Boulez Mahler 10 Cleveland

Pierre Boulez, the Cleveland Orchestra and Mahler - perfect partners. Their recording of Mahler's Seventh Symphony is outstanding, one of the landmark performances in the whole discography. Immediate alert then for Boulez's return to Severance Hall in this live recording from February 2010.

What spark! This zips along, crackingly vivid and spontaneous. Mahler delighted in the quaint charms of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, but anyone listening to the Wunderhorn symphonies can hear what sophisticated use he made of them. Mahler transformed cute to cosmic. Bucolic humour yes, but no delusions If kitschy-folksy is what you want from Mahler you'll probably get a shock from the sharp, sardonic wit of these performances. But what light they shed on the symphonies!

Understand the songs, and you learn the fundamentals of Mahler's output. It's not just the way song themes weave through the early symphonies, but the whole idea of symphonic construction based on cells of song, elaborated and expanded. "One long trajectory from Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen to Das Lied von der Erde and beyond", someone once said - I think Boulez but can't check. In any case, Boulez learned his Mahler 60 years ago from the songs upwards. Boulez's Mahler is important because he understand the essential structural foundations.

Magdalena Kožená and Christian Gerhaher sing twelve songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn.  Much as I love Schwarzkopf and Fischer-Dieskau (my first Mahler), their emphasis was on words first, music as support. Hence the self-conscious quaintness. Ludwig and Berry even "act" the songs on the video released a while back. Kožená and Gerhaher adhere, instead, to a more "musical" perspective.  Kožená's particularly interesting, because she has an extremely bright, crisp tone which works well with the Clevelanders's lucidity. Gushily sentimental Wunderhorns you can hear anytime, but this one's different because Kožená sounds like a soloist in the orchestra. You're listening to how she interacts with the orchestra..

But the songs on this recording are no match for the performance of the Adagio from Mahler's Tenth Symphony.  This is brilliant in every sense - how the strings in  particular gleam and shine!

Sinuous introduction that reaches outwards - the shepherd's mournful tune from Tristan und Isolde, perhaps? The connections are apposite, given the "to live for you, to die for you, Almschi" connotations. Notice how the winds repeat the theme again, just as in the opera, Mahler's personal favourite, which he never delegated to other conductors. Thus the powerful, surging undercurrents that Boulez brings from the Clevelanders, swelling like the tides in an ocean drawn by the moon. This is the heartbeat of the movement, surging and ebbing - you almost feel the physical presence of Mahler, who wasn't to know then what his heart would do to him. In this Adagio, he seems reinvigorated, full of life and new hope. Boulez and Prof Henry-Louis de la Grange have been close since the 1940's, so Boulez is up to date with the latest research.

The rich sonorities become lighter, more exoteric, textures clearing, soaring upwards, quirky, elusive strings and woodwinds til recapitulation of the main theme, brass at the crest, then the "shepherd" theme heard from a distance, almost unadorned, rising forth. Then POW!!  the orchestra ignite in huge crescendi culminating in blasts of sound so intense you could be fooled into thinking there was a huge organ somewhere in that surge. It's astonishing, a scream of intensity and passion so great that it explodes the myth that Boulez is clinical. Cool headed, yes, but with intense emotional depth.  This continues with the quieter resolution. More restraint, but such feeling and commitment.  My goodness - to have been at Severance Hall the night this was recorded.  Congratulations to Cleveland, playing in absolute top form. What a night to remember! The Cleveland Orchestra is one of the finest in the world, Let's hope the locals appreciate their good fortune.

Early Chinese cinema - Two Stars in the Milky Way

More Chinese Weimar - Two Stars in the Milky Way (1931).  Art Deco Shanghai in all its glory, and documentary about Chinese film making. Essential background viewing for anyone interested in cinema, China and social mores.

Violet Wong plays Lee Yuenying, daughter of a scholarly gentleman who composes entirely in western style - piano, bust of Beethoven etc. Perfect life of gentility, "western style" adapted to 1920's China.

Outside their villa on the China coast (near Shanghai by the shape of the sails on the junks) a film company is making a movie. The crew hear Yuenying singing (western song though it's silent). Great shots of how they set up on location filming in those days, complete with hordes of onlookers, peasant farmers and coolies in the background. No need for extras, bystanders just turned up and were incorporated into the film. Watch the hand wound cameras, look at the director with white scarf and solar topee. No costumes needed, they just filmed each other.

Being a nice girl, Yuenying doesn't do public shows, so the film crew go to watch her give an "exhibition dance" for charity. Fantastic 1920's theatre. You can see why Shanghai was the greatest art deco city in the world - the angular lines and patterns fit seamlessly with Chinese geometric concepts of design. Yuenying dances a vaguely "Egyptian" dance, arms bent at angles, elegant poses, very "moderne". Definitely influenced by Ballets Russe. the Tutankhamen craze of the 1920's etc. Shanghai absolutely up to date with what was hot in Europe.

Cut to the film studio and its big 1920's mahogany boardroom. Boss says about the future of Chinese cinema, "We of the film industry have a mission to fulfill, to propagate the values of our people  and contributing knowledge to the public through the screen".

