Il Corsaro a delight and a triumph

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music presents:

Il Corsaro

An opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, based on Lord Byron’s poem, The Corsaire.

Presented by students of the New Zealand School of Music:

Cast: Thomas Atkins (Corrado) / Isabella Moore (Gulnara)
Christian Thurston (Pasha Seid) / Elisabeth Harris (Medora)
James Henare  (Giovanni) / William McElwee (Pirate/Aga Selimo)
Declan Cudd (Pirate/Eunuch) / Jack Blomfield (Lord Byron)
Imogen Thirlwall (Caroline Lamb)
Voice Students of Te Kōkī  NZ School of Music

Conductor: Kenneth Young
Director: Sara Brodie
Assistant Director : Frances Moore
Orchestra of Te Kōkī  New Zealand School of Music

Opera House Wellington,

26th July 2013.

This New Zealand premiere marked the 200th anniversary of Verdi’s birth,  and was the first of four performances to be staged with two sets of vocal principals on alternate dates. This opening night presented Thomas Atkins as the swashbuckling pirate Corrado, Elisabeth Harris as his lady love Medora, Christian Thurston as the ruthless Pasha Seid, and Isabella Moore as the queen of his harem Gulnara.

Il Corsaro was completed in 1848, towards the end of Verdi’s early period of operatic writing, and follows Byron’s plot quite faithfully. This is a somewhat unlikely romantic tale, requiring a suspension of disbelief akin to the plots of Gilbert and Sullivan, and it is peopled by similar colourful larger-than-life characters.

The standout performers this night were undoubtedly Thomas Atkins and Isabella Moore, who portrayed their roles of piratical raider and romantic heroine most convincingly.  Each showed wonderfully assured vocal and dramatic skills, and they could comfortably project their voices out into the auditorium, never being overshadowed by the orchestra.

This was conducted by Kenneth Young, who drew from the instrumentalists an excellent performance of a varied and demanding score, conveyed with technical mastery and musical assurance.

The costumes were designed and executed with similar exuberance, as was the stage set. The male and female choruses did an excellent job, with the male group providing a particularly impressive opening scene to the work.

All these elements enhanced the strong impression that the student participants were enjoying themselves hugely – their enthusiasm carried the audience along in the colourful, dramatic sweep of the action, in a way that is so essential to a successful performance.

All the soloists showed sound vocal skills, but those of Corrado and Gulnara were exceptional and were greatly enhanced by their vocal confidence and acting abilities. There were very few wobbly nerves to be seen amongst the cast, revealed only occasionally by the odd loss of intonation.

This performance was definitely nudging its way confidently into the realms of a professional production. It was a great shame that the auditorium was not particularly full, since it was a most entertaining night out, and a most encouraging display of the youthful skills which the New Zealand School of Music is fostering.

 

Peter Mechen reviewed the following evening’s performance, featuring an alternative cast of principal singers:

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music presents:

Il Corsaro

An opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, based on Lord Byron’s poem, The Corsaire.

Presented by students of the New Zealand School of Music:

Cast: Oliver Sewell (Corrado) / Christina Orgias(Gulnara)
Frederick Jones (Pasha Seid) /Daniela-Rosa Cepeda(Medora)
James Henare  (Giovanni) / William McElwee (Pirate/Aga Selimo)
Declan Cudd (Pirate/Eunuch) / Jack Blomfield (Lord Byron)
Imogen Thirwell (Caroline Lamb)

Voice Students of Te Kōkī  NZ School of Music

Conductor: Kenneth Young
Director: Sara Brodie
Assistant Director : Frances Moore
Orchestra of Te Kōkī  New Zealand School of Music

Opera House Wellington,
27th July 2013.

Giuseppe Verdi’s operas are reckoned to fall generally into three stages of development – rather like Beethoven’s music, in fact. The opera Il Corsaro, completed in 1848, comes towards the end of the composer’s “early” operatic body of work, but after better-known works such as Nabucco (1842), Ernani (1844) and (most surprisingly) Macbeth (1847). It ‘s such an enterprising choice of repertoire for this, the 200th composer-birth-anniversary – but given its actual lineage, why is Il Corsaro so little-known?

Verdi had read Lord Byron’s poem The Corsaire in 1844, subsequently contracting his librettist, Piave, to adapt Byron’s verses for the stage. The composer then got involved in a kind of squabble with one of his publishers, and the upshot was that he seemed to lose interest in Il Corsaro, despite at an earlier stage calling it “beautiful, passionate and apt for music”. Uncharacteristically, he publicly distanced himself from the opera’s first performances, a circumstance which has contributed to the work’s subsequent neglect. We’ve lost the composer’s on-going thoughts and attitudes towards the work’s early presentation history, as ought to have been expressed in various pieces of correspondence or performance-inspired alterations to the score.

A pity, because the work sits on the border of Verdi’s movement towards a “middle-period” style, with lyrical elements playing an increasing part in his strongly-energised dramatic expression, one that sweeps both along with irresistible force. Despite the story’s obvious gaucheries I soon found myself caught up in it all, thanks as much to the across-the-board commitment of the cast and production team as to the composer’s directly engaging way with character, situation, plot and denouement.

It was an inspired idea of director Sara Brodie’s to give us the poet, Byron, at the very beginning, his creative persona visibly interacting with the music of the prelude (incredibly whiplash playing from the student orchestra under Ken Young’s direction – marvellous!) By the time the Corsaire’s ship entered and the pirates disembarked it was possible to imagine that the poet had dreamed and imagined us as well, a transfixed, captive audience!

