Stéphane Degout : Poulenc Ravel Saariaho

Stéphane Degout (photo: Julien Benhamou)

Stéphane Degout at the Wigmore Hall, London, in Poulenc and Ravel with Cédric Tiberghien, joined by Matteo Cesari (flute) and Alexis Descharmes (cello) for Saariaho. Thanks to rain and traffic chaos, the house wasn't sold out, as it should have been, but those who attended were there because they can recognize genuine quality. We were well rewarded - excellent programme, delivered with idiomatic stylishness. Degout is one of the most distinctive voices of his type around, the ideal Pelléas, for example, and Tiberghien is a star in his own right, as well as song accompanist. Dream Team .

Poulenc and Apollinaire featured, starting with the much loved early songs from Le bestiare (1919) where serious thoughts are disguised beneath playful images. These songs are funny, but also wistful. "Est-ce que la mort vous oublié, poissons de la mélancholie? " So much for the image of the golden carp, cavorting in unthinking bliss.  Apollinaire's elegant insouciance acts like armour plating, protecting the soul from the cruelty of the world.  The door to the hotel in Montparnasse (1945) is decorated with plants that will neither flower nor fruit.  There are "raies sur lesquelles il ne faut pas que l'on marche" - thresholds that must not be crossed.  "O, bon petit poète un peu bête trop blond " . Degout shaped that wonderful short phrase, bringing out its ironic anguish. the poet is pretty, and means well, but will always be a tourist, living on the surface, never connecting to reality. There's much more to these songs than charm, Degout brought out their painful undertones. 

Degout and Tiberghien let Apollinaire himself speak, playing a recording of the poet himself reciting. A tiny fragment, preserved on grainy tape, a ghostly but powerful presence.  "Joy and Melancholy" said Degout, "what Poulenc liked in Apollinaire". Thus we listened to the Calligrammes (1948), epigrammatic miniatures that seem torn from greater dramas beyond our knowledge.  In Aussi bien que les cigales, the piano part evokes the stultifying heat of the Midi. where people seem hypnotized by complacency. "Que vous ne savez pas vous éclairer ni voir" sang Degout with a poignant mix of anger and sorrow.  Lest we, too, be lulled by these moments of direct confrontation, Degout and Tiberghien launched into the livelier Quatre poèmes de Guillaume Apollinaire (1931)  and Banalités (1940). In photographs,  people pose and smile, masking whatever might really be happening. Apollinaire and Poulenc create snapshots, freeze framing human experience in tiny, concentrated fragments. It's up to the sensitive interpreter to develop them into wider scenarios.  Alors, Avant le cinéma, where the text plays with words like "cinéma", "ciné" and "cinématographie".   Degout paused, briefly, to highlight the irony.  "Aussi, mon Dieu faut-il avoir du goût"   ie, some folks don't care about what's really going on as long as they can be seen to have taste.  

Alexis Descharmes, the cellist, introduced Kaija Saariaho's Cendres (1998) for alto flute, cello and piano. Saariaho's aim in this piece was to create musical tension by "sometimes bringing the instruments as close together as possible in all compositional aspects (such as pitch, rhythm, dynamics, articulation, colour), sometimes letting each of them express the music in their own most idiomatic way". The result is a well-balanced flow which generates colour and movement. The flute cries: is it the wailing of a wild bird  ? Elaborate patterns in the piano part, the cello part full of invention.  The piece is lucid, yet elusive by turns. Hearing Cendres in context with Poulenc and Apollinaire underlined the idea of listening simultaneously on different levels.  The joy of mixed programmes like this which stretch the listener's experience!   

Then, just as we began to appreciate the emotional sophistication of this programme, Degout and Tiberghien switched away, elusively, to Ravel.  Chansons madécasses (1925-6) made use of the same forces as Cendres, Degout singing withn the same ensemble, so Ravel seemed to evolve out of Cendres as if a strange, exotic creature was being conjured up by magic. Nahandove, "L'oiseau nocturne a comencé ses cris".  Delicious  sensuality, yet also a tease. Degout emphasized the menace in the second song Aoua!, where the innocence of the islanders is betrayed . "Méfiez-vous des blancs, habitants du rivage".  Promises poisoned by slavery and death.  Just as Poulenc ended Calligrammes with a warning about complacency,  Ravel ends with the image of an island girl who doesnt think about much beyond her immediate self.  In  Histoires naturelles (1906),  the peacock, the cricket, the swan , the kingfisher and the guinea-fowl are beautifully observed nature portraits, yet they share something in common with the creatures in Poulenc and Apollinaire's Le bestiare because they are also oblique comments on the human condition.  

