Review of Hallé concert conducted by Thomas Adès on 27 March 2025

A UK premiere from Thomas Adès, seen here conducting the Hallé Choir and 

Orchestra, with Anna Dennis the soprano soloist, at the Bridgewater Hall

Pictures cr Sharyn Bellemakers, The Hallé

 

Thomas Adès had the audience on his side even before the music began at the Bridgewater Hall. He made a brief announcement that the order of two pieces in the concert’s first half, one by Kaija Saariaho and one by himself called America: A Prophecy, would be reversed from what was indicated in the printed programme. “So,” he dryly observed, “tonight we are not putting America first.” Cue cheering and applause – a reflection of our times.

The second part of the concert was an outstanding performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. It’s a cliché to say that it still has power to shock even more than 100 years after its riotous premiere, but to gain its full effect it requires an orchestra of virtuoso standard and a conductor who knows exactly how he wants it to sound in every astonishing detail. For this it had both – the Hallé, led by Roberto Ruisi, were completely committed, and Adès is a master of clarity and imagination.

But the more intriguing experiences in the concert were in the first half, and had a connecting link in that they were each written for a particular juncture in recent time. They may therefore seem to fade in their significance as we move into the second quarter of the century, but their choice made for thoughtful reflection on the way we were in 1999 and 2020 – and how we are now.

Two of these works were originally commissioned by Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic to be “Messages for the Millennium” as it turned. Kaija Saariaho’s Oltra Mar (subtitled Seven Preludes for the new Millennium) is a choral work with its four odd-numbered sections including wordless singing and being about travelling and the sea, said Saariaho in her own programme note (the title being Old French for “Across the sea”). The second, fourth and sixth sections set words in French derived from texts from different times and places on the themes of Love, Time and Death. Deep stuff, indeed, for a juncture in history. There is much in common in the language of the first three and the final one, and the fifth is very short, so the overall shape feels more like that of an asymmetric arch, sustained notes slowly creating chords in the early part, faster tempi and stronger rhythms intervening, brief phrases creating a sense of foreboding as the subject becomes Death, and a final return to the atmosphere of the opening. There are huge contrasts and highly dramatic moments.

If that was all suffused with fatalism, Adès’s own “prophecv” for the 21^st century – revised only last year, in a version for soprano plus large chorus and (very large) orchestra, and jointly commissioned by the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Hallé – told us it would all end in tears. This was the UK premiere of the new version.

The original was around 15 minutes long and written for soprano soloist and optional chorus. This version took around 22 minutes and is apparently designed to hammer home the message implicit in texts referring to the Spanish conquest of Central and South America in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, the resulting destruction of Maya civilization and the apocalyptic devastation wrought by those who used Christian ideas as a justification for heartless militarism. “Ash feels no pain”, as one of those texts puts it.

The solo singing from Anna Dennis (pictured below) – in a role calling for pure strength and total accuracy – was outstanding: a good deed in a very nasty world. The Hallé Choir’s performance was excellent … would that the work’s message were different.

But the concert began in innocent simplicity. Adès’s Dawn: A chacony for orchestra at any distance was a product of the Covid lockdown of 2020, written for the BBC Proms (when concerts were delivered to an empty hall, you may well remember). It’s specified that the orchestra can be of flexible size and players can be placed around the hall in any way. The music is endearingly simple, slow “white notes” lines layered over each other: the ground a descending sequence and the orchestration (which includes a cymbalom along with plentiful other percussion) gradually thickening to a splendid resolution.

The positioning, seen today as rather random beaming-up of various players to different parts of the choir and high-level audience seating, doesn’t seem to make much difference. The textural effect is skilfully created, though, and rewarding.

 

Review of Hallé concert conducted by Thomas Adès 21 November 2024

Thomas Adès conducts the Hallé. cr David Hughes, the Hallé

In the third of his four concerts as the Hallé’s two-year artist-in-residence, Thomas Adès brought a programme based on Sibelius. His own compositions featured in it, too, as is no doubt the expectation for his part in the orchestra’s Manchester programming – in the form of his 20-minute orchestral piece, Aquifer, and his Homage to Sibelius, which employs a violin soloist. That role was filled by Stephen Waarts, who also played Rautavaara’s Deux Sérénades, a kind of two-movement concerto from the end of its creator's life which had to be completed by Kalevi Aho – the premiere of it was less than six years ago.

Being based on music from one of his operas, the Serenades give the solo violin some vocalistic, sweet lines, with longing embodied in them, and Waarts’ lyrical playing was complemented by liquid, glowing tone from the orchestra, the woodwind fluttering around the solo like exotic birds. Both movements end without warning, as if in mid-phrase: a poignant reminder that their creator was nearing the end of his days.

Homage to Sibelius uses a much larger orchestra than the 29 strings heard in Rautavaara’s music, and the solo violin is relatively unsoloistic until around half way through the music, when, in contrast to the intertwining, chaconne-style descending patterns and scales around which the music is mainly built, he finds a rising path that finally climbs ever higher, even as the rest of the texture plumbs the depths. It was co-commissioned by Anne-Sophie Mutter and first heard at the Lucerne Festival in 2022. One of the ingenious features of the harmony is the way the bass notes change to create different tonal centres for the moving lines above them – something Sibelius knew about, too.

Liquid sound was also very much the essence of Adès’ Aquifer (as the title implies): this, with the large orchestra back before him, was at times very much water under pressure, though, with the opening of its seven sections erupting like a geyser to a big climax involving all seven of the percussionists on duty. By the time the central section comes, there is striking, uplifting theme for horns with jagged shards of sound around it from trumpets (and others), and after varieties of motion – increasing power, excitement and exhaustion – the theme returns, high and exultant, to make a tumultuous coda. The piece was written earlier this year to celebrate Sir Simon Rattle’s move to the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and feels very much a pièce d'occasion.

Adès’ abilities as a conductor have been, for me, the most rewarding aspect of his visits to the Hallé, and since Sibelius is one of his specialities it was thrilling to hear his readings of the Seventh and (to finish) Fifth Symphonies. Sir Mark Elder performed and recorded them with the Hallé respectively 14 and 10 years ago, so some members may have benefitted from that inheritance as well.

With Emily Davis in the leader’s chair, their playing of the Seventh under Adès was disciplined, clean and beautifully articulated: moments of warmth – almost sentiment – in the opening paragraphs leading to crescendi that ended in sonorous, indeed ecstatic climaxes; the tempo gradations all skilfully controlled.

The Fifth was equally varied and subtle in its opening, with well chosen emphases, delicate wind playing and finely built highpoints. The whispers of sound in the second movement’s “dim. possibile” and the slightly anticipated acceleration that followed were certainly effective, and likewise the springy tunefulness in its more relaxed moments. The last movement was a wild ride, of course, and (as ever) had to achieve something very tricky at the end: to create a sense of conclusion in those six explosive chords at the end, rather than have them seem an odd kind of surprise. They were completely precise, perfectly timed – and simply did the job.