From then on, the swashbuckling and rollicking yarn really took hold – the opening chorus sequences, much of them unaccompanied, had both energy and clarity, making up with focused, well-varied emphases, what was slightly lacking in girth and punch. I thought both Tony de Goldi’s powerfully unfussy set designs (I loved the sky-curtain seemingly drawn open by the ship’s prow, at the beginning!), and Hannah Rodgers’ lighting choices beautifully enhanced this and all of the following scenarios. Daphne Eriksen’s costumes further enlivened the colorful action throughout every sequence, and sat nicely upon each character.

Oliver Sewell made a strong impression right from the start as Corrado, Il Corsaro himself, the fine ring to his voice suggesting the ability to lead and command. As Medora, Corrado’s lover, Daniela-Rosa Cepeda conveyed a lovely fragility, both visually and vocally, shaping her  melismatic irruptions nicely and actually making them mean something in emotional and dramatic import. The lovers’ farewell duet was built both tenderly and then excitingly towards the cannon-shot – a great moment, the poignancy of parting all the more dramatic as a result – convincingly done.

However “mad, bad and dangerous to know” Byron’s sometimes mistress Caroline Lamb thought him, her reaction to the poet’s verses was here portrayed as something bordering upon hysterical mirth – her timely removal over the poet’s shoulder allowed the opera to proceed! – however, her giggling was echoed by the women of Pasha Seid’s harem as they congregated, focusing their attentions upon Gulnara, the Pasha’s favorite odalisque.

Christina Orgias as Gulnara began extremely well, making an eloquent lament for her native land, demonstrating vocal command and fearlessly attacking her high note at the end of the aria. Frederick Jones as Pasha Seid produced true and accurate tones, and as the evening progressed, seemed to increasingly warm his voice to the task, relishing both his “hundred virgins” and his “vengeance” arias. I did think there could have been more tension and dynamism in his and Gulnara’s exchanges, when he accused her of wanting to help his enemy, Corrado, whom he had captured earlier, to escape – in these Verdian situations subtleties often need to be cast aside by performers in favour of full-blooded theatrical flow.

All the while, conductor Ken Young ensured the orchestral support for the singers was right up with the play, both in vigorous passages and in places like the lovely “sighing” effect accompanying Corrado’s lament for Medora from his prisoner’s cell. Later in the same scene the orchestra raged splendidly throughout the storm (pre-echoes of Rigoletto) that accompanied Gulnara’s killing of the sleeping Pasha Seid, the lighting kicking in brilliantly at that point for a properly hallucinatory effect.

As for the final scene, I found myself abandoning my notes and surrendering to the tide of spectacle, sound and emotion the performers were able to generate. Neither Byron nor Verdi chose a “boy-gets-girl-at-the end” scenario – Byron has the unfortunate Medora, Corrado’s lover, dead from grief before his return, whereupon he  spurns his liberator, Gulnara, who has travelled with him, and exiles himself from his island home. Verdi’s scenario has Medora die of exhausted grief when Corrado arrives with Gulnara, whereupon the remorse-laden pirate abandons the former odalisque and throws himself into the sea in true, united-in-death verismo style.

It all seemed in such accord with similar operatic irruptions of passion and cut-and-thrust – and from the same composer! So, very great credit to all concerned for a splendid realization of a hugely entertaining and surprisingly well-crafted work.

This was a critical edition of the score prepared by Verdi scholar Professor Elizabeth Hudson, Director of Te Kōkī  New Zealand School of Music, and I imagine she would have been gratified at having her work staged and delivered with such creative flair and unswerving performance commitment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NBR NZ Opera’s “Butterfly” – traditional and triumphant

NBR New Zealand Opera presents –

Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly

Cast: Antoinette Halloran (Cio-Cio-San) / Lucy Schaufer (Suzuki) / Piero Pretti (Pinkerton)

Peter Savidge (Sharpless) / James Rodgers (Goro) / Richard Green (The Bonze)

Jared Holt (Yamadori) / Bianca Andrew (Kate Pinkerton) / Kieran Rayner  (Commissioner)

Edward Laurenson (Registrar) / Lesley Graham (Cio-Cio-San’s mother)

Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus

Orchestra Wellington

Conductor : Thomas Ringborg

Chorus Master: Michael Vinten

Director: Kate Cherry

St.James Theatre, Wellington

Saturday 11th May, 2013

This “Butterfly” has already flittered, swayed, dipped and floated her way down the island from most of the way up north – so quite a few people will by now have seen and heard her. I’ll go out on a traditionalist limb and declare that most of these people, I feel certain, would have been pleased to find her heart-rending story more-or-less conventionally staged and costumed, though with enough creativity and flair to make something uniquely beautiful and memorable.

How refreshing to be able to concentrate for once upon the musical aspects of a standard repertoire opera, instead of having to fight one’s way through some hot-shot director’s quirkily modernist and sometimes fatally intrusive “production take” on the well-known story (“Anything to stop it being done straight!” as comedian Michael Flanders says at one point in his and Donald Swann’s legendary revue “At the Drop of a Hat”, regarding a musical adaptation of a seventeenth century novel.)

Before the bright things of the revisionist world begin casting their barbed spears in my direction, I must emphasize that I’m not against the idea of taking a new look at any such performance-art-form, provided that its impulse to do thus comes from inner conviction on the part of those responsible, not merely a desire to be superficially “trendy” or “fashionable”. Then, of course, the conviction has to be intelligently thought through and applied, at the very least as coherently as the work would have been wrought by its original creator.

Apart from one or two brief and unnecessarily gratuitous touches, I thought, for example, the recent NBR NZ Opera production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” was a brilliantly successful rethink of the work’s original setting. As I believe many people would also, I would nevertheless be eminently satisfied with seeing the work staged as the composer himself would have had it presented. With all  the recent emphasis in the music world on “authentic performance” it’s interesting that there isn’t a parallel set of impulses to try and recreate original stage settings as faithfully as possible as well – in fact, especially in the case of baroque opera, there’s sometimes a kind of schizophrenic dislocation between what happens in the orchestral pit as opposed to the goings-on up on the stage!

