Preview — Tosca, Royal Opera, July 2009

The main reason I bought tickets for this revival was to see Deborah Voigt as Tosca, with Marcello Giordani as Cavaradossi. Unfortunately Ms. Voigt has cancelled due to acute colitis, and will be replaced by two other ladies: Angela Gheorghiu and Nelly Miricioiu. The first night will see Ms. Gheorghiu sing, and her performance will doubtless be well covered in the national newspapers. I am attending the second night on July 11 when Ms. Miricioiu sings, and will report immediately thereafter.

The remainder of the cast remains unchanged, with Bryn Terfel as Scarpia, and the conductor is Daniel Oren. The last time I saw Tosca was May 2008, in this same production by Jonathan Kent, and Antonio Pappano did a brilliant job of conducting. Daniel Oren has a lot to live up to, but I am optimistic. I am also optimistic about Tosca herself, since I did not care for Micaela Carosi’s performance last year; she lost her pitch on some of the sustained notes and lacked the pathos essential to this role. This time the Royal Opera House has chosen vastly more experienced Toscas. Ms. Carosi was young, whereas Deborah Voigt is 48, Angela Gheorghiu 43, and Nelly Miricioiu 57. As for Marcello Giordani as Cavaradossi, I saw him in March as Sharpless in the Metropolitan Opera simulcast of Butterfly and he sang like a god. He was also Des Grieux in the Metropolitan Opera broadcast of Manon Lescaut, but his interaction with Karita Mattila as Manon lacked freshness, and both of them looked too old for their parts. Tosca, however, is a very different opera and I am looking forward to a terrific interaction between the two lovers.

Review — L’Amour de loin, English National Opera, London Coliseum, July 2009

If you like Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande you may love this opera by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, though I prefer music with more bite. It is a static, dreamlike creation lacking theatrical action, though that side of things was ably provided by director Daniele Finzi Pasca. He drew on his experience with Cirque du Soleil, and really did a terrific job, being responsible for the choreography and the lighting design, which was very colourful and clever. Each of the three principals was shadowed by two acrobats, and in that sense it reminded me of the recent Royal Opera production of Acis and Galatea, but this was so much better than Wayne McGregor’s nonsense that there was no comparison at all.

The story itself is based on a love poem by a famous troubadour from 12^th century Aquitaine, a period when such poems in the Provençal language dealt with amor de lonh (distant love). The original author was troubadour Jaufré Rudel, prince of Blaye in Aquitaine, and his work had the title La vida breve. There are three main characters: the troubadour Jaufré; a travelling pilgrim; and Cleménce the princess of Tripoli.

The prince is obsessed by the idea of an ideal love, and though his companions mock him, the pilgrim says he has met such a lady, and when he returns to Tripoli, tells Cleménce about the prince. She prefers to remain distant to avoid any suffering, but the prince wants to meet her, and makes the journey, albeit full of foreboding and indecision, from which he becomes seriously ill. By the time he arrives in North Africa he is close to death, and meeting her, dies in her arms, metaphorically consummating his love. She rages against fate and enters a convent, praying to one far away, whether God or her lover we know not.

The libretto by Lebanese-born writer Amin Maalouf is rather dreamy, like the music. For example as Jaufré travels by ship he asks the pilgrim, “Why is the sea blue?” and the pilgrim responds, “Because it reflects the sky”. “But why is the sky blue?” “Because it reflects the sea”. What are we to make of that — was it in the original by Jaufré himself?

Saariaho’s music is kind to the singers in the sense that they never seem to be battling with it, but easily singing over it, and I thought Faith Sherman did particularly well as the pilgrim. So indeed did Roderick Williams as Jaufré, and Joan Rodgers did well as Cleménce. This UK premiere, under the baton of music director Edward Gardner, presumably did justice to the composer’s intentions, but I have to say that I found it dull. The production however was extraordinary, and I loved the set designs by Jean Rabasse, and the costumes by Kevin Pollard, even if the pilgrim did look like an elf from Peter Jackson’s film version of the Lord of the Rings. The journey by ship was done against a wonderful background of swirling water projected onto a screen, with acrobats performing throughout the voyage. The only thing I didn’t like about the production was the small screen that two performers wheeled to the front of the stage from time to time, showing rather odd images — it was a distraction.

