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.

L’elisir d’amore, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, November 2012

This 2007 Laurent Pelly production is set in 1950s Italy with Dulcamara, the charlatan purveyor of an elixir, arriving in an articulated lorry housing a mobile café. There are also bicycles, a moped and motor scooter, even a dog, giving a charmingly simple feel to the rural community.

In dress rehearsal for this second revival the movements of the supporting cast seemed unnatural, particularly in Act I, but musically it was another matter. Aleksandra Kurzak was a glorious Adina, sexily appealing in her stage presence, and prettily secure in her vocal work. Her Chiedi all’aura lusinghiera (Ask the flattering breeze) in the early duet with Nemorino was charmingly sung with flirtatious body movements.

All images ROH/ Catherine Ashmore

Bruno Campanella conducted with a sure but light touch, and I loved the addition of a motif from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde by Mark Packwood on the fortepiano continuo in Act II. This is after Nemorino appears, having drunk more of Dulcamara’s love potion, but Roberto Alagna in this role rather overplayed things, heaving hay bales and throwing himself to the stage in Act I and lurching around very drunk in Act II. As Dulcamara, Ambrogio Maestri was a joy to watch and hear, particularly having just seen him in a different production live from the Metropolitan Opera in New York. His duet with Aleksandra Kurzak in Act II was perfection, and Fabio Capitanucci was a fine Sergeant Belcore, interacting well with the rest of the cast.

Forthcoming performances promise to be vocally delightful, but I hope the production comes over more convincingly in Act I. Those cyclists riding from stage right to left, and back again, several times, pretending they are merely passing by, and the man on top of Dulcamara’s vehicle flapping furiously with a cloth to no apparent purpose, were unnecessary distractions. Comments on the staging in later performances are welcome.

Performances continue until December 7 — for details click here.

Ravel Double Bill, Glyndebourne, August 2012

This wonderful pairing of two Ravel operas is a must-see, with L’heure espagnole showing the erotic machinations of a clockmaker’s wife, and L’enfant et les sortilèges the fearful consequences felt by a child who breaks the regular structure of his life.

All images Simon Annand

For anyone who has seen the elegant minimalism of Covent Garden’s L’heure espagnole, Glyndebourne’s Laurent Pelly production — based on his earlier work in Paris — is a refreshing change, showing a Rabelaisian world of clocks and knickknacks, well suited to the ad hoc scheming of the clockmaker’s nymphomaniac wife Concepción. It all starts with the sound of clocks ticking in the auditorium and hands whirling around in the clocks on stage. So many clocks, so little time, and Concepción is desperate for a bit on fun on the one day a week her husband goes out to adjust the town clocks. It was all hugely enjoyable, and Stéphanie d’Oustrac was a perfect Concepción, prettily pert and sexily seductive, with a beautifully expressive voice.

Elliot Madore as Ramiro

When her would-be lovers, an ineffective poet and an absurdly desperate but equally ineffective banker, have failed to measure up, she turns for serious satisfaction to the muleteer Ramiro, brilliantly sung and acted by Elliot Madore. Full of simplicity and eager charm, he was very funny in his handling of the grandfather clocks, and the small role of Concepción’s husband was very well played by François Piolino. Ravel’s complex and imaginative score for this delightful farce was brought to life by Kazushi Ono and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and they and most of the singers returned after the interval for L’enfant et les sortilèges.

This brief opera with its cleverly imaginative libretto by Colette is a small masterpiece, and Laurent Pelly’s new production with set designs by Barbara Limberg matches it beautifully. Khatouna Gadelia gave a convincing performance of the boy, looking so small and insignificant compared to the vast furnishings of the room. Compelled to do his homework, and put on short commons when he fails to complete it, he feels so powerless he breaks all the rules, upsetting the balance of forces that secure his place in the world, until the fire in the grate threatens him and he quietly cries out J’ai peur. The turning point towards the end is when he calls out Maman! All the trees spin round, and the huge reaction from the animals and objects that he has anthropomorphised shows that they too feel powerless, seeing him as good and wise. Joël Adam’s fine lighting shows sudden warmth, and this wonderful opera suddenly draws to its conclusion.

Music, staging, costumes and lighting bring to life this extraordinary piece of child psychology, all very finely conducted by Kazushi Ono, and Glyndebourne has served its audience well by putting on these two operas.

They make a far better match than Covent Garden’s twinning of Ravel’s L’heure with Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. Following Ravel’s comedy with the dramatic subtlety of L’enfant is perfect. This was a treat.

Performances continue until August 25 — for details click here.

Cendrillon, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, July 2011

The solid-looking walls in this production carry the text of Perrault’s fairy tale Cinderella, as if to reassure us that our lovely heroine will indeed eventually get her prince. For there is delicious uncertainty in Act III of this Massenet opera when Cinderella’s nasty step-mother and sisters assure her that after the bold intruder made her rapid exit from the ball, the prince decisively rejected her.