 

 

To be broadcast on Radio 3 on 27^th November

Review of Hallé concert conducted by Kahchun Wong 3 October 2024

Kahchun Wong conducts the Hallé  cr Alex Burns, the Hallé

Popped in between the opening concert of the Hallé season and his next big contribution to the regular autumn series for Kahchun Wong was a “Rush Hour” concert – one that follows the formula of a novelty (or near-novelty) plus a repertoire work, both played as an interval-less, approximately one-hour long, early evening programme.

The repertoire work was the 1919 suite from The Firebird, by Stravinsky, played with bright colours, delicacy and purity in the opening, percussive interjections from the brass in the Infernal Dance, beautifully controlled textures in the Lullaby, and a very grand final Hymn, starring the big bass drum. It was all very rewarding and praiseworthy.

But before that came Tan Dun’s Violin Concerto: Fire Ritual, with Eldbjørg Hemsing as soloist: the UK premiere of the piece, which was given by the same conductor and soloist in 2019 with the New York Philharmonic (its first time in that city).

It’s another example of “East meets West” in Wong’s programming, being written by a Chinese-American and based on a Taoist tradition of ritual that goes back to Chinese imperial times. The sound of traditional instrumentation is also evoked in Tan Dun’s writing – but not in the sense of using old instruments, rather as the inspiration for parts of a vastly varied sound world.

In one way it’s about as varied a sound world as anyone could hope to get from a symphony orchestra (and its conductor). There’s not just the sound of instruments being played in the usual way, but also unusually (a bowed cymbal, for instance), to which are added things such as players whispering, breathing noisily and humming, the conductor singing, and unison audible page-turning by the musicians – it’s surprising how loud that can be when you want it to.

In addition, the wind section of the orchestra was positioned away from the rest in the auditorium, and placed in pairs (oboe, flute, bassoon, clarinet, etc) facing each other from opposite sides of the gallery seating. So not just a quadrophonic experience, but surround sound in multiple variations.

And the soloist begins peripatetically, entering from the side of the platform as she plays and proceeding around the stalls seats until taking her place centre-stage. Much to see, as well as to hear.

I guess it all contributes to the sense of a ritual procedure, but the music has precise descriptive content, too. There are four sections, which we are told evoke the memory of the victims of war and those who have suffered throughout human history, with a kind of interlude called “Heavenly Birds” (guess what noises that requires) and a final prayer for peace. And let’s not forget a virtuosic cadenza-style episode for the soloist – variety is of the essence – and a brief motif for solo tuba which isn’t totally dissimilar to that at the start of the Infernal Dance in Stravinsky’s Firebird. I guess many will have found the very Chinese-sounding, pentatonic “big tune” towards the end the most heartening and melodious aspect of the whole musical pattern, which in technical terms is worked from and around the note D (or “re” in tonic sol-fa notation of the open key, audio-visually punning to indicate the ideas of return, rebirth and re-live).

It strikes me as in some ways like what in the 1960s we used to call “a happening” (as does Bernstein’s also ritual-based Mass): never a dull moment and fascinating in its mental stimulation.

The Royal Philharmonic Society Awards 2024, at the Royal Northern College of Music

 

    

       

L-R from top: Nicky Spence; Jasdeep Singh Degun; Roman Grigoriv, Olga Diatel and Illia Razumeiko; and Jack Capstaff at the RPS Awards

The Royal Philharmonic Society held its awards ceremony at the Royal Northern College of Music on Tuesday night (5 March) – the first time they’ve ever done them out of London. And here are my awards for the highlights of the show:

l The ceremony began with Conversation in the Forest by Keiko Abe, performed by “The Sound of Manchester” – Delia Stevens and Le Yu (aka Aurora Percussion Duo), with Andrea Vogler, David Hext, Harriet Kwong and Paul Patrick.

l Most entertaining acceptance speech of the night was from tenor Nicky Spence (winner, Singer category), pointing out that he’d been up for the award more than once before and “I was beginning to think I was Pippa Middleton” and telling the tale of how his mother (also present) and he stayed in a youth hostel when he first auditioned for the Guildhall School – sharing a room with bunk beds and, as both were “under-ambitious in terms of BMI”, it became a test of faith for the party on the underneath.

Nicky Spence and his husband, pianist Dylan Perez, also entertained with a rendition of Noel Coward’s Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington, which opened the second half of the night (it all finally ran to 45 minutes behind schedule).

l Jasdeep Singh Degun – the first sitar player ever to win an RPS Award – was both winner of the Instrumentalist category and composer/leader in the final item: Veer, with Harkiret Bahra, tabla, and RNCM musicians Leda Mileto, Chris Karwacinski, Beth Willett and Clara Hope Simpson (aka the Aestus Quartet) and Joana Moura, double bass.

l The Opera and Music Theatre award was won by Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival’s presentation of Chornobyldorf, which brought the whole Ukrainian cast and company of the opera to Yorkshire for its UK premiere. Ukrainian composers Illia Razumeiko and Roman Grigoriv travelled from Kyiv to receive the award.

l And the most eloquent acceptance speech was from Jack Capstaff, music director of Derwent Brass, the Derbyshire brass band which won the “Inspiration” category for non-professional ensembles – the only award decided by public vote (all nominations for it this year being for those based somewhere north of Watford). Bearing in mind the band world’s intense competitiveness, he said, with their foibles – “and there are many” – bands had always been good at creating access to music making for grass-roots communities, and it was down to a groundswell of support that Derwent had won the vote.

Other details:

l “Manchester Classical”, the weekend mini-festival last summer that brought together the Hallé, BBC Philharmonic, Manchester Camerata, Manchester Collective, RNCM and others, was presented with the Series and Events Award, having brought thousands of citizens to the Bridgewater Hall. Accepting the award, Hallé boss David Butcher said the city was unique in its collaboration between different organisations, and “when you work in partnership, brilliant things happen”.

l The Gamechanger Award went to the Irene Taylor Trust and its artistic director Sara Lee for using music to help people affected by the criminal justice system and in marginalised areas of society. 

l The Impact Award was presented to disabled musician Clare Johnston and Drake Music Scotland for Call of the Mountains, a collaboration with Kazakhstan’s Eegeru ensemble, which culminated in a collective performance in Edinburgh.

l Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, an icon of contemporary music who died in 2023, was given the Large-Scale Composition Award for her acclaimed opera Innocence: a portrait of lives changed by a high school shooting (it was staged by the Royal Opera). Her son, Aleksi Barrière, who was the opera’s co-librettist, collected the trophy.

l The BBC Singers were recognised for the quality, style and imagination they bring to a range of endeavour, receiving the Ensemble Award. 

l François-Xavier Roth received the Conductor Award for his work with the London Symphony Orchestra and his own ensemble, Les Siècles; the Chamber-Scale Composition Award went to Laurence Osborn for TOMB! premiered by the GBSR Duo and 12 Ensemble at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival; the Storytelling Award went to Leah Broad for Quartet, a book about four female composers; and the Young Artist Award was presented to mezzo soprano Lotte Betts-Dean.