Review — The Cherry Orchard, Old Vic, June 2009

This, the last of Chekhov’s plays, was presented more as comedy than tragedy in Sam Mendes’ production, performed to a translation by Tom Stoppard. The comedy was effective in showing the head-in-the-sand attitude of a family who are more concerned with romance and betrothal than finding a way out of their financial difficulties. Indeed, Sinead Cusack came over well as the mother, Ranevskaya who is in denial of her impecuniosity, and unwilling to face the prospect of tearing down her beloved cherry orchard and using the land for summer cottages. Simon Russell Beale as the ex-serf Lopakhin did a splendid job of trying to impose some rational behaviour on these once-wealthy landowners, warning them they will lose the whole estate if they do nothing. As they remain paralysed in a state of denial he buys it himself, owning the place to which his father and grandfather were once indentured.

While I regard Ranevskaya and Lopakhin as the principal characters, the rest of the cast did very well, and this was a team performance without anyone dominating things. When Ranevskaya returns from Paris to her estate she brings her 17-year old daughter Anya, well portrayed by Morven Christie, and the girl’s German governess Charlotta, dramatically played by Selina Cadell, who did a wonderful job of the conjuring tricks in the party scene. Rebecca Hall as Ranevskaya’s adopted daughter Varya had excellent stage presence with her brooding angst, and yearning for Lopakhin. The large cast comprises some twenty-odd characters, so I shall only mention two or three more. Ethan Hawke was suitably irritating as the student and ex-tutor of Ranevskaya’s late son, Paul Jesson was good as the sentimentally silly brother of Ranevskaya, and Richard Easton did an excellent job as the old retainer who is left behind in the sealed-up house after the others have all left. As he slumps in a chair, falls off and lies on the ground we hear a sharp crack, signifying the beginning of the end of the cherry orchard as the first tree falls.

The set design by Anthony Ward was a raised platform with carpets but no other scenery, and the lighting by Paul Pyant worked well, as did the sound by Paul Arditti, with music by Mark Bennett. Costumes by Catherine Zuber were of the period, namely start of the twentieth century. All in all a simple but effective production, and a fine performance from the cast of British and American actors.

Review — Phèdre, National Theatre, June 2009

This play by Racine, originally performed in 1677, was presented here in a 1998 version by Ted Hughes, originally staged just weeks before he died. The story is based on the ancient Greek legend of Hippolytus, who was the object of unremitting desire by his father’s wife, Phaedra. In the Greek original, well expressed in Euripedes’ play Hippolytus, the young man is a devotee of the chaste goddess Artemis (Diana in the Roman version), and Aphrodite takes revenge against his rejection of erotic love by inspiring his step-mother with insatiable desire for him. His father Theseus, king of Athens, and of Minotaur fame, believes Hippolytus has forced himself on Phaedra, and calls down a curse from Poseidon. Only after the curse has taken effect, and Hippolytus has been killed by a bull-like monster from the sea, does Theseus realise his error. Racine’s main change to this legend is the creation of a new character, Aricia with whom Hippolytus is secretly in love, and she with him. This removes the misogyny from Hippolytus, and since Aricia is the daughter of an earlier king of Athens, it creates a political dimension. The other important difference is that Euripedes has Phaedra commit suicide after writing a note accusing Hippolytus of rape, whereas in Racine the accusation comes from Phaedra’s nurse while her mistress still lives.