It will be obvious by now to anybody reading this review that I loved this production of “Butterfly” – its predictable aspects concerning the Japanese setting somehow had a freshness which transcended any feeling of routine or tired tradition, as if the “obvious” had been completely rethought, and emerged as something original. As an example of this, I liked the uses of the sliding doors to create different spaces and ambiences, with not a single movement unmotivated by text or music.

With a set at once fixed and yet extremely fluid, lighting had an enormous part to play in the creation of a distinctive ambience, and there was a similar sense of the “expected” still being able to take us by surprise. Butterfly’s Act One entrance was suffused with light (firstly through screens, and then spilling gloriously through the opened spaces) – as it should, the music giving ample demonstration of what’s required at this point – but our senses were suitably enraptured by the whole sequence in a way that joined us with the onstage spectators witnessing this Venus-like arrival.

The Act One love-duet took us to the opposite end of the lighting spectrum, with suspended, descending lamps both literally and metaphorically signifying the onset of the mysteries of night and the consummation of ardent expressions of love at the scene’s end – again, a beautiful, uncontrived effect. In the Humming Chorus, lamps were this time carried by the watchers, and extinguished one by one, the effect of “going into the night” tellingly contrasted  with the wide-wake steadfastness of Cio-Cio-San (Butterfly), waiting for her lover, Pinkerton.

In the context of such “charged” naturalness throughout, the costumes were of a piece with the sun’s radiance and the night’s gentleness. The Japanese/European contrast was necessarily marked, the Americans’ naval uniforms and the woman’s elegant western garb at the end having a plain, almost functional beauty which contrasted with the colourful oriental styles and hues worn by the Japanese characters.

With so many visual and functional felicities in play, the stage was, as it were, beautifully set for the singers and orchestral musicians to contribute their particular magic. Happily, they responded with a wholeheartedness that I felt matched the inspiration of the work’s creators, here brought out by astute, sensitive direction. Kate Cherry and her assistant Jacqueline Coats, together with stage and lighting designers Christina Smith and Matt Scott had, I thought, between them captured a kind of essence of universal human emotion, exotically but subtly flavoured, so as to retain our audience-connections with the situations of the characters.

First to impress (and weakening my resolve to castigate the NBRNZ operatic powers-that-be for casting so many non-New Zealanders in major roles) was the engagingly-acted and superbly-sung Goro (the marriage-broker), of Wellingtonian James Benjamin Rodgers, his demeanor capturing the bumptious servitude of the character to the full and his voice impressively clear and communicative at all times. His dynamic of interaction with Butterfly’s maid, Suzuki, was flecked with delightful self-righteous impulses tempered with proper “knowing-one’s-place” decorum; and American mezzo Lucy Schaufer’s Suzuki gave as good as she got. Elsewhere Schaufer’s attendance upon her mistress, Cio-Cio-San, took her character to another expressive level, beautifully mirroring Butterfly’s hopes and fears throughout.

Overshadowed by the loquacious Goro when he first enters, Italian tenor Piero Pretti as Lieutenant Pinkerton nevertheless quietly and confidently eased his character’s presence into the scenario, from the beginning his manner hinting at a none-too-subtle disdain of things Japanese. Then with the entrance of his friend, the American consul Sharpless (sung by English baritone, Peter Savidge), both tenor and baritone had to open their respective vocal throttles, partly to cope with an accompanying orchestral fabric which I thought was too fulsome and insistent in many places throughout the scene. Thankfully, Swedish conductor Tobias Ringborg thereafter seemed to pick up on the balances between singers and orchestra more surely, getting more clarity and coherence from the stage as a result, and some beautifully sensitive work from the pit.

I thought Piero Pretti a strong, heroic-sounding Pinkerton, sounding as though he had to push his tones over the orchestral fabric during those first exchanges with Sharpless, but thereafter responding to Butterfly upon her entrance, and during the love duet, with great tenderness and ardour. As Sharpless, Peter Savidge’s baritone also struggled to make his words be heard during his first scene, and similarly benefitted from the more diaphanous orchestral textures accompanying Cio-Cio-San’s entrance. Later, in Act Two, he again needed to be more incisive at first, but then settled and deepened his voice in time for a well-acted, extremely touching letter-reading scene with Butterfly.

And so to the heroine – Antoinette Halloran was the second Australian soprano I had seen and heard sing the role of Cio-Cio-San in Wellington (Rosamund Illing was the first, back in 1990), and like her distinguished predecessor she didn’t disappoint. Butterfly’s approach and entrance, as previously mentioned, was here a wonderful moment, the character’s appearance personifying both radiance and simple beauty, aided and abetted by a profusion of bright chorus colours and sunlit tones. Like many an operatic Butterfly, Halloran didn’t look particularly Oriental, but she nevertheless presented a believable portrayal of an exotic young girl on the brink of womanhood, readily and innocently putting her trust in a man she hardly knew, but had nevertheless fallen in love with.

Perhaps her voice wasn’t always ideally steady when under vocal pressure, though she delivered the well-known “Un bel di” with just the right amount of growing intensity towards a powerful, and properly fraught conclusion. Just once I felt her acting more workmanlike than inspired (her response to the Bonze, her uncle’s angry public condemnation of her marriage) – but for the rest of the time I thought it a beautifully-wrought and deeply touching portrayal. Among a number of enduring impressions of Halloran’s Butterfly, my most vivid is of her whole person’s transfigured intensity during her all-night vigil, throughout both the Humming Chorus and the orchestral prelude to the final scene, waiting for Pinkerton’s return.

