Tosca with Opolais, Lee and Volle, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, 20 March 2013

In this new cast, Kristine Opolais and Yonghoon Lee complemented Michael Volle, who has sung Scarpia all this month at Covent Garden. From my previous experience of him in other bass-baritone roles (from Salome to Aida) he more than lived up to expectations, but it was Yonghoon Lee as Cavaradossi who was the new find of the evening.

The Act I set, all images ©ROH/ Tristram Kenton

From his Recondita armonia in Act I to his final moments in Act III this man was a revelation. His passion for Tosca was palpable, and after his glorious E lucevan le stelle in Act III, which he started very quietly and gently, he grasped at her when she appears with the safe conduct. Unlike the usual plump tenors, Yonghoon Lee is admirably slim, and he used his body to great effect. His Vittoria in Act II was the outburst of a committed young artist, his whole body showing passionate commitment, and emphasising the brutal mendacity of a police chief in the dying days of a lost regime. Then in the late moments of Act III standing with his back to the audience while the soldiers fire, he crumpled, his life blown away like the flame of a candle.

Scarpia in Act II

As Scarpia the police chief, Michael Volle’s characterisation and voice came over with huge power. From the dramatic sweep of his entrance in Act I to his grasp of a prize that eludes him and suddenly kills him in Act II, this was a great performance. Standing on the lower level near the Attavanti chapel in Act I you can see him thinking, and as the act closes his determination against the forces of the orchestra below, and of God on the upper level, came through with a certainty of success. Then in Act II as he moves into Ha più forte, expressing his relish for a violent conquest rather than soft surrender, we witness the dark forces impelling this man to destroy the individual liberty. When Kristine Opolais as Tosca kills him she does so with despatch, and her anxiety for the safe conduct and placing of the candles was beautifully done. She acted the entire role with great conviction, but vocally seemed not yet ideally suited to the heady drama of Tosca.

Among smaller roles, Jeremy White made a fine Sacristan, and among small matters of production, the slow steps of the firing squad in perfect time to the music, and Spoletta’s putting an arm out to stop the captain of the guard delivering a finishing shot, show great care for detail by revival director Andrew Sinclair.

This whole performance was a treat, but what really raised its level, apart from the singers, was Maurizio Benini in the orchestra pit. His conducting of Puccini’s wonderful score generated huge emotion, with gloriously powerful sounds from the orchestra at moments such as the point in Act I just before Tosca’s exit, and in Act II when Tosca finally realises what is going on in the other room, and in the crescendo as Scarpia presses her and she screams for the torture to stop.

This was a knock-out, and the vocal characterisations by Yonghoon Lee and Michael Volle are not to be missed. Unfortunately performances with this cast are sold out, but further ones with Serafin, Antonenko and Hendricks under the baton of Daniel Oren take place in July — for details click here.

Maria Stuarda, Metropolitan Opera live cinema relay, January 2013

Finally the Met have staged Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, an 1835 opera based on the play by Schiller written in 1800, where Mary Queen of Scots meets Elizabeth I of England. The meeting never took place, but the play makes for super drama, and the opera provides for some wonderful singing, with the two queens backed up and egged on by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, William Cecil, chief advisor to Queen Elizabeth, and George Talbot, English statesman and keeper of Mary Stuart.

Meeting of the queens, all images MetOpera/ Ken Howard

In this tale it is Leicester, sung with great warmth by Matthew Polenzani, who brings the two queens together. His duets with both were very touching, as was his fury and dismay at Mary’s execution. Matthew Rose portrayed an avuncular Talbot whose prayerful duet with Mary in Act II came over very powerfully, and Joshua Hopkins sang Cecil with body language that bespoke great concern with State security (and remember that in real history Mary was caught out when the English secret service deciphered her coded messages).

Elizabeth in Act II

As Elizabeth, the young South African soprano Elza van den Heever took the role seriously enough to shave her head, but the characterization she gave in Scene 1 made me think of a seventeen year old girl trying to impress and throw her weight around. Vocally she failed to command, though she improved in the later scenes. I found the characterization a bit puzzling because director David McVicar said he wanted the queens to portray the ages they would have been at the time. Fact: Elizabeth lived from 1533 to 1603, being queen from 1558, and Mary was born in 1542 and executed in 1587, so the imaginary first encounter would have been in about 1575 when Elizabeth was 42, and Mary 33.

