Lucia di Lammermoor, Opera Holland Park, OHP, June 2012

The new Holland Park season opened on a blustery cool evening, just right for the Scottish setting of Donizetti’s Lucia. Its plot, based on a novel by Walter Scott, is absolutely up to the minute in view of the government’s recent proclamation making forced marriage illegal, and costumes were appropriately modern.

The mad scene, Enrico behind, all images OHP/ Alex Brenner

These omens turned out well, and the straightforward production by Olivia Fuchs allowed our concentration to dwell on the main characters and their interactions. Jamie Vartan’s designs, which included excellent costumes, helped keep the focus on the principals by having frames of wire mesh somewhat obscuring the chorus most of the time, and the movement, directed by Mandy Demetriou, was very well done, as was the placing of the various performers.

Edgardo

The singing was terrific. Russian soprano Elvira Fatykhova sang Lucia with great sensitivity and lovely top notes, giving us a heroine who should live and be happy rather than be destroyed by the machinations of her own brother Enrico, aided and abetted by the wretched Normanno. David Stephenson sang a fine Enrico, and his acting was superb. Here was a rather nasty fellow, with a frisson of physical attraction for his sister, gripping her upper arms in Act I and trying to make her feel guilty. And for why? Because he wants to compel her into an expedient marriage to restore the family fortunes, while she loves Edgardo, whom he hates. Aldo di Toro sang grippingly as Edgardo, portraying an attractive sympathetic man, and the duet between him and Enrico at the start of Act III was superbly done.

Irrational exuberance from the groom, before Lucia knifes him

Good stage presence from Keel Watson as the chaplain Raimondo, whose condemnation of Normanno towards the end of Act III was powerfully sung, and Nicholas Ransley made a fine Normanno, particularly in his interactions with Enrico in Act I.

This was a strong team performance of Lucia, held together with great energy by Stuart Stratford conducting the City of London Sinfonia. Indeed the players needed energy to keep out the cold, and I counted five woolly hats in the orchestra pit!

Another triumph for Holland Park, so here’s hoping the season will continue as well as it has started.

Performances of Lucia continue until June 30 — click here for details.

Rigoletto, Opera Holland Park, OHP, July 2011

This was a terrific performance of Verdi’s Rigoletto in a simple but very effective staging. The set was essentially two large shipping containers, one serving principally as Rigoletto’s residence and the other as Sparafucile’s tavern.

Rigoletto after the abduction, all photos by Fritz Curzon

The first scene, of libidinous fun, with oligarchs in black tie and sexy girls in red slit skirts, worked well and never went over the top, and Monterone’s entrance and curse were powerfully done. It’s only a small role, but William Robert Allenby played and sang it for all it was worth. He was in good company with Jaewoo Kim as a stylish Duke with a beautiful voice. His soliloquy at the start of Act II showed real longing, if only of a temporary nature, yet he also managed the insouciance one expects of this libertine. His convincing charm to the ladies made it entirely understandable that Rigoletto’s daughter Gilda, and Sparafucile’s sister Maddalena should want to save his life. These darker characters, Sparafucile and Maddalena, who are willing to bend to Rigoletto’s vengeance were convincingly performed by Graeme Broadbent and Patricia Orr.

Gilda and Rigoletto

Rigoletto himself was brilliantly sung and performed by Robert Poulton. He didn’t overdo the nastiness of this character, as sometimes happens, yet his determination to take revenge came over very well when he makes the fatal mistake of telling his daughter to go home alone, after showing her the Duke’s real character. He also showed the softer side of his own character in dialogues with his adored Gilda, and Julia Sporsén sang her beautifully, very ably portraying this young woman’s emotional state in a virtual scream at the end of Act II when she admits that the Duke betrayed her but still pleads for his pardon.

Maddalena and the Duke

The production by Lindsay Posner, with designs by Tom Scutt, had some unusual and rather effective features. In the tavern scene of Act III, Sparafucile is watching football on television, and when the Duke bursts into La donna è mobile the picture suddenly changes to Pavarotti singing the same aria. The Duke grabs the remote control, presses the off-button and carries on, using the remote as if it’s a microphone — just the right point for a lighter moment. Then in the final scene when Rigoletto opens the sack to find his daughter inside she appears on top of the shipping container that served as their house, giving us a voice disembodied from the dead body in the sack. It’s a clever touch, because it always seems rather odd that Gilda can still be alive in the sack that Sparafucile hands over, let alone having the strength to sing.

Excellent conducting by Stuart Stratford with the City of London Sinfonia, and this wonderful production with its fine cast can still be seen until August 13 — for details click here.

L’amico Fritz, Opera Holland Park, OHP, June 2011

If you’ve never seen L’amico Fritz before, it’s worth going because this opera contains some lovely music by the same composer who gave us Cavalleria Rusticana. And if you’ve seen it before, it’s also worth going because you will hear Anna Leese in the main role of Suzel, and she’s stunning. She rises effortlessly over double fortissimos in the orchestra, with phrasing that gives huge emotional power to her singing.