Solid, reliable work from both the chorus and singers in smaller roles rounded out the picture – though of the latter only Bianca Andrew in her brief appearance as Pinkerton’s American wife, Kate, seemed entirely at one with her character, her poised elegance barely disguising her awareness of Butterfly’s situation. And, mention must be made of Butterfly’s child Sorrow, engagingly and winsomely played by Finn Bowden.

Apart from that first-Act sequence during which I thought the orchestral playing a couple of notches too insistent and unvaried against the tones of Pinkerton and Sharpless, conductor Tobias Ringborg and the Orchestra Wellington gave us both sensitive and spirited playing, illuminating the score’s most telling moments with tones ranging from finely-crafted diaphanous texturings to deep, louring portents of the ever-resonating tragedy. The playing fully realized the composer’s fascination with and use of exotic colour and piquant harmonies, both through individual instrumentalists’ skills and finely-judged ensemble work – a “moments per minute” scenario of continuing delight.

I thought this production brilliantly (and triumphantly!) gave the lie to the idea that today’s audiences require opera to be “updated” (I use the word euphemistically) in order to be able to connect with the stories, themes and characters. This was something “whole”, its power and impact the result not of outward titillation but inner conviction.

 

Delight with a sting in the tail – Cosi fan tutte at Days Bay Opera

Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte at Days Bay Opera, Wellington

(Producer – Rhona Fraser / Director – Sara Brodie)

Cast: Simon Christie (Don Alfonso) / Tom Atkins (Ferrando) / Kieran Rayner (Guglielmo)

Kate Lineham (Fiordiligi) / Maaike Christie/Beekman (Dorabella) / Imogen Thirwall (Despina)

Orchestra and Chorus

Conductor: Michael Vinten

Canna House, Days Bay, Wellington

Thursday 21st February 2013

It’s presently a feast for aficionados of outdoor theatre, in Wellington – firstly, Antony and Cleopatra splendidly strutting their Summer Shakespeare stuff in the Dell at the Botanical Gardens (on until March 2nd, incidentally); and now this latest delight from the Opera in a Days Bay Garden – Mozart’s and librettist da Ponte’s most exquisitely-contrived work for the stage, Cosi fan tutte.

Cosi’s opening night fortunately caught something of the run of beautifully mellow summery days that the capital’s been experiencing of late – alarmingly, the following morning clouded and drizzled, but forecasts were better both for later in the day and the subsequent days. It seems (moustaches crossed) as though the weather gods, having had a bit of capricious fun, might be on Mozart’s and Days Bay’s side, after all.

But what better an experience to enjoy a subtle masterpiece of music-theatre, splendidly directed, sung and played, in a garden setting redolent with fragrant, easeful airs, encompassed by elements seemingly at peace with themselves and their surroundings?

The audience was here seated on the lawn, looking up to the ascending terraces on which the action unfolded, in front of the house, all beautifully framed by trees and the surrounding hills. In a pre-opening night interview producer Rhona Fraser (owner of the house and garden) commented on the advantage of having this “naturalistic” setting, with real doors, gateways and archways as entrance and exit wings, as well as sufficient spaces in which people could safely “jump around” and be “physical”. And the acoustic supported the singers most gratefully, the voices right from the outset projecting their tones readily to our ears.

It did seem to me, at the overture’s beginning, as if the orchestra might this time be too far removed from the centre of things, and their sounds more dissipated than supported by the open-air environment – the configuration was different to last year’s “Alcina”, when the audience inhabited the terraces and the action took place largely on the lawn, with the singers sounding by and large in the same “space” as the orchestra. But as the overture progressed the music drew our ears increasingly closer and focused our sensibilities on the accompanying action – and it wasn’t long before we had gotten used to the perspectives of what became the evening’s perfectly-proportioned sound-picture.

During this process the “scene” was already being set, as Don Alfonso (Simon Christie), the cynical (and here, somewhat out-of-sorts) middle-aged bachelor made his way into a cafe, in which people at other tables (recruited spontaneously from the audience, to everybody’s delight) were being attended by an attractive waitress. The atmosphere definitely had a “modern” feel, though not a contemporary one (those were the days! – not a cell-phone nor text-messenger in sight!) – perhaps late-1950s/early-1960s, underpinned by the “Navy Lark” uniforms of the two young men, Ferrando (Tom Atkins) and Guglielmo (Kieran Rayner) who arrived and greeted Don Alfonso as an old friend.

The Overture completed, the conversation between the three soon turned towards women, Ferrando and Guglielmo avowing the steadfast beauties and fidelities of their beloved ones and Don Alfonso (having already called their lovers’ steadfastness to question) parrying their indignant responses – here was excellent, energetically-delivered recitative between the three (Simon Christie particularly sonorous and characterful), and what I thought just enough umbrage taken (leavened with their brief ogling of the attractive waitress at “ah, women! – oh, women!”) by the two young men at their older companion’s cynicism. (Incidentally, Andrew Porter’s excellent English translation was the text used.)

The scene augured well for the rest – having heard that the opera’s setting would be “updated” here, my fears that director Sara Brodie might have been tempted into some kind of Peter Sellars-like mastication of the scenario (I had just viewed that director’s “take” on the opera on DVD and found the production singularly and searingly insightful, but over-wrought and ultimately repulsive in effect) seemed thankfully unfounded from this point on!  I didn’t necessarily hold with the view that, because Mozart’s was a comedy of eighteenth-century manners, the scenario should, whatever the travails of the workings, return both the characters and we observers at the end to “reason and normality”. Instead I thought that composer and librettist provided plenty of scope for any production to explore uncomfortable ironies and life-changing emotional refurbishments in the denouement – more than the literal message of the text alone perhaps suggests. But read on……

We then met the “Penelopes” as Don Alfonso wittily called them – firstly, Fiordiligi (Kate Lineham) filling her tones with artless, indolent infatuation, not every note precisely placed at this early stage, but capturing most convincingly the romantic idealizations of a young girl. And so did her sister Dorabella (Maaike Christie-Beekman), less ardent and vulnerable-sounding, a touch stronger and more “controlled” in effect – together, a near-perfect combination, as it transpired, their interaction at once a happy blend and characterful difference. At “If ever my heart should change….” I thought Dorabella’s the shade stronger counterpointing in the duet, but, again, it was a case of “vive la difference”!