Eventually  westernized, educated Yuenying agrees to act in a movie about traditional China, and sings, too. Not Chinese opera though  as the scenario is highly realistic. As the film is silent, we don't know what she sings. Could be anything, as in China, the lines between genres aren't so strict, like in the west. Yuenying and the actor hero, Yang Yeeyan, fall in love. They have a date playing mini-golf where they meet a rival actress who fancies Yang too. Mini-golf with mini pagodas and mini Chinese bridges - kitsch even then. Watch out too for the fancy car they ride in,  with Dad in the pull down jump seat!

Film is success, and studio hires the art deco theatre for dinner party. Orchestra on stage, first violin takes bow - wonderful authentic looking shot. Yuenying's father and studio boss decide to arrange a marriage, but Yang's cousin reminds him he has a "country-bred" wife at home in the provinces. Too scared to tell Yuenying he's already married traditional style, Yang pretends to be cheating on her with other actress. Heartbroken, Yuenying and father leave the "evil" city and return to their villa by the sea. Film ends with shot of Yang as an old man with stick, and Yuenying, now orphaned, singing by her father's empty chair. Two sequences, transposed. Honour wins over love, but love doesn't end. The title refers to a legend about lovers who were torn apart, turned into stars in the Milky Way.


This is a keynote film, because it shows how Chinese cinema was every bit as up to date as in the west. It's also important because it's "about" Chinese cinematography and moral values.The bosses' speeches in the studio come straight from the heart. Cinema in China was part of the process of becoming modern, and was an expression of progressive sociual principles. What wonderful sets! Also authentic - cheaper to film live than build sets. Read more by searching on this site and also The Chinese Mirror, the best English-language resource on Chinese film on the net. Both films on the DVD have English subtitles. The other film, Spray of Plum Blossoms stars the iconic Ruan Lingyu and is based on Shakespeare. It's worth watching too. Ruan deserves whole posts on  her own - search her name on this site. Violet Wong was a relative of Marion Wong, who made the first Chinese American movie, the Curse of Quon Gwon, in 1917. Although second-generation ABC she easily integrated back to China, quite different to Anna May Wong.  Please take some time to explore my site as there is a lot about Chinese film and culture, Chinese stereotypes, western, Chinese and Japanese film. Spercial emphasis on vintage film and the way film fits into society.

Rise and Fall of Mahagonny - La Fura dels Baus Madrid

La Fura dels Baus's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at Teatro Real, Madrid is so raw and savage that it hurts. Which is exactly as it should be.

Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill were writing to shock. What could be more pertinent today than a parable of greed and depravity, where the worst crime  a man can commit is to have no money?

Mountainous piles of garbage on the stage, the "desert" the desert of the soul. From the trash emerge strange, half-human creatures. But this is realism. All over the world municipal dumps are where the destitute end up, scavenging an existence from the detritus the rich throw away. Brecht could not have found a better metaphor for the End of Capitalism.

From this arises the City of Mahagonny, with a Rich Man's Hotel. The rubbish piles are covered with green baize but  something's clearly unnatural here. In Spain the image has extra kick, given that huge parts of the country are devastated by irresponsible tourism. Despite cheap alcohol and sex, people keep trying to leave. Even simple Alaskan woodsman Jimmy Macintyre (Michael König) knows that something's wrong if things are too easy.

Excellent new libretto. Translation is free but so sharp it expresses the attack of the original. Brecht would have loved the directness. The Teatro Real Orchestra, conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado, is crisp and unsentimental  As the orchestra pumps up and down rhythms, the chorus and actors pump up and down in sexual orgy. It's depraved, but not indecent because they're emphasizing the mechanical anonymity embedded in the music.

Superb choruses, too. The "chorales" were extremely well done. Everyone knows the "jazz" references in this score but the Madrid chorus understand how much deeper the cultural references go. This is a story where good and bad compete and bad wins. Even God gets trumped. No illusions here that Mahagonny is a "musical". It's cosmic, an atheist struggle of life and death with the brutal message: You Can't Help a Dead Man.  The implication is, do something before it's too late. It's actually an advantage that the chorus are Spanish, they try harder to articulate. 

Michael König is an unusually deep Jimmy, by no means a buffoon. After all, he's the central protagonist. His friends swallow the delusion, but Jimmy does his own thing. Hurricanes don't scare him, the real danger is Man. It's because he's been kind to Alaska-Wolf Joe that he loses everything and is condemned to die. König's Jimmy is much stronger than he lets on, which gives logic to the Final Act.

In a world where "you make your own bed, and choose to stand up or be kicked", he's killed. But he has stood up for his principles, and has "kicked" because he hasn't compromised his innate decency. If he's trapped in the upside down morality of Mahagonny, he can take his leave with dignity because he, unlike everyone else, hasn't sold out.  Wonderful performance - a model for others to learn from.

Measha Brueggergosman is magnificent as Jenny Smith. Few singers have stage presence like she does - once seen, never forgotten. Indeed, she's such a strong personality that it might have inhibited her being cast in mainstrean roles, but her voice has a good range and she has the ability to slip into charcter well. More, please!  Her Jenny operates on several levels at once. "Eine Frau ist keine Tiere!" the words go, but this Jenny moves like an animal, ever vigilant. After all, she's in a jungle where you kill to survive. That ultra-tight bra must have been uncomfortable to wear but that costume fits the persona if not the person. This Jenny's restrained, held in too tightly because she doesn't really know how to "kick" like Jimmy does. The dynamic between König and Brueggergosman is superb. Here Jimmy and Jenny really are a pair, though Jimmy's way ahead emotionally.

