halloween bassoon

Happy Halloween!
This is from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra…

picture from Geoff Browne — thanks!

Garden Opera — sad news

A very sad announcement from one of my favourite opera companies:

THE GARDEN OPERA COMPANY ANNOUNCEMENT

The Trustees of Greensong Productions, the charity which owns and operates Garden Opera, regret to announce that they have decided that it is no longer financially viable for Garden Opera to continue its operations.  Two summers of wet weather in 2007 and 2008, combined with the recession, took a significant toll on our performance bookings for this year. Notwithstanding the reduction in salaries and fees to staff, singers and musicians, for which we thank them, and the generosity of friends and supporters, we are without reserves to sustain the loss suffered in 2008 and the substantial loss now forecast for 2009.  With no improvement in sight, we simply cannot afford to carry on and we will now effect an orderly and prompt run-down of our affairs.

The Trustees and Peter Bridges, who has run Garden Opera for the last 14 years, thank everyone who has been associated with the company: all our singers, musicians, directors, costume and set designers, back stage crews and many others; Lucy de Castro, who, as general manager, has so patiently sorted out all conceivable problems over the last seven years; our friends and supporters, particularly those who have helped us with donations; and, of course, our hosts who have been fantastic and without whom there would have been no Garden Opera.

Over the years, Garden Opera has brought a lot of fun and happiness (and good music) to a huge audience across the country and overseas, including a great Barber this summer which was really well-received. Furthermore, through our performances we have helped many of our hosts over the years to raise several hundred thousand pounds for their many different charities.
So, it is with considerable sadness that we bring down the curtain.

However, Peter has informed the Trustees that he would like to have the opportunity to re-establish Garden Opera in a new guise.  Should that prove to be possible, they wish him all good fortune.  

Ray Miles

Chairman

9 October 2009

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Commiserations to Peter and to Lucy and to all the members of the company past and present, and thanks for some of the greatest operatic experiences ever.  Let us hope the phoenix will find a way to rise again.

Any millionaires out there??

More info on their website: http://www.gardenopera.co.uk/

‘Tristan und Isolde’ at Covent Garden

Well!  The Royal Opera’s new production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde has really set the cat among the pigeons.  I couldn’t possibly comment myself, being closely involved with it (I wrote and edited the surtitles).

The critics’ reaction has been generally more than favourable (four or five stars) – the audience’s markedly less so (one seasoned witness said ‘I’ve never heard booing like it in the Opera House’)…

If you really want to see the fur flying, check out Charlotte Higgins’ blog on the Guardian website, and (especially) all the follow-up comments.  Most interesting.

Were you there?  What did you think?  Let me know — add a comment below.

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DISCLAIMER
Please note — all views expressed on this site are my own (or those of other contributors or persons quoted) and do not represent the views or policy of The Royal Opera or any other employer or organisation mentioned.

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 photo (uncredited) stolen from Charlotte Higgins’s blog

Garden Opera: The Barber of Seville

On Friday 11 September, to Garden Opera at Ravenscourt Park, London W6 – the very last performance of their summer-long season, and the only one we could get to!

The weather was kind – not too chilly, and it didn’t rain.  The setting was a lovely peaceful enclosed space, disturbed only by the occasional District Line train and the enthusiastic intervention of some local parakeets.  Handy tea-shop before the performance, loos rather a long dash in the interval…  The audience we presume were mostly local:  pretty much a full house, appreciative and animated.

The opera was Rossini’s BARBER OF SEVILLE, in a very simple, slick and extremely funny production by Katharina Wienecke.  The action was set in ‘Dr Bartolo’s Circus’, seemingly an odd idea but it worked very well, with Rosina ‘The Singing Bird’ (in a cage, of course) as the star attraction, her disgruntled guardian Dr Bartolo a retired animal-tamer, and Basilio an unlikely magician, forever producing scarves, flowers and magic wands from a variety of orifices.  Count Almaviva and Figaro the barber survived relatively unscathed from Rossini’s (or his librettist’s) original conception.  Occasional inconsistencies (Dr Bartolo was required to be a physician after all, to match the text of his patter-aria) either didn’t impinge or were turned into sources of comedy.  And, as in the best Barber performances, there were moments of (almost) genuine pathos.