Mary and Leicester

The point where the opera really took off was when Joyce DiDonato appeared in Scene 2, and her soliloquy envying the clouds that can skim off to France was exquisitely delivered. As the English queen approached in a hunting party her concern was dramatic and palpable, and after their duet, her defiance, with its famous vil bastarda, was riveting. In Act II her prayer, delivered with huge sincerity, was a touching moment, and in her final lines to Cecil requesting that Elizabeth not be punished by remorse, her words floated on the air like birds on the wing singing of peace and reconciliation.

Maurizio Benini in the orchestra pit gave a lyrical intensity to Donizetti’s music, and this cinema screening suggests that David McVicar’s production, with set and costume designs by John Macfarlane, is very effective with a dramatic final moment as Mary climbs to the scaffold and the executioner awaits. Congratulations to the Met for producing the opera, and to Joyce DiDonato for such a convincing and beautifully sung Mary Stuart.

L’Elisir d’Amore, Metropolitan Opera New York, live cinema relay, October 2012

The Met’s 2012/13 cinema season starts with a romantic comedy, but have no fear, some serious Shakespeare is on the way. In two and four weeks time they will broadcast Verdi’s Otello and Thomas Adès’s The Tempest. In the meantime this was a super L’elisir with Anna Netrebko as a sparkling Adina, and Mariusz Kwiecien as a charmingly forceful Belcore, producing fireworks with their mutual attraction in early Act I.

Adina and Belcore, all images MetOpera/ Ken Howard

That interaction was a fine catalyst for the duet between Adina and Matthew Polenzani as an endearingly sympathetic  Nemorino when she advises him of inconstancy and fickleness in Chieda all’aura lusinghiera (Ask the flattering breeze), and he responds with Chieda al rio (Ask the river). Wonderful stuff, and this production by Bartlett Sher fully brought out the romance between the two of them. It was helped of course by Michael Yeargan’s set designs, reminiscent of those by Oliver Messel, whose designs for the ballet can still be seen today by London audiences. Costumes by Catherine Zuber were of the 1830s when Donizetti wrote this opera, and the top hat for Adina was an attractive feature emphasising her superiority over the other young women.

Dulcamara

Nemorino and elixir

Indeed Adina is a highly literate woman, and at the beginning of the opera is found reading to others the tale of Tristan and Isolde. The romance is there right at the start, and Bartlett Sher has taken his cue and allowed the comedy to take a more natural second place. Of course the truly comic figure is the charlatan ‘Doctor’ Dulcamara who produces the elixir of love for Nemorino. He was grandly portrayed by Ambrogio Maestri as a well-fed bullshit artist, whose consumption of spaghetti at the wedding feast was a useful focal point for the camera.  This is in Act II where Matthew Polenzani’s impassioned rendering of Una furtiva lagrima was sung with huge feeling, and brought the house down.

Helped by Anna Netrebko’s playful sexiness, the four principals all did a wonderful job together, aided by fine orchestral support from Maurizio Benini in the orchestra pit. This is what one expects from the Met, and I look forward to Otello in a couple of weeks time. For anyone in London who is keen to see L’elisir on stage, the Royal Opera will give eight performances starting in mid-November.

La Traviata, with Bobro, Grigolo and Gavanelli, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, 23 January 2012.

This performance on January 23 was to have been the first of two with Ermonela Jaho as Violetta, and Vittorio Grigolo as Alfredo, but Ms. Jaho was unwell and her place was taken at the last minute by Slovenian soprano Bernarda Bobro, making her debut at Covent Garden. She has recently sung the role in Estonia, Schleswig-Holstein and Stuttgart, and worked with the Royal Opera House cast throughout the rehearsals, so she was well placed to fit into the production, and gave a fine performance.

Vittorio Grigolo and Bernarda Bobro

This reminds me of 17^th January 2008 when Ermonela Jaho took over from Anna Netrebko in the same production. Act I is a tough one to pull off for Violetta, veering from party girl to someone who wonders whether she should continue disdaining love in favour of her life of arid pleasure. Ms. Bobro’s voice sounded a bit light here but her top notes were glorious, and in the scene with Paolo Gavanelli as Alfredo’s father in Act II she really came into her own, both of them beautifully restrained, yet dismissive and finally respectful of one another. Great stuff, preceded of course by Vittorio Grigolo giving vent to his frustrations and his boundless love for Violetta. Huge applause from the audience, and at the end of the opera Mr. Grigolo came forth to claim his due, holding his heart and opening his arms to centre, left and right. His singing was superb, as was his acting in Act III as Violetta is dying. He stood rooted to the spot, until his father gestured to him to go to her.

