An  Invitation from Jonathan Kester

Although I live and work far away in the Antipodes, in Perth on the west coast of Australia to be precise, I have been invited to contribute to Lark Reviews.

A recording is available through the link below once the live link ends
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Handel-Faramondo-Emily-Fons/dp/B00MVT8O3I/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1433770222&sr=8-2&keywords=faramondo

Faramondo was a rarely performed opera adapted and re-scored by Handel and performed for the first time in London in 1738. Its lack of popularity since is due to two factors. The first is its convoluted and somewhat obscure plot and the second is because it originally required four castrati singers in some of the lead roles. Even for its first performances Handel could only afford one castrato to sing the title role because he engaged one of the most famous and expensive singers of the day, Gaetano Majorano, known as “Caffarelli”.  The other castrato roles had to be sung by women.

The advent of so many fine counter-tenors during the past 10 years or so has enabled many baroque works to be restored to the classical music repertoire and Faramondo is one that has now been recognized for the musical masterpiece it really is.

Recently, I went to Brisbane to attend a weekend training and, to my delight, discovered that, while I was there, The Brisbane Baroque Festival was taking place and included 5 performances of Faramondo.  This Australian premier was the Gottingen Baroque Festival stage production and was recorded by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (see the link above). It was unforgettable. I actually couldn’t fault any aspect of its presentation. Every member of the cast in singing roles acted with complete conviction and sang with an astonishing level of faultless accuracy and embellishment of the score both in the recitatives and especially in all of the wonderful arias.

This opera can be seen on YouTube in a concert performance recorded in 2009. Some of the world’s finest counter-tenors take the leading roles under the baton of Diego Fasolis with Max Emanuel Cencic in the title role. Philippe Jaroussky and Xavier Sabata are also in the cast. (The performance is available on CD through Virgin Classics.)

Having been used to listening to and watching Max Emanuel Cencic as Faramondo on YouTube I did wonder how I’d take to listening to a woman singing the title role in the Gottingen production in Brisbane. I needn’t have worried because the American mezzo Jennifer Rivera sang the role with a passion, a clarity and vocal agility that even the wonderful Max Emanuel Cencic was not able to offer in the YouTube version.

If anyone on your side of the planet can arrange for the Gottingen Festival production of this marvelous opera to be performed in London or elsewhere in  England I urge you to do so. Anyone attending who enjoys Handel’s music will find it a truly memorable and deeply satisfying experience.

Our thanks to Jonathan for his review and enthusiasm. We’ve known each other for almost sixty years, but reviews and comments from further afield are always welcome from those who come across exciting and noteworthy events.

London Coliseum, 9 May 2015

Mike Leigh has known The Pirates of Penzance since he was a child and let us say from the outset that his first staging of the work is a triumph on all levels. Where so many directors would attempt to up-date it or make it relevant, he takes it at face value, giving it a freshness that even those of us equally immersed on G&S found surprising. We can add to this the reality that G&S is nowhere near as popular, or as frequently performed, as was the case fifty years ago. Consequently it was a delight to see so many young people in the audience clearly encountering Gilbert’s wit for the first time – as many as there were those of us having to supress the desire to turn the whole event into a Sing-along-Pirates.

Not only is Mike Leigh’s direction fast-moving and witty throughout, it has exceptional clarity so that the text and lyrics are easily heard – useful when on the first night the sur-titles seemed to have a life of their own. Alison Chitty’s designs brought an equally fresh approach with their deep pastel blues and mauves, for a set which was on one level entirely abstract and yet reflected children’s toys in its simplicity. The pirates’ ship at the start was a stroke of genius. And all of this lit with subtlety by Paul Pyant.

Where most revivals of G&S rely on singers from the Musical stage, here we had operatic voices which could do justice to Sullivan’s lyricism. Claudia Boyle has a secure coloratura which allows her Mabel to drop Donizetti onto the Cornish coast with aplomb while her acting has a roguish charm – no wilting heroine here. It would have been good to feel that her Frederick, Robert Murray, was equally virile but, while he sang well, he did not cut as dashing a figure as the other men.

Musically the evening hinges on three basses, Andrew Shore’s fleet-footed Major General, Joshua Bloom’s Pirate King cast in the mould of Brian Blessed, and Jonathan Lemalu’s Sergeant of Police, whose likeness to Ronnie Barker was at times disconcerting. When Sullivan is sung so well there can be no doubt of his stature as a composer, and the patter songs are matched by the simple delicacy of Ah lead me not to pine and the intensity of the Pirate trio.

The only unexpected characterisation was Rebecca de Pont Davies’ deeply Cornish Ruth. Taking the text at face value she carries an ear trumpet because she is hard of hearing and, for all the Pirates desire early on to get shot of her, they are only too happy to share a picnic given the chance to do so.

The ENO chorus were loving every minute of it and what a pleasure to find double the number of men in act two rather than having to split them in half across pirates and policemen. The ladies danced well in Francesca Jayne’s free-flowing choreography and were unfased by the speed of How beautifully blue the sky.