Please also see my piece on Poulenc Apollinaire Les Bleuets

Saariaho True Fire Gerald Finley Sakari Oramo BBC SO

Kaija Saariaho's True Fire, with Gerald Finley at the Barbican London, with the BBC SO with Sakari Oramo conducting.  Saariaho has produced masterpieces, like Orion (2002) a breathtakingly beautiful evocation of starlight and mystery, but occasionally has lapses like Adriana Mater. But her music is too distinctive to dismiss.  In True Fire  she breaks into new territory.  The characteristic washes of multi-tonal, multi-coloured oscillation remain, but darker hues prevail. intensifying the elusive danger that lurks within Saariaho's music, which is far too often overlooked.. True Fire has a dark soul, and is all the better for it.

Saariaho's regular muse is Karita Mattila, for whom she wrote Mirages, premiered in 2008 also at the Barbican, London.  True Fire is a companion pieces to some extent, being very different on many levels, Mirage making the most of Mattila's grand dramatic intensity, while True Fire  is more suited to Finley's baritonal hues.  He's been a Saariaho regular too, for many years. singing Jaufré Rudel in L'amour de loin when Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted it in Helsinki more than ten years ago, the performance immortalized on DVD.  (Please read my review of the Met version ).  True Fire works as an exploration of Finley's timbre : colours and shadings again, and much variety in the setting.

This time the music is structured and channelled in a purposeful direction. Three "propositions", based on Ralph Waldo Emerson frame sections based on Seamus Heaney, a Native American lullaby and a text by the poet Mahmoud Darwish.  Introduced by the rumbling first "proposition" the section "River" flows strongly.   Words like "Thirst", "Night" and "River" are repeated in circular motion, "flowing, flowing". Strong currents in the orchestra, lit by fractured cells of sound which en masse sparkle with  light.  Gradually the flow subsides and Finley's voice rises to the top of his register, gradually fading.   The second proposition is particularly lush - bell-like sonorities, bright percussion, swathes of strings: "In silence" , Finley intones, barely above a growl.  Strange rocking rhythms in the Lullaby, a vigorous introduction moments of sparkling light. "In the west a dark flower blossoms, and now lightning flashes"  Again, circular forms . "Oh, oh, oh, my little one", repeating  like a set of mini-variations, the rocking rhythms taken up again in the orchestra -  hushed cymbals and gongs   In contrast "Farewell" began with hollow but carefully paced intonation  lit by short passages of orchestral complexity. "Don't wait for anyone, in the crowd", sang Finley with understated ferocity, consonants tightly clipped, the word "Narcissus" sharply sinister.  The last "proposition" is an extended diminuendo, voice and orchestra slowly proceeding towards an ending which glows, muted but forceful. What is the "true fire" in the text ? All may be fading around it but something remains firm and pure.

Sakari Oramo conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra at very short notice, receiving the score for the first time on Tuesday for Thursday evening's concert.  Fortunately he knows Saariaho's idiom well, and his rapport with the BBC SO is instinctive and strong. They've done a lot of Saariaho too, over the years. They know that this music works best when it flows naturally, like an organic form, without being pushed and pulled.  On the basis of this performance, I think True Fire is a keeper. It fits Finley like a glove, so he'll be able to sing it well for years to come, after which other baritones can enjoy its riches.   Before True Fire, Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, and afterwards, Prokofiev Symphony no 5. well played but the real news is Saariaho. 

Kaija Saariaho L'amour de loin Met

Sixteen years after its sensational premiere, Kaija Saariaho's L'amour de loin reached the Met in New York . Listen here on BBC Radio 3 because on repeat you can cut out the mindless Met chatter. and focus on the music.  Orchestrally,  this was ace, conducted by Susanna Mälkki, one of the great specialists in contemporary music.  She's right up there with Nagano and Salonen, who set very high standards indeed.  Saariaho's music is spectral, based on multitonal washes of colour and minutely-defined intervals. It shimmers with light, seemingly transparent, yet blindingly elusive. Searching lines reach into space, cut by sudden flashes of brightness. Long undulating vocal lines suggest Arabic ululation, where sounds carry over long distances. This wavering, tentative legato also suggests medieval supplication, for whatever is happening here, is more spiritual than physical.  Delicate, bird-like textures and tinkling figures on harps and strings, evoke fragility.  This isn't love so much as the idea of love.  Is this a folie à deux (or three) where the characters function as perspectives in an act of wish fulfillment  ? This is one of those operas where meaning lies in abstract, impressionistic sounds. Do we hear medieval instruments behind the shine of modern orchestration ? Repeating figures induce hypnotic trance.  Imagination takes over from logic

