Les Troyens, Metropolitan Opera live cinema relay, January 5, 2013

Where are the Trojans when we need them? They provided the Greeks with stories portraying a welcome incompetence, letting a wooden horse full of Greeks into their city, and having their great warrior Hector defeat someone he thought was Achilles, only to be killed by the real one.

MetOpera image/ Cory Weaver

But in this Met production the Trojans are strongly represented, and Deborah Voigt as Cassandra was spectacular, not only singing the part with great power but exhibiting a stage presence worthy of the world’s greatest actresses. The glorious costume helped show her to be the most beautiful woman in the world, desired by Apollo who gave her the gift of prophecy but took it away with the curse that no one would ever believe her.

Coroebus and Cassandra/ KenHoward

As the Trojan prince Aeneas, Bryan Hymel took over from Marcello Giordani, who was a puzzling choice for this role. Hymel sang it at Covent Garden last summer, and was once again magnificent. His Act V solo Inutiles regrets was terrific, and his chemistry with Susan Graham as Dido was excellent.

She really came into her own in Act V, so beautiful in her mauve dress earlier in that act, so convincing in her grief. In Acts III and IV she also sang gloriously but came over more as a suburban widow than a queen, though I blame director Francesca Zambello here. I’ve seen her render other vivacious heroines in an unattractive way, and what did all that choreography by Doug Varone achieve in Acts III and IV? It was naff. It was tiresome. Some people left the cinema after Act IV, and indeed the sugary atmosphere was so cloying that Aeneas must have wanted out too. But that’s not the way Virgil intended it, nor indeed Berlioz.

Aeneas and son/ KenHoward

The direction and setting in Acts III and IV was extraordinarily suburban and unregal. Dido, Aeneas and others sat around watching entertainment and looking like actors in a television sit-com, while the camera zoomed in as Dido rearranged her dress. Queens do not do this — indeed imagine Angela Merkel rearranging her dress at a semi-public entertainment, and she is a mere prime minister. Dido was the great queen who led her people from Tyre to found a new colony in North Africa, but Acts III and IV failed to exhibit this. And even in Act V when Dido committed suicide she thrust the short sword to the side of her waist and then turned away from the audience. She should turn first, particularly with camera close-ups, so we can’t see the pretence.

Directorial faults aside, Fabio Luisi in the orchestra pit gave a lyrical account of Berlioz’s score, and the singers and huge chorus were magnificent. Karen Cargill sang very strongly as Dido’s sister Anna, as did Kwangchul Youn as Dido’s Minister Narbal, showing the gravitas that befits a man who sang a wonderful Gurnemanz at Bayreuth last summer. The Met have assembled an excellent cast and among other soloists, Dwayne Croft sang with nobility as Cassandra’s fiancé Coroebus, and Paul Appleby gave a stirring performance of Hylas’s song at the start of Act V.

Dido in agony/ CoryWeaver

With David McVicar’s production at Covent Garden, La Scala, San Francisco and Vienna, and now this production at the Met, Les Troyens seems to be much in vogue, but it is long and with the tiresome choreography on display here some cuts to the dance sequences might be very welcome.

Robert le Diable, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, December 2012

Before the first night of this hugely theatrical opera the ROH sent out a dramatic announcement saying they were “extremely grateful to Patrizia Ciofi, who has taken over the part of Isabelle at extremely short notice and will sing the role for the first four performances”. In the event she was wonderful, having sung the role before under conductor Daniel Oren, and as soon as she appeared in Act II, warmly vocal in her grief at the apparent loss of Robert, the whole performance rose to new heights.

Act I, all images ROH/ Bill Cooper

Robert himself is a prey to forces beyond his control in the form of his demon father Bertram, and Alice, a Micaela-like character who adores him and brings a letter from his mother. That letter forms a small coup de theatre when she produces it in Act V. In the tug of war between her and Bertram, it persuades Robert to take her side, and go on to marry Isabelle, while Bertram is consigned to the fires of hell.

Congratulations to director Laurent Pelly for persuading the Royal Opera to put on this ‘Hollywood blockbuster’ as he has called it. It was a huge success at its first performance in 1831, remaining immensely popular throughout the nineteenth century, though unseen at Covent Garden since 1890. Could Pelly make it work, like Carmen, for a modern audience? Well, he can and he did.

Alice and Robert

He was helped by a superb cast, Bryan Hymel singing the very difficult role of Robert, which has seven high C’s in the first forty minutes, to say nothing of later exigencies of the role. Marina Poplavskaya sang beautifully as Alice after an uncertain start, looking serene, yet spitting defiance at John Relyea’s Bertram as she clung weakly to the cross in Act III. Relyea was superb, so full of menace as he threatens Alice, yet so urbane in his dealings with Robert as he persuades him to gamble away everything, before conjuring up the Prince of Granada, very well sung by Ashley Riches, to challenge him for Isabelle’s hand.