PS:

Having once been part of a partly similar awards shindig myself, it was like a reminder of old times to see how these things are put together. You invite all your nominees and their friends to come to swell the crowd, but you keep the winners’ names confidential, of course … and then you worry that some of the chosen winners have not committed to being there.

With performers, one trick is to invite them to do a turn in the ceremony – which on the whole they will accept and seriously commit to (see above for examples). But sometimes, when it’s a clear turn-down because they have engagements elsewhere, you simply have to tell them they’ve won, swear them to secrecy and get them to film an acceptance speech in advance, feigning surprise, etc., etc.

When it’s the backroom and admin people (or movers and shakers, as they like to think of themselves), sometimes they, or their underlings, will say: “I could come, but I’m very, very busy and it would help to be tipped off, just privately, if being there in person will really be worth it” – in other words, “Have I won, because I’d love to make a speech in front of my peers and admirers, but otherwise it’s not worth it?” That’s the tricky one. I must admit to having stooped that low with those guys, sometimes.

 

Review of Hallé concert conducted by Anja Bihlmaier with soloist Maxim Rysanov

  

Anja Bihlmaier  cr Nikolaj Lund

It was Beethoven’s Fourth with zip at the Hallé last night, as Anja Bihlmaier showed her credentials as a conductor of the present day, taking the tempo markings very much at face value and, with the orchestra in fine fettle almost from the first bar, creating a performance of neatness and beauty.

She had 40 strings for the entire programme, which also began with Beethoven, in the form of the tone-poem-like Leonora no. 3 overture. I’ve heard it done with more operatic atmosphere – there were only the briefest of pauses, for instance, in this performance to follow the off-stage trumpet calls – but I think she wanted it to be as coherent as possible as a musical structure. It certainly had a fiery presto to finish.

In between the Beethoven pieces there was Maxim Rysanov with Bartók’s Viola Concerto (as completed by Tibór Sérly) – played with artistry and assurance and gathering a fair old head of steam in the gypsy-style passages of its finale – and followed by an encore for the soloist, himself Ukrainian-born, and the Hallé strings led by Roberto Ruisi: Myroslav Skoryk’s Melody, a piece which has become a symbol of lament and horror at the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

After the break came Unsuk Chin’s subito con forza, a short series of shocks and surprises apparently inspired by Beethoven’s music, in which a notable feature was versatility of Erika Öhman on various percussion instruments (which, in addition to her role as timpanist for the rest of the programme, makes her worthy of the woman-of-the-match award for this show).

The Beethoven symphony began in what could have been Haydn style and went on to a pretty perky Adagio and a lively work-out in the Scherzo, with only slight let-up in the tempo for the trios. The last movement danced away from the very first note and ended with a fine effect of contrast – one of Beethoven’s own surprises. I was impressed by the playing, shown in a number of points in the evening but supremely in that finale, of the guest principal bassoon, Todd Gibson-Cornish.

Maxim Rysanov

Review of Hallé concert with Antje Weithaas conducted by Christian Reif

                                                                           Christian Reif  (cr. Simon Pauly)            

The extended platform was in use again at the Bridgewater Hall to accommodate the full forces of the Hallé Orchestra in Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (which was the main marketing label for this concert). It was a worthy reading under conductor Christian Reif, who has the ability to inject a near-theatrical magic into everything he touches.

There was particular gravity and feeling in the slower dances of the first part of The Rite, a real sense of mystery as the second part began, and excitingly realized tension in the conclusions to both segments. The piece has attained the sanctity of set-text authority as an archetype of modernism these days (and modernism is now a matter for history books), but even if it shocks less than it did 110 years ago it can still pack a punch.

But the greater interest for me personally was to encounter another work by Dobrinka Tabakova, the Hallé’s artist-in-residence this season – in this case Pacific, from her Earth Suite, a set of pieces begun when she held a similar job recently with the BBC Concert Orchestra, and apparently still in progress as an open-ended set. Giving music eco-titles is a useful strategy today (it helps arts organisations tick boxes for their funders), but her description of this piece, written as the Covid pandemic began, as permeated by “some of the anxiety and uncertainty of that time” made more connections with the sounds we heard.

It begins with spooky tapping, silence and low hums, before a kind of chorale for muted trombones and then the sound of the strings: followed by a sequence of melodic lines for differing combinations of wind instruments, some highly extended, against a plodding choral accompaniment, which builds to a broad climax before dying away quite rapidly. It’s an easy structure to follow and has a quality of confidence and restfulness that outweighs any others.

The earlier elements in the programme were Falla’s Interlude and Dance from La Vida Breve, piloted by Christian Reif with a sure hand, casting enchantment in the former from the simple ingredients of unison strings, solo clarinet, and so on, and keeping a steady but perfectly danceable pulse, without over-emphasis of its “Spanishness”, in the latter.

And a wonderful solo for Bartók’s Violin Concerto no. 2 came from Antje Weithaas. She had no problem with the full strings strength (nearly 50) of the Hallé, as Reif kept the orchestral sound under precise control, and amid all the virtuosity and fireworks there was tenderness, eloquence and poise.

Antje Weithaas (cr. Kaupo Kikkas)

Review of Hallé concert with Boris Giltburg and conducted by Alexandre Bloch

Boris Giltburg cr Sasha Gusov

The Hallé like to bill each concert with a title these days: what good luck that this one was given that of the music played in its second half, Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra, as the conductor, soloist and piano concerto originally advertised had all changed by the time it happened.

So we had the chance to witness Alexandre Bloch’s debut with the orchestra. He’s no stranger to Manchester, though, having been a junior conducting fellow at the Royal Northern College of Music, after the Paris Conservatoire. He won the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition in 2012, and I remember his part in the 2013 Chester Festival, appearing with Manchester Camerata, which was followed by a move to the London Symphony Orchestra as assistant conductor.

He too the Hallé through Debussy’s Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un faune first, with the opening magically played by Amy Yule, starting from a very gentle piano but highly varied in dynamic as it proceeded. With the orchestra limited to 40 strings (as it was also for the concerto that followed) and the rich tones of Marie Leenhardt’s harp, the textures of this music were beautiful, and its phrasing was delicate while rhythmically quite brisk and always precise.

Boris Giltburg – a welcome guest in the past – appeared to play Chopin’s Piano concerto no. 2. He’s played a lot of Rachmaninov in his time (including here with the Hallé) and did not hesitate to use the power of the piano at times in this one, but he, too, can produce wonderful delicacy and dramatize the changes in sound the score requires. The Hallé wind were on exceptionally fine form for their solos in this piece. And we got an encore from Giltburg in a gorgeously sweet version of Chopin’s E minor Étude.