Willard White as Trinity Moses is superb - when he takes his clothes off he reveals the physique of a man of 35! He, too, has commanding stage presence: vocally no fancy bits in the part to distract from his menace.  Donald Kaasch's Fatty the Bookkeeper's a thuggish creep, but he, too, has hidden depths. When he takes his shirt off, on his back, there's a magnificent tattoo of an Eygptian God of Judgement. Jane Henschel's Leocadia Begbick looks like a sweet old lady, but watch her eyes slant and glint! Good cameos, too - watch out for John Easterlin (Bank Account Bill) and Otto Katzameier (Jack O'Brien).

Interestingly, the production seems to have been designed around the performance space in Madrid, with relative small floor area but seven tiers rising above. The live audience would have had a lot to look at, but the filming was rather less effective. I couldn't believe it when a camera jerkily panned toward a detail of architecture at the beginning, and shot it out of focus. Surely that was the crest of the Royal House of Spain? I don't think the cameraman meant anything by that. Fortunately there were cameras placed in the rafters to capture the piles of rubbish looming high above the singers. The Metropolis of Mahagonny as Tower of Babel wrought in trash.

The Final Scene shows the cursed people of Mahagonny. Having chosen not to follow God "but their own way", they march with banners on which slogans are written. I don't know Spanish, but in Brecht's original the slogans are both militant and ironic. There's no easy answer to the dilemma of modern capitalism but the main thing is to respond.

Since this was filmed, there'll probably be a DVD, in which case, grab it. La Fura dels Baus led by Alex Ollé and Carlus Padrissa, staged Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre at ENO. Who can forget the gigantic woman, used and abused by all, yet looking outwards with dignified vulnerability? The production reached levels  the opera didn't access: in New York without staging, the full impact might have been lost. Almost certainly, there'll be many eager to reject this production because of the rubbish dump, simulated sex and pig trough orgy, but maybe they should stick to West End feelgoods instead. This Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny packs a punch, and can't be ignored. Just what Brecht and Weill would have loved.

Opera at the Movies Bachtrack

Keeping up with opera screened in movie theatres is tricky - different cinema chains., different distributors, minimal publicity. Now here's help!

Check out the Bachtrack site (listed on the right of this page for easy reference. It's the best site for planning your schedule - everything in the same place, including things off the beaten track (Like Westminster Cathedral Dream of Gerontius).  I use it all the time.

They've got details of Royal Opera House and NY Met screenings plus also Opus Arte European opera, most of which is top notch. More soon, too. Like Berlin Deutsche Oper's new season which features some of the top stars, including Joyce DiDonato,Jospeh Calleja, Jonas Kaufmann and this year's hot property Vittorio Grigolo - although you'll have to look through the listings carefully as they often have different casts for different nights of the same production. As well as the established repertoire, they are making a point of producing some lesser known operas such as Strauss's Die Liebe der Danae and Cassandra and Respighi's Marie Victoire.

When you're using the main "find an opera" or "find a ballet" pages, look out for one or more yellow bubbles at the top of the listing results: these will tell you if there are any cinema or on-demand listings which match your search.

Opera on film is different to opera live or on audio recording.  Much depends on the musical intelligence of the film-maker. Some, like Brian Large, can turn trash to (almost) gold. Gone are the days when stand and shoot was enough - the camera has to follow the detail in a meaningful way. Long term there are implications for stageceraft because film opens possibilities not practicable in live performance. Certainly there are implications for the experience of opera, since audiences anywhere will get to see top quality shows. The end of one-city, one-house insularity.  When people are actually exposed to things they've only read about before, perhaps they'll have more progressive attitudes. Some of the hysteria about "Regie" might dissipate when people realize the word simply means "directed". In French and German it's just a word but to some English-only speakers it's red flags to bulls.

Met Rheingold and ENO Faust

The world did not collapse because the Met staged a new production of Das Rheingold with Robert Lepage's ultramodern staging. See HERE for reviews with photos. Unprecedented expense - the floor had to be reinforced before the sets could safely be installed. The ultimate "special effects" production. Maybe that's what stunned the audience into submission.  Why not . We all know the story and spectacle is definitely what Wagner would have enjoyed.

So why the fuss in the UK press about Gounod Faust at the ENO? Des McAnuff's Faust is going to the Met soon, so maybe for a change NY audiences will be primed to appreciate it better after the shock and awe of Rheingold.

Ironically, McAnuff's Faust is a lot closer to Goethe than Gounod was.  Being a theatre man he goes straight to the heart of the drama. What a story! A  holy old man selling his soul to the devil for a day of youth. He causes mayhem yet is redeemed by love. Goethe didn't need, as Gounod did, to pretty the tale up with divertissements to please the Paris audience. Gloire immortelle de nos aïeux is so wonderful that Gounod had to adjust the plot around it. It had to be "Frenchified" to work. While the essential bones of the story are there, Gounod uses extras like Siébel and Wagner, and some of the Gothic edge is smoothed away.