Jaufré Rudel is a troubador/poet, for whom courtly love is more ideal than reality.  He sings about a woman so perfect that it seems she can't possibly exist, but it's enough that perfection can be glimpsed. Reality doesn't measure up.  Maybe he'd be fine singing alone, forever in France: certainly he has a loyal audience. Yet the Pilgrim identifies the beloved with Clémence, who lives far away in Tripoli, in Africa, across the ocean.  Is it madness ?  The "Moorish" exoticism in the music intoxicates like a  invisible narcotic fumes.  Love, after all, is an "altered state". But this is not Tristan und Isolde, where strong personalities are transformed by a potion to the horror of those around them.  Everyone in  L'amour de loin, even the Pilgrim and the choruses are complicit in delusion as if it were a communal act of creativity. When Jaufré dies before they can meet, Clémence curses God,  cadences leaping wildly upwards and down. But we're left wondering if these lovers would really find happiness other than in dreams.

It took me a while to adjust to Eric Owen's Jaufré. Although he sang nobly enough, the part suits a lighter, more agile voice, ideally Gerald Finley, with whom Saariaho has worked frequently. Indeed, Finley is giving the premiere of Saariaho's True Fire, (review here) a BBC commission later this week at the Barbican, London, with the BBC SO.  Susanna Phillips sang a penetrating Clémence, a better foil for Owens than a lighter voice like Dawn Upshaw, who was an ideal balance with Finley.  Tamara Mumford sang the Pilgrim rather impressively, adding depth to the role.  But kudos to the Met orchestra, who probably aren't too used to this kind of repertoire, but rose to the occasion with Susanna Mälkki's assured mastery of form.  

L'amour de loin is Saariaho's masterpiece, where orchestral colour and meaning work together extremely well.  It's a beautiful piece which grows on you, if you let yourself luxuriate in its unique dream state.  I was a lot less convinced by Saaariaho's Adriana Mater in 2008, though it was magnificently conducted by Salonen, with Monica Groop who sang the title role in Paris and Helsinki.   The problem there was that the libretto, also by Amin Maalouf, bore little relationship to the music. Potentially, Adriana Mater could have been high drama : in a war zone, a woman has an illegitimate child but rejects the father because he's a weak willed brute.   Saariaho's dreamy water colour harmonies just didn't work.  Another Saariaho/Maalouf collaboration, Le passion de Simone (2006) was more effective. That was based on the writings of Simone Weil, and thus took a form closer to oratorio than to opera.   The orchestral writing was more austere (Simone starved herself to death),  relatively little singing and a prominent part for spoken narrator.   I  didn't go to Emilie (2010) also Saariaho/Maalouf. That was a one person vehicle for Karita Mattila, but caught the broadcast with Camilla Nylund. My review of L'amour de loin at the English National Opera, with Roderick Williams in 2009 is HERE.

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 t
- See more at: http://www.operatoday.com/content/2009/07/saariahos_sumpt.php#sthash.xRPvs6rW.dpuf

Love, after all, is an “altered state” where logic doesn’t apply, particularly in the case of 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 t
- See more at: http://www.operatoday.com/content/2009/07/saariahos_sumpt.php#sthash.xRPvs6rW.dpuf

Why I'm at the LPO Wednesday Orozco-Estrada

Andrés Orozco-Estrada, new principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducts Dvořák Cello Concerto and Mahler Symphony no 1 at the Royal Festival Hall on Wednesday.  Listen to this clip HERE where he conducts the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra  in Saariaho, Sibelius and Brahms.   The mark of a good conductor, for me, is the way he or she respects the composer above all else. "We are here to serve the music, not the other way round" as Elly Ameling once said.