Overall it was still a short-ish programme, but Alexandre Bloch compensated for that with a brief lecture, illustrated by his own singing voice, on the Lutosławski before it was played. In performance – now with 60 strings, six percussionists and all the other resources the score prescribes – it was intensely colourful and brilliantly delivered, with the kind of instrumental virtuosity that conceals the height of the skills on display, and rhythmic energy constantly to the fore. The long, final Passacaglia, Toccata e Corale was passionately built to its climax, with brassy splendour and a near-devotional intensity from the strings.

Review of Hallé concert with Ian Bostridge and conducted by Kahchun Wong

Kahchun Wong (cr. Angie Kremer)

Kahchun Wong’s concert with the Hallé was a really interesting one – in the end, not so much for what it had appeared to offer on paper, but for what it gave in practice.

The paper interest was a UK premiere: Sofia Gubaidulina’s The Wrath of God, written in 2019, an 18-minute piece for very large orchestra (four Wagner tubas as well as four horns, two bass trombones, two tubas and a lot of percussion). It’s about the day of judgment, and suitably scary. It’s very loud a lot of the time, though there are beautiful and delicately mysterious softer passages too, one for strings and gong, one for strings and solo horn, followed by clarinet, piccolo and glockenspiel, then solo violin. Those I appreciated: but the predominant impression was that this somewhat episodic piece keeps making you think it’s all over, then showing you that it’s not.

The remaining ingredients in the programme were mainstream 20^th century music. Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings featured the peerless and extraordinary voice of Ian Bostridge, alongside the Hallé’s principal horn, Laurence Rogers. Between them (and Kahchun Wong) they gave the lovely song cycle about evening and night with many a dramatic twist. Bostridge frequently uses his voice in a quasi-instrumental way, with intensive emphasis on some notes and lines: in the Elegy (Blake’s “O Rose, though art sick!” and Dirge (the anonymous “Lyke-Wake Dirge”), particularly (the latter has its own evocation of the day of judgment, so that made plenty of sense). Rogers matched him for expression and played the virtuosic part with consummate skill. And in the final Sonnet (Jonson’s “Hymn”, to the Moon) we heard more of a kind of portamento in the Bostridge voice on rising phrases that seems to carry a frisson of dread, even in the most re-assuring music. Never a dull moment with these artists.

Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 5 is probably the favourite among his entire set and very much a repertoire work for symphony orchestras now. The challenge for any conductor, I think, is to catch some sense of ambiguity in it, to set against the clearly tuneful, attractive and agony-to-ectasy journey that it appears to be on the surface. Kahchun Wong did that very effectively: in one sense he dramatized it a bit more than others might (in the first and last movements), but the main characteristics of his interpretation were an assured and idiomatic approach to its rhythms, a peak of intensity which made the impassioned Largo, the third of its four movements, the unforgettable emotional heart of the piece, and a highly strategic change of tempo in the finale (beginning with the horn solo) that brought a huge weight of sadness into the midst of the triumphalism and ensured that stolidity persisted to its end, sound and clamour notwithstanding. It’s a way of conducting that would have been second nature to the great maestros of the first half of the 20th century – the time this music was born – and gives a sense of proportion and shape that are impossible to replicate by any other means.

 

Review of Hallé performance of Verdi's Requiem, conducted by Sir Mark Elder

Sir Mark Elder conducting the Hallé

Verdi’s Requiem has often been described as an “operatic” setting of a sacred text.

There’s no doubting that Sir Mark Elder sees it that way. It makes fairly frequent appearances in concert programmes, but of all the versions I’ve heard I don’t think there’s been any quite as determined to make it into a drama as this.

Each of the soloists is known for their prowess in Italian opera, and it seems each had been encouraged to see their role in this performance as a character study of some sort, whether pronouncing judgment, pleading for mercy, or floating to the heights of beatification.

When it came to the big choral and orchestral highspots, all was spectacle – the Dies Irae with not one but two big bass drums, and especially the Tuba mirum, with Aida-style stage trumpeters appearing on high, to properly put the fear of God into us.

The opening of the whole work was so minimalist as to be almost inaudible (pity so many of the audience decided to show their appreciation with paroxysms of coughing at that precise moment),so much so that the stentorian sound of the men leading off with Te decet hymnus was quite rough by comparison.

It was all much appreciated for its showmanship, and the contribution of the soloists. Natalya Romaniw was a heavenly prima donna, wonderfully sustaining her purity of tone and accuracy to the very end of the Libera me. If the Romantic notion that anyone can be saved through the love of a good woman was what Verdi had in mind there, her voice exemplified it.

Alice Coote, too, so imperious in her depiction of the Last Judgment in the Sequence, was the perfect Secunda Donna when it came to the Agnus Dei, which was one of the most beautiful parts of the whole performance. Thomas Atkins shone as every Italian tenor at prayer should do, in Ingemisco, and James Platt caught something of the pleading tone of Germont father in his singing of Confutatis maledictis (though in ensemble his foundation of the harmony didn’t always seem quite precise enough).

Whatever Verdi did or didn’t believe about the hereafter, he got something right with his setting of the Sanctus in this work: the dwelling place of God must be a scene of supreme rejoicing, which is what he caught in that wonderful fugue for double chorus. For me, it’s the climax of the whole work, though Sir Mark took it quite gently, with rhythmic life – unusually – somewhat lost in the part-singing for some of the time … until the last glorious cadence.

This work should always be something special for the Hallé: its founder, not known for operatic ventures into the Verdi canon particularly, was quick off the mark in appreciating it when it first appeared: he gave it here in Manchester in spring 1876, only about a year after Verdi, with his hand-picked Italian troupe, had toured it to London (and thus performed the British premiere). But Hallé was almost certainly the first to do it with all-British forces.

Review of BBC Philharmonic 'centennial' concert

Eva Ollikainen conducting the BBC Philharmonic

Calculating the age of an orchestra is a funny business. You might think that continuous existence as a group who played together under the same name, with slow membership changes over time, would be definitive.

By that standard the BBC Philharmonic is still quite young. Even allowing for changes of name (via the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra and the preceding BBC Northern Orchestra), but looking for its existence as a body of players on full-time contracts, you can’t go before 1942, or, allowing for almost universal freelance orchestra membership in earlier times, only back to 1934, when its players were basically those of the Hallé anyway (and also appeared as the Liverpool Philharmonic). Before that there was a BBC Nonette – the “Northern Studio Orchestra” – although attempts had been made in 1930 to establish something bigger.

So how do we get the idea that the orchestra’s lifetime stems from the 2ZY radio station in Manchester of May 1922, which started even before the BBC existed? (It’s not too long since Margaret Wyatt wrote a little book for the BBC called BBC Philharmonic: A celebration 1934-1994, so even by that count the Phil is 88 years old now).

Only on the basis that a body that employs musicians can “own” an orchestra, even if it’s simply paying for one-off concerts, and using various names from time to time (“2ZY Orchestra” and “Northern Wireless Orchestra”, from 1926).