Plenty of accurately dressed French peasants in the ENO production, so why the fuss? So what if McAnuff's first scene takes place in what looks like a lab? Faust studied the Black Arts, and was completely aware that knowledge can be dangerous if it's used for evil purposes. He called up the Devil, after all. What could be more apposite than atomic bombs? They don't stay in view for long, anyway, and the complex structure of spiral staircases lend itself well when Méphistophélès scoots about from on high.


Similarly, why not psychedelic effects and lurid lights? Witches are afoot in Walpurgisnacht, which is traditionally associated with glowing lights in the mist and bonfires to ward off evil spirits. See the industrial-looking observation building (1890's)  at Brocken in the Harz where Goethe's Walpurgisnacht supposedly took place. (click to expand for detail)

The ENO Faust deserves a lot more respect than it's given. I don't know how Toby Spence was singing on the first night, but the night I went he was very good indeed. Vocally clear and sweet-toned, as befits the "youthful" Faust. Which is how Gounod wrote the part - not for a hefty baritone. Remember too that he knows the part in French. Even if he's a native English speaker, he's a musician accustomed to hearing the musical logic of the original.  Generally good performances all round.

Wouldn't it be ironic if notoriously conservative New York audiences got more out of ENO's Faust than supposedly sharp Londoners ? Now that would be Faustian. Please come back, I'll be writing abiout the Met Lepage Rheingold soon. Search around on this site. There's LOTS on Wagner, The Ring, Stagecraft and Robert LePage.

Watch the FULL DOWNLOAD HERE of F W Murnau's Faust (1927)

NIobe Royal Opera House - well informed review

Agostino Steffani's Niobe regina di Tebe is a smash hit at the Royal Opera House. Wild card, for sure. Bijoux like Niobe would normally appear in tiny specialist houses catering to the cognoscenti. Picking this for ROH took guts because such obscurities are almost guaranteed not to reach the mass market. For a change good artistic judgment has paid off. Niobe is the hit of the season, bringing in audiences who might not otherwise do obscure baroque. Lots of last minute extra bookings being made.  This was the opera I'd really been keen to get to, and managed to reschedule so I can.

HERE is the review by Sue Loder in Opera Today. Read it - this is extremely well written, a model of well-informed, judicious thought. If only more writing was as good as this! So read and enjoy. Lots of photos too, well chosen editorially. My own summary on why the opera works so well is HERE

"The quality of the vocal writing matches the inventiveness of the music which seems to hover, musicologically, somewhere between Cavalli and early Handel. The recitatives are lyrical, the arias and duets constantly change form and texture with no one vocal style predominating. There is no aria longer than five minutes and the da capo form in its full Handelian sense is missing: this helps to drive the action forward and several set-piece arias are interrupted by another character. The orchestration is equally complex and thoroughly fascinating in its detail and richness; often a character will be assigned his or her “own” obbligato instrument - such as the nurse Nerea who sings several slightly cynical or world-weary arias with some virtuosic recorder playing echoing her complaints. Anfione is often accompanied by the smaller strings and viola da gamba. Under the confident and stylish direction of Hengelbrock, his expanded orchestra gives an object lesson in how to transfer what was an intimate festival performance in 2008 into a major house display in 2010."

Tristan und Isolde Urmana Salonen Royal Festival Hall

The whole Royal Festival Hall standing in ovation for Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Even the ushers were impressed. Violeta Urmana stunned the capacity audience with a glorious, passionate Isolde. But that wasn't all. Orchestrally, too, this was an outstanding experience. The Philharmonia Orchestra under Esa-Pekka Salonen was exceptionally lucid.

Usually Wagner Tristan und Isolde is played by opera house orchestras, so the music is naturally eclipsed by what's happening on stage. Fine as opera house orchestras are, they play second fiddle. The Philharmonia though does a much wider repertoire, and is constantly challenged to excel. Under Esa-Pekka Salonen they're exploring new territory : this Tristan und Isolde was exciting as pure music.

That first chord alone, stretched and ending with a sudden zip, expressed insight. Tristan and Isolde each have a past, but their lives culminate in a brief blaze of passion quickly snuffed out. Wagner's music references the ocean, constantly surging, swelling and pulling back.  Ocean as metaphor for emotional depth. Salonen led the Philharmonia through the constant flux magnificently. Clearly defined leitmotivs, precise details, never losing sight of the ultimate destination. Exquisite phrasing, absolute lucidity.

The overture to the final act was a kind of apotheosis, orchestrally, exquisitely judged and balanced, emotionally as vivid as the text to follow. There are many ambiguities in Tristan und Isolde, but when an orchestra plays it "as music", the inner logic becomes so powerful that you're hypnotized. The Philharmonia was incandescent. Truly this was a performance that will be remembered as one of the highlights in the Philharmonia's illustrious history.

Few can create the part the way Violeta Urmana does.  Hers is a voice with genuine richness and lustrous resonance. Her technique is superb - perfect phrasing and breath control, nothing forced or played for effect, none of the silly tricks of vibrato and volume some popular singers resort to for effect.  Isolde is much more sophisticated than Brünnhilde though they're both heroines the world cannot contain.  Urmana's Isolde is magnificent, a princess with a huge history behind her, connected,to ancient arts of magic and healing. Which is why Tristan, whose wounds are psychic as well as physical, needs her. Whoever dressed Urmana knew what they were doing. A creamy bodice on a dark dress with sleeves emphasized Urmana's womanly amplitude. She looked like an elegant version of the primeval goddess Astarte. Sexier than Stemme, and an accurate insight.