This is Mascagni’s second opera after his great success with Cavalleria Rusticana, and Stuart Stratford’s conducting of the City of London Sinfonia brought out its high moments most beautifully. There are also some very light moments, and it occurred to me that since the composer wanted never to repeat himself and always do something new, why not write for the ballet. His music certainly has a rhythmic pulse that would suit a choreographer, and after all, Tchaikovsky wrote opera and ballet at the same time as Mascagni produced this piece, to say nothing of Stravinsky and Prokofiev later.

Fritz and Suzel, photo Fritz Curzon

The story of L’amico Fritz might work rather well as a ballet, but as an opera it suffers from a weak libretto, and in an excellent essay in the programme, Robert Thicknesse says Verdi thought it “the worst libretto I’ve ever seen”. The plot is roughly that Fritz, a wealthy young landowner in Alsace, is uninterested in marriage, and has never felt the pangs of love. He sees the pretty Suzel only as a friend, but David the Rabbi wants to marry Fritz off, and there are various Biblical quotes, such as that man is not meant to live alone. Eventually love is awakened and Fritz is distraught to learn that Suzel will marry someone else. We never see who that is, if he exists, but Fritz is now more than ready to declare his love … and they all lived happily ever after. Dull stuff for an opera, but lovely music, and some glorious singing.

Eric Margiore sang lyrically as Fritz, giving a fine soliloquy at the start of Act III. David Stephenson gave a strong portrayal of his friend David, the Rabbi, and Patricia Orr was terrific in the travesti role of Beppe, showing in Act III that he too had felt the anguish of love. One rather clever aspect of the production was that Beppe, a musician and protégé of Fritz, not only sings but plays a beautiful solo violin. The switch between singer and violinist is almost imperceptible, and I was surprised the violinist’s name wasn’t displayed in the programme. In fact it was Iwona Boesche, listed merely as the last of the First Violins. Both she and Patricia Orr were super, but the star of the evening was surely Anna Leese as Suzel. She is just 30 years old, so she presumably has a great career ahead of her, and I very much look forward to hearing here again.

The production by Annalese Miskimmon, with colourful designs by Nicky Shaw and lighting by Mark Jonathan, places things in the 1950s, with Fritz as a young developer. His office is clean, modern, well-organised, and he builds pretty homes in the country. Messy things like emotions are kept well away, at least for a while, but when the high moments come they’re worth waiting for.

Performances continue only until June 25, so call for tickets immediately — for more details click here.

La Forza del Destino, Holland Park Opera, OHP, August 2010

“Vengeance is mine”, saith the Lord, but the quest for revenge by the Calatrava family, personified by its son, Don Carlo, leads to deaths only in the family itself. In his dying throes, Carlo manages to kill his sister Leonora as she comforts him, but the person he most wanted to kill, namely his sister’s beloved Don Alvaro, lives on. Such is Alvaro’s fate, the power of fate being the theme of this opera, whose driving force is Verdi’s music.

The backdrop to Act III, all images OHP/ Fritz Curzon

I’ve always found it terrific stuff, and was delighted with the excellent musical direction by Stuart Stratford, whom I remember doing an equally fine job at Holland Park last summer with Katya Kabanova. Peter Auty was powerfully lyrical as Alvaro, and his soliloquy in Act III, when he pleads with an absent Leonora to pity his suffering, was superb. Mark Stone was a very strong Carlo, and the two of them together in Act III were wonderful. Gweneth-Ann Jeffers as Leonora was remarkable — she modulated her voice seamlessly from quiet passages to loud ones, and gave this role a powerful undertow of emotion. Among the other parts in this opera, Donald Maxwell was delightful as Fra Melitone, amusing, with perfect comic timing and a gloriously strong voice. No wonder I found him so good as the Major-Domo in Fille du Régiment at Covent Garden three months ago. Mikhail Svetlov sang well as Padre Guardiano, as did Carole Wilson as the gypsy Preziosilla, reminding me of her analogous role in Ballo last summer.

Alvaro holds the dying Leonora

The production by Martin Duncan works very well, with wonderful designs by Alison Chitty, whom I recall doing magical work for Birtwistle’s Minotaur at Covent Garden in April 2008. Here she did another piece of magic. Act III had a black cloth backdrop with chairs hanging in front, along with red cords stretching from floor to rafters at various angles. Lampshades hanging from the rafters were lit blue, and the chairs were projected onto the backdrop. Mark Jonathan’s dark lighting on this set produced the effect of a Kandinsky painting, which I thought entirely appropriate to the time in which the opera was set, namely early-mid twentieth century. Altogether this was a superbly designed production using little more than chairs as props — brilliant.

Congratulations to Opera Holland Park, a fitting production for this, the last night of their season.