It’s been considered thus before – Charles Hallé employed his band from 1857 to 1895 either from gig to gig or on six-month contracts (though for many years he paid some a weekly wage for that winter season), and it was most often known as “the Manchester Orchestra” then.

Never mind: the BBC in the North West is celebrating 100 years of paying musicians to perform for it, which is a good thing whether you call that having an orchestra or not. The Philharmonic marked this with a great performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in the Bridgewater Hall, conducted by Eva Ollikainen. It was full-bodied Beethoven, with 60 strings and effectively triple woodwind, and the vocal line-up of Tuuli Takala, Kitty Whately, Steve Davislim and Simon Shibambu, abetted by the CBSO Chorus, made a strong body indeed.

Big bodies can still be light on their toes. Ollikainen brought energetic tempi to the first two movements, resulting in playing of incisiveness, vehemence even, and the timps pounded by Paul Turner were emphatically prominent in both. The Adagio was all suavity and songfulness, and the finale eloquent, full of gloriously realized counterpoint and surging and bounding in rhythmic energy to its climax.

Before it there were just two short orchestral pieces; the first the overture, Chanticleer, by Ruth Gipps, which the orchestra has recently recorded. Written in 1944, it’s a bit of a stop-start piece, but with plenty of instrumental colour. Oddly enough, its fairly conventional mid-century harmonies end on a strange cadence – as if it was meant to lead straight into the opera it was originally written for.

Present-day composer Erland Cooper wrote his Window over Rackwick to a BBC commission, and it had its world premiere in this concert. It’s a kind of tribute to Peter Maxwell Davies, the son of Salford who was associated with the Philharmonic for many years, inspired by the Orkney spot where he had his home, and setting a poem by his friend and collaborator, George Mackay Brown. The soprano soloist was pure-toned Héloïse Werner.

It’s like a simple, oft-repeated song refrain, beautiful to hear in its string chamber ensemble garb, and, like Max himself, very pleasant to encounter, but leaving you in no doubt of his being amply content with his own company.

Review of Hallé concert with Tami Pohjola, conducted by Taavi Oramo

Violinist Tami Pohjola and conductor Taavi Oramo pictured with the Hallé (credit Tom Stephens)

This week’s repeated Hallé programme (I heard it on Wednesday afternoon) was an intriguing one. Not so much for the headline works – Mendelssohn’s Italian symphony and Sibelius’ Violin Concerto – but for the two overtures by women composers added to those, and the two guest artists.

They were both Finnish and young, and going places. The conductor was Taavi Oramo and the soloist Tami Pohjola.

She is a wonderful player. She has both a gorgeously lyrical sound and some very big tone, allied with formidable technique. Standing against around 50 strings in the tutti orchestra was no problem, and the first movement cadenza was not just confidently negotiated but heartfelt in style. That makes a difference: the slow movement, too, was soulful in spades, and the finale much more than a mere fireworks display.

Oramo ensured that the orchestral role in the concerto had plenty of emphasis, energy and expression, and the Hallé wind players lightened the atmosphere with their usual expertise.

The two overtures were Fanny Mendelssohn’s in C major and Louise Farrenc’s no. 1 in E minor. They were near-contemporaries in life, and the overtures are near-contemporary in date – but, for me, there was a world of difference. Fanny Mendelssohn, for all her technical accomplishments, seems to borrow effects from others (Mozart, and maybe even Beethoven at some points) but has a tendency to repeat herself in shortish phrases, and her harmonic progressions are not always too adroit. Taavi Oramo made sure her writing was pushed along to create real tension, but even he could not make this overture into more than a curiosity.

Louise Farrenc, on the other hand, was a composer of imagination and originality, as well as technical accomplishment. Her harmonic changes are sure-footed and she writes remarkable counterpoint almost throughout, so that her themes intertwine to great effect. What a pity she doesn’t seem to have written very much more for orchestra than this and one other overture.

Felix Mendelssohn, the Italian’s composer, gave us a masterepiece and it’s now a familiar one. I specially liked the charm Taavi Oramo and the musicians drew from the Con moto third movement (a Goldilocks tempo there, with some very individual touches from the horns), and the finale was definitely fast and furious – perhaps a tad too much ...

Review of Hallé concert with Guy Johnston, conducted by Delyana Lazarova

 

Delyana Lazarova conducts the Hallé 

There could have been few orchestral works more appropriate to reflect our thoughts after the death of a sovereign than two we heard played by the Hallé yesterday.

Neither was planned with such an event in mind, but Dobrinka Tabakova’s Cello Concerto has a central movement that ends in so still and elegiac an atmosphere as to seem as if written as a meditation on profound loss, and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony is itself a journey into finality and silence.

Delyana Lazarova, the assistant conductor to Sir Mark Elder, conducted this opening concert of the 2022-23 season, beginning it, and others, by playing the National Anthem. It wasn’t the stirring version, begun with a side-drum call to arms, that older audience members remember from the years last century when war was still a keen memory, but Britten's, with a quiet beginning, as befits the prayer it really is.

We were soon into the whirl of Ravel’s La Valse, begun under Lazarova’s baton in a manner as rhythmically numinous as it was in other ways, but soon full of impetus and precision, the richness of its textures fully realized and the tensions effectively rising to its shattering close.

Dobrinka Tabakova, now the Hallé’s artist in residence, was present to hear Guy Johnston play the solo in her concerto of 2008. It’s a readily appreciable piece: three movements, clear themes and motifs, harmonious chording and real tunes. What a refreshment to hear new music like that! It’s also very hard for the soloist, who’s frequently up in violin register in the early part of the piece, by Guy Johnston was unabashed by those demands and brought eloquence and sweetness to the melodies – especially the lovely dialogue with solo viola in the central movement.

The Tchaikovsky symphony is one most listeners and all players will have been familiar with for years. I’m a child of the 1960s, when conductors (including John Barbirolli) were more inclined to use tempo flexibility as a vehicle for expounding structure, and Lazarova’s safe and steady tempo for the third movement (Allegro molto vivace, it says) ensured crisp and accurate articulation but lost out a bit in the hysteria department, which can be an important part of the symphony’s emotional journey (the finale has even been “diagnosed” by the learned as exhibiting clinical evidence of hysteria in the way those chromatic upward rushes are shared from first to second violin parts in the score).

The first movement was magisterially presented, careful baton beating bringing springy rhythms throughout and brightness and brilliance characterising the development part of its structure. The last pages were beautifully intense and tragic.

The orchestra was led by Magnus Johnston (Guy’s brother, as it happens), and though several of the regular section leaders (noticeably in the strings) weren’t present, the guest principal bassoon, Daniel Handsworth, made an eloquent contribution to his solos in the Tchaikovsky symphony.