Gary Lehman is a Heldentenor who is a Held - a hero with dignity and honour. Tristan's not at all a conventional Action Man, as Wagner's text keeps telling us. He's carried his fate since birth. Calling a child "Tristan" is a form of child abuse, dooming a kid to a life of sorrow. No wonder he's death obsessed, a suicide waiting to happen. Lehman sings with conviction (even when he's lying down). He's moving. In the Third Act, when Tristan speaks of his past, revealing his vulnerability, Lehman's voice softens tenderly: extremely moving. The film projection towers over him, showing a small boy staring at a candle which might suddenly die. Incredible unity of voice, visuals and emotion, totally true to Wagner's text and music. Lehman and Urmana have recorded Parsifal with Gergiev. For them, I'm getting that.

Anne Sofie von Otter was an excellent Brangäne. The character is strong, and von Otter creates the part with forceful but elegant purity of tone.  Von Otter and Urmana are wonderful together. Each very distinctive and assertive, opposite sides of a similar persona.  A dream team - hopefully they'll work together more often.

Jukka Rasilainen as Kurnewal is luxury casting, too. He's very experienced indeed, and it shows. Kurnewal, like Brangäne, is by no means a small part, but an important counterfoil to Tristan. Although there's less to sing, more depends on the quality of the performance. Rasiliainen expresses himself well: this Kurnewal makes an impact as a fully realized personality.

Matthew Best (King Marke), Stephen Gadd (Melot), Joshua Ellicott (Helmsman) were good but outclassed by Urmana, Lehma, von Otter and Rasiainen. With principals as good as these, it's hard for anyone to compete.

Someone told me that a man near her raged out at the first interval because he didn't approve of the film projections. Which says more about him than the projections. Surely anyone seriously interested in opera would have noticed the quality of the singing and playing? This short-sighted bigotry proves how little he really knows or cares. Opera is meant to be visual and like any other element in a performance there will be good and bad.  There have been infinitely more stupid projections than these, as anyone who saw Wozzeck at the South Bank last year will remember.

Bill Viola's projections would operate well as a separate stand alone work of art, a Tristan und Isolde installation, for example. But in performance, they should relate to what's happening. The worst part was in the First Act, where two models who don't resemble the singers take their clothes off in slow, ritualistic motion. I can see the point, though it's very deep, too complex to take in while so much else is going on. But it's horribly distracting because it doesn't connect to the performance itself. The music (especially this time) surges, the film operates in a different time frame. If this sequence was completely cut out, a lot of the problems would be removed.

When Viola's film uses semi-abstract images that complement the performance, the projections work very well indeed. They are intelligent - images of night and day, light and dark, water and fire occur throughout the opera,, and the film follows text faithfully. For example, Brangäne's torch, haunting the love duet, adding to the tension. When Tristan asks Isolde to follow him, there's a shot of a wild path, trees beaten out of shape by harsh winds. A reference to coastal conditions but also to hardship.

The projections in the Third Act are by far the best, for they express deeper ideas in the opera. The ocean, distant lights hidden by mist, the rocky shore, which seems barren until you see the spring that brings forth clear, pure refreshment, feeding mosses and lichen. Because we are seeing Tristan's homeland we're drawn closer into his soul. This is when Tristan reveals himself emotionally, and we get a glimpse of how he came to be who he is. When the image of the ocean is lit by colours of fire and dawn, it expresses the union of opposites which runs throughout the opera.

When Urmana sings the Liebestod the image behind her comes alive, white lights rising upwards as the music does, until the image, like Isolde herself is transfigured ino another plane of existence. It's beautiful and enhances the music appropriately. How it could be done in actual performance, I don't know.

The fact is that semi-staging is a newish art form, still evolving. If the economy continues into nosedive, we may well be hearing more concert performances with minimal staging. That's not a bad thing at all, if it means resources are put into great singing and orchestras of the calibre of the Philharmonia. Less is often more, because it focuses on the essential drama not the trappings.

Peter Sellars shows what can be done. He uses the Royal Festival Hall as his canvas.As Isolde's ship docks in the harbour (which we don't actually need to see), Matthew Best appears, spotlit, in the Royal Box. As a king would. The gulf between Isolde and King Marke made real in the way no stage setting could express. Von Otter's Brangäne occupies the ramparts upper level, side stage, trumpets are heard from far away. Sellars incorporates movement into this concert performance as effectively as any full staging.


Photo : Violeta Urmana  copyright Christine Schneider

ENO Janáček Makropulos

Janáček doesn't work for me in English so I avoid recordings like the plague. Live performance, however, is different because staging adds an extra dimension. This ENO revival of Christopher Alden's The Makropulos Case, at the Coliseum, with magnificent designs by Charles Edwards,  is so stylish that you focus on the drama rather than the disjuncture between syntax and music.
 
Green marble, Art Deco elegance brings the story right up to the time the opera was written. Janáček might have visualized it thus. Elina Makropulos might have found it strange, but Kamila Stösslová would have loved it! Even the fox-fur wrap references another Janáček femme fatale, the Cunning Little Vixen. And EM holds a newspaper - as if Time meant anything to her. Brilliant!  This is staging done with musical intelligence.

