A Celebration of Ivor Novello, BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, August 2012

“A gentle, more elegant age” was how the BBC’s Katie Derham referred to the world of Ivor Novello in her brief introduction, quoting We’ll Gather Lilacs in connection with his funeral in 1951. After that we were placed in the very capable hands of Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra for a glorious late night concert.

They played superbly, and Simon Callow was a wonderful master of ceremonies reciting a quiver full of delightful anecdotes prepared by Paul Ibell. Apparently Novello went to jail during the war for misuse of petrol coupons by his chauffeur, and the judge decided that the usual £50 fine would not be enough. Anti-theatre, and anti-gay he sentenced the great artist to prison, who when he came out and appeared on stage again, received a three-minute standing ovation. This was while his hugely successful show The Dancing Years was playing, which as Callow told us was initially of some embarrassment to the appeasement policy of the British Government. Dancing Years, set in Austria, did not portray the Nazis favourably, but with Novello himself in the main role it was extraordinarily popular and we were treated to three of its songs.

The singers were Sophie Bevan, and Toby Spence bravely returning to the stage after an operation for thyroid cancer. It was a huge pleasure to see him perform again, and this was perhaps a cautious try-out. Lovely singing as usual, though he avoided some top notes, and was miked up for the encore. Ms Bevan’s voice is so beautifully pure and she was particularly sweet in I Can Give You The Starlight, yet apart from Why Isn’t It You she barely interacted with him.

After Toby Spence had opened with that old First World War favourite Keep The Home Fires Burning, we were taken on a lovely late evening tour of Novello’s music, ending with We’ll Gather Lilacs as an encore. Novello died suddenly a few hours after a performance and his ashes at the Golders Green Crematorium were laid beneath a lilac bush.

The performance will be broadcast on BBC2 at 8 p.m. on Saturday, 11 August 2012.

The Tsar’s Bride, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, April 2011

This is about love, jealousy, guilt and remorse — ideal material for opera — ostensibly set in the time of Ivan the Terrible (late Tudor period in England). The power of the oligarchs and the state security police (the oprichniki) is part of the story, and director Paul Curran, who has lived and worked in Russia, sets it all in modern times. The result carries complete conviction, allowing the human emotions, insecurities and scheming to shine through in a milieu that is easy for us to understand.

Lïkov and Marfa in Act 2, all photos ROH/Bill Cooper

Rimsky-Korsakov wrote this opera at the end of the nineteenth century, and made no attempt to follow what was becoming an academically Russian style. Quite the opposite in fact, and in Act I the young man Lïkov, who is in love with the heroine Marfa, sings a beautiful arioso commenting favourably on the way things are done in Germany. This is immediately countered by a chorus singing the glories of the Tsar, and dancing girls who entertain the oprichniki at a party given by Gryaznoy. He is also in love with Marfa, and his mistress Lyubasha is insanely jealous, to the extent that she asks the Tsar’s pharmacist Bomelius to give her a potion that will destroy Marfa’s beauty. Gryaznoy also acquires a potion — to make Marfa fall in love with him — and he gets her to drink it before her wedding to Lïkov.

Act 3, the wedding party for Lïkov and Marfa

The Tsar himself we never see, but he’s in the process of choosing a wife, and his choice falls on Marfa. She, however, has taken the potion given her by Gryaznoy, and yet unbeknownst to him, Lyubasha has switched the potions. These multiple deceptions end in tragedy in the last Act, as Marfa, now the Tsarina, finds herself dying. To cover himself, Gryaznoy has accused Lïkov and killed him, but as Marfa becomes delirious she believes Gryaznoy to be her beloved Lïkov, and he is overwhelmed by remorse. He admits to his crime, only to be outdone by the scheming Lyubasha, who realises she’s lost him. Death all round, but in the style of great opera we were rewarded with glorious singing.

Marina Poplavskaya was a wonderful Marfa, so pure of tone and innocent looking. Johan Reuter portrayed a powerful Gryaznoy, and Dmytro Popov sang Lïkov with a lovely lilt to his tenor voice. The other fine tenor voice was Vasily Gorshkov as Bomelius the pharmacist. The bass role of Marfa’s father was well sung by Paata Burchuladze, and it was altogether a strong cast, with Ekaterina Gubanova singing powerfully as Lyubasha, particularly in her unaccompanied aria in Act I.

Act 4 in the Tsars palace, Marfa lies dead

The direction by Paul Curran was excellent producing well-nuanced and entirely convincing performances. Sets and costumes by Kevin Knight were superb, and I loved the women’s costumes in the Tsar’s palace for Act IV. The purples blended with the gold leaf in the background, and gave a perfection to what in fact is a frightful scene of madness and eventual death. The set in Act III was simply fabulous, a penthouse with an outdoor pool, and the lighting by David Martin Jacques was remarkable. The bright skyscrapers in the distance, and the reflection of the pool on the upper facade of the balcony drew spontaneous applause from the audience.