In this performance, Phaedra was played by Helen Mirren, portraying an insecure woman only too conscious of her own inadequacies. Her stepson Hippolytus was played by Dominic Cooper, calm and secure in his own feelings, and her husband Theseus was powerfully played by Stanley Townsend, roaring his anger at Hippolytus and summoning Poseidon to avenge him. These three made a strong cast of principals, well supported by Margaret Tyzack as Phaedra’s scheming nurse, Ruth Negga as a sincere Aricia, and John Shrapnel as Hippolytus’ counsellor, whose speech describing the young man’s fearful death was very dramatically rendered. In fact this superb Nicholas Hytner production, with designs by Bob Crowley, lighting by Paule Constable, and an excellent sound score by Adam Cork, ends dramatically with Aricia dragging the dead remains of Hippolytus in a bleeding sack from stage rear to stage front. The broad trail of blood on the clean wooden stage is very effective.

Glyndebourne 75th Anniversary Concert, Glyndebourne, June 2009

This lovely concert, celebrating 75 years since the founding of the Glyndebourne Opera in 1934, featured several singers who are performing this season, mainly in Falstaff, but also in Rusalka, The Fairy Queen and Giulio Cesare. It also featured others with a strong Glyndebourne connection, such as Gerald Finley, Sarah Connolly, Emma Bell, and Kate Royal, who were all in the Glyndebourne chorus at one time, along with such luminaries as Thomas Allen, Sergei Leiferkus, Felicity Lott, and Anne Sofie von Otter. The orchestra played stirringly under the baton of music director Vladimir Jurowski, and I particularly liked the performances of Thomas Allen as Figaro in Act I of Rossini’s Barber, of Gerald Finley as Wolfram in Act III of Tannhäuser, of Sergei Leiferkus as the eponymous character in Rachmaninov’s Aleko, of Anne Sofie von Otter singing the habañera from Carmen, of Felicity Lott and Thomas Allen singing the delightful duet between Hanna and Danilo at the end of Lehar’s Merry Widow, plus Felicity Lott, Anne Sofie von Otter, and Lucy Crowe in the final trio from Rosenkavalier. A list of what was performed is given below — unfortunately Brandon Jovanovich was unable to sing, so his excerpt from Werther and his presence as Otello in the first item were cancelled. Apart from this the only disappointment was Danielle de Niese as Norina in Act I of Don Pasquale, whose voice seemed somewhat screechy in a cavatina that lacked the charm and subtlety it ought to have had.

Otello: Paolo Battaglia as Montano, Gerald Finley as Iago, Alasdair Elliott as Roderigo and Peter Hoare as Cassio sang the beginning of Act I before the entry of Otello.

Il Barbieri di Seviglia: Thomas Allen sang Largo al facotum, Figaro’s description of his own occupation in Act I. This was delightful and really got the evening going.

L’italiana in Algeri: Marie-Nicole Lemieux went from suffering to scheming in Isabella’s Cruda sorte! from Act I.

Don Pasquale: Danielle de Niese sang Norina’s Quel guardo il cavaliere, but seemed to be trying too hard.

La clemenza di Tito: Sarah Connolly sang Sesto’s Act I aria Parto, parto ma tu, ben mio to his beloved Vittelia.

Idomeneo: Emma Bell as Elletra joined the Glyndebourne chorus singing Placido è il mar, evoking a calm sea and the prospect of a prosperous voyage, before the onset of a terrifying storm at the end of Act II.

Die Meistersinger: the orchestral prelude to Act III.

Tannhäuser: Gerald Finley sang Wolfram’s melancholy farewell to Elisabeth, O du mein holder Abendstern, addressed to the evening star.

Khovanshchina: Larissa Diadkova gave a powerful rendering of Martha’s prophecy to Prince Golitsyn in Act II, predicting his disgrace and exile.

Aleko: Sergei Leiferkus sang a cavatina by the eponymous character in this Rachmaninov opera. He sang superbly, with excellent diction.

Carmen: Anne Sofie von Otter sang the habañera, her body, arm and hand movements conveying Carmen’s cavalier attitude to love.

Manon: Kate Royal sang Adieu notre petite table from Act II, as she prepares to deceive Des Grieux and leave the home she has shared with him.

Die lustige Witwe: Felicity Lott and Thomas Allen sang that wonderful duet Lippen schweigen between Hanna and Danilo at the end of the opera.