Off to the ball, all photos by Bill Cooper

This is too much for her father, who notices her grief and finally finds the backbone to defy his wife. In a tender duet with his daughter he promises they will return to his country seat and leave this town where he’s seen her cheerfulness fade away. Rather than allow her father to share her pain, however, she decides to run away and die alone. Her plaintive soliloquy Adieu, mes souvenirs de joie was most beautifully sung by Joyce DiDonato, ending with quietly sweet regret. The woodland scene that follows was played among roofs and chimney pots, and it worked well as the fairy godmother conjures up a gradual recognition between Cinderella and her prince, most gloriously and strongly sung by Alice Coote. Their duet was fabulous.

Elves surrounding Cendrillon

Why do we not see this opera more often? Preliminary plans were made in 1896 at the Cavendish hotel on Jermyn Street when Massenet and his librettist Henri Cain were in London for the premiere of La Navarraise. Upon its completion three years later a lavish first production was given in Paris at the Opéra Comique and was a great success, yet its first UK production was not until 1928, and this is amazingly its first performance at Covent Garden. In this version of the Cinderella story by Massenet and Cain, the two young principal characters are portrayed as desperate, lost children, hence the musical reason for not casting a tenor as the prince, yet the most widely available recording at one time did precisely this, and as Rodney Milnes writes in the Grove Dictionary of Opera, “there is neither authority nor tradition for this reprehensible practice”. Could this be partly a reason for the neglect of this opera? To be sure, Massenet was viewed unkindly at one time as a composer of drawing room romances, reflecting the personal and intimate nature of many of his works, but failing to credit their well-organised dramatic element, and the composer’s uncanny ability to fit music to words in a way that seems utterly natural. Cinderella’s Vous êtes mon Prince Charmant is a delightful example. And then there is the wonderful orchestration, such as the off-stage use of a lute, viola d’amore and ‘glass flute’ for the entrance of Prince Charming in Act II. The orchestration of this scene even reminded me of the meeting between Octavian and Sophie in Strauss’s Rosenkavalier. Ballet lovers will also recognise some of the music from Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet Manon, which was arranged by Leighton Lucas to music entirely from Massenet’s works.

The prince kneels to Cendrillon, surrounded by her rivals

But this is an opera that needs to be seen rather than just heard, and Laurent Pelly’s production, first staged at the Santa Fe Opera in 2006, is superb. I love the set designs by Barbara de Limburg, the choreography by Laura Scozzi, and the unnatural fairy tale element expressed by those extraordinary red costumes designed by Pelly himself, along with the red make-up on the footmen, and the absurd derrière of Madame de la Haltière, the stepmother. She was gloriously performed by Ewa Podles who used her vast range of pitch to the full, giving us low notes that seemed to run along the floor of the stage.

The nasty sisters were vivaciously played by Madeleine Pierard and Kai Rüütel, both in the young artists programme, and Eglise Gutiérrez exhibited wonderful top notes as the fairy godmother. Jean-Philippe Lafont was a quietly engaging and immensely sympathetic father who gained vocal strength as the evening progressed, and I loved his gravelly tone. Altogether this was staged to perfection with a wonderful cast, and the fact that it is a co-production with Barcelona and the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels speaks for its international attraction. Well-known operas occasionally attract very odd and self-indulgent productions, but this relatively unknown work has been given the magical production it needs to engage us. Do not miss it, because although it will surely be revived, this is a terrific cast, with very fine musical direction from Bertrand de Billy.

There are only five further performances, the last being a matinée on July 16 — for details click here.

Manon, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, June 2010

If you want an opera about a femme fatale, this is it, based on Prévost’s L’histoire du Chevalier Des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut. It is probably Massenet’s most popular work, though oddly it hasn’t been performed at Covent Garden since 1994. I love it and was thoroughly looking forward to this new production, with Anna Netrebko as Manon and Vittorio Grigolo as Des Grieux, making his debut with The Royal Opera. He performed superbly — his voice is extremely strong — and she sang and acted wonderfully as usual. But the whole thing left me cold — why?

Act I, Royal Opera photo by Bill Cooper

Certainly Act I was a great disappointment. The sets placed the inn on the stage level, but with the houses so high above it that the performers at street level could not all be fully seen from the front row of the Amphitheatre, and apparently from further back could not be seen at all. This ‘sight-line’ problem seems to plague Covent Garden, and if the directors won’t fix it then someone from the management has to step in — you simply can’t have almost the whole Amphitheatre as an area of ‘restricted view’. But it wasn’t just the sets in Act I; the singing and speaking boomed out far too loudly, and from a beginning like that there is nowhere to go. Evidently the director, Laurent Pelly intended that Christophe Mortagne play Monsieur GM as a loud-mouthed boor. But he seemed more like an angry tradesman than a powerful cabinet minister, and it was only when Anna Netrebko entered, portraying an ingénue that things improved. Her acting here, and when she dies in Act V, was convincing, and she interacted well with Vittorio Grigolo throughout the opera. Their singing was extremely powerful, though I would have preferred more gentleness at times, perhaps a hint of greater introspection. William Shimell had excellent stage presence as De Brétigny, with Russell Braun as Manon’s cousin Lescaut, and Christof Fischesser was excellent as Des Grieux’s father.