Act 4, Gryaznoy kills Lyubasha

This opera is a favourite Rimsky-Korsakov work in Russia, yet little known in the West. The trouble is of course that recordings, and even scores, were not readily available until after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but we need to be seeing more of these works. Mark Elder did a terrific job with the orchestra, bringing the score to life, just as the production brought the story to life. For anyone who thinks this representation of Russia is over the top, and I met one such, read Adrian Mourby’s excellent essay in the programme. Yes, Russia looks entirely normal, but the abnormalities are associated with the oligarchs, and this is essentially the setting of The Tsar’s Bride.

Performances continue until May 2 — for more details click here.

Adriana Lecouvreur, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, November 2010

As I took my seat on the first night a young man said to his neighbour that this was better than Puccini. On the other hand I know of someone who walked out of the dress rehearsal at the first interval saying this was not opera. My opinion falls in between such strikingly different reactions.

Gheorghiu and Kaufmann

Covent Garden has not produced Adriana Lecouvreur since its first performances in 1904 and 1906, not long after the Milan premiere of 1902, so I’m delighted they have now put on such a fine production by David McVicar. Sets by Charles Edwards and costumes by Brigitte Reiffenstuel are complemented by Adam Silverman’s lighting, and the effect was excellent. Add to that two principal singers — Angela Gheorghiu and Jonas Kaufmann, both at the top of their game — who sang the same roles in concert at the Deutsche Oper Berlin last month, and we were all set for the best that this opera has to offer. Gheorghiu and Kaufmann were wonderful — she was dramatically terrific, exhibiting a lovely tone, and he sang like a god. They rose to the heights and parsed the quiet passages with superb control. Their duet towards the end of Act II was glorious, and anyone unfamiliar with opera would surely say, “This is opera”.

So much for the answer to one objection — but is it better than Puccini? I don’t think so. Puccini’s work was brilliantly theatrical, but one cannot say the same for this opera: political intrigue, mistaken identity, love triangles, jealousy, and those violets . . . oh, the violets that appear in Acts I and II, and again in deathly form in Act IV. If one of those ‘Konzept’ directors got hold of this, the flowers might be represented by a figment of the unconscious mind, but this is unlikely to happen because Adriana Lecouvreur is not an opera that attracts a multitude of different productions. I think the libretto cannot sustain an abstract production, but fortunately the music is better than the story. It’s pleasingly melodious, and from time to time it sounds as if it may really take off, but never quite does. That’s just the way it is, and no fault of Mark Elder who produced beautiful sounds and admirable tension from the orchestra. The audience were enormously enthusiastic about the singing, which helped create a buzz and must surely have helped inspire the performers.

Along with Gheorghiu and Kaufmann as Adriana and Maurizio, Alessandro Corbelli brought a wonderfully sympathetic dignity to the role of Michonnet the stage manager who loves Adriana, and acts almost as a surrogate father to her. Michaela Schuster sang beautifully in the part of the jealous Princess who sends Adriana the poisoned violets, and Maurizio Muraro sang strongly in the bass role of the Prince, with Bonaventura Bottone delightfully foppish as his servant the Abbé.

Michaela Schuster and Jonas Kaufmann

A wonderful production with superb singing and beautiful sounds from the orchestra. What more could one want? . . . Well, actually  a few cuts might not come amiss in Act III, which I found tedious. They already cut the Prince’s description of his work as an amateur chemist who has discovered a poisonous powder that induces delirium and death when inhaled, though this at least shows how the Princess gets hold of such a strange murder weapon. I would rather see the ballet cut — the music is hardly on the level of the Dance of the Hours, and it was choreographed deliberately as a mockery of bits of classical ballet, such as Ashton’s La Fille mal gardée, with its ribbon dance and cat’s cradle. In the end it was all about the singing, and I’d be glad to see the abandonment of anything that detracts from that.

Further performances are scheduled for November 22, 25, 27 and 30, and December 4, 7, 10, with Angeles Blancas Gulin taking over the role of Adriana on Nov. 25 and Dec. 10, and Olga Borodina taking over as the Princess on Nov. 30 and Dec. 4, 7, 10. For more details click here.

Billy Budd, Glyndebourne, May 2010

The power of evil to destroy good is an integral part of this opera, so a production and its performance must be partly judged with that in mind. This new production by Michael Grandage goes for a sense of claustrophobia inside the ship, darkly lit, with two levels above the deck that the sailors inhabit. I liked the set design by Christopher Oram with its curved edges at the front, as if we are viewing the whole scene through a giant peep hole. The final death of Billy is done off-stage, only the pulling of the rope being visible within the ship.