Paolo Gavanelli as Germont

This Richard Eyre production still works very well indeed. It has an intimate quality sometimes lacking in Traviata, and in the final act I love the big mirror where Violetta sees fleeting visions of her past life. Hanna Hipp was lovely as her maid Annina, and the way Jean Kalman’s lighting falls on her and Violetta at the start of the final act is a work of art.

With fine musical direction from Maurizio Benini in the orchestra pit, the principals, Bobro, Grigolo and Gavanelli were wonderful together. It’s always interesting to see how the baritone plays Afredo’s father — there are so many possible interpretations — and Paolo Gavanelli gave it a memorably restrained gravitas. But main plaudits must go to Bernarda Bobro who was surely not expecting to be on stage, and her very pretty voice infused the role of Violetta with a quiet tragedy. At the end she looked so young, and so washed out, that one could believe her life had come full circle far too soon. The frail one could live no more.

The other performance with the same cast is on January 25, again with Bernarda Bobro as Violetta  — for details click here.

Le Comte Ory, Metropolitan Opera, live cinema relay, April 2011

This uniquely Rossinian opera — his penultimate — is wonderful fun, and I’m delighted the Met has put it on, and done so in a cinema screening for the whole world to share. It’s not often performed because it needs three superb singers — in the roles of Count Ory, his page Isolier, and the Countess Adele — and the Met did us proud by having Juan Diego Flórez, Joyce DiDonato, and Diana Damrau in these roles. The superb singing and acting from all three was a treat.

All photos: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera

In its original form this was a one-act vaudeville production by Scribe and Delestre-Poirson, produced eight years previously, and they turned it into an opera for Rossini in 1828. The story is based on the exploits of the libidinous Count Ory, a medieval Don Juan who featured in a well-known Picardy legend. Ory and his page are both enamoured of the Countess Adèle whose husband has departed on one of the Crusades. In Act I, Ory disguises himself as a hermit whose religious virtue and ascetic background can help sad people, such as the lonely Countess, to regain their composure. He does this by telling her she needs a lover to give her a zest for life, and the page Isolier sees his chance. Ory soon dissuades the Countess from such a liaison by telling her the young man is page to the terrible Ory, but then he himself is unmasked by his tutor, who’s been searching for him, and the plan fails. But Ory is a man of ingenuity and in the second act he and his companions dress as nuns and gain entrance to the Countess’s home in the midst of a storm. Lots of fun, particularly in a bedroom scene with Ory, Isolier and the Countess all together in a bed. When the Crusaders return it’s all over.

Rossini’s music is partly adapted from his wonderful earlier creation Il Viaggio a Reims, a sort of cantata-opera written for the coronation of Charles X. It may lack the vitality and flow of L’Italiana or Il Barbieri, but as that great Rossini expert Francis Toye writes, “No score of his shows such elegance, such piquancy, such grace”.

The page and the Countess

The production by Bartlett Sher was set in the eighteenth century, with suitable stage props operated from the side by a master of ceremonies who tapped his stick to tell the orchestra when to start. His comings and goings started before the overture as he walked over the stage within the stage. The glorious costumes by Catherine Zuber came from several time periods, and those for the Countess were magnificent, well matched by Diana Damrau’s brilliantly assured singing of the role, particularly in the top range. As her amorously insistent lover, Juan Diego Flórez made a superb entrance as Ory, disguised as a hermit with an obviously fake beard. His presence was riveting, and in the interval conversation with Renee Fleming we learned that he’d been in attendance at home as his wife gave birth a mere half hour before the performance. Congratulations to the Met for magically transporting him, and presumably his dresser, to the theatre on time!

Ory and the Countess

The page is a trouser role, and though it’s not easy for a woman to appear as a young man, Joyce DiDonato’s performance was as good as it gets. She was utterly convincing, and this is a woman I’ve seen as Rosina in Il Barbieri looking the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen — even in a wheelchair, which she used at Covent Garden in July 2009 after a stage accident. Superlatives fail me.

These three principals were well aided by Stéphane Degout as Ory’s friend Raimbaud, Susanne Resmark as the Countess’s companion Ragonde, and Michele Pertusi as the tutor. Fine conducting by Maurizio Benini kept the singers together beautifully and the ensemble at the end of Act I was simply terrific. A better performance of Le Comte Ory is difficult to imagine, and I would love to see the Met do more Rossini in live screenings.

