staid Handel performances blunt the appetite. (And Handel can be wild!)  Artistically, this was a daringly brave.choice. Several different posts on Niobe on this blog, please search.

Tannhäuser would be top of my list for sure except for niggling doubts. Audio-only it's mindbendingly beautiful but therein lies the dilemma.  What does the opera really mean? Why are the Wartburgers and even the Pope so paranoid? It's much more than an opera about art, even though the main man's the one with the lute. It's a morality tale with a twist. As Tannhäuser says, the Wartburgers don't know what real emotion is. It follows that, no matter how beautiful art might be, it's superficial without intense, and dangerous emotional engagement. There's plenty on Tannhäuser and on Wagner on this site, so please take the time to read and think about it. Fascinating. I'm growing to love this performance (as heard on broadcast) passionately but still not completely convinced it's been thought through. Not even by Wagner himself, perhaps.But interpretation is important, because it's has a bearing on evaluating performance.

So what is the thread that runs through how and why I respond to things. For me I think it's repertoire first, understanding the work in question, its composer and its meaning.  Even completely new things like George Benjamin's Into the Little Hill which grows in stature the more it's heard.  With vocal music, there almost inevitably has to be meaning of some kind of other, conscious or otherwise. Indeed, the greater the work, there more complex the interpretation. Usually, though not inevitably.

That's why I enjoyed the Glyndebourne Don Giovanni better than the Glyndebourne Billy Budd.  That Billy Budd managed to avoid morality altogether and present the opera as a sailor love triangle. If it hadn't been for Jacques Imbrailo's outstanding performance,  the production would have been ideas-free altogether. In this opera, Britten comes close to revealing his inner conflicts. But perhaps audiences want comfort zone affirmation, not ideas. Anyway, I'll be writing more later about the filmed version of Don Giovanni that's still available on BBCTV2 on demand.  The film is so different from the actual live experience it needs a special post.

ENO's Makropulos Case would have been top of my list too if it had been in Czech.  No way will the best European singers relearn their parts in a language foreign to them and to the music. Of course the ENO helped put Janáček on the anglophone map but it's still a compromise.  ENO's Bizet Pearl Fishers would have been a greater success if all the singers had been on the level of those in the ROH concert Les Pêcheurs de Perles. Some languages translate better. Oddly enough, the more I think about ENO's Idomeneo, the more it makes sense to me. Revivable, with adjustments.

Two Rossini Armidas and one Handel Alcina this year (same theme, different angle). I walked out of the Met Armida in disgust. Massive budget, but so self-congratulatory (I could use another word) that  it was artistic constipation. In complete contrast Garsington Opera's Armida was utterly brilliant.  Garsington makes a speciality of obscure Rossini operas, so the production came from a genuine understanding of the music and meaning. The Met has money, but Garsington has taste.

Normally I don't like celebrity chasing because it's not good for art or for the kind of performers who take it too seriously. But some singers rise way above that level and have integrity. That's why I shall never forget Plácido Domingo's Simon Boccanegra.  Such artistry, such committment, such engagement. Who cares if the fit's not perfect? There are things in art that transcend all pettiness.

Stephen Hough's new hat - Herbstlieder

Stephen Hough's famous as a pianist, but at the Oxford Lieder Festival he wore a new hat as composer. Previously all I'd heard of Hough's own music was a piece written for the Sacred Made Real exhibition at the National Gallery. Against those phenomenally powerful visual images, it had no chance. So I came expecting to be polite. Instead, I'm most sincerely impressed,.

A coup for the Oxford Lieder Festival! Hough's Herbstlieder is a good addition to the repertoire.  Set to texts by Rainer Maria Rilke, it's a meditation on themes loosely connected with autumn, the passing of time, days drawing in, regret, the end of fruitfulness, and all that implies in life. Herbstlieder is impressionistic, creating an atmosphere as nebulous as autumnal mists.

It's quiet, too, like meditation. Herbstlieder starts with a simple cadence of separate chords fluttering downwards. "Like leaves falling" said Hough in the pre-concert talk. Diminuendi don't necessarily diminish. The chords that link the first two songs mark a subtle progression. Rilke writes of a star seit Jahrtausenden tot, whose light still reaches us from afar.A strange image : ein weisse Stadt an Ende des Strahls in den Himmeln steht. A white city seen in the heavens at the end of a ray of light. Hough sets these words so the crescendo rises right to the top, to the limits of the register. Whatever the image might mean, the connection is made between the lone individual on earth and distant galaxies beyond.

In Trănenkrūglein, images of jugs being filled and emptied. Circular, cascading piano part,  but at the conclusion, the vocal line pauses, like the last drops dripping from a jug. Machen ...mich....leer. (make me empty), Bestūrz mich, Musik is its companion piece. Big, bold phrasing, the piano part almost staccato. In the midst of the turmoil an unadorned line Mein Herz: Da!, emphasis on the da.The voice part swells passionately, evoking the Posaune des Engels, (the Final Judgement)  Filled to overflowing, the music subsides.

