Sumptuous Circus L'Amour de Loin, ENO

Absence of plot is by no means an impediment in opera. This new production at The English National Opera, created by innovative circus director Daniele Finzi Pasca proves that superlative staging can make up for weak narrative. Through visual images, the spirit of L’Amour de loin is invoked to express the drama beneath the music, better than the text itself.

Kaija Saariaho’s music wavers in a langorous swoon. Cadences rise and fall away, legato rippling upwards and down without regard to syntax. This is lavishly sensual, complete with faint echoes of the French medieval world of the troubadour, Jaufré Rudel (Roderick Williams), and the “Moorish” exoticism of Tripoli where the heroine Clémence (Joan Rodgers), resides. It’s the musical equivalent of intoxicating fumes, perfume or perhaps some strange potion inhaled through a hookah. Dramatic structure isn’t relevant to mood music as dream-like as this.

Love, after all, is an “altered state” where logic doesn’t apply. This particularly applies to idealized troubadour love, where artistic indulgence is as much an impetus as the love object. No wonder Jaufré panics and becomes fatally ill when he crosses the sea to meet Clémence for the first time. Unlike Tristan und Isolde where strong characters are transformed by a potion, to the horror of those around them, everyone in L’amour de loin, even the Pilgrim, is complicit in the dream state, so intensity dissolves in romantic washes of chromatic color.

Saariaho’s writing works best describing images like the ocean crossing, one of the most brilliant scenes in this production where light images are projected onto waving expanses of silk. It’s less suited to dramatic rationale. Jaufré and The Pilgrim debate endlessly whether he’s mad but the point’s already made in the music. Narrative meaning is further obscured by the distortion of natural rhythm and by dropping single spoken words into lines that are otherwise sung.Richard Stokes’s translation is lucid but retains the unworldly illogic of the original. All Saariaho's writing for voice is like this, even the song cycle for Karita Mattila, which was written with lots of input from the singer.

Roderick Williams, Joan Rodgers and Faith Sherman sing well, but this isn’t an opera where character development matters much. Its energies lie in the non-vocal writing, giving Edward Gardner and the ENO Orchestra a chance to luxuriate in lush orchestral texture.

The last scenes, where Clémence curses God, then quite quickly gives in to His will, might afford great opportunities for drama had the libretto engaged seriously with ideas.This is where the staging proved itself completely. As Clémence rages at God, Roderick Williams as the dead Jaufré descends from the roof on a wire, his white shroud trailing to the ground. At his side are the two “spirit Jaufrés” who had been doubling him as he lay “dying”. Is it a reference to Christ flanked by the two thieves at the crucifixion ? Perhaps not, but the idea is just as sacrilegious as Clémence’s curse and vaguely logical in the same sense. But as pure theatre it’s undeniably dramatic. The stage is lit up in colors as gorgeous as the music, while the chorus shine searchlights upwards towards the ceiling. Gradually the number of searchlight beams increase until the whole auditorium is bathed in unearthly white light. Whatever the image may mean, it’s a magnificent statement.

In an opera where ideas are so loosely defined, moments like this make all the difference. Finzi Pasca uses specialist circus skills to extend the range of effects possible on stage. Acrobats dressed in strange headless garb “swim” in the air against a background of silk and colored lights.Huge planes of blue silk zoom onto the platform released from the upper balconies. Cutout transparencies and panels create illusions of space. Even the costumes act. Sleeves are made with huge silken extensions manipulated by actors, so it seems the singers are surrounded by huge, winged beings. It turns the opera into something truly magical.

Incidentally, Jami Read-Quarrell, one of the acrobats, starred as an exceptionally good Puck in Britten's A Midsummers Night's Dream at the Linbury, ROH last year.
Read full review HERE with production pix

Since 1715, the Three Choirs Festival

The 3 Choirs Festival started around 1715. So this year is Festival number 284!

Three Choirs came about when the choirs of three cathedrals, Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester, agreed to come together and sing in each other's home city every year. Who is the man in the statue, with the bike? No less than Edward Elgar, born in Worcester, and a regular visitor to the Festival most of his adult life.

Over the last three centuries, the Festival has been the epicentre of the British choral tradition. Indeed, its influence is so great that it has shaped the very nature of British music. In the 19th century, Germans used to call Britain Das Land ohne Musik because the British didn't do symphonies or operas. But think Handel, Mendelsssohn, Bach, and the whole perspective changes. We wouldn't have had Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Finzi etc without that tradition. It's Three Choirs that defines so much of the British musical heritage. For that reason alone, visiting at least once connects to the ambience.

This year's Festival is in Hereford, starting 8 August, with Elgar's Dream of Gerontius. This is always a festival keynote, carrying all kinds of emotional resonance. Geraint Bowen, the Festival director. conducts the Philharmonia and a cast including Catherine Wyn-Rogers. It's followed by a fireworks display and a reception in the Bishop's Palace Gardens, making the most of the long summer evening. This evening is the biggie everyone goes to, so book early.

Sunday morning starts with Haydn's Heiligemesse and ends with a very late night (2215hr!) Happy Hour with the Lay Clerks where the Cathdral singers let it hang out with songs old and new. Monday's big evening concert includes Haydn, Finzi and Britten, who inhabited a completely different world from Three Choirs, though he is known to have attended. The late night concert is interesting - the Philharmonia Brass play Gabrieli and Michael Berkeley.