This opera reflects a nineteenth century view of the Middle Ages, cleverly signified by imagery at the very start. Two drinkers sit at a table, under a picture of a bottle of Vino di Sicilia labelled 1831, indicating the year of the opera and the location of the action in Sicily. The libretto was based on old legends of Robert of Normandy, father to William the Conqueror, and the star singers and sensational stage effects on at its first performances inspired Chopin to call it a masterpiece and doubt anything in the theatre had ever reached its level of splendour.

Bertram and Alice

Pelly succeeds brilliantly with his production, the primary colours of the horses and the court ladies in the first two acts giving way to a heady German Romanticism in Act III showing mountainous terrain reminiscent of Der Freischütz, first seen in Paris seven years before Robert. The set turns, a cave appears, and inside the mountain devils use pitchforks to toss condemned souls to the flames of hell, in a scene reminiscent of the right panel of Hans Memling’s Day of Judgement. In Act V a beast of hell with flames in its mouth appears as a cardboard cut-out, and from the other side of the stage cut-out clouds bring on Alice. Battle between heaven and hell can commence, and Pelly has captured what for us is the kitsch nature of the opera, making it a theatrical treat.

Wonderful costumes by Pelly himself, with sets by Chantal Thomas beautifully lit by Duane Schuler who managed the trick of having Alice in the light, and Bertram in the dark as they come together in Act III. And then of course there is Meyerbeer’s music, superbly conducted by Daniel Oren. It worked its magic for me in Act IV as it evoked the play of higher powers, until arpeggios on the harp give a pause for reflection as Isabelle launches into a lovely aria professing her love for Robert.

Heaven versus Hell

Congratulations to the Royal Opera for giving us this hugely revitalised staging of a work that had a profound effect on both opera and ballet. The Act III music for the dance of the nuns reminded me of Løvenskiold’s La Sylphide, which it foreshadowed by a year. It was probably the first ballet ever performed with white tutus, and was a raunchy affair from which Maria Taglioni pulled out after her contracted six performances.

Timings in the cast list: Acts I and II 75 minutes, Act III 48, Acts IV and V 67 minutes, with two intermissions. That makes about 4 hours 35 minutes if the intervals are 30 minutes each, or less if they cut the length of the second interval, as they did on the first night.

Performances continue until December 21 — for details click here.

Les Troyens, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, June 2012

As the Euro crisis deepens, it is salutary to see Cassandra on stage — her foresight ever accurate but never believed.

The City of Troy, all images ROH/ Bill Cooper

In the first part of this grand opera, Cassandra is the main character, superbly sung and acted by Anna Caterina Antonacci. It all starts with the chorus happily expressing their joy that the Greeks have been routed, but then Cassandra appears and the music abruptly changes mood. Les Grecs ont disparu! … but what dread plan lies behind their departure she asks. The first part leads up to the destruction of Troy, and is the perfect start to this great tale — pity Berlioz never lived to see it performed! A complete five-act production was first seen in Karlsruhe in 1890, 21 years after his death, but even then it was spread over two nights. Yet the whole thing takes a mere five and a half hours, including two half-hour intervals. Productions are rare, but it’s not the length alone — we’re used to that with Wagner — the trouble is you need a quiver full of first rate singers, including two brilliant performers in the mezzo roles of Cassandra and Dido, a Trojan horse, a ship, two walled cities, open countryside … oh, and two dance interludes.

The horse enters Troy to Cassandra’s consternation

Fortunately, David McVicar has overcome all difficulties in this new co-production with the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, and San Francisco Opera. He places the action in an undetermined time that could easily be seventeenth/ eighteenth century, which is not a problem. After all, scholarly opinion and tradition places the Trojan War about 1200 BC, Dido in the late ninth century, the founding of Rome in the mid-eighth century BC, and Troy had not yet been discovered when Berlioz wrote his opera. Costumes by Moritz Junge are wonderful, sets by Es Devlin (who is also designing the Olympic closing ceremony) are super, and lighting by Wolfgang Göbbel is magical. For instance in Act IV when Dido and Aeneas fully express their love, the model city that was on the ground turns upside down and suffused with a violet glow, its buildings twinkle with light as if it were the starry sky. The model city was a clever idea, and at the start of the second half when the Carthaginians sing with happy grace to their queen Dido, I almost expected her to respond Euch macht ihr’s leicht (Hans Sachs) … just kidding, but Moritz Junge’s costumes for this act reminded me of the final scene in Meistersinger, where Covent Garden’s staging includes model houses. Here, Dido tells us it is just seven years since she left Tyre to escape the murderer of her husband, and with the myth and history so well explained in Berlioz’s own libretto, this opera is Wagnerian in conception.