La Boheme: Ana Maria Martinez sang Mimi’s charming Si, mi chiamano Mimi from Act I.

Der Rosenkavalier: Felicity Lott as the Marschallin, Anne Sofie von Otter as Octavian, and Lucy Crowe as Sophie in the trio at the end of the opera, starting with the Marschallin’s Hab’mir’s gelobt.

Le nozze di Figaro: The finale of the opera with Kate Royal as the Countess, Gerald Finley as the Count, Jennifer Holloway as Cherubino, Danielle de Niese as Susanna, and Matthew Rose as Figaro.

Review — La Traviata, Royal Opera, June 2009

The last time I saw this fine Richard Eyre production was in January 2008, but this time it was better, for several reasons: the preparation, the singing and the conducting. It seems Richard Eyre himself rehearsed the revival, which explains the excellent acting from the entire cast; the principal singers were Renée Fleming, Joseph Calleja and Thomas Hampson, and the conductor was Antonio Pappano.

Renée Fleming gave a superbly sensitive performance as Violetta, brilliantly showing her fragility and death at the end, and Joseph Calleja sang like a god as Alfredo. I saw him perform the same role at the Lyric Opera in Chicago in October 2007, where I commented that his voice was full and romantic, perfect for the part, but on that occasion his acting was very wooden. Here he acted the part, and along with Thomas Hampson as his father, Giorgio Germont, we had a simply wonderful trio of top singers. Hampson interacted well with Violetta, cool and aloof at first, but warming to her as he began to believe her sincerity. Between father and son the interaction was powerful, and the father even threw the son to the ground at one point in the country house where he lives with Violetta.

With three brilliant principals carrying things off to such thrilling effect it seems hardly necessary to mention anyone else. But Sarah Pring was very fine as Annina, the maid to Violetta, and I much liked Richard Wiegold as Doctor Grenvil. Then of course the conducting of Antonio Pappano was sensitive and full of emotional energy. This was a terrific performance of Traviata, and if Renée Fleming omitted some high notes, it was only the dress rehearsal.

Finally I would just add that this is what the Royal Opera should be doing, giving the audience a production in which great singers can express themselves and provide the audience with a convincing account of an operatic masterpiece. It is sadly the case — and the recent Lulu was a striking example — that the Opera House occasionally hires a director who convinces the senior management that his unusual way of presenting an opera will somehow shed new light of matters that many members of the audience already understand very well. By a process of hyper-intellectual argument the director loses the plot, and the audience find themselves infuriated by un-theatrical nonsense. This was the perfect antidote. Thank goodness for Richard Eyre.

Parthenogenesis, Royal Opera House, Linbury Studio, June 2009

When the curtain fell the audience waited for a scene change that never came. Eventually someone applauded and when this was taken up, the curtain lifted so the cast could take bows — it was the end of the opera.

The inspiration for this opera was far more striking than the result. In 1944 in Hanover a young woman was thrown to the pavement by a bomb blast nearby, suffered minor injuries, and nine months later gave birth to a daughter. The girl was said to have identical fingerprints, and other genetic indicators, to her mother, who insisted that she had never had sex with anyone. Doctors confirmed this seemed to be the case, and conjectured that the shock of the bomb may have triggered parthenogenesis — non-sexual reproduction — a word derived from the Greek parthenon meaning a young maiden.

On this unlikely theme the composer James MacMillan has created a 50-minute opera in which an adult clone named Anna lies in hospital in the last stages of ovarian cancer. In her sleep she recalls her mother’s meeting a fallen angel who visits her bedroom to inform her she will give birth without first having sex. The mother and the angel are singing roles, performed by Amy Freston and Stephan Loges, while Charlotte Roach took the spoken role of Anna. The text was by Michael Symmonds Roberts, and while James MacMillan is a composer inspired by intellectual and religious themes, he seems to be no man of the stage. As a piece of theatre this simply didn’t work.