Guy Johnston and Dobrinka Tabakova acknowledge

applause after the performance of her cello concerto

Reviews of the National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company at Buxton

Emily Vine (Mabel) and chorus in the National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company's

production of The Pirates Of Penzance at Buxton Opera House 2022

The Pirates of Penzance

The Gilbert & Sullivan Festival is back at Buxton – hurrah! A full week of performances at the Opera House there precedes two weeks of continued festival in Harrogate, so there’s the best of both worlds for G&S lovers.

The shows diary is very much the same as it used to be in the days when Buxton had the festival to itself: a different title almost every day, with the festival’s own National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company leading the way (they’re also doing Iolanthe and Utopia Ltd, a relative rarity), plus the pick of the crop of other specialists in the Savoyard repertoire – this week that’s The Gondoliers (Forbear! Theatre), The Mikado (Peak Opera), HMS Pinafore (Opera della Luna), and Charles Court Opera with their own concoction called Express G&S plus Patience.

The Pirates of Penzance was done with the familiar painted sets but re-costumed for director Sarah Helsby Hughes’ fresh take on the piece. She kept all the original script and music, but sent us on a kind of time-warp to the 1930s, where, even if professional pirates still looked the same, Major-General Stanley’s daughters were beach belles in Act One and appeared in fluffy nighties for Act Two, and lovers Mabel and Frederic at one point transformed into Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. There was plenty of dancing by a gifted cast and chorus (choreographer Eleanor Strutt), and just a few knowing tweaks of the familiar lines and situations. I loved it, and the Opera House audience hardly ever stopped laughing.

The music was in the expert hands of John Andrews (of Red Squirrel Opera fame) and the playing by the festival’s own National Festival Orchestra was unimpeachable – a small but well balanced ensemble, under a conductor who knew that getting the words across was the thing that mattered most.

The principals line-up was, as ever before, a mix of new talent and experience. Stalwarts from the old days included Bruce Graham as Sergeant of Police, Louise Crane as Ruth and James Cleverton as the Pirate King – all needing no introduction to the faithful and completely on top of their jobs. Matthew Siveter, as the Major-General (in a kind of Boy Scout uniform, to suit the time-warp), has already made his reputation in the G&S field and proved just how with a superbly rapid “I am the very model …” patter song.

RNCM-trained Aidan Edwards was an extremely strong and clear Samuel, and the three lead daughters, Catrine Kirkman, Kate Lowe and Alexandra Hazard, vamped things up delightfully. And for Frederic and Mabel we had two classy singers: David Webb’s tenor never less than noble and Emily Vine’s soprano hitting the high notes with panache.

 

Iolanthe

Iolanthe was the first of this year’s shows performed by the Gilbert & Sullivan Festival at Buxton and in John Savournin’s production very much follows the formula of tradition-with-tweaks.

Nothing to frighten the horses or the purists (no re-wording of “Oh, Captain Shaw …”, for instance), despite the fact that of all the G&S canon its references today seem furthest removed from the present-day world: we don’t even have a proper Lord Chancellor now, and our House of Lords is far from being made of blue-bloods alone.

But a visit to the festival at Buxton or Harrogate is almost like travelling back to Victorian/Edwardian times anyway, and no one seems to worry about a storyline whose point is all to do with a long-gone legislative and judicial establishment, with a Lord Chancellor in charge of wards of court and membership of the house of peers requiring nothing other than breeding – add to that the romantic Victorian fascination with fairies and you are soon into an innocent fantasy world with its own rules entirely.

There’s just the occasional sharp-eyed reflection on the nonsense (I liked Phyllis’s response to Strephon’s revelation that he was half-fairy and only half-man, as Emily Vine snapped out her line: “Which half?”), and today you can hardly avoid a titter over the line “She’d meet him after dark, inside St James’s Park, and give him one …”, but that’s as far as the double-entendres go.

Merry Holden is the choreographer, and the ever hard-working cast and chorus have moves that require some co-ordination and sometimes recall the much-loved skipping around of the old D’Oyly Carte routines (in “If you go in, you’re sure to win”, for instance – which got its equally traditional encore). The music was again in the expert hands of John Andrews, with the National Festival Orchestra providing flexible and sympathetic accompaniments.

And stand-outs among the principals, for me, were Matthew Palmer (Strephon), an excellent young tenor still at the outset of what should be a very successful career, and Meriel Cunningham (Iolanthe), who has a rich mezzo-soprano tone and real clarity. Matthew Kellett enjoys rattling off the patter as the Lord Chancellor; Matthew Siveter has his spot of glory as Private Willis; Emily Vine is a winsome Phyllis and Amy J Payne an imperious Queen of the Fairies; and Ben McAteer and Hal Cazalet enjoy prancing their way through as Earls Mountararat and Tolloller.

Utopia Limited

One of the orchestra members was using the audience loos (which are few anyway) before the show at Buxton on Friday night, so I asked him whether they didn’t provide enough of them backstage.

“Yes,” he said, “but they’re all full of the turns, warming up their voices.”

A tangential illustration of one facet of producing Gilbert & Sullivan’s next-to-last operetta, Utopia Ltd – there are an awful lot of “turns”, i.e. people in the cast.  That’s probably one reason why it’s not done very often.

So credit where it’s due: the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival, this year beginning at Buxton and moving on to Harrogate, did us all a good turn by offering the first fully staged professional revival of it (apart from the D’Oyly Carte’s one attempt) back in 2011, and here it is again.

Jeff Clarke, of Opera della Luna fame, is the director, with Jenny Arnold his inventive choreographer, and John Andrews conducts the G&S Festival’s own National Symphony Orchestra.

The piece may, when written in the early 1890s, have been a bit derivative of past Gilbert-Sullivan glories: Gilbert’s plot is about a distant island that decides to improve itself by adopting all the benefits of Victorian English society – the rulers (and some members) of the Army and Navy, a lawyer, a county councillor, a Lord Chamberlain, and a crafty businessman on the make, and of course there’s much flouncing around in posh costumes and drinking of cups of tea. Cue jokes at the expense of all of that, and there are references in the script (and in the score for the latter of them) to both The Mikado and HMS Pinafore.

Clarke has removed the locale from the “luxuriant and tropical landscape” of the original book to a generally Middle Eastern one, with palms and porticoes. He leaves it to the expertise of performers such as Robert Gildon and Giles Davies (as the Wise Men of pre-reform Utopian society) and Ben McAteer to get the story over in Act One, which they do with excellent diction, and there is a delightful character study from Monica McGhee (as Princess Zara, the daughter of the kingdom who returns from Girton College, Cambridge, to share all she’s learned of enlightened society) – she’s absorbed the Queen’s English so much as to sound like the Queen herself.

Meriel Cunningham and Rachel Speirs (the latter stepping up from chorus duties to take the role on 5 August) portray her sisters, the young princesses Nekaya and Kalyba as feisty young ladies with their own ideas … an aspect of Gilbert’s young heroines that’s increasingly drawn on these days.