Don Alfonso’s entrance into this idyll, complete with tragic mien and utterances, put a cat among the ensemble pigeons momentarily, but the feeling of disruption of peace and order was appropriate to the unravelling. In fact, throughout the performance, such was the teamwork among the singers and the obvious rapport between them and conductor and orchestra, that any brief dislodgements of ensemble (very few) had to my ears a kind of “elastic” quality, which seemed to be able to reconnect the counterpoints at a moment’s notice – very easeful, naturalistic musicmaking! This, the first “big” ensemble of the work brought out further delights, both musical and theatrical – the different “pools of emotion” stirred by each character took on a wondrously antiphonal effect, with almost the whole stage-width being employed, Dorabella to the right and Fiordiligi to the left, and their lovers filling in rather less acute symmetries, but with the focus firmly on the whole, and beautifully held together by Michael Vinten’s conducting. An especially lovely moment for the ensemble was at the words “how my heart is torn when I must leave you”, the whole thrown into occasional relief by Simon Christie’s sly but telling asides, his Don Alfonso replete with the character’s ironic satisfaction.

The lovely “Soft breezes….” trio provided a perfect extension to the sorrowful mood of the leave-taking, with the voices again being able to “separate” but remain pliable and secure in their combination, with Don Alfonso adroitly betraying a weakness for either Fiordiligi’s charms or a touch of generalized sexual gratification. Straightaway, the following scene introduced the “last-but-not-least” player in the scenario, the sisters’ maid, Despina (Imogen Thirwall), throughout bubbling with a mix of infectious energy and insouciance which made her a force to be reckoned with beneath the girlishness! Chocolate played its somewhat indelible part as well, firstly leaving tell-tale smears on Despina’s face for the sisters’ entrance, and then undercurrenting Maaike Christie-Beekman’s delightfully undone, Nabokov-like desperation as Dorabella, in thrall to despair and creature comfort (in Act Two, Kate Lineham’s Fiordiligi righted this attention-catching balance with a stunning appearance complete with plastic hair-net and portable hair-drier!).

But the action moved quickly to complete the ensemble possibilities around which the opera wove its subsequent tangles – after Despina’s pooh-poohing of her mistresses’ anguish, and her “conspiratory” scene with Alfonso, came the entrance of the “Albanians”, the supposedly departed lovers lavishly disguised and richly endowed with hair (a great audience moment!), followed by the sisters’ “getting wind” of the visitors’ presence and their subsequent confusion and embarrassment at the fulsome attentions paid them. It was all beautifully staged, with the men countering every move made by the women, like a dynamic game of chess, with Alfonso and Despina registering their “suspicious indignation” regarding the piteous squawks of the cornered women, interspersed with the sweet nothings of the exotic gentlemen callers.

By the First Act’s end all of the characters had stamped their mark on the proceedings, the sisters each performing beautiful instances of teamwork and individual characterization which would engage and fascinate our sympathies to the end. Kate Lineham’s Fiordiligi floated her tones with ever-increasing surety throughout, and made something many-jewelled of her aria “Like Gibraltar”, strong and imperious at the beginning, and with her conductor, judging the strength/energy ratio to perfection as the music reached fulfillment. As well, her softly-voiced moment of eventual capitulation to Ferrando’s attentions in Act Two touched our sensibilities, so completely drawn-in were we by that stage at her plight as a helpless plaything of emotion. Her sister’s portrayal by Maaike Christie Beekman brought out plenty of necessary contrasts of manner and vocal tone, strongly establishing a more confident and adventurous character, more volatile and playful than serious and sensible, thus more suggestible to the suitors’ flirtations. Her full-blooded, forthright singing of “Desires which torture me” in Act One made a marked contrast with her kittenish post-coital-like posturings for the benefit of her new “lover” in the Second Act.

Their lovers, real and disguised, contributed as much to the performance’s success, both together and individually – Tom Atkins as Ferrando used his true-voiced tenor to excellent lyrical effect, contributing to a true, knockabout partnership with his fellow-officer, Guglielmo (Kieran Rayner), as well as making much of moments like his Act One aria “The soft breath enchanting”, his voice having a lovely, “open” sound. His desperate and ultimately successful attempts to seduce Fiordiligi during Act Two were more effortful, in places a little breathless, but his urgency and purpose were strongly conveyed. As vivid and mellifluous-toned a characterization was Kieran Rayner’s Guglielmo, with his ardent Act One declarations of love and gently-mocking anatomical self-descriptions, more confident on the surface than his friend, but beneath more vulnerable and volatile. His encompassing of the character’s range of moods brought us great delight, from the irony of his admonition of women for their deceptions (“Dear Ladies…..”) to his anguish and bitterness at his belated betrayal by Fiordiligi.