The Gregors and the Prus have been scrapping for 200 plus years over a missing will. In Dr Kolenatý's office, papers fly about out of control  like a flock of mad chickens (another Janáček clue), and rows of men like robots line the walls. It takes a feisty Janáček heroine to come up with the solution.

Crowd scenes here beautifully done, expressing a purpose - other ENO directors take note! The Second Act, where the men converge outside glass doors reinforces the idea that EM exists in an existential bubble, her thousands of admirers mindlessly conforming.  EM's situation is Extremely Mad but no-one questions. They'll kill themselves, like Janek, but don't they know who she is and where she's come from? She knows why she rejects Gregor's lust and uses the current Baron Prus.

This staging is exceptionally musically literate, Charles Edwards delivers yet again. Christopher Alden's direction is very good too, though the singers don't move as stylishly as the plot would support. This opera turns en pointe so sharply, singers need the physical flare of dancers.

This cast is reasonable, nonetheless. Amanda Roocroft's a popular if safe choice. Comparisons with Elisabeth Söderström would be completely unfair, but even Cheryl Baker had more sass. Still, Roocroft fills the role, costumed as she is by Sue Willmington like Anna Wintour, We can fill in the "Nuclear Wintour" persona ourselves - it fits the role very neatly!

Andrew Shore, Peter Hoare, Ashley Holland and Alasdair Elliott impressed as the hapless men and Laura Mitchell as Kristina. But this being Janáček, pay attention to the minor female role of EM's maid, a familiar chorus member now given a chance to show  how good a character singer she can be. Use her more !

Charles Mackerras reputedly said it didn't matter if Janáček singing was in English, because he knew Czech.  Yet opera is voice. If the singers are doing stresses alien to the music it's a problem whatever the conductor might be doing.  Long ago, there were reasons for making Janáček accessible  to English speakers, but now the repertoire is so familiar the logic doesn't apply.  As Elizabeth David said, "In those days olive oil was something you bought at the chemist to clean your ears". Times change. Ideally, this excellent production could be revived in the original language, with a more idiomatic cast.

Photo: Amanda Roocroft, credit Neil Libbert, courtesy ENO. Copyright - do not copy.

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.

Mahler 3 Jurowski

There have been so many Mahler Third's in the last few years,  so great expectations for Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall last night. We were all in an uncommonly receptive mood.

What would they find in it? Not so much Mahler as Wagner. Mahler conceived this symphony inspired by the wide open spaces of the Salzkammergut. Obviously, not literal representation, but the idea of struggle and creative freedom is very much a part of Mahler's psyche and thus part of his music.  Jurowski's Mahler 3 is very "indoors", replete with every luxury possible. Wagner in Switzerland, safe from Saxons and creditors, swathed in velvet.

The first movement is monumental for a reason. It's a blockbuster as imposing as the mountains, created to set a framework against which all other elements are heard. Hence the importance of analytical thinking, understanding why Mahler's music evolves the way it does. Jurowski, never a great Mahler conductor, dispenses with structure and goes instead for maximum orchestral impact.

Cue for luscious textures, grand sweeping gestures, the ultimate Romantic symphony,. Mahler as Tchaikovsky, perhaps. Jurowski luxuriates in gorgeousness, so this was seductive performance indeed. Although details in Mahler are important, they are always there for a purpose, not merely to fill space. He lived in fin de siècle times but was personally quite ascetic. Without architecture or ideas, Mahler isn't Mahler.
 
Nice details, especially the sour-noted clarinet that weaves around Petra Lang as she sings O Mensch. It's like a poisonous snake, a valid image in this song that reflects on the sufferings of mankind, thanks to apples, temptation and the Devil.  Less successful was the swagger in the Scherzando, whose deliberate bumptiousness wouldn't sit well with an interpretation as civilized as this.

Jurowski dwells on detail to the extent that themes blur rather than take shape. Tempi are drawn out lovingly, but in the process the drama is lost. I don't do stopwatch but someone in the exit said he'd never heard timings so diffuse. Jurowski smiled a lot while conducting, which was a good thing, because this is Mahler's sunniest symphony.

Several times I was thrown, hearing all the right notes but wondering what symphony this might be. Where was it going?  Then I realized that the key to this performance wasn't to think about Mahler as we know him now, but in terms of what Alma would have wanted us to hear him. There's a huge difference, but Alma's view is more marketable. While well played, for the most part,  this performance could be enjoyed as an indulgence rather than as an insight.

It's not Jurowski's fault. He's never been a great Mahler man (with the wonderful exception of Das klagende Lied in 2007) but he's fallen for the rebranding and repackaging the Mahler year has brought. Sugar-coated Mahler sells. Jurowski's a natural opera man, a Russian specialist par excellence, so he does Mahler in much the same way,. It's lovely to listen to, but isn't necessarily the composer's idiom. 

Jurowski was much more in his element with Zemlinsky's Maeterlinck Songs op 13, where highly perfumed sensuality is essential to meaning. This is a wonderful cycle  but it's not heard to best advantage with a symphony like Mahler 3. Indeed, part of the problem with this Mahler 3 was that it was infused with Zemlinsky. Contemporaries they were, but extremely different musically. The Maeterlinck Songs need to be showcased on their own terms, so performance is truly committed. Perta Lang has done this repertoire so often, she can sing this well, and sit down and save herself for another hour before the Misterioso movement, but she's so good she deserves star billing, not a warm-up act.