Satyagraha, English National Opera, ENO at the London Coliseum, February 2010

photo by Alistair Muir

This is an opera about Gandhi (1869–1948) and his belief in non-violent resistance. Violence is a word common to many languages, but non-violence is not described by a single word, so Gandhi invented one — satyagraha. It’s a Sanskrit word from two roots, satya meaning ‘truth’, and agraha meaning ‘holding firmly to’, giving the sense of holding firmly to truth.

The opera is in three parts, headed Tolstoy, Tagore and King. The first is named after the great Russian writer whose letters to the young Gandhi were a source of inspiration, until Tolstoy died in 1910. The second part is named after Rabindranath Tagore the great Indian writer, and first non-European winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. He and Gandhi had a great reverence for one another, and it was Tagore who used the honorific ‘Mahatma’ (meaning great soul) to refer to his friend. The third part is named after Martin Luther King, who was greatly influenced by Gandhi’s teachings, and remarked that, “Christ gave us the goals and Mahatma Gandhi the tactics”.

Despite these three parts referring to past, present and future, the libretto has no narrative in the conventional sense, and there are no surtitles, though it’s sung in Sanskrit. Words are occasionally projected, sometimes on an array of newspapers held up by the performers, and whole sentences occasionally appear on the backdrop. The libretto, like Glass’s music, is very repetitive, but I mean this in a good sense, and its insistent intensity provides a way of approaching the persistent minds of original thinkers like Gandhi, and others (Einstein, Galileo, Kepler, Akhnaten) about whom Glass has written operas.

This one about Gandhi reveals excerpts from his life, such as his early experiences as an Indian lawyer working in South Africa when he experienced racism at first hand. For example, the incident when he was attacked by a crowd of white settlers, and only rescued by the wife of the police superintendent, is vividly shown. Many years before Gandhi went to South Africa he had studied the law at University College London, where he acquired an interest in Buddhist and Hindu literature, and joined others in reading the Bhagavad Gita. Excerpts from this great poem are performed by giant puppets, battling one another in slow motion, the puppets themselves being constructed on stage from baskets and rolled up newspaper. This puppetry, and the masks that appear later, are glorious and enliven the rather static nature of the music. With excellent sets and costumes the whole opera becomes a slowly moving picture that changes, yet somehow remains the same, just like the music.

Stuart Stratford conducted it, keeping both orchestra and singers in unison, and bringing out the lyrical and rhythmic quality of Philip Glass’s music, while Gandhi was well sung and very calmly performed by Alan Oke. The absence of surtitles and clear narrative is unusual, but I found the whole work an uplifting experience. The production by Phelim McDermott, assisted by Julian Crouch who also did the marvellous set designs, along with excellent costumes by Kevin Pollard, and superbly subtle lighting by Paule Constable, has a rather ethereal quality, and as a friend of mine said, “I was left humming peaceful thoughts all the way home”.

Katya Kabanova, Holland Park Opera, August 2009

This dark and intense Janaček opera is based on a nineteenth century Russian play, The Thunderstorm by Alexander Ostrovsky, that takes place in a village on the river Volga. An excellent essay by Robert Thicknesse in the Holland Park programme magazine describes the background to Ostrovsky’s play as being an “old-fashioned feudal [society] governed by superstition and immemorial custom and ruled by a particular breed of uneducated violent despots from what was known as the merchant class”. This was a Russia quite different from the polite society portrayed by writers such as Pushkin, Turgenev and Tolstoy. The story is essentially very simple. A daunting matriarch called the Kabanicha keeps her son Tichon in thrall to her whim, while emotionally abusing his wife Katya. When Tichon goes away on business, Katya begs him to take her along, as she fears her own attraction to a young man named Boris. The household also contains a young woman named Varvara, the Kabanicha’s foster daughter, who is in love with a man named Kudrjaš. Varvara makes the running in arranging night-time meetings between the young women and men, and when Tichon returns home, Katya cannot bear not to admit her guilt. The opera ends with her suicide, drowning herself in the Volga, after which her husband manages to blame his mother the Kabanicha for driving his wife crazy, and she simply thanks the many people who have come to witness the death.

This performance was a team effort, led with great emotional sensitivity by Stuart Stratford in the orchestra pit. The young men, Boris and Kudrjaš were very well sung by Tom Randle and Andrew Rees, with Patricia Orr very convincing as Varvara, and Jeffrey Lloyd Roberts as Tichon. The Kabanicha was portrayed with calm dignity by Anne Mason, and Katya was beautifully sung by French soprano Anne Sophie Duprels. Altogether a wonderful performance of this gripping drama, which Janaček’s music so ably brings to life. Hearty thanks to the Korn/Ferry opera for putting it on stage with such a fine cast, mainly reassembled from those who were in the production of Jenufa two years ago, particularly conductor Stuart Stratford, and Anne Sophie Duprels who was Jenufa herself.