Jacques Imbrailo as Billy, photo by Alastair Muir

The music — and this is wonderfully powerful music by Britten — was brilliantly played by the London Philharmonic under the baton of Mark Elder. The part of Billy, the cheerfully trustworthy foundling whom everyone loves, was strongly sung by Jacques Imbrailo, who acted the part with a suitably ready optimism. His nemesis, Claggart was Phillip Ens, whom I last saw in the Ring at Covent Garden singing Fafner. He was surprisingly lyrical, giving an impression of Claggart as a more nuanced and less evil man than one normally associates with the role. In his monologue in the second scene of Act II when he sings “alas, alas, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness comprehends it and suffers” it seemed he really regretted being the dark force he has become. The intellectual honesty and sad weakness of Captain Vere was brought out well by John Mark Ainsley, and Iain Paterson sang strongly as Mr. Redburn the First Lieutenant, as did Matthew Rose as Mr. Flint the Sailing Master. The cast worked well together, the chorus was terrific, and Jeremy White showed particular strength and sympathy as Dansker, the older sailor.

Volunteers with Billy, ready to fight the French, photo by Alastair Muir

The costumes by the designer, Christopher Oram were wonderfully drab, suiting Paule Constable’s sombre lighting, but with a flash of red for the marines who escort Billy to the yard arm. If you’ve never seen Billy Budd before then this production has a welcome conventionality that eschews unexpected imagery. It adumbrates the restrained power of a warship that has no immediate battle to fight, apart from the sighting of a French frigate that disappears into the mist as the wind drops. But I would have liked a greater sense of the open sea and the Christ-like aspect of Billy to emerge. Darkness is good, though I felt the shining light of Billy was dimmer than it needed to be, and the menace of Claggart could have been stronger. A greater contrast between good and evil might have left a more lasting impression, but it was a wonderful performance, with powerfully nuanced musical direction from Mark Elder in the orchestra pit.

Glyndebourne’s production of this remarkable opera, an opera having not a single female voice, is very welcome indeed, and performances continue until June 27.

Linda di Chamounix, Royal Opera, September 2009

This late work by Donizetti was written for a Viennese audience and first performed in May 1842, then revised for Paris in November the same year. It was a great success, but its rather silly plot is now little known, so I’ll give a brief synopsis. Linda is a very pretty peasant, loved by, and in love with, an apparently impecunious artist named Carlo. Unfortunately the local Marquis has designs on Linda, and her father Antonio is dependent on him for the renewal of their lease. To add to the complication, Carlo is the nephew of the Marquis, a fact hidden from everyone. But before things can come to a head, the young men arrange to go to Paris to perform as street entertainers during the winter months when there is no work, and the local Prefect persuades Linda’s father that she should go with them to keep out of the Marquis’s clutches. Carlo follows her, reveals his true identity, and in Paris sets up a stylish home with her. Carlo’s mother hears of it and makes immediate arrangements for her son to marry a member of the aristocracy. In the meantime, the Marquis visits to persuade Linda to leave with him, but is firmly rebuffed. Then Antonio visits seeking help, and when faced with his daughter, living in luxury, he disowns her. Now comes news of Carlo’s forthcoming marriage, and Linda goes mad. Unlike Lucia di Lammermoor however, this all ends happily. Linda returns to Chamounix with her friend, the orphan Pierotto, and is cured by the sound of music, first from Pierotto, then from Carlo, who sings the words they shared when they first met. The whole village then rejoices in anticipation of their wedding. Rather like Act I of Giselle in reverse.

This was a concert performance, brilliantly conducted by Mark Elder, and the cast, headed by Elise Gutierrez as Linda, and Stephen Costello as a gloriously voiced Carlo, was excellent. The father and mother, Antonio and Maddalena were strongly sung by Ludovic Tezier and Elizabeth Sikora, with Balint Szabo singing a firm bass as the Prefect, and Marianna Pizzolato in the contralto part of Pierotto. But the star of the show for me was Alessandro Corbelli as the Marquis. His voice expressed so well the pomposity of the role, and even his entrances and exits were comic masterpieces. He and the young American, Stephen Costello, who was making his debut at Covent Garden, were a delight to watch with their body language helping to express their feelings, even in this concert performance.

Finally it’s worth mentioning that the stage was beautifully lit for the orchestra and chorus, and the dimmed lighting of the auditorium added to the effect, with the dome lit in blue from two lights in the orchestra pit. A very attractive ‘production’, even if it was merely a concert, and I would gladly see more unusual operas like this. An excellent start to the new season for the Royal Opera House.