These various couplings of friendship, love and betrayal underlined the ensemble nature of the work – and the “unholy alliance” of Don Alfonso and the maid Despina not only added to but twanged the strands deliciously. Both Simon Christie and Imogen Thirwall were compelling to watch and listen to from each of their separate entrances, and through their somewhat barbed interactions, right up to their part in the work’s unexpectedly eruptive conclusion. Christie made every one of Don Alfonso’s utterances “tell”, while conveying glimpses of a somewhat middle-aged-lecher aspect, which held a place but without exaggeration. Despina’s impersonated roles of doctor and notary were similarly treated, more characters than caricatures, and stronger as a result – her use of Dr. Mesmer’s “magnet” had the right mixture of hocus-pocus and suggestiveness, even if the trills, both vocal and orchestral, might have been a touch more outlandish.

I’ve already mentioned instances of the strengths and delicacies of Michael Vinten’s conducting, and the sterling efforts of his players throughout. Musically I took away as much a feeling of partnership and artistic interchange as individual expressions from singers and orchestra players – and I thought that, in this opera especially, it was as it should be. Very great credit, I feel, is due to both producer Rhona Fraser, and especially to director Sara Brodie, whose vision and dramatic instincts here, I think, provided a model for the idea (which I habitually shrink from) that opera production can successfully take in updated elements and “speak” directly and viscerally to different eras, without doing violence to the original. We were taken to a specific time-frame with the help of certain iconic objects and modes, but none that in appearance or use sharply contravened Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s content and style.

As to the true climax of the convolutions, it was definitely “come-uppance” time at the end for at least two of the characters, the action having wonderfully appropriate “shock value” for being so swift and focused, and a lot to take in all at once! Despina dealt to Don Alfonso with the classic “bent over double” result, and Ferrando landed a haymaker on his erstwhile friend Guglielmo’s jaw. What the two sisters did, if anything, I couldn’t say (it happened all too quickly!) – but perhaps, like me, they were too taken aback to do anything except go with the flow! No apocalyptic nihilism – merely just desserts! – and what happened to the couples then became anybody’s guess, speculation of which I’m certain both Mozart and da Ponte would have heartily approved, as they would our appreciative delight of what we had just been so generously given.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twenty-two talented young singers fill brilliant evening at Whanganui’s Opera School Gala

New Zealand Opera School, Whanganui – Gala concert 2013
Great Opera Moments

Twenty-two singers with seven accompanists in arias and ensembles from opera

Staging directed by Sara Brodie and ensembles conducted by Michael Vinten

Royal Wanganui Opera House

Saturday 12 January 2013, 7.30pm

This concert celebrated the nineteenth annual opera school held at Whanganui, in the music rooms of Wanganui Collegiate School during the preceding ten days.

The idea of a training school for promising singers was driven by certain Auckland-based opera figures, most importantly Donald Trott. He has been deeply involved in opera both as a singer and administrator from the days of Perkel Opera and the several opera company metamorphoses, through Auckland Metropolitan Opera, Auckland Opera to the present NBR New Zealand Opera; and this involvement at Whanganui may well be the most rewarding and memorable.

Previous general manager of NBR New Zealand Opera, Jonathan Alver, has now become Director of the school while Donald Trott takes the role of Executive Chairman.

In the early years the principal tutor was the distinguished Romanian soprano Virginia Zeani. Her place has been filled in recent years by English vocal teacher Paul Farrington plus New Zealand teachers Margaret Medlyn, Barry Mora and Richard Greager as well as others coaching language and acting.

In recent years, with the guidance of stage director Sara Brodie, the evening concert has been enlivened by staging ideas attempting to offer linkages between items, making use of the aria’s thrust, the situation dramatised in the aria, the opera’s setting or subject. As is to be expected, it worked better in some instances than others. Sometimes the audience was probably in the dark through not knowing what the opera or the particular aria was about.

A rare ensemble to start
That was probably the case with the opening ensemble. Leoncavallo wrote Zazà in 1900 and it was probably the only work after Pagliacci that met with some success; one can be forgiven for not having heard it though it registered with me years ago seeing a Metropolitan Opera photo of a prominent soprano – Geraldine Farrar perhaps – in the title role.

Its Introduction, presented, as was the entire first half of the concert, as a rehearsal.  It served to open the concert: half a dozen singers in a cheap music hall in Saint Étienne, near Lyon, where Zazà is performing (incidentally, for those who like such connections, it’s the birthplace of Massenet and its opera house has been staging festivals of all Massenet’s opera over many years); strangely, this ensemble does not include Zazà. The music has an odd, un-Italian, latter-day, operetta character. For the operatically curious, it was interesting.

It led seamlessly into Amelia Ryman’s aria from Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix, ‘O luce di quest’anima’ the best and probably only known aria from the opera. As the first solo of the evening, shaky intonation was evidence of nerves, a condition that affected several of the singers, particularly in the first half dozen pieces.

Mozart and his contemporaries
Then we get an introduction to the subject of Così fan tutte through a spoken exchange between the two naïve young lovers and their Alfonso, who resembled Donald Trott. Tenor Phillip Akau became Ferrando and sang the beautiful ‘Un’aura amoroso’, again displaying nerves, and an attractive voice.

We remained in the Mozart era with an aria from La serva padrona, attributed to Cimarosa; but did he actually write a version of the opera set first by Pergolesi?  Paisiello, on the other hand, certainly did: it’s easy to confuse the two contemporaries. From it, Madison Nonoa gave a spirited account of the aria ‘Stizzo mio stizzoso’.

There followed a bracket Mozart: first some stage business takes place and a letter is passed to Edward McKnight, as Publio, before he sings ‘Tardi s’avvede’ from La clemenza di Tito. After the abortive attempt on his life Tito has sent Publio to try to save Sesto – the failed assassin – from the Senate’s likely decree of execution.  The role of the letter at that point escaped me.

