Music
More than a yard of tickets to the Proms!
What could be more appropriate than a performance of Schubert's Winterreise (Winter Journey) in the Lake District in winter? The great song cycle, settings of poems by Wilhelm Müller, compares the poet's loss of love to the cold and bleakness of winter. The journey of the cycle includes songs inspired by a weather-vane, torrent and stream, a charcoal-burners' hut, a dream of spring-time, a crow and a wayside inn. All familiar features of the Lake District scene.
A young cast in an established production of Don Giovanni at Covent Garden gave an energetic performance. The Italian language wasn’t bad and the characterisations weren’t undermined by the physiques of the singers: Don Giovanni (Erwin Schrott) looked a credible “dissolute one”, he chatted up a lady in the stalls circle in Act 1 and he got his shirt off in ActII before being claimed by the stone figure of the Commendatore. Donna Elvira’s Act II solo (Ruxandra Donose) was electric although some of this rather restless audience weren't impressed. Nice to have a fortepiano continuo (Mark Packwood) rather than a harpsichord.
The audience was impressed by Da Ponte’s comedy, the complicated acting and the staging - including live fire for the torches carried by the search party with more live fire for the flames that engulfed the unrepentant Don Giovanni.
Tonight's fluid interpretation of the overture set the scene for this dynamic and convincing production. It was a revelation to play Die Meistersinger as a German comic opera, it solves the problem of how to deal with Wagner's masterwork which was misappropriated by the Nazis. The justification is certainly there in the text and in the music, the programme gives additional justification based on Wagner's notes. Not playing the overture (or any of the music) as a storm-trooper march allows an interpretation based on Wagner's careful study of small-town politics and one of his most human stories.
Die Meistersinger is one of those operas for which there is never going to be a perfect ensemble of soloists and a perfect production and a convincing interpretation. This production comes pretty close and certainly sent us back out to the rain and wind of a stormy January night in Covent Garden after a thrilling, enjoyable and uplifting experience.
The central duet between the Dutchman (Egils Silins) and Senta (Anja Kampe) was gripping in it's horrific and seemingly inevitable progress between cursed mariner and his potential saviour in this evening's revival of Wagner's "Romantic opera" Der fliegende Holländer at Covent Garden. At the end of 140 minutes of continuous music drama I felt I had been guided expertly through an emotional mangle.
I find it difficult to know what to make of Der fliegende Holländer: composed around 1840 and first performed in 1843 in Dresden, audiences clearly found it challenging at the time. It is a fully completed work but it leaves me somewhat perplexed 150 years later. Perhaps the best explanation - if one is needed - is that Wagner the artist and Wagner the person were both searching. The actual stormy sea crossing which Wagner attributed as the inspiration was just the trigger which helped him write out his wanderings in a form of an opera of a mystic legend. Der fliegende Holländer appeared nearly twenty years before Gounod's “Faust”, that I saw a few weeks ago. They're comparable because they are both about a metaphysical bargain based on myths, but Charles Gounod's “Faust” comes over as a far less radical score despite the later date; that's an indication of just how progressive was the thinking of the young Richard Wagner.
Royal Opera’s production of Gounod’s “Faust” should come with a warning: it beguiles you, opens you up and then packs a series of precision punches in the last act, just like Méphistophélés in the story. The programme warns just about the single gun shot near the end of Act II.
Charles-François Gounod’s “Faust” is one of the grand operas. it’s also the opera of the Faust story that is most often performed. It’s grand in the sense of long, grand in scope because it deals with the big and universal themes of life and death, love and betrayal, and grand because the cast is the soloists, chorus, extra chorus, actors, acrobatic dancers and ballet dancers. It’s not a cheap ticket either but it’s worth it, certainly this Royal Opera production from 2004 is worth it.