The show took forever to get going, partly because of interminable if well-intentioned announcements from a distinguished local worthy (over incessant pre-recorded fairground organ music);  then the Overture started as another fairground organ piece, gradually morphing into the ‘live’ orchestra of Peter Bridges and his small but perfectly formed circus band (flute doubling clarinet, trumpet doubling flugelhorn – David Clewlow, no less – plus two violins, cello and the maestro himself on piano).  At long last the opera itself began;  the first scene (even without the chorus) does seem interminable, but that is Rossini’s fault. 

Once the show got up steam, there was no stopping it:  the profusion of sight gags, jokes, hilarious dialogue and text (busked up from Amanda and Anthony Holden’s old ENO singing translation, though with some changes, not always for the better?) kept the show bouncing along in high spirits.  I particularly enjoyed some of the in-jokes:  ‘Somebody’s knocking, who can it be?  (The cast’s all here!)’

Despite the exigencies of such a small company, musical standards were extremely high and without compromise:  apart from the excision of the chorus and some minor characters, remarkably few cuts were made.  As always, the show was double-cast, so I can only comment on the version we saw.  I’d guess that some other performances must have been distinctly different!

Alexander Anderson-Hall was Almaviva;  though his voice at first sounded unpromising, he could certainly deliver the notes, and he disclosed an unsuspected vein of comedy, especially in his Les-Dawson-inspired ‘granny’ disguise as the singing teacher ‘Donna Alonsa’ in Act II, with her knitting and tin of corned beef. 

Figaro was Simon Lobelson, a singer I had not encountered before:  a natural communicator with a fine voice and a quick wit, he commanded the stage whenever he was on it (in spivvy black leather, looking disconcertingly like David McVicar).

Serena Kay as Rosina was a delight, wide-eyed and bubbly, evidently having a whale of a time despite her colourful but somehow un-sexy costume.  (Mercifully she jettisoned the awful ‘singing bird’ wig at the earliest opportunity.)  And she sang some impressive coloratura too.

Bartolo was Adam Miller (who on other nights had been singing Figaro:  there’s versatile!)  Another fine performer, with splendid diction and a great line in irritated helplessness.

And Deryck Hamon as Don Basilio – last seen as Garden Opera’s Don Pasquale a year ago – was a hoot, all arms and legs and magical surprises despite his lugubrious Scots delivery.

A special mention for Nick Ash, who began the show as an impressively uniformed but hangdog programme seller (and remover of unwanted ladders), and reappeared as the Chief of Police, a pivotal role (the answer to ‘Somebody’s knocking, who can it be?’…) – speaking his few lines instead of singing them, but very effective and funny, especially in his simpering grovel when he learns Count Almaviva’s true identity.  He was nowhere mentioned in the programme, apparently because he was booked after they had gone to press (one of the perils of a long season fixed well in advance, I guess).  Well done that man!

I haven’t done justice to all the fun and games and the sheer enjoyment of the evening – another triumph for Garden Opera.  Long may they continue!  Here’s to next season…

Many thanks to Lucy for fixing the tickets, and to Diana for her company again (and the picnic!)

Gergiev’s ‘Ring’ at Covent Garden

So… the circus came to town last week, and now it has departed in a cloud of dust and a hail of booing (some of it mine – never done that before!) amid the storms of applause.

Valery Gergiev, the Ossetian wizard, attempted the impossible – all four operas of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in four days, with his Mariinsky company from St Petersburg (formerly the Kirov) at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

I can’t really comment on all four, since for two of them I was behind the glass, working.  But my friend Diana did come to all four and took me to the other two (thank you, D!) so I got the general idea.

Did Gergiev succeed?  No.  Over-hyped, over-conducted, mostly beautifully played;  under-cast and under-sung, with very few honourable exceptions (it does not bode well for a Götterdämmerung when the loudest applause is for the Alberich);  over-designed, over-lit, under-rehearsed;  and, above all, under-directed.

This is surely Gergiev’s fault:  my feeling is that he doesn’t think anything is important except what he thinks is important, namely his conducting and the fact that he has ‘achieved’ this impossible feat at all.  He is quoted in interviews as saying that he wants to get away from the tyranny of the opera director:  having evolved his overall concept with designer George Tsypin (master of the enormous stage-cluttering useless object:  remember the giant cracked glass bottles in his Theodora from Glyndebourne?), Gergiev proceeded to sack or alienate at least four directors along the way (including Johannes Schaaf – ‘too German’ – and Opera Factory’s brilliant David Freeman). 