The final song, Herbst, reverts to hushed, autumnal contemplation. Indeed, much of it is parlando. A pianist composer writing his own instrument out of the picture? Yet in some ways, that's the spirit of Rilke's poem. Und in der Năchten făllt die schwere Erde.(and in the end Earth itself will fall) like the distant stars. Individual striving is no big deal in the eternal scheme of things. Und doch ist einer, welcher dieses Fallen, unendlich sanft in seinen Hănden fast. (And yet there is one who holds these fallen gently, eternally in his hands)  Eichendorff or Rūckert might have been specific about the "one", but with Rilke we can imagine a more abstract communion with the cosmos. 

Hough spoke about writing these songs three years ago while he was in a hotel in Seoul, Korea. Even in this maniacally busy world of 24/7 communication, we're often isolated. But it's not necessarily a bad thing if we can switch off the mental muzak around us and think beyond ourselves. Far from being noisy and dissonant a great deal of modern music is like this - pure, abstract, contemplative. There are no jolly jingles in Herbstlieder to worm their way into your mind and distract. Yet that's precisely why it's such a good piece. Wolfgang Rihm, darling of modern German music, said of his hero, Wilhelm Killmayer, "His scores are all white!"  Think of Webern's aphorisms, Kurtág's tiny fragments, antidotes to the frantic turmoil around us. Stephen Hough's nowhere near that league, but he's a lot closer to the real avant garde than he realizes.

Good performance by Alisdair Hogarth and Jacques Imbrailo, who seems to intuit the spirituality of these songs. We will get to hear them again, as there may be a recording in the offing. In the meantime, track down the publisher. See Stephen Hough's site for more.

This is the sort of adventurous music Oxford Lieder Festival is famous for. Also premiered in this recital was a new piece by Ned Rorem, a setting of Shakespeare Sonnet 147, (My love  is as a fever longing still) jointly commissioned by the Oxford Lieder Festival and Prince Consort. They're relatively impecunious but what they have, they invest in long-term benefits for art song. It's an excellent piece, wavy cadences, baritone and tenor artfully blended, the piano tolling like a bell at the culmination.

The Prince Consort also sang songs from Schumann Spanisches Liederspiel and Spanische Liebeslieder. Read about their concert of Rorem's Evidence of Things Not Seen at rthe Oxford Lieder Festival in 2009.

Please read my other posts on Oxford Lieder, Prince Consort and Jacques Imbrailo. (Use search facility or labels below)  Photo credit : Grant Hiroshima

Don Pasquale ROH - 1904 copied!

"One can’t help feeling that things should either be more frothy or more revelatory. As it is, it’s hard to care about these marionettes in their artificial bubble." says Claire Seymour in Opera Today on Don Pasquale at the Royal Opera House.

Compare the 2010 production shots (on the link) with this one from 1904/5 La Scala. Almost identical to small details! Paolo Gavenelli is wigged and robed so he's unrecognizable. Imbrailo painted up like a doll. One also wonders what the acting was like in 1904, if these old poses are anything to go by.  Please also see an interview with Jacques Imbrailo on his interpretation of Dr Malatesta.

Jacques Imbrailo in Don Pasquale

Jacques Imbrailo sings Dr Malatesta in Donizetti's Don Pasquale at the Royal Opera House. Don't assume that  Dr Malatesta must be as old as Don Pasquale. How would he be able to fool the old man that Norina is his sister?  Don Pasquale's gullible but not that dumb. Donizetti sparkles, but beneath the lightness there's sharp wit. Just don't expect Verdi.

In this Don Pasquale, director Jonathan Milller aims for lyrical realism. “Not too flowery, he tells us”. says Imbrailo, “Naturalness is good even though it’s bel canto. The focus is on acting as well as on vocal display".

Jacques Imbrailo was a wonderful Billy Budd at Glyndebourne this summer.  The production projected the opera as a love triangle . Britten would have been surprised, for to him the moral dilemma was far more significant. Captain Vere's struggling with  fundamental concepts of good, evil  not lust.. Fortunately, Imbrailo's Billy Budd transcended the production. Imbrailo's "Beauty" wasn't a passive "Baby" but a force of exuberant life.

Billy is pure because he doesn't play games. Dr Malatesta is a chancer who can't stop trying to pull strings. "He’s an opportunist who likes to give things a nudge, then sit back and see how things unfold." says Imbrailo. "He’ll push events towards an outcome that suits him. The only one who really gets hurt is Don Pasquale, but he’s saved from a much worse fate. Dr Malatesta’s intentions are good, though he thinks the ends justify the means”.

All actors (and singers) need to develop roles from within, thinking into character. Sometimes you wonder where some people find extreme evil ! But art is art, not reality. Donizetti's wit is clear but not malicious. Dr Malatesta could be anyone, there but for fortune. It's easier to scam, and some folk have no qualms about being dishonest if that gets results. Integrity, though, takes more courage. It's better to be a Billy. Please read the full interview in Opera Today HERE

There's a video clip of Imbrailo as boy soprano HERE and a link to Billy Budd HERE.

photo credit : Suzy Bernstein

Jacques Imbrailo - boy soprano

Isn't he cute! He'll grow up to be Billy Budd and Dr Malatesta.