David Parry keeps the tempi brisk throughout but never at the risk of blurring the text. Would that all G&S were at this level. I wonder if this Pirates will run as long as Mikado? I will be surprised if it does not.

BBC Symphony Orchestra, Jiri Belohlavek

Barbican Hall, 2 May 2015

Such are the vagaries of fashion that even today Smetana’s tragic opera Dalibor is rarely heard, yet when it is its impression is overwhelming. This is the composer at his most romantic and heroic, able to translate the shifting emotions of the narrative into long sweeping musical paragraphs within which there are frequent moments of outstanding beauty. Dalibor’s reflection of his death and rapid meeting with his dead friend Zdenek, the intensity of the love duet and the nuanced choral settings are just of few obvious examples. The changes in style, which at first can seem unnerving, are, on reflection, in keeping with the social setting. The long first act, and the opening of act three, are both formal public gatherings, while most of the rest of the work is intimate and personal. Smetana matches the orchestration to the event so that while we may feel as if the opening is close to Lohengrin the whole work is not focussed that way and any Wagnerian moments are accidental rather than deliberate.

The chorus are important but always distanced, physically so in the Barbican Hall, and this seemed appropriate. Even the lusty Mercenaries chorus, harking back to Weber’s Huntsmen, are somehow off-stage even when at their most enthusiastic.

The Czech cast were probably about as good as one could wish for. Dana Buresova’s Milada has a ringing top to the voice and a subtle sense of humour when she needed it in the prison scenes. Richard Samek proved an heroic Dalibor, even if there were occasional moments when his voice seemed under strain. No such problems for Ivan Kusnjer’s King who dominated the evening and made political sense of Dalibor’s death even if the story may beg for a happier ending.

There are few better interpreters of Czech music than Jiri Belohlavek and he rose to the challenges of the score with absolute conviction. The BBC Symphony orchestra responded with an extrovert enthusiasm which convinced us that this really is a work which should be in the regular canon.

It was being recorded for later transmission but no date is currently available. Keep a look out for it and save it – you will not regret it.

Barbican Theatre, 11 April 2015

9/11 has become such a strong icon that it is almost impossible to consider any of the events of that day without already having a biased emotional response. That, even fourteen years later, this is the first opera to deal with the subject says a lot about our sensitivity to the destruction of the twin towers. If the outcome, Between Worlds, leaves us unsatisfied I suspect this has more to do with our collective difficulty in facing the events of that day than the creativity of Tansy Davies and Nick Drake. The proverbial Martian viewing this without any context might be confused as to why the emotional impact is so high when the events seem so banal. If this were an earthquake in Japan, or the collapse of a block of flats in India, would we treat the subject in this way; almost certainly not. One only has to consider John Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer to find a work which interrogates the circumstances as well as the personal tragedies of the day.

There is certainly much to admire in Tansy Davies score. Her choral writing is strongly focussed and the text (without surtitles) carries with unexpected clarity. The narrative moves swiftly and the individual characters are rarely reduced to simple stereotypes. However they are equally undistinguished musically, so that we are not encouraged to respond to their situations as individuals. We respond to the death of Mimi or Tristan because the music leads us emotionally to the point where we are totally involved in their deaths. Here we seem to be barely introduced before they disappear. Only the Janitor, played with great sensitivity by Eric Greene, comes across as a rounded individual. The other four protagonists are unnamed and reduced to a series of passing remarks in an atmosphere which is from the start doom-laden. While the use of mobile phones is a telling reflection on the impact of technology on this particular disaster, we fail to sense the difference between the intimacy of the calls and the universality of the chaos which surrounds them.

Deborah Warner’s production has great clarity and the setting by Michael Levine provides a sharp environment which never attempts to use any of the graphic images from the day itself. Gerry Cornelius draws out the many subtleties in the score which will hopefully come to mean more as we get to know the work better.

At less than ninety minutes there is something of a feeling of being short-changed here. Perhaps it needs Part Two, in the manner of Shaw’s end to Saint Joan where he brings together the protagonists in another world, to start to unravel the one question Between Worlds fails to ask. Why?

The Dome, Brighton, Good Friday 3 April 2015

There have been many attempts to stage the Bach Passions in recent years, some more successful than others. This was announced as being in the round rather  than a semi-staging but it still leaves one asking what the expectation was that lay behind the approach. From the point of view of the chorus it certainly made for a more dynamic impact. Singing from memory, the opening chorus had real fire and bite. This was also true of the crowd scenes in the second part where the mob violence was well captured.

However for much of the rest of the time the movement held up the action. One of the great strengths of Bach’s St John is the speed at which it moves, and a very good reason for not having an interval. Here there were long pauses between individual items while singers moved from one part of the building to another, or instrumentalists adjusted to their new positions.

Solo singing was generally of a high standard, with Robert Murray’s Evangelist and Paul Reeves’ Christus particularly impressive. Of the solo singers, the men seemed happier with the staging than the women, who appeared more comfortable when placed on the conventional platform next to the conductor.