Saariaho, Sibelius and Brahms - three very different composers indeed, yet  Orozco-Estrada  understands how each of them functions.  Kaija Saariaho's music isn't easy to conduct, with its ultra-diaphanous textures and elusive tonality, and some of it is quite uneven.  Her Orion, which dates from 2002, is a specially beautiful work, Orion is the name of a group of stars in the galaxy, so the music  sparkles like starlight, prominent in darkness, faded yet still present in Brightness. Hence the absolute importance of detail, keeping sound distinct and clear so they shine together. A bit like the brushstrokes in an Impressionist painting. Or even like the silk scarves Saariaho likes to wear with myriad water colour shades. But Orion is also a hunter, a Greek god who roams forests and kills his prey.  Beneath Saariaho's finest work there's decisiveness and strength, a firmness which underpins the creamy textures. Orozco-Estrada  gets Saariaho. He gets how the luminosity springs from refined detail, yet purposely forges ahead.


James Ehnes is the soloist in Sibelius Violin Concerto. The piece is so familiar, and so good, that average performances are bearable enough. But this seems intensely personal.   Despite his successes and prodigious talent as a composer, Sibelius would have liked to have been a violin virtuoso.  Ehnes's playing is sensitive, making me think about Sibelius, the man, full of self doubt. That insecurity, born perhaps because Sibelius was an empathic person, is for me why his music is so powerful. Get past the Finland symbolism and what Mahler called "national flavouring" and focus on the deeper personality within.

Brahms, too, is often misunderstood.  Does he imbibe the Beidermeyer certainity so prevalent of his age (and alas of ours).  Or is there a deeper Brahms beneath the bonhomie?  For that reason, while I enjoy conventionally Romantic Brahms, I much prefer performances which suggest something more complex. When Orozco-Estrada conducts Brahms, he makes the composer feel clear-minded and thoughtful, warmth and geniality.  Orozco-Estrada  gets the grand stride of Brahms, but also reminds us that grandness for its own sake is no measure of humanity.

Sibelius Luonnotar Barbican Oramo

Tonight at the Barbican, Sakari Oramo conducts Sibelius 3 and Luonottar with the BBC SO. This should be very interesting indeed, as the soloist is Anu Komsi,  one of the Komsi twins,well known specialists in unusual and modern repertoire. Each of them has phenomenal range. Although one doesn't need to speak Finnish to sing Luonottar, it probably helps, as it's extremely difficult to sing. Even those who can negotiate its challenges need to connect to its cosmology. This is the primeval creation myth from the Kalevala. It's also seminal in Sibelius's development as composer. If you can't make it to the Barbican, it's being broadcast live and on demand on BBC Radio 3.  Please also read my article on Luonnotar analysing its form and meaning. Video clip included!

For background, listen to this week's series about Finnish Composers before and after Sibelius, as it's quite well researched. Explains a bit why Finland has more musicians per capita than most anywhere else in the world. 700 operas at last count years ago. It also puts modern Finnish composers and conductors into perspective. Of the present generation, Sakari Oramo, Esa Pekka Salonen, the Komsi twins, Magnus Lindberg, Kaija Saariaho all closely networked.

Saariaho operas - why?

Rupert Christiansen reports on Kaija Saariaho's fourth opera, Emilie, in Paris. It's a tour de force for Karita Mattila, who sings for 80 minutes. But all that effort, for what? "Saariaho's mushy modernist idiom – try imagining Pierre Boulez slumming it on a film score – is peppered with pseudo-baroque flourishes from the harpsichord, as well as spooky marimba and electronic effects. Textures are dense and rich, but the flavour is generic: the score never seems specific to Emilie or expressive of her. There's no muscle, no clarity: it all swirls around in a haze. "

L'Amour de loin was interesting because it was different, a sort of mutable mood piece you could drift in and out of. Some nice passages for the baritone, which gave it backbone. When it was staged at the ENO, it was visually gorgeous, the set providing a narrative the opera lacked.

Le Passion de Simone was different. Simone Weil, a middle class intellectual, was desperate to identify with socialist workers. She had such extreme self conviction, that it hardly mattered that the workers weren't moved. During the Holocaust, when people starved in concentration camps, Weil voluntarily starved herself to death. Anorexia elevated to political act. Self regard so intense it swept away realiyty.

Weil is emotive, so you can't really knock an opera based on her. On the other hand, psychologically, Weil's such a character that the dramatic possibilities are infinite. This is perhaps Saariaho's best opera. The music redeems its fundamental inconsistencies of the plot. Blank out the words, (though you shouldn’t) and you have an intoxicating feast of chromatic colour. It’s so vivid and beautiful that, consciously or not, it undermines Weil’s ideas that life is polluting, unworthy "bestiality". Saariaho even manages to incorporate into her music some of Weil’s other ideas, such as the dichotomy between gravity and grace: gravity comes in the dark undercurrents of the brass and winds, for example, and grace in the diaphanous, glistening textures of her writing for strings and percussion. There’s lots of her distinctive exoticism in the gamelan-like passages for marimba, bells and harp. There are some pretentious moments, such as over-long silences between the sections, and passages pushing the same point too long, but on balance, it’s the music that makes this opera.