Where Clarke really gets into his stride is the early part of Act Two, with nice touches from lighting designer Matt Cater for a night-time setting, and Anthony Flaum, as Captain Fitzbattleaxe of the First Life Guards (who we soon learn is Princess Zara’s love interest as well as security detail), is very funny as the romantic tenor singer who’s never quite able to deliver when he’s not in the mood. That’s soon followed by a song for the British gentlemen who represent the “Flowers of Progress” – complete with visual props, a mock encore and present-day references to the NHS and fuel prices in its final verse.

Of these Britishers I admired Tim Walton’s highly theatrical Lord Chamberlain and the cockney wide-boy given by Paul Featherstone as businessman Mr Goldbury, and Katharine Taylor-Jones also impressed as The Lady Sophy – the nearest Utopia Ltd gets to an elderly bossy-woman role. Cameron Mitchell, Aidan Edwards, Stephen Godward and Ciarán Walker all make strong contributions.

Review of Albert Herring at Clonter Opera

Jack Roberts (Mr Upfold), Flora Birkbeck (Florence Pike), Erin Rossington (Lady Billows), Jordan Harding (Mr Gedge), Thomas Stevenson (Supt Budd), Lydia Shariff (Mrs Herring) and Daniel Kringer in Clonter Opera's production of Albert Herring

Eric Crozier and Benjamin Britten, after Maupassant

Clonter Opera

Clonter Opera Theatre

14, 16, 17, 19, 21 and 23 July 2022, 2 hours 35 minutes plus supper interval (30 minutes, or 70 minutes in some performances)

I love it when an opera company announces Albert Herring. It’s an affectionate send-up of the hypocrisies and absurdities of rural British life, almost like The Archers set to music.

Not precisely the same, of course, but you have the figures of the vicar, the police superintendent, the headmistress of the village school, the mayor, the titled lady who lives in the big house and her housekeeper – and the younger generation: lovebirds Sid and Nancy, and a few schoolchildren.

Then there’s Albert. He’s the son of the greengrocer’s shop owner, Mrs Herring, and a young man very much under his mother’s thumb. The story begins when the worthies are seeking a girl of pure and impeccable character to be their Queen of the May … but none of the candidates actually qualifies, on moral grounds. Only shy Albert seems to be an innocent – so they make him King of the May.

Sid and Nancy spike his lemonade with rum at the village fete to celebrate his coronation (what better piece could have been chosen in this year of jubilee fetes left, right and centre?), and with his prize money in his pocket, all unknown to everyone and particularly his mum, Albert goes out on the razzle that night.

What happens next you need to see the opera to enjoy best, so I won’t spoil it, but this is operatic comedy, one of the best ever written. It’s a demanding piece, too, but Clonter Opera, the finishing school based on a Cheshire farm near Jodrell Bank, helping young singers find a bridge between conservatoire training and the professional world, has put all its resources into this production and come up with something rather special.

It's one of the few mainstream operas that a small-scale but well-equipped theatre such as Clonter’s can put on with the orchestral score exactly as written, as Britten wrote it for just 13 players, and the professional Clonter Sinfonia do sterling duty in the pit, under the acute and supportive baton of music director Philip Sunderland.

The production by Michael McCaffery, sets the story in 1947 – that was the year of the first performance, just 75 years ago – rather than 1910, and the set and costume design by Bettina John quietly underscore an important aspect of the score: the post-war sense of rejuvenation that was sweeping through Britain at the time. This is an opera that tells us, without ever stating it out loud, that the older generation, with their prejudices and stuffiness, are on the way out, and the future belongs to the young; and John’s design has detailed and authentic-looking sets of dull and faded interiors, contrasting with brightly coloured (and sometimes near-surreal) costumes for the characters who parade through them. The Clonter stage revolve is skilfully used to produce successive backdrops, as in the original scenario, and we hear the full musical entr’actes that cover the scene changes (one reason why the full running time is quite long).

As a vehicle for young voices to show their potential and young performers their abilities, Albert Herring could hardly be bettered. The character studies of  Erin Rossington (Lady Billows), Flora Birtbeck (Florence Pike), Jordan Harding (Mr Gedge), Jack Roberts (Mr Upfold) and Thomas Stevenson (Supintendent Budd) were all engagingly realized and strongly sung, and I think that Rosalind Dobson (Miss Wordsworth) has a particular gift for comedy, with just the right touch of exaggeration and an ability to keep reacting in character.

The three children were each played by first-year students of the Royal Northern College of Music – Eirwen Roberts, Myome Mortimer-Davies and Samuel Horton – who enjoyed their opportunities for fun and games; and Lydia Shariff, as Mrs Herring, was able to convince us (more than most) that she was a generation older than her real age.

But the stand-out performances in a gifted ensemble were from Daniel Kringer, as Albert, Thomas Chenhall, as Sid, and Frances Gregory, as Nancy. Albert is a difficult role to play: he’s not a village idiot, rather a young man who’s never had a chance to spread his wings until the incidents the opera portrays, and he shames his elders in the end. Daniel Kringer’s voice quality was very durable and his diction excellent, and his acting showed Albert learning from his experiences, right through to the fascinating line, “I didn’t lay it on too thick, did I?” (which leaves us wondering whether he’s smart enough to have been kidding the lot of them with his lurid account of a night on the tiles).

And in this he’s in cahoots with Nancy and Sid, the young couple who are well aware of the ways of the world, and the flesh. Thomas Chenhall and Frances Gregory showed themselves to be mature voices and accomplished actors, well equal to the world of the professional stage – in which they’re each already busily engaged.

 

 

Reviews of Buxton International Festival operas 2022

La Donna del Lago at Buxton International Festival:  Máire Flavin as Elena (red dress) 

Credit Genevieve Girling

La Donna del Lago

Tottola and Rossini, after Walter Scott

Buxton International Festival

Buxton Opera House

8, 12, 15,17, 22 July 2022, 2 hours 50 minutes

 

After the outright cancellation of 2020 and constrained conditions of 2021, Buxton International Festival is back and firing on all cylinders this year. And its operatic flagship is a masterwork by Rossini.

Written in 1819, it was inspired by Walter Scott’s poem, The Lady of the Lake, and is an early example in European opera of full-blown Romantic ideas coming to the fore – war and peace, love and rivalry, wild and remote locations, supposed ancient traditions and figures from the past. There’s even a reference (not taken from Scott) to characters in the writings of the mythical Scottish bard, “Ossian”, a literary fake that hoodwinked most people at the time.

And musically we find Rossini on the cusp of using new-fangled Romantic language in his otherwise cute-and-classical writing: off-stage horn calls, tremolando strings, the sound of the harp to convey local colour (no matter that there’s nothing specially Scottish about it). At the same time he was going all out for popular appeal, and one of the climactic numbers is a competitive duet for love-rival tenors in which the dramatic tension is reflected vocally by bursts of repeated high Cs (and more) from both of them.