Arcadia, Duke of York’s Theatre, June 2009

This Tom Stoppard play cleverly juxtaposes the modern world of literary scholarship and mathematics with the early nineteenth century world of literary creativity, classical study and scientific enquiry. In the early period we have a very clever girl of 16 named Thomasina, played by Jessica Cave, and her tutor Septimus Hodge, wittily played by Dan Stevens, along with a poet, and others. These early nineteenth century characters are juxtaposed in the modern world by a dreadful literary academic named Bernard Nightingale, played by Neil Pearson, along with an author named Hannah, wittily played by Samantha Bond, and a clever but rather intense mathematician named Valentine, very ably portrayed by Ed Stoppard.

Hannah is doing a book about the history of the Derbyshire country estate where all the action takes place, and Bernard visits with questions about Byron staying there in the early nineteenth century, and some slightly daft and ultimately irrelevant ideas about was going on at the time. While Bernard and Hannah plumb the past, those in the past enquire about the future. Thomasina hits on the idea of the second law of thermodynamics to explain the arrow of time, whose direction is entirely absent from Newton’s laws of motion, which are the same going backwards or forwards. As she points out, you can stir jam into a rice pudding, but you can’t stir it out again, and the three laws of Thermodynamics have often been wittily stated as: you can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t get out of the game. The second law says that available energy gradually becomes unavailable, so that in the long run everything will be at ‘room temperature’ and the universe will die out. Thomasina also discusses mathematics with her tutor, and devises an iterated algorithm that Valentine, in the modern world with his Apple laptop, is able to use to create beautiful shapes of nature.

The ability to make this into theatre is Stoppard’s genius, and while the main passion is intellectual, he sprinkles sex into both periods. The women are keen for some fun, and in the early period a poet’s wife, whom we never see on stage, along with Lady Croom, elegantly played by Nancy Carroll, breathe sexual desire into the proceedings. In the modern world Hannah shows sexual interest in the dreadful Bernard, and the young Chloë Coverly, charmingly played by Lucy Griffiths, shows a bright interest in things sexual as did her earlier incarnation as Thomasina, who starts the play off by asking her tutor what carnal embrace means. In the end she desires more than words from her tutor, but when she goes to bed with papers and a candle we realise this is where her room goes up in flames and her genius is lost forever.

This revival is by David Leveaux, with sets and lighting by Hildegard Bechtler and Paul Anderson, but on the Duke of York’s stage it is unfortunately more cramped than when I saw it at the National in 1993, and the impression of extensive gardens behind the house is lost. The acting was very good, though I would have preferred more charm from Jessica Cave as Thomasina, whose high-pitched voice resonated sharpness, while Neil Pearson could have made Bernard less obnoxious and more smugly clever, which may have kept things in better balance. But Samantha Bond, Ed Stoppard and Dan Stevens were a delight to watch.

Review — Jewels, Royal Ballet, June 2009

This 1967 Balanchine ballet is in three parts: Emeralds, Rubies and Diamonds. Mr. B originally hoped that the jewellers Van Cleef and Arpels might bankroll the ballet, and although that never happened, they did sponsor this Royal Ballet production two years ago. The staging is simple yet effective and in each part the costumes, reflecting emeralds, rubies, and diamonds, are delightful.

Emeralds is to Fauré’s incidental music for Pelléas et Mélisande. In this strange tale by Maeterlinck, Mélisande is found by a stream in a forest, like a naiad, and the green of emeralds recalls both the forest and the watery world from whence she comes. The leading couple were Tamara Rojo and Valerie Hristov, with Leanne Benjamin and Bennet Gartside as the second couple, and Deirdre Chapman, Laura Morera and Steven McRae in the pas-de-trois. They all danced extremely well, particularly Tamara Rojo, Leanne Benjamin and Steven McRae, as did the supporting artists, and this was a wonderful start to the evening.