Vivaldi's Four Seasons appears earlier in the programme, but Haydn's Four Seasons on Tuesday 11th will be a better treat. Performers include James Gilchrist, Roderick Williams, and Gillian Keith. I've heard them sing this in London with another orchestra and conductor, so it should be very good indeed. Next night it's Handel, Israel in Egypt, in a new edition by Stephen Layton, who conducts. Iestyn Davies sings! Handel operas, for me, work well when there's something to look at. Interestingly, when Mendelssohn conducted this in 1833, he staged it, even using transparencies of Durer and Raphael.) The last night is a famous and much enjoyed communal song fest, but the next to last night is Mendelssohn's Elijah. Unlike so many choral bonanzas, there are parts in this where really top class singing makes all the difference. Sarah Fox gets to do the killer high parts! That's why Three Choirs is way above the "average" choir festival. The singing here is altogether another league.

Three Choirs isn't just song though. Lots of other music to keep you busy all day, every day, and talks, generally of a high calibre. Plenty of open-air Shakespeare performances too. The Festival is also a big social occasion for those into British music – everyone converges for reunions like the Elgar, RVW and Finzi societies etc. Many people stay all week and party because this is a lovely, atmospheric part of England, still rural in many places. Lots of excursions if you travel by car (but parking in town is difficult) Plus, no likelihood of snow in August.

http://www.3choirs.org/home.html
(photo above by Tony Hodges on flickr)

Bohuslav Martinů : Juliette, Kožená

Many works by Martinů will be performed in this year’s commemoration of the anniversary of his death, but it would be hard to equal the impact of this performance. Much of its success was due to Magdalena Kožená, whose presence illuminated the whole opera, even though her moments on stage were fleeting.

A man arrives in a strange village where nothing seems quite right. The villagers have no memories to bind them to reality, so things unfold without sense or connection. But what is reality? The opera’s subtitle is “The Key to Dreams”, which implies a search for meaning, whether or not it can be unlocked.

From the orchestra emerges a lovely, haunting melody. The man thinks he’s heard it before, connected to a vague memory - a beautiful woman ? He’s determined to pursue the dream which seems to fade as fast as it unfolds. The woman is Juliette, shining bright and golden, “like a star in the firmament”.

Deeper the man goes, into a dark forest, where he meets a Seller of Memories, who sells photographs of exotic places. The man buys into the images, convinced that they show his past with the woman he’s searching for. Eventually the man finds himself in The Central Office of Dreams which people enter and leave when they sleep. On ferme! warns the nightwatchman (who was also the Seller of Memories). Wake or you’re forever trapped! But Juliette is such a powerful, seductive dream that the man would rather remain in eternal limbo than lose her.

Bohuslav Martinů’s Juliette materialized at the Barbican, London, in a new edition of the urtext, using the French version the composer wrote on his deathbed in 1959. He lived most of his adult life in France, so it’s perhaps poignant that he should return to his masterpiece in this way.

Hardly any staging was needed, for the action unfolds like a dream, utterly adrift from rules of cause and logic. Indeed, what narrative there is lurks in the music. The orchestral writing is densely vivid but at critical moments the density clears and a solo instrument takes centre stage. At first, it’s an accordion, then horn, clarinet and oboe, then a particularly evocative melody on piano which surrounds Juliette’s entries. It’s like in dreams where a single image comes into focus, like symbolic portent. Each time Juliette’s music returns, impressions deepen and become frustratingly familiar. Have we heard it before ? And where ? In dreams, the mind fixes on details and follows their trail. Martinů uses allusions from music as tantalizing clues. There’s a snippet from L’Histoire du Soldat, just before the Fortune teller scatters cards. Then, a quotation from L’Après-midi d’un Faune, evoking a mood of frustrated love and longing. The villagers lack memory so can't find meaning : the composer uses memory to extend it. Similarly, Martinů uses off stage noises and singing. Even when asleep, the mind hears what’s happening “outside” so to speak. At any moment the dreamer might be woken, the dream shattered. It’s psychologically astute, building dramatic tension into the very fabric of the music.

Jiří Bělohlávek has a specially sensitive feel for this elusive, mysterious music, which will come as no surprise to anyone who has heard his Janaček or Dvořák. This performance was as good as the superlative Excursions of Mr Brouček last year, which he conducted with the same forces, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Singers. This production was also directed by Kenneth Richardson, who made such magic with the concert staging of Mr Brouček. Richardson’s intelligent, subtle style achieves great things by simple means. The forest, for example, is created by light and shadow, yet feels impressively alive.

Kožená was outstanding. Visually and vocally she glowed. While all the cast was good, she was exceptional, for Juliette is in an altogether more exalted league than ordinary mortals. Kožená’s fees might normally exceed the other singers fees put together, but here she was utterly worth it, for her presence embodied all that Juliette stands for. The role is so important that the whole opera rests on how well it is realized. Kožená has long championed Martinů’s music, so this magnificent performance was a great tribute.

William Burden sings Michel, the protagonist. It’s a long, demanding role which he carries off with aplomb. Also familiar to those who loved Mr Brouček was Zdeněk Plech, who made the relatively small role of The Old Arab/Sailor so interesting that you wished the composer had developed it further. Roderick Williams sang no less than four roles, including the pivotal Seller of Memories. He acts as well as he sings, and is certainly one of the brightest young British stars of his generation. When will he get the profile he deserves ? Andreas Jäggi’s Clerk was suitably tense and manic.

There are only two available recordings of Julietta, and the classic version is nearly 50 years old. Let’s hope this performance, which was recorded by the BBC, will make it to CD/DVD. Bělohlávek’s recording of Mr Brouček won the Gramophone award for best Opera in 2008, so perhaps this new Juliette will do the same.

This performance will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Tuesday 31st March, available online for a week.

Read the original on Opera Today:

http://www.operatoday.com/content/2009/03/magdalena_koena.php

Photo is by Pepe Araneda,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pantherman/2221071934/