Finally he has brought in a fifth director, Alexander Zeldin, who has a Russian name but is British and as far as I can tell speaks not much Russian;  worst of all, he is only 24.  With the best will in the world, nobody aged 24 can have more then the haziest notion of how to direct this Everest of the operatic repertoire, which countless directors, conductors, scholars and analysts have spent whole lifetimes trying to understand.

I fear he is not really a director, but a ‘crisis manager’ and director of traffic, brought in to salvage what is left of previous attempts to make the original concept work.  By the time we got to the end of Götterdämmerung, it was impossible to discern any attempt at understanding the piece or the drama, or even listening to the music, for heaven’s sake.  Of all composers, Wagner tells you in every bar precisely what is going on, dramatically and emotionally;  just open your ears and listen (and read his stage directions!).  And please, try sitting out front and reading the surtitles, and then you will understand why the audience sniggered at things that were clearly in the text but were not happening on stage.  Ho hum.

Gergiev’s original concept was a fascinating one:  finding parallels between the Nordic myths that Wagner drew on and his own native Ossetian Nart sagas, he gets Tsypin to fill the stage with 30-foot effigies of Nart gods, and tries to get away from conventional Teutonic readings of the cycle by finding links with other mythologies.  Well yes, fine.  But (as my boss, Judi Palmer, said) it might have been a nice concept if anyone had done anything with it.  There were interesting ideas, such as making the ‘gold’ and the ‘Rhine’ out of shimmering masses of actors’ bodies;  but these ideas were not thought through or related to Wagner’s text, so failed to take off. 

Moreover,

20,000 hits! A milestone!

Hey fellas! Less than two years after launching this website, I see I have now had over 20,000 hits — despite having rather ground to a halt over the last few months.

Many thanks to all of you for dropping by. There will be new things coming when I have time to get my breath back and get my act together!

Meanwhile, best wishes to everyone for a happy summer.

Jonathan

Cardiff Singer of the World 2009

 Greetings from Wales, where I am ensconced with the BBC putting several thousand subtitles on the broadcast items for the CARDIFF SINGER OF THE WORLD Competition, 2009, coming from St David’s Hall in Cardiff.  Very exciting contest, some terrific singing and wonderful music.  A great privilege to be part of it.  

For me, the fruits of several weeks’ hard work (slotted in between all the other things I have been doing lately!) commissioning and preparing the subtitle translations and editing the titles. 

Halfway through the week at the moment, Round 4 (out of 5) this evening… The Rosenblatt Song Prize Final (a separate competition) is on Friday, the main Final on Sunday.  Day-to-day coverage on BBC4, BBC Wales and Radio 3;  Sunday’s Final is broadcast on BBC2 at 5.30 – don’t miss it!

Martinů’s Juliette, BBC SO/Belohlávek

To the Barbican on Friday 27 March for a concert performance of Martinů’s opera Julietta, or rather ‘Juliette’, as it was given in Martinů’s own French (re-) translation – a slightly odd decision given that the conductor and some of the cast were Czech. Still, the effect of the French vocal declamation was to make the music more than usually reminiscent of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. Comprehension was ensured thanks to my friend Paula Kennedy’s scrupulous surtitles – which she would have been just as happy to do from Czech!

Kenneth Richardson provided a slick and effective ‘semi-staging’; singers basically wore evening dress and sang from scores, but the action was spiced up with minimal costumes and props, carefully thought out entrances and exits, and subtle lighting. American tenor William Burden was the tireless protagonist, the hapless Michel, who finds himself adrift in a land where no one can remember anything.  Magdalena Kožená was the appropriately distant and mysterious Julietta, looking lovely and vaguely 1930s in a floral frock.

Great character roles from a large cast including Jean Rigby and Rosalind Plowright, Roderick Williams and (outstanding) Andreas Jäggi.