Then there’s a further bit of stage business, an exchange reflecting the wager in Così; but it’s followed by the Count’s petulant reaction in The Marriage of Figaro, ‘Hai gia vinta la causa’, as he faces the imminent marriage of his two servants. Baritone Edward Laurenson’s rather strong and elegant performance missed something of the anger.

Zerlina, on the other hand, is trying to placate her legitimately jealous fiancé in honeyed tones, with ‘Batti, batti’, and Eliza Boom’s attractive voice met its demands a lot more than half way.

The return to Così was long delayed, till the second half of the concert, when Isabella Moore took up ‘Come scoglio’, Fiordiligi’s beautiful hymn to fidelity, as one of the disguised lovers holds out a posy of flowers towards her. Her performance lent her words real conviction and it was distinguished by subtle dynamics, eloquence, clear delivery and agility – it was certainly among the two or three finest items of the evening.

Shakespeare or Bellini
I Capuleti e i Montecchi
is generally assumed to be adapted from Shakespeare, but it draws mainly on Shakespeare’s own source: Matteo Bandello’s 16th century novella (is there a Bandello industry in Italy that gets outraged by thefts and distortions of the works of their great Renaissance writer?). Here we had two arias from Bellini’s first act: the first in the order of the score, Romeo’s ‘Ascolta, se Romeo l’uccise un figlio’. Disguised as his own servant, he meets Capellio (Capulet) and Tebaldo (Tybalt) in the Capulet palace proposing a deal to mend the feud between the rival Ghibelline and Guelph parties of Renaissance Italy through a marriage between Romeo and Giulietta, which is rejected by Capulet. Instead, Capellio insists that her marriage with Tebaldo should take place at once (not, as in Shakespeare, with Paris, who doesn’t, along with several other Shakespeare characters, even appear in Bellini).

Mezzo Elizabeth Harris enters, swinging a sword dangerously, reminding us that she is performing a trouser role, with Romeo’s aria in which she comfortably reached the extremes of her range.

In the following scene of Act I, Giulietta (Shannon Atkin) in her chamber longs for Romeo in ‘Eccome in lieta vesta’, leading to ‘Oh quante volte’. Unlike Shakespeare, there is no preliminary scene with her Mother and her Nurse and no first encounter with Romeo at the Capulets’ ball. Atkin, in a white bridal gown, a bit previous one might say, sang expressively and maintained well shaped lines in the famous aria and, climbing on to a stool, the cabaletta,

Libertines male and female
For the Carmen items the stage manoeuvres relied somewhat on both retrospect and foresight: the music starts with a bit of the habanera from the first act, but continues with Micaela’s arrival in Act III seeking José in the gypsy camp in the mountains. Probably unremarked, Tom Atkins, who appeared as José later in the concert, is among the gathering. After Carmen and her friends have read their futures in cards, they stay as Micaela (Christina Orgias) summoning Dutch courage, sings ‘Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante’; and indeed, she looked far from timid.

Tom Atkins, Don José, in the penultimate aria of the evening, sang the Flower Song from Act II, a fine tenor with distinctive colour and expressiveness in a performance that fully justified its position near the concert’s end.

The role of the sexual adventurer switches sexes for Ann Truelove’s difficult aria, ‘No word from Tom’, from Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. Elizabeth Mandeno handled it admirably if not perfectly, expressing the meaning and emotion very well; and David Kelly’s piano accompaniment scored high.

Romantic tales from between the wars
The rest of the first half remained in the 20th century.

There’s more than one worthy stand-alone aria in Korngold’s Die tote Stadt (though nothing quite compares with Marietta’s Lied).  Surprisingly, it turned out to be the only German item in the programme: the Pierrotlied, ‘Mein Sehnen, mein Wähnen’ (‘my longings, my delusions’, cf. Hans Sachs’s ‘Wahn, Wahn’). In my Erich Leinsdorf recording, Hermann Prey sings it beautifully and Frederick Jones’s voice found the right colours, with an excellent understanding of its character.

The first half ended with the glamorous, troubled scene at Bullier’s restaurant from La rondine, with dancing, using the revolve with flair; solo voices emerged well though singing from their scores created a oddly static impression,

Some French opera
The second half began with a further instalment of the Così problem, with Donald cynically prevaricating; towards the end of the evening (between the Gounod and Debussy arias) he presents bills to several of the men, counting the goods with numbers seeming to total those in Leporello’s Catalogue Aria.

But somewhat enigmatically the singing continued with Imogen Thirlwell’s ‘Depuis le jour’ from Louise, a lovely romantic performance; and she stayed on stage through the next item, for Oliver Sewell’s singing of ‘Dalla sua pace’ from Don Giovanni, elegantly, expressing well Don Ottavio’s aristocratic ineffectualness.

A camel led across the stage made me momentarily expect Aida, but when Leila Alexander began ‘Se pieta di me non senti’ I recalled that Handel’s opera’s full name was Giulio Cesare in Egitto; it’s Cleopatra’s prayer to the gods to have pity on Caesar in battle with Ptolemy, all sung in high head tones, rather effective. .

Other French arias came later: Valentin’s futile assertion, ‘Avant de quiter ces lieux’, in Faust, that Christian Thurston sang with a tenorish, if slightly constricted quality but it is a voice of promise.

Bianca Andrew chose a rarity, the only sample from Debussy whose sesquicentenary was widely observed last year. His L’enfant prodigue is not an opera, rather a dramatic cantata; I did not recognise the ‘Air de Lia’, and my notes in the dark recorded ‘Massenet?’which was not a bad guess given its early composition. Bianca appeared in stockings and suspenders, her French was very good, clear and her soprano voice firm and true.