Laurent Pelly’s current Covent Garden production of La Fille du Régiment is wonderful, but I don’t think this opera should be played with the comic touch that he is so good at. The pantomime aspects of Act I returned in Act III, particularly with the superfluous ballet interlude, which led to the dancers being carried off by the ‘gentlemen’. Massenet’s music demands more emotional sincerity than was evident here. The plaintively coquettish pleading in Act III “N’est-ce plus ma voix? N’ai-je plus mon nom? N’est-ce plus Manon?” was strongly sung, but failed to bring out the pathos. Despite Antonio Pappano being at the helm in the orchestra pit, I felt a lack of sensitivity between orchestra and singers, and this opera should have a quiet side that seemed to be absent here. Manon herself has a dual nature, wanting to live simply with Des Grieux, yet still wanting the parties and jewels that money can bring, and at the end when Des Grieux urges her to wake up, as night is falling and he sees the first star, she sings “Ah! le beau diamant! Tu vois, je suis encore coquette“. There should be a pull at the heart strings, but it wasn’t there, and the audience seemed unmoved, though there was deservedly strong applause at the end for Anna Netrebko and Vittorio Grigolo.

Sets by Chantal Thomas, with costumes by Laurent Pelly, were modern, and there were some colourful touches. Manon’s costumes in Acts I and V were excellent, and her Act IV dress in shocking pink contrasted dramatically with the green of the gambling den, but her dress in the second scene of Act III, when she persuades Des Grieux to go with her and abandon his commitment to take holy vows, seemed out of place and unflattering. The black suits for the men were all a bit too much, and what was that vast orange balloon doing in the first scene of Act III? It looked like something out of the old 1960s television series The Prisoner.

Act III scene 1, Royal Opera photo by Bill Cooper

At the end, Manon’s final words are “Il le faut! Il le faut! Et c’est là, l’histoire de Manon Lescaut“, but if that was the story I missed it. I can admire the cold beauty of this production, but despite the powerful singing and orchestral playing, I was left unmoved.

La Fille du Régiment, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, May 2010

To a lover of darkly dramatic operas such as Tristan, Tosca, and Trovatore, this Donizetti work might seem rather trivial, but of its type it’s brilliant, and Natalie Dessay is unsurpassable in the role of Marie. She’s vivacious, and utterly believable, as is Juan Diego Flórez in the role of Tonio. His rendering of the great tenor aria Ah! mes amis in Act I, with all its high Cs, was greeted with huge applause. These two formed a perfect match, brilliantly supported by the rest of the cast, who were all entirely at home in their roles. Alessandro Corbelli was a wonderful Sulpice, sergeant of the regiment and surrogate father to Marie. Ann Murray gave a finely nuanced portrayal of the Marquise of Berkenfeld, with Donald Maxwell perfectly fitting the role of her Major-Domo. And Dawn French in the speaking role of the Duchess of Crackentorp had excellent comic timing and stage presence.

Royal Opera photo by Bill Cooper

The performers could hardly be better, but it’s their interactions within Laurent Pelly’s wonderful production that makes these performances work so well. While the staging of Act I is cleverly done on a map of the area in Switzerland where this opera supposedly takes place, Act II is the pièce de résistance of the production. It starts with four maids cleaning, their movements choreographed in time to the music, and continues with one small nugget of comedy after another. For example it’s a rare opera production that has one singer playing a piano accompaniment for another, rather than miming what a pianist in the orchestra is playing, but that is exactly what Ann Murray did for Natalie Dessay, and it was followed by Ms. Dessay and Mr. Corbelli having a go on the piano themselves. The entrance of the wedding guests was wittily done, and the use of different languages was a delight. While the opera was performed in French, Dawn French herself occasionally made sharp comments in English, translated by French surtitles — a lovely touch. And when push came to shove and the French soldiers ousted the Major-Domo from the room, he burst into German!

Then to top it all there was the beautiful musical direction of Bruno Campanella. His conducting had a rhythmic energy that received a spontaneous round of applause immediately after the overture, and kept things moving throughout the opera. This was the same cast I saw three years ago — except that Ann Murray has replaced Felicity Palmer — and it’s a cast that has to be seen. Any young lover of opera should visit these performances so that in fifty years’ time they can tell their grandchildren they once saw Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez in the roles of Marie and Tonio — a pairing that will be difficult to beat for the rest of their lives.

Student standby tickets are sometimes available, and performances continue until June 3.