Please see some of Jurowski's earlier Mahler HERE. 

And here's Andrew Clark in the Financial Times.   "Jurowski’s crisp, clinical control was such that you couldn’t help being diverted by the way he manicured this or that motif – sometimes to Mahler’s benefit, as in the Minuet’s counter-themes. But tempi were so drawn out, with every phrase held up for inspection, polish and communal admiration, that the performance suffocated under its own self-absorption."

Schumann Wigmore Hall Gilchrist Maltman

Schumann is a perennial at the Wigmore Hall.  This recital, with James Gilchrist, Christopher Maltman and Julius Drake, was well attended. Many friends in the audience new and old, By sheer coincidence two people, from different parts of the world met up, who'd both been in choirs where Maltman sang. The Wigmore Hall "family" spans the globe.

Whoever reorganized the order of the first songs deserves praise. Placing Trost im Gesang with Der frohe Waldersmann shows wit. Kerner and Eichendorff were very different men. Eichendorff was a devout Catholic, who shaped the idealistic Prussian education system. Kerner was a medical doctor who believed in what we'd now call pseudo-science – mesmerism, spirit messages etc. Yet which was really the more unconventional?

Kerner's traveller sets forth, confident that song will guide him on his path.  Eichendorff's traveller thinks about two quite different paths but hopes that God will arrange things right. The pious mood is underscored by something more troubling. Double-edged piety, like Mörike's Gebet. ("send me what you will, God, but not too much either way)"

In  Eichendorff's Fruhlingsfahrt, two sturdy youths set forth, both striving for lofty things. One finds happiness in simple things. The other is seduced by the sirens of the deep and ends up a shattered wreck. Both Fruhlingsfahrt and Der frohe Wandersman show that  Eichendorff's fascinated by wilder shores even while he praises domesticity. His homilies to God are talismanic, for he intuits that creativity can be dangerous. An artist is driven by something greater than his own free will.  Happy Wanderer? No way.

Perhaps Schumann, already aware of his own emotional extremes, intuited that Eichendorff understood the connection between art and madness. Eichendorff's poetry was "new" at the time, the poet outliving the composer. Hence the fearfully tricky phrasing in the song, and in Sängers Trost, which seem deliberately designed to knock a singer outside his comfort zone. Much credit to James Gilchrist for negotiating the difficulties so well. He's so engaged with meaning that he brings out the true spirit of these songs, which superficial performances don't reach.

Gilchrist is an ideal character tenor. Like Philip Langridge, he has the knack of getting inside a part, developing it through thoughtful observation and empathy. Gilchrist's spent most of his career in oratorio and song, but it is in opera where his skills in characterization are really needed.  As an actor, he's a natural because he's empathic, able to build personality into any part he sings. In opera, a singer with Gilchrist's emotional intelligence would do wonders.

I've never forgotten Christopher Maltman's Tarquinius in the Rape of Lucretia, where his body builder's physique gave the role a powerful, malevolent edge.  That's character singing, albeit in a different way.  While I was bothered by many things in Maltman's Liederkreis Op 39, my friends enjoyed it a lot.  Lieder is communication, so in that sense, it worked well.  There are just so many Liederkreises op 39 and 24, that we're spoiled. 

Withe the Four Lieder op 40 to settings of Hans Christaian Andersen, Maltman could focus on each song as a vignette, for each tells a story.  Der Spielmann lets him created the fiddler wildly playing at a wedding. Then the punchline, Bin selber ein armer Musikant. The fiddler's more involved in the wedding than we realize. He's pulling back, emotionally, much as Eichendorff switches to God.

Schumann's 12 Kerner Lieder op 35 were the highlight of the evening.  This is a very tightly structured cycle, sometimes compared to Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte, or even to a miniature symphony, even though the texts are a mixeed batch. This indicates that perhaps Schumann heard greater possibilities in them than a straightforward textual study might indicate.

Lust der Sturmnacht is strange.The poet wants the stormy night to continue because he can be with his lover. But can't they have fun without the wildness outside? Suddenly lust (in both senses) gives way to unearthly calm and purity. In Stirb, Lieb' und Freud', a young girl is praying, transfixed in rapture. The poet stunned to silence, knowing he can't compete with the Virgin Mary.

Gilchrist seems to intuit that this sudden switch between turbulence and ecstasy might just be what drew Schumann to put these random poems together in this order. Schumann was obsessed by cryptic puzzles and hidden clues. In this cycle the "tavern songs" are popular but drinking songs they aren't. Drink lowers defences, releasing ghosts, memories and suppressed emotion. The two key songs are moments of quiet contemplation: Stille Liebe and Stille Tränen.  Because Gilchrist captures the extreme mood swings so well, he captures the schizoid character of these songs. On the surface they don't fit together but if the highly literate Schumann heard connections, so should we. Wonderful, vivid singing, animated and expressive.

Afterwards, I told him that it was so good that it didn't matter if one single word wasn't ideal, in an otherwise outstanding performance.  "But it matters to me!", he saIt's that emotional honesty that makes Gilchrist an ideal character tenor.