James Morgan handled his forces with aplomb and managed to keep everything together with remarkable ease. He was not helped by the lighting which tended to plunge most of us into darkness even when the lit performers were, for many, out of sight. We were invited to sing the chorales with the chorus, but were actually only given four of them, and these not annotated in line with the vocal score.

Musically this was sound throughout but did not gain anything from being performed in this way, and may have been dramatically more effective if given as a single piece with little or no breaks.

The afternoon was not helped by an unexpected breakdown in the box office which led to very long queues in the rain outside the Dome, which in turn led to a very late start. In my many years of attending events at the Dome this has never happened before and it was entirely unclear why it was so on this occasion. Too many people had to rush into the performance with no time to prepare or get a drink etc beforehand. A pity, the musicians deserved better.

Mayflower Theatre, Southampton 25 March 2015

In over fifty years of visiting, and later reviewing, performances by WNO, the chorus has always been its greatest strength. Productions may at times have been questionable and just occasionally singers not quite what had been expected but the chorus has never failed us. Something about the air in Wales I suppose!

It was therefore more than appropriate that they should be celebrated with a production all to themselves and one carefully crafted to show not only their vocal but their dramatic ability. Rather than a series of bleeding chunks, David Poutney has created a narrative line which links the individual choral items into a whole and gives us a sense of progression. The evening opens strongly with the first chorus from Prokofiev’s War & Peace. Here the sense of external attack is linked to the internal attack felt by the villagers in Peter Grimes, which in turn flows into work and finally to the army, where Lesley Garrett joined them for the Rataplan chorus from La Forza del Destino. A slight change of pace brought on the night but the dawn gave rise to decadence and corruption. The chorus were obviously enjoying themselves here in excerpts from The Rake’s Progress, Mahagonny and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Possibly the most entertaining sequence was linking the cigarette chorus from Carmen to the Policeman’s lot from Pirates- and all set in a locker room! The wedding scene from The Cunning Little Vixen brought the first half to a riotous close.

The second opened at almost the same level of enthusiasm with a Hollywood style first night setting for the opening of act 4 of Carmen. As if the decadence could go no further there was a sudden but fleetly handled change to a religious mood, with a splendidly choreographed Hallelujah Chorus and Panis angelicus. The heart of the second half came with an extended section from Khovanshchina which allowed the chorus to demonstrate a rapid change of mood and constant free-flowing movement. The fear of attack from outside brought us full circle, and the lowering of the barbed wire fence for Va pensiero was very moving. It was only at this point that David Poutney seemed to lose his nerve. It would have made good sense if To dream the impossible dream had been kept within the prison camp and the final glorious chorus from Candide allowed to show as hope overcoming adversity. In the event the Dream number reverted to Sunday Night at the London Palladium with Lesley Garrett in a red dress and a solo spot. It was unconvincing and an anti-climax after so much that had been so good.

Individuals from the chorus took the scattering of small solo parts and Howard Kirk was particularly impressive at the end as Candide. Alexander Martin had manoeuvred his way with skill through the many scores and at no time was there any sense of an uncomfortable jump from one genre to another.

One final point. Each scene was totally convincing within itself. The action and singing was more than sufficient to convey the intensity of the narrative. Perhaps we need to learn again what Wieland Wagner realised when penniless at the end of the war – you don’t necessarily need large or expensive sets for a production to be highly effective.

The Dome, Brighton, Sunday 22 March 2015

The final concert of the season saw the return of Barry Wordsworth from his antipodean journeys and the largest number of players on stage for a very long time.

Lord Berners is hardly a familiar name where twentieth century composers are concerned but his Fantasie Espagnole  is a delightful set of pieces which are aware of Ravel and Debussy in passing but always more tongue-in-cheek than romantically serious. The Fandango is wildly enthusiastic and the final Pasadoble fires off in all directions.

By contrast Walton’s cello concerto seemed heavily introspective even in the experienced hands of  Raphael Wallfisch. The opening movement tended to drift and it was not until the more expansive sections of the Allegro appassionato that the performance came more sharply into focus. The final movement brought us the two long solos from Raphael Wallfisch, much exquisite playing and a touching conclusion.

Holst’s The Planets is so regularly played in parts on the radio that it comes as quite a shock to encounter the sheer dynamic impact it makes in the concert hall. Mars is often uncomfortably loud and the heady enthusiasm of Jupiter intoxicating. It was obvious that the orchestra were really enjoying playing the work and relishing the many solo opportunities it gives them. The fiendishly difficult runs in Mercury did not seem to worry the woodwind, and the extended percussion provided bite and accuracy in their many exposed passages. The orchestra was joined in Neptune by the women’s voices of Brighton Festival Chorus singing from behind the stage. During the movement the blend was fine but the final fade did not quite happen and they appeared to be suddenly cut off rather than disappear. Maybe we are too used to electronic signals failing all of a sudden.

The new season starts on 11 October with works by Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Kalinnikov. All details from www.brightonphil.org.uk