The story is fairly simple: Elena (the Lady in question) is the daughter of a chieftain whose loyalty used to lie with the King but who’s now mixed up with rebel Highlanders. He’s betrothed her to their leader, but she really loves another. The King, disguised, comes across her and falls for her, too (hence the two-tenors rivalry). Battle goes badly for the rebels, but Elena seeks to save her father and her true love, and in the end … Well, I won’t give it all away.

Director Jacopo Spirei and designer Madeleine Boyd have staged the opera in a way that conveys general impressions – ragged clothes for the Highland warriors, shiny techno-style costumes for the King and his forces; a interior/exterior set to provide the lakeside locale for the first act and a geometric, power-lit coldness for the King’s palace in the second … showing there’s a clash of cultures as well as of loyalties, a nice gloss on the storyline. The use of a tiny model boat to represent what the script says is Elena’s offer to her visitor of a trip across the lake got a bit of a titter from the audience – but what else can you do on a stage like Buxton’s?

What you need for this opera to work is two tenors with first-class Italian-style top registers: tick – Buxton has Nico Darmanin and John Irvin. You also need a really good bass-baritone and a virtuosic wide-ranging mezzo (for the trouser role of Elena’s warrior true love: tick – Buxton has David Ireland and Catherine Carby. And above all you need an utterly wonderful soprano as Elena: Buxton has Máire Flavin, and her rondó finale at the end brings the whole thing to a triumphant close, as it did on the first night in 1819 and needs to every time.

So the casting is top-class. So is the chorus, all 22 of them plus some minor role singers, too. Buxton has nobly managed so often in the past with a small-scale body, but at last it’s great to hear a full-throated crowd of them in the bright Opera House acoustic.

And the musical direction, by festival artistic director Adrian Kelly, is full of energy and impact. The Northern Chamber Orchestra plays with precision and panache, and the whole thing rattles by with both brilliance of coloratura technique and glorious tone production from all the principals.

(Giulio Cilona conducts on 12, 15 and 17 July).

Antonio e Cleopatra

Ricciardo and Hasse

Buxton International Festival

Buxton Pavilion Theatre

13, 16, 20, 22 July 2022, 1 hour 25 minutes

 

This is Buxton International Festival’s second fully home-grown opera production for 2022. Antonio e Cleopatra is a “serenata” – a baroque mini-opera employing a tiny orchestra and a smaller cast … the title tells it all, as there are just two of them.

It was written in 1725 by Johann Hasse, a German who, like Handel, had his first successes in Italy, and created for production in Naples – then part of the Holy Roman Empire of the Habsburgs.

As the state museum in Vienna will proudly tell you, the Habsburg imperial crown, inherited from Charlemagne, has symbols that show supposed continuity from the Caesars, and this piece makes the point by having Cleo and Mark Antony finally console their unhappy lot (after the battle of Actium) by looking to a future world ruled by Kaiser Charles VI and his missus, Kaiserin Elisabeth. Very loyalist, if a tad historically unlikely.

So how to present a two-acter in which the lovers (both written for high voices) spend the whole time telling each other how they feel, and nothing actually happens? This is baroque opera, and the convention is that each aria (always in da capo repeat-the-beginning-after-a-middle-section form) represents one emotion only – despair, anger, renewed love, determination, regret, resignation, heroic fatalism, etc. The succession gives the singers opportunities to show what they can do in each mood, and that’s the drama.

Director Evangeline Cullingworth (with the help of designer Grace Venning) seems to find parallels in the agonies of a penniless (or even homeless) young couple of the present day. We’re in a near-bare bedroom, and they have nothing but the clothes they stand up in and one big suitcase of a few remaining treasured things. These turn out to include bits of Roman armour, a pair of angel wings, some wigs, theatrical costumes, imitation pistols and hair brushes. Perhaps they have been acting in some dead-end theatre, as finally they dress up in full Carry On Cleo mode for the suicide pact that ends the piece?

The props, of course, give them something to do as they emote their way through Hasse’s arias (plus a couple of duets, one to close each act), with all those repeats. The vocal music is extremely taxing, though, and the quality of the two singers – Thalie Knights, as Antonio, and Ellie Neate, as Cleopatra – is what the audience has come to hear. They are top-class young artists, well able to embellish their repeats tastefully, and in Ellie Neate’s case making the most of her frequent bursts of high-powered top notes (originally written for Farinelli). The first-act closing duet, “Un solo sospiro”, verges on the Handelian in its variety of emotive resource and showed the two both at their best.

Musical direction from the harpsichord is by Satoko Doi-Luck, with a tireless in-period string quintet beside her.

 

Viva la Diva

Donizetti after Sografi, English version by Kit Hesketh-Harvey

Salzburg State Theatre in association with Buxton International Festival

Buxton Opera House

10, 14, 19, 21 and 23 July 2022, 2 hours 55 minutes

 

It’s good to see that Buxton International Festival can laugh at itself. Here we have an adaptation of material originally written to be a comic opera about opera, by Donizetti, turned into a tale of the auditions, rehearsals and final chaotic performance of a piece by the “High Peak Festival” – guess what that might be.

There’s the aspiring hopeful from the Royal Northern College of Music, the heavyweight star soprano with equally nasty minder from eastern Europe, the mezzo who flounces out to be replaced by the grande dame of the local musical scene, the tiny Italian tenor with a sore throat, the dodgy impresario who can’t quite find the cash to pay everyone on time, and the hapless director trying to hold it all together.

So far, so good, as ideas. In practice, Viva la Diva turns out to run 40 minutes longer than they estimated when the festival programme was printed, and it’s not quite as funny as it thinks it is. Maybe that’s to do with the inevitable in-jokes of opera singers sending themselves and their colleagues up, maybe it’s because Kit Hesketh-Harvey’s English words to fit around Donizetti’s tunes, full of internal rhymes and cleverness, still aren’t as tight as a script for a comic opera should be (he also gets extended mileage out of imagined absurd surtitle translations of an Italian libretto – OK first time but not worth doing over and over). Maybe the extra length is to do with preparations for the second act, which is technically quite ambitious, but if you’re going to do an exercise in The Opera That Goes Wrong (as this does), you have to be sure we know which bits are gags and which are not.

There was a feeling of improv creeping in, as if the presence of a male in drag (George Humphreys, stealing the show as supposed contralto Lady Agatha Wigan) turns everything to panto in British theatreland.

Many of the rest of the cast are capable of strutting their stuff as genuine bel canto singers, and I suppose they needed to have the opportunity to prove it, but the progress of the plot is slowed by rather too much Donizetti in the process. So full marks to everyone for singing really well at times and acting funny at others, to conductor Iwan Davies and repetiteur Katie Wong for both being and portraying their roles, to the Northern Chamber Orchestra for both their excellent playing and for pretending to go on strike, and to director Stephen Medcalf and the technical team for everything that went wrong properly.