Last week, when Julius Drake played Hugo Wolf, he hammered away so forcefully that someone commented that the piano might be faulty. At the Wigmore Hall, pianos are objects of sacred veneration. If a piano was out of tune, someone would be lynched.  Fortunately, this time Drake gave much more respect to tempi, dynamics and singers.  Much better!
COMING UP tomorrow: Makropulos Case,  Jurowski Mahler 3 and more.

László Polgár - moving personal tribute

László Polgár, who died unexpectedly on Sunday, was a wonderful bass, who sang with  feeling and authority.  Yet he was also a man with personality. It does make a difference if an artist has soul. Once I met a TV actress famous for playing feisty. In real life, she was, one might say, a "blank canvas" who'd take on any projection. In opera, I hope and believe, it helps that the performer cares deeply enough  to know their music "from within" so when they communicate, it's more than outward form.

So here is a personal tribute from someone who appreciated Polgár very deeply. In the media, we usually read standardized bumpf but this is different. It's extremely moving because it's sincere and genuine.

"He was a wonderful example of what is sometimes termed a 'bass noble'. His dark and resonant voice, always expressive, was produced through an excellent technique that served him well in all ranges. This was coupled with an innate dignity of delivery -- well, Laszlo was about as noble as they come."

"Having said that, I have to admit that the role in which I perhaps loved him the most was Leporello! He could be very funny when he wanted to be. The most disreputable Pistola that ever was! And his Basilio was simply a hoot."

"These were just fun things, though -- his serious repertoire included Filippo, Gurnemanz, Arkel, Gremin. Major roles in all languages, in theaters around the world. But the role for which he will always be remembered is Bartok's Bluebeard. He sang the part innumerable times all over the world; it fitted like a glove."

"Anyone who ever heard him in a Liederabend will have wonderful memories of the evening. I remember hearing him sing 'Auch kleine Dinge können uns entzücken' and thinking that he was a stellar example of one who understood the art of intimate communication as well as the big scope needed for a Sarastro of monumental stature."

"He communicated effortlessly in many languages; he loved to rehearse even more than he loved to perform; he was a strikingly handsome man who often made jokes about his big nose: 'Nature blessed me with this nose, I didn't invent it myself!'"

Ole Bull 200

The name Ole Bull's familiar to all, but how many have heard his music? Norway's greatest fiddler, a charismatic personality, who was to Norway what Sibelius was to Finland, only a lot more flamboyant.

Last week he was featured Composer of the Week on BBC Radio 3. Four broadcasts still available on demand. Most BBC Composer of the Weeks are boring, repeated many times, but this Ole Bull series is brand new, unusually well researched and informative. Plus, none of this music is familiar, so grab the opportunity to hear something very different indeed.

Bull's career and music – he was born in 1810 and died in 1880 – are set in the context of Norwegian culture at the time, when the country was still ruled by Denmark and later was in a political union with Sweden, and national identity was still evolving. Music, literature, poetry, even a new language Nynorsk. Listen specially to programmes 3 and 4. What sounds like Edvard Grieg sonetimes is, sometimes isn't - it's Bull! And the pianist/composer Agathe Backer Grøndahl is included - she who raised a huge familiy on her own and wrote music nights.

Faust - complete download

Not Gounod's Faust at ENO, but  F W Murnau's Faust from 1926. This is based on the Goethe version of the story, with Gretchen burned at the stake. The perspective's completely different from the medieval version. Goethe's heretical!

His God jests with the Devil who makes a bet that he can corrupt even the holiest of men, scholarly old Faust. Germany's in the grip of terrible plague, Savonarolas and false prophets abound. Faust realizes books aren't going to help, so he does a deal with the devil, deliciously played by Emil Jannings, the schoolmaster in The Blue Angel., which you can see in full download on this site by clicking on the link.

Faust gets turned into a handsome young man, re-enacting the youth he probably didn't have curled up with books.  He and Gretchen fall in love and there's a baby. So she gets thrown out and eventually burned at the stake. Faust returns, but now he's old and wretched again. Still, Gretchen recognizes him, and he's redeemed. Liebe, says the film, written in flames.  Love wins, not so much God, unless it was God who willed love to happen.

This film is such an influential classic. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalpse, the crowd scenes, and the landscape over which the Devil flies, carrying Faust in his arms.  Evil birds of doom, a bit like cranes but scarier. Precursors of the airborne hordes in Flash Gordon or Apocalypse Now? A very "Germanic" setting. This proved to be Murnau's last Weimar movie. By 1927 he was settled successfully in Hollywood. What a cultural jump from Faust to Sunrise, Murnau's adaptation of a Gerrman story to open-air California.

László Polgár 1947-2010

This afternoon, László Polgár passed away, unexpectedly. Tall and imposing, he was a powerful stage presence. And then that voice! So dark, yet so agile. The last time I heard him live was a concert performance of Tristan und Isolde Act 2. Nothing was going right, none of the singers was on the ball, conducting sloppy, as if it was a run-through. Then Polgár comes on. Even though he clearly had a heavy cold, he sang King Marke with such authority and dignity that it didn't seem out of character at all when he coughed. It was a bit late in the concert for him to save the show, but he was memorable.