The happy people of Carthage surrounding Dido

The singing was terrific. Eva-Maria Westbroek was a gentle yet powerful Dido, Bryan Hymel gave a remarkable performance as Aeneas, and their rapturous duet in Act IV came over beautifully, enhanced by lovely changes of lighting. Hanna Hipp sang with great feeling as Dido’s sister Anna, and Brindley Sherratt was a striking vocal presence as her chief minister Narbal. Fabio Capitanucci came over strongly as Cassandra’s fiancé Coroebus, and Barbara Senator was entirely convincing as Aeneas’ son Ascanius. Excellent performances in all the solo roles, not just vocally but in terms of movement and stage presence. For example, Pamela Helen Stephen had huge presence as queen Hecuba of Troy, and Jihoon Kim was very effective as the ghost of Hector.

This massive team effort, with its magnificent chorus, was held together with consummate skill by Antonio Pappano in the orchestra pit, and as he said in a recent interview, this is just the sort of project the Royal Opera House should be undertaking. Quite right, and though there were some boos for the production team at the end, I didn’t understand why — it was a remarkable achievement. The Trojan horse’s head from the end of the first part was matched by a similar human torso and head at the end, which I took to indicate future battles between Carthage and Rome, brought on by Dido’s ritual curse of Aeneas and his descendents, and her foreknowledge of the mighty Hannibal.

A minstrel sings for Dido and Aeneas

McVicar’s production somehow manages to make sense of a world we have lost, where ghosts urge people on to great deeds, and gods issue commands. Perhaps some of our political leaders today would love to justify their actions as heeding urges of ghosts or gods, but in this remarkable story that’s what happens, and the production brings it to life. The Royal Opera have needed to score a goal, and they’ve got one here — it’s a beauty.

The performance on 5^th July will be streamed live on The Space, available at thespace.org, or by viewing on TV (Freeview HD channel 117). It will also be broadcast live on French television — information at www.mezzo.tv .

Performances at the Royal Opera House continue until July 11 — for details click here.

Rusalka, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, February 2012

Can a force of nature acquire a soul? This is what Rusalka wants, to become human. As she says to the water spirit Vodník, humans have souls and go to heaven when they die. But souls are full of sin, says Vodník, …  and of love she responds. She has seen her prince and wants him to love her.

Dvořak’s opera Rusalka pits the powers of nature, particularly water, against human feelings and emotions. Like Ashton’s ballet Ondine it is loosely based on Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s fairy tale Undine that tells of a water nymph who falls in love with a prince. After acquiring human form, she loses her ability to speak, and at their wedding spurns his advances, feeling unable to compete with the fatal attraction of the articulate foreign princess. She abandons her prince, and though he searches for her and they are briefly reunited, his fate is sealed by his own unfaithfulness, and he dies in her arms.

Camilla Nylund made a lovely Rusalka, and Alan Held a very powerful Vodník. Both these performers sang the same roles in the original version of this production at Salzburg in 2008, and here at Covent Garden they enjoyed huge support from the other cast members. Bryan Hymel’s gloriously melodious voice was perfect for the Prince, and Petra Lang was superb as the foreign princess. Her body language is wonderfully expressive, and this singer who has made such a marvellous Ortrud in Lohengrin at both Covent Garden and Bayreuth, is perfectly suited to the role of a princess who feels not love but anger, determined that if she can’t have the prince then he shall be denied happiness. Compared to the princess he’s a weak man and instead of happiness he finds death as he begs Rusalka to kiss him at the end.

The power that allows this water nymph to turn into a human is the witch Ježibaba, strongly sung by Agnes Zwierko, and the singing of the three wood nymphs was beautiful, Madeleine Pierard in particular. Underlying it all was the conducting of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who imbued the music with huge emotional intensity at just the right moments. This was a terrific performance, and the singers were loudly cheered at the end, though the production team was roundly booed.

A bizarre production, photo Clive Barda

The production itself was brightly kitsch in parts, and like many other productions imported from the Germanic world, it presumably had a Konzept — in this case perhaps a brothel with Ježibaba as the madame, carefully checking the banknotes at one moment — but what’s the point? The ethereal nature of Rusalka and the watery forces of nature are better viewed without such a concrete representation. They inhabit a dark and mysterious world, yet the lighting at some points in Act III was extremely bright in a way that might work in Cosi fan tutte, but not in Rusalka.

This is a Czech opera — the very word of the title means water nymph in Czech — and does not fit easily with this Germanic-Italian production by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito. The theme of nature here is very much a Slavic one, and the term rus has an ancient Indo-European origin, meaning dew or humidity.

Do look beyond the superficialities of the production to the deeper meaning of the opera and don’t leave at the interval as several people did, because the performance is superb.

Performances continue until March 14 — for details click here.