Die Feen, Chelsea Opera Group, Queen Elizabeth Hall, March 2013

Wagner was 20 when he wrote this opera, and it was never performed in his lifetime. Seeing it in Fulham forty years ago I was amazed at its sophistication, and delighted with the Chelsea Opera Group’s concert performance last night.

The two main characters, Arindal and Ada have the same names as in Wagner’s first but uncompleted opera Die Hochzeit (The Wedding), yet the situation is quite different. The political union in that opera is replaced here by a love that is politically almost impossible since Arindal is a mortal prince, and Ada an immortal from the fairy world. She decides to give up her immortality, though knowing this is fraught with difficulty since the spirit world will strike at Arindal giving him ample reason to curse her. He does, and all seems lost. Yet true love triumphs, and the resulting redemption prefigures the world of Wagner’s later operas, with precognitive echoes of Tannhäuser in the music.

Conducting by Dominic Wheeler produced fine energetic playing from the orchestra, bringing this early Wagner very much to life. At one point in Act I he stopped the music to bring the soloists back into phase with the orchestra, but after that it all began to gel, with Danish tenor David Danholt singing strongly in the role of Arindal and New Zealand soprano Kirstin Sharpin singing beautifully as Ada. At the start of Act II the chorus laments the attacks of the enemy, but Elisabeth Meister as Arindal’s sister Lora chimed in strongly, and her solo expressing the brave hope of seeing her brother again drew spontaneous applause. This suddenly moved the performance to a higher level, and Ada’s big aria Weh’ mir … (Alas, the fearful hour draws nigh) confirmed it.

Excellent singing from the three male courtiers, Andrew Slater (bass), Andrew Rees (tenor) and particularly Mark Stone (baritone). Ben McAteer showed strong diction in the minor baritone role of Harald, Emma Carrington sang a lovely mezzo as one of Ada’s two fairy attendants, and Piotr Lempa was a wonderful bass in Act III as the voice of the magician Groma, and as the Fairy King who eventually bestows immortality on Arindal after he has released Ada from petrifaction.

Wagner never again had such a simple happy ending in his redemptive dramas, and discounted this early effort. But what a treat it was to hear such an excellent performance, and congratulations to Chelsea Opera Group and conductor Dominic Wheeler for putting it on.

Cinderella, Gergiev and the LSO, BBC Prom 52, Royal Albert Hall, 22 August 2012

Combining Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra to play ballet music is a winner. At the Proms in 2008 they gave an electrifying performance of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty, and this year they produced a superb rendering of Prokofiev’s Cinderella.

Cinderella tends to be less well-known than Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, and partly for that reason less favoured on radio broadcasts, but it is a fascinating score, and the LSO gave it their best. In the first act when the fairy godmother appears in her new guise, Gergiev produced a lovely musical sweep into the world of magic where she conjures up visions of the year with its four seasons. And then as Cinderella finally sets off for the ball he rounded the music off to perfection. After a short pause we moved into Act II where they placed brass up in the top gallery for the entrance of the prince and his companions, and as their sound filled the hall and was answered by the orchestra on stage the result was quite unlike anything you will hear in the theatre — it was wonderfully effective! Towards the end of that act the music swelled out strongly for the Prince and Cinderella, before dying away and moving into the waltz-coda, and then the ominous ticking of the clock as midnight approaches.

After the interval came Act III where the Prince searches for Cinderella, and as he finds her the music developed gloriously. After the slow waltz came a ravishing amoroso, ending with a beautiful diminuendo. What a change this was from the Proms in 2011 when Gergiev conducted Swan Lake with the Maryinsky theatre orchestra, who produced the usual boilerplate rendering they had been serving up in the theatre. As I wrote at the time, I longed to hear Gergiev back again with the LSO at the Proms in 2012, and this was it, a world-class conductor with a world-class orchestra — it was a huge pleasure.

Netrebko, Schrott, Vargas, at the Royal Albert Hall, RAH, 7 June 2012

This concert was a fine mixture of solos, duets, and trios, plus two choral sections, and purely orchestral pieces played here by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Claudio Vandelli.

It began with that delightful Rossini overture to L’italiana in Algeri, which starts almost silently before moving into higher gear. This gave just the right bounce to open an evening that ended with four encores, one for each of the singers, and one — specially commissioned — for all three.

The highlight for me was Erwin Schrott and Anna Netrebko singing that glorious duet from just before the end of The Merry Widow. In the operetta, the merry widow, Hanna Glawari demands Danilo start talking sense, and he interrupts her in the middle of the syllable lieb…, with Lippen Schweigen. Starting with those words, their voices melded beautifully together. Ms. Netrebko, in her lovely second-half dress, was the most perfect Hanna Glawari one could ever wish to see and hear, and Schrott’s singing … hab’ mich lieb came over with huge feeling. As they slowed the tempo down the conductor followed with the orchestra, and dancing round the front of the stage they exuded the magic of being in love.

This was the antepenultimate item, followed by an instrumental excerpt from Carmen before all three singers returned to perform the trio at the end of Gounod’s Faust. In the meantime the Philharmonia Chorus had given us the humming chorus from Butterfly and the Hebrew chorus Va Pensiero from Nabucco. The main singers gave us just the right amount of action, as when Ramon Vargas and Anna Netrebko performed that lovely duet O soave fanciulla from the end of Act I in La Boheme, waving as they left, as if to meet their friends at the café in Act II. Vargas himself gave a superb rendering of Una furtive lagrima from L’elisir d’amore, and Anna Netrebko gave a rip-roaring account of the cabaret aria that Sylva Varescu sings at the beginning of Kálmán’s Csárdásfürstin. Here was the vibrant young cabaret singer who deserves the man she finally marries.

One of the intriguing things about this concert was Schrott’s accompaniment by two additional instrumentalists, František Jánoška on the piano, and Mario Stefano Pietrodarchi on the bandoneon, a concertina-like instrument often used in tango ensembles. This lightened the tone for Schrott’s excellent bass, taking us from Banquo’s aria to the infectious sound of zarzuela, including a superbly performed excerpt from one by Sorozábal.

At the end of the show, all got bouquets: Vargas bestowed his on a young lady in the front row, and Schrott then leapt from the stage to give his to a young girl further along. Finally they returned for four encores: O mio babbino caro, from Anna Netrebko, Granada from Ramon Vargas, Rojotango by Pablo Ziegler from Erwin Schrott, and finally finally a new commission called Home by Kempe, sung by all three.

A fabulous evening, only spoiled by odd audience members whose cameras lit up during the performance.