Jiří Bělohlávek conducted the BBC SO in coruscating form – amazing colours and atmosphere. What an extraordinary score! I remember it from ENO in the 1970s (and from my Supraphon LPs), and its hypnotic power remains undimmed. It struck me as an amazing achievement to have written a full-length opera which is uniquely in his own idiom and no one else’s: apart from the echoes of Pelléas and the fact that the spooky opening bars are reminiscent of Stravinsky’s Les noces, one almost never felt ‘Oh yes, that bit’s Puccini, or Verdi, or Richard Strauss…’ as one does with all too many 20th century operas (including Britten!).

Martinů wrote the opera in 1936-7, to a play by his friend the French surrealist Georges Neveux. Martinů is probably an acquired taste, but I love his music. It’s the 50th anniversary of his death, so we are fortunate in getting more of it this year than we usually do.

Great to see a packed hall and so many luminaries in the audience – including, I was happy to see, Chris Hogwood, hotfoot from conducting the dress rehearsal of Dido and Aeneas + Acis and Galatea at the Royal Opera House only a few hours earlier (yes it was a long day).  I reminded Chris that it was he who introduced me to Martinů all those years ago (39 actually) at Cambridge Tech…

There’s a nice review here: http://thoroughlygood.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/juliette-bbcso-belohlavek-martinu/

picture: front cloth from a Czech production of the opera

Salomon Orchestra, 3 March 2009

London has dozens of amateur orchestras, each proclaiming itself ‘the finest amateur orchestra in the capital’.  Well, the Salomon Orchestra really is the finest non-professional orchestra in London.  Founded in 1963, it contains some of the best players on the circuit.  I grew up with these guys (and girls) and a surprisingly large number of them seem to have been in the orchestra for as long as I can remember!  (– which makes one worry where the next generation of really good amateur players is coming from…)

Their concerts are always a treat, and Tuesday’s was something special.  It was interesting to see how many distinguished amateur orchestral players were in the St John’s audience:  many were current or ex-members of Salomon who weren’t actually playing in this concert, but others had come to admire – a sign of the esteem in which this orchestra is held.

Unlike most other amateur bands, Salomon doesn’t rehearse on a weekly basis, but has a series of concentrated rehearsals just before each concert.  This really pays off.  Nor does it have a regular conductor;  this pays off too.  Guest conductor Dominic Wheeler electrified the band into disciplined playing of tremendous precision, energy and musicianship.

The concert opened with Benjamin Britten’s Fanfare for St Edmundsbury – three solo trumpets at corners of the gallery, playing three different fanfares in different keys, separately and then together.  As so often with Britten, a simple trick, but very effective (you think ‘I wish I’d thought of that!’).

Then Britten’s unjustly neglected Violin Concerto from 1939, an ambitious and accomplished work from a 26-year-old composer with a firm grasp of contemporary musical developments across Europe (and the world:  the score was completed in Canada and the USA).  In its breadth and easy authority it reminds me of Bartok’s 3rd Piano Concerto, although there are astonishing echoes (or pre-echoes) of Shostakovich and Prokofiev.

Soloist was the assured and hugely talented Sara Trickey, who conveyed the work’s searing intensity with power and brilliance.  If the last movement seemed to outstay its welcome, that might have been my fault rather than Britten’s.

After the interval, Dvořák’s unfamiliar Othello Overture – alas, unfamiliar to the orchestra too, it seemed:  I guess the rehearsal time had been mostly taken up with the other works on the programme.  But despite uncharacteristically ragged ensemble and some wrong entries, the performance was powerful and compelling, and Dvořák’s sonorities were beautifully conveyed (who else would score a chord for brass with just a cor anglais added?).

Finally, the piece I had come for:  Martinů’s Symphony No. 6

London Phoenix Orchestra — A Little Light Music

Yes, we’re here again! Lev Parikian conducts the London Phoenix Orchestra in a scintillating programme of American and Russian light music, with overtures to two great shows – Gershwin’s Girl Crazy and Bernstein’s Candide – and Gershwin’s brilliant tone picture, An American in Paris.   And there are three nice little pieces by Leroy Anderson (whose centenary was last year), and the so-called ‘Jazz Suite No. 2′ by Shostakovich, which isn’t jazz at all but is, er, a lot of fun (especially for the saxophonists).  Oh, and Shostakovich’s ‘Tahiti Trot’, better know to you and me as ‘Tea for Two’.

(And I get to play the contra!  That was a nice surprise.)

It’s on Tuesday 24 February (which happens to be my birthday) at Cadogan Hall. 

BE THERE!!