Il Turco in Italia, Royal Opera, April 2010

Rossini was just 22 when he composed this delightful opera, following his great success with Tancredi and L’Italiana in Algeri when he was 20 and 21. The libretto is brilliant — the work of Felice Romani, arguably the greatest Italian librettist of his day. His texts came slightly later than those of Lorenzo da Ponte who wrote the librettos for three of Mozart’s greatest operas, including Cosi fan tutti which, like Turco, features an older man who is planning the whole story. Where Cosi has Don Alfonso, Turco has a poet and opera librettist, Don Prosdocimo, portrayed here by a charming Italian named Thomas Allen, the same name as a well-known English opera singer — perhaps they were the same person. They certainly looked the same, but the Italian was so fluent and natural . . . words fail me — he was wonderful. Added to that we had the superbly comic Alessandro Corbelli as Don Geronio, a cuckold whose younger wife, the flighty and sexy Fiorilla was delightfully played by Aleksandra Kurzak. She looked a real temptress with her mischievous manner and gorgeous dresses. No wonder she had a lover, a young fellow called Don Narciso, very ably sung by Colin Lee. But as soon as the very handsome Ildebrando d’Arcangelo landed in Italy as Selim the Turk, she went for him, and he for her. After a brief acquaintance they immediately go off to her husband’s house and jump into bed together, just below the picture of an erupting volcano.

This brings me to the sparkling production by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Courier with colourful sets by Christian Fenouillat, lit by Christophe Forey, and 1960s costumes by Agostino Cavalca. It’s La dolce vita, and at one point the Turk, Don Geronio and Don Narciso arrive on stage by taxi, Fiat Cinquecento, and motor scooter. Don Narciso sported an Elvis quiff of hair and a comb, fitting that same period when Elvis Presley was producing songs such as It’s Now or Never, with its melody taken from the old Neapolitan song O Sole Mio.

The story is full of twists and turns, and includes a gypsy girl named Zaida, well sung by Leah-Marian Jones, who has left Selim’s household but still loves him. There are scenes of two women pulling at one man, and two men competing for the same woman. There is a very funny restaurant scene with Thomas Allen and Alessandro Corbelli, which later becomes an argument between Corbelli and d’Arcangelo, lifting chairs and charging each other. When the waiter tries to intervene he is caged between the legs of the two chairs. The directors have made such hilarious incidents appear entirely natural, though of course they have had wonderful performers to work with, and earlier in the week when Alessandro Corbelli gave an extended interview at the Royal Opera House, his slight pauses before answering showed a natural comic timing.

And then of course . . . there is the music. As soon as the overture started, the conductor, Maurizio Benini gave Rossini plenty of fizz, and during the performance he allowed the singers freedom with their comic timing, while keeping the orchestra in phase with the stage action. Rossini’s music is full of fun, and this production has a sense of spontaneity, as if it were Commedia dell’arte. The stylized sea, and the evening scene with a crescent moon in an azure sky, recalled for me the song “It’s only a paper moon over a cardboard sea”. But Thomas Allen switched on the moon, and everything was magic. What a shame there was a sprinkling of empty seats in the higher price categories. Perhaps this was owing to the Easter weekend, but the Amphitheatre and the slips were full of appreciative opera lovers.

La Cenerentola, live relay from the Metropolitan Opera, New York, May 2009

As the pompous father, Don Magnifico we had the incomparable Alessandro Corbelli, whom I saw at Covent Garden and at Glyndebourne in 2007. He is simply wonderful, playing the part quite straight because, as he said in an intermission interview, these ridiculous people do not realise they are ridiculous. His two fancy daughters, the ‘ugly sisters’ were well played by Rachelle Durkin and Patricia Risley, again without overdoing the farce. As Dandini the valet we had Simone Alberghini, doing a great job of playing up to the idea of being prince for a couple of days, and loving it. As to the serious characters, John Relyea’s commanding voice and strong stage presence made him an unusually powerful prince’s tutor. Lawrence Brownlee was a beautifully voiced prince who sang like a god, though his short stature was an awkward disadvantage as he couldn’t measure up to the poise and beauty of Elina Garanča as Cenerentola, the household slave and third daughter of Don Magnifico who is roundly abused by her half sisters and father. While she was the star of the show, Alessandro Corbelli was superb with his perfect comic timing, particularly in the wine tasting scene, and later when dispossessed of his illusions in the duet with Dandini.

The production by Cesare Lievi, with set and costume designs by Maurizio Balo and lighting by Gigi Saccomandi, worked very well, and the camera work was excellent. The conducting by Maurizio Benini was full of élan and the ensemble pieces were sung to perfection. There was just one serious glitch, at least in the cinema I was in, because the sound was slightly behind the camera work, making the performers look as if they were miming their parts to pre-recorded vocalizations. Let us hope this never happens again.