Rubies is to Stravinsky’s Capriccio for piano and orchestra. The racy choreography involves a pas-de-deux for a central couple, in this case Alexandra Ansanelli and Carlos Acosta, who were full of vivacity, looking as if they were really enjoying themselves. They are complemented by another woman, in this case Laura McCulloch, who plays a temptress role, and she and the lead couple take it in turns to accompany the supporting dancers. Again the ensemble work was excellent.

Diamonds is to music from Tchaikovsky’s Symphony 3, which was his last composition before starting work on Swan Lake, and the ballerina is like a diamond in glacial splendour, a precursor to the cold beauty of Odette in Swan Lake. The principal couple, Alina Cojacura and Rupert Pennefather were brilliant. He danced like a god, with great precision and a lovely line, and she was simply delightful. They were attended by: Yehui Choe, Hikaru Kobayashi, Helen Crawford and Emma Maguire, as the four soloists, whose dancing was a delight to watch, as they inter-weaved with one another on stage. Again the ensemble work of the other dancers was superb, and this was altogether a terrific evening with a wonderful cast. Valeriy Ovsyanikov conducted with great brio and precision.

Tribute to Diaghilev, Royal Opera House, June 2009

This was a delightful mixture of divertissements, very ably conducted by Valery Ovsianikov with the orchestra of the English National Ballet. The most striking items were Igor Zelensky and Ulyana Lopatkina dancing a pas-de-deux from Scheherazade, Marianela Nuñez and Thiago Soares dancing the black swan pas-de-deux from Swan Lake, Zelensky as Apollo, and Ulyana Lopatkina as The Dying Swan. Here is the list of what was done — in my view they should have cut Daphnis and Chloë, and Tamar, both performed to recorded music and to choreography unconnected with Diaghilev.

Scheherazade by Igor Zelensky and Ulyana Lopatkina of the Kirov, choreography by Fokine, décor and costumes by Leon Bakst. Simply superb.

Daphnis and Chloë by Natsha Oughtred and Federico Bonelli of the Royal Ballet, choreography by Ashton, décor and costumes by John Craxton. Nicely done.

Petrushka by Dmitri Gruzdyev of the English National Ballet, choreography by Fokine, décor and costumes by Alexandre Benois. Disappointing—unmusical and lacking pathos.

La Chatte by Alexandra Ansanelli of the Royal Ballet, choreography by Ashton in homage to Fanny Elssler, décor and costumes by William Chappell. Very nicely done.

Giselle pas-de-deux from Act II by Mathilde Froustey and Mathias Heymann of the Paris Opera Ballet, choreography by Fokine, décor and costumes by Benois. Well done.

Tamar by Irma Nioradze and Ilya Kuznetsov of the Kirov, choreography by Smoriginas, décor and costumes by Bakst. They should either have done the original Fokine choreography or omitted this, particularly since it was to recorded music.

Le Spectre de la Rose by Yevgenia Obraztsova of the Kirov and Dmitri Gudanov of the Bolshoi, choreography by Fokine, décor and costumes by Bakst. Beautifully performed.

Apollo by Maria Kowroski of the NYCity Ballet and Igor Zelensky of the Kirov, choreography by Balanchine, décor and costumes by Andre Bauchant. Nicely done.

Les Sylphides by Tamara Rojo and David Makhateli, choreography by Fokine, décor and costumes by Benois. Well performed.

Le Tricorne by Dmitri Gudanov of the Bolshoi, choreography by Massine, décor and costumes by Picasso. Strongly performed.

The Firebird by Irma Nioradze and Ilya Kuznetsov of the Kirov, choreography by Fokine, décor and costumes by Gontcharova. Well performed.

Les Biches by Mara Galeazzi and Bennet Gartside of the Royal Ballet, choreography by Nijinska. Well done.

Swan Lake pas-de-deux from Act III by Marianela Nuñez and Thiago Soares of the Royal Ballet, choreography by Petipa. A superb performance, particularly from Nuñez.

Le Carnaval by Yevgenia Obraztsova and Andrei Batalov of the Kirov, choreography by Fokine. Very nicely done.

The Dying Swan by Ulyana Lopatkina, choreography by Fokine. Beautifully performed.