Then, Adriana Mater. In theory this is an explosive plot: woman raises son born of wartime rape. Decades later, son kills father. This is the stuff of Greek tragedy, but this libretto manages to make the story banal and inconsequential. Saariaho is one of the few composers who has personally experienced pregnancy and childbirth, so you'd hope she has a handle on it male composers don't.

Saariaho’s long lines evolve slowly, their beauty in the gradual process of gestation. Again, there’s a lot of potential in using this style to present a narrative like this, a story that covers a period over 20 years. A friend of mine commented that Saariaho sounds like “Messiaen crossed with Philip Glass” in the sense that her music unfolds organically, like breathing, which is measured and even. But it's been done before, better and since.

And that's about it. There's no sense of narrative, no emotional depth, no sense of turbulent complexity. At the time I heard it I couldn't figure out why it upset me so much, but with the perspective of distance I now understand. The subject is horrible, but the music doesn't engage with it. It's L'Amour de Loin rehashed. At least the world of L'Amour was nice to look at.

Emilie sounds like more of the same all over again. Pregnant woman knowing she's going to die and her life has been wasted. There's great potential in this as drama, but what will Saariaho do with it?

Existential angst and puppet invasions

Puppets are subversive. They may be carved of wood but like most human beings, they only come to life when their strings are pulled. Egads! Puppets are sinister. An old sock can come alive when someone shoves their hand up it and talks squeaky. Some kids were scared witless by Shari Lewis (for those who remember the 50's kid show) . Puppets come with dementedly jolly jingles, rictus grins and implied menace. If the fairy can make Pinocchio into a "real boy" can real boys be turned into marionettes?

Perhaps that's why puppets have existential angst. They remind us that we too are toys that can be manipulated by others. So puppets pack a punch when it comes to theatre. For thousands of years story tellers have used puppets to illustrate their art. Unreality is part of the magic. So when puppets invade theatre and music, they add extra dimensions.

This week Philip Glass's new symphony had its premiere at the Proms. Nice, because it works the way Buddhist chant works, creating a state between consciousness. On the other hand, you wish there was something to look at to concentrate the mind. That's perhaps why his Satyagraha at the ENO was brilliant. The repetitive music evoked the relentless struggle of India's ground-down masses. But the puppets! Huge, towering marionettes who walked like giants, acting out the ancient sagas of Hindu gods. They injected a whole new level into the opera, expanding its meaning. Gandhi was a little man but what he achieved was heroic. That memorable production was created by Improbable, a truly innovative theatre group that combines puppets, circus, athletics, and visual images. So much potential, so many possibilties. Theatre, opera and music directors take note - Improbable is a fantastic resource.

Even more recently, we saw how circus skills can save an unstageable opera like Saariaho's L'Amour de loin. Read about that HERE.

And now, Monteverdi's Return of Ulysses gets the puppet treatment at the Edinburch Festival. The singers will be shadowed by huge puppets, operated on sticks like Indonesian wayang where puppets enact ancient sagas. The puppeteers are Handspring Puppet Company. This Ulysses has been seen in France, Belguim, New York and Luxembourg. Read about it HERE with photos and production shots.

"While working on Ulisse I had occasion to take my five year-old nephew for a chest x-ray. The child was stood at the machine and positioned using a video screen next to the x-ray machine. On the video screen you could see the moving skeleton of the child, the incredibly fine and fragile collarbones, the thin pylon of the spine and in the jaw not just the child’s teeth, but also the adult teeth still on the bone, waiting to erupt." says the designer, William Kentridge. Read the whole article, it's very detailed and different. Baroque is fantasy, the ultimate union of artifice and illusion, referencing myth and human concepts. So Monteverdi and puppets could be made for each other.

Coming up next : Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus at the Proms. The one original performance, in 1986, was staged with puppets: parallel figures shadowing the spoken and sung roles. Birtwistle's Punch and Judy is about puppets, the strange British idea that children should be entertained by scenes of domestic violence and police corruption. Puppetry as a tool for evil indoctrination. That's why the opera upsets me so much. That's what Birtwistle was trying to show. Watch this space.

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