A bel canto episode
A feature of this concert was the splendid selection of non-hackneyed arias. One of the nearest to that class was Jesse Stratford’s singing of Nemorino’s ‘Una furtive lagrima’. After a little scene involving a rack of clothes including a wedding dress, his uncle’s will was read and all the women on hand fell upon him; a great white wig had some relevance I suppose, but it eluded me. However, he sang with happy clarity and he delivered his notes accurately, with fine spirit.

Angelique MacDonald then took us back to Bellini, ‘Qui la voce sua soave’ from I puritani. It’s from the mad Elvira in Part II (she’s the daughter of a Puritan and she loves Arturo, a Royalist, condemned to death; thus, she goes mad):  though it was a huge success at its Paris premiere and continued so for decades, Puritani does little to counter the belief that opera libretti are absurd. MacDonald, at first in a stunning, sparkling, deep blue gown, changed into white in mid-aria for the cabaletta, ‘Vien diletto’. It was one of the most stylish offerings of the evening.

Then, after another somewhat puzzling verbal exchange about everyone needing a sponsor, another singer from the New Zealand School of Music, Kieran Rayner, chose I puritani, where Riccardo sings ‘Ah! Per sempre io ti perdei … Bel sogno beato’ from Part I. Rayner has become one of the best-known young singers around Wellington and he invested his baritone voice with solid feeling to portray the man who’d earlier loved Elvira and is given an uncompromising though quite rewarding role.

Later another most effective Donizetti aria appeared: ‘Chacun le sait’ from La fille du regiment, written for Paris. This is the regimental song, and Ella Smith, as Marie, the offspring of the regiment, in loose, orange, quasi-military trousers sings and gestures in vivid military style, it was another real high-point of the evening.

Puccini
Out of the 26 items, only three were by Puccini (and, in their 200th anniversary year, neither Verdi nor Wagner appeared at all!).

After the Rondine scene, the second Puccini was the last scene of Act I of Tosca in which Scarpia sets his sights ruthlessly on Tosca – ‘Va, Tosca’. Scarpia is Edward Laurenson who had also sung the Count’s impatient aria from The Marriage of Figaro. Here too, was a dark voice that did well expressing the aggressive, controlling character in some male psyches; the scene was complete with organ accompaniment for the Te Deum and cannons from the Castel Sant’ Angelo announcing the escape of Angelotti: an arresting moment in the middle of the second half.

And the final ensemble scene came from Act II of La Bohème, with Musetta’s waltz song sung brightly by Amelia Ryman while the scene involving contributions from all four students leads towards their abandonment of their bill to the foolish Alcindoro. Here again the revolve was sensibly used, and it brought the evening to a brilliant conclusion.

It remains to record the major and very eloquent contributions from the pianists: Bruce Greenfield, Greg Neil, Edward Giffney, Iola Shelley, David Kelly, Travis Baker and Somi Kim; and the occasional on-stage contributions from tutors who have been named in the text above.

In recent years the school has been successful in gaining greater visibility in the city through the work of local volunteers in Wanganui Opera Week, organising daily concerts in the course of the school. The support of Creative New Zealand and the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation, among several other major sponsors, are helping to put the school’s very valuable work on a firmer basis.

 

Brilliant Bartered Bride redeems shortcomings of its Cold War setting

The Bartered Bride by Smetana (NBR New Zealand Opera)

The Vector Wellington Orchestra and the Opera Chorus; conducted by Oliver von Dohnányi; directed by Daniel Slater; associate director and choreographer: Tim Claydon; associate director: Jacqueline Coats; chorus master: Michael Vinten

Cast: Anna Leese, Peter Wedd, Conal Coad, Andrew Glover, Taryn Fiebig, John Antoniou, Patricia Wright, Richard Green, Helen Medlyn, Jeff Kingsford-Brown

St James Theatre, Wellington

Saturday 13 October, 7.30pm

New Zealand Opera continues to explore every year or so, as much as it safely can, slightly unfamiliar operas. Their record so far has been unfaltering, and this splendid outing of something a bit on the fringe has maintained the high score. An opera has been revealed that many will have heard of but few expected to see here. This production has put it into the mainstream, into the class of comic operas with Rossini and Donizetti, Strauss and Offenbach or G & S. The music has character, wit and energy, and the story is no less probable than the average comic opera – or theatrical comedy for that matter.

The history
But first, the opera’s background in New Zealand. It has not been entirely absent from the New Zealand stage; it was one of the operas produced in the second decade of the legendary New Zealand Opera Company. It was in 1964, and I did not see it as I was overseas, but I recall reading about it in the New Zealand press. That year the company was about at the height of its success: both The Bartered Bride and Rigoletto toured nationally with the then NZBC Symphony Orchestra, and nationally meant to a dozen or more towns; and there were were also a Cosi fan tutte which had been produced in Wellington at the end of 1963 (I saw that) and then travelled to Auckland, Nelson and Blenheim, and La cenerentola (Rossini) was staged in Auckland and Wellington.

And note too that the Dunedin Opera Company, which was established in 1956, a little after the New Zealand Opera Company, and is still at work, staged The Bartered Bride as its first production in 1957, revived in 1962; though that would have been a very pro/am affair.

Certainly, by today’s standards, those productions would appear pretty amateur, but at that time very few people travelled overseas and saw real international opera, and there were very ready audiences for opera all over the country. In reality, through those years, and especially the 1980s and 90s there was a lot more opera to be seen throughout New Zealand than there is now, if not as polished as it usually is today.

This splendid performance
Before I describe my misgivings about the production, I will dwell on the performance itself, much the most important aspect and which was such a delight.  The English translation is by David Pountney and Leonard Hancock, and the dialogue by Daniel Slater, the director; it was idiomatic and sometimes witty, and the surtitles were excellent though often remaining on the screen too briefly for me. I am a firm advocate of opera in the original language, and earlier I had some misgivings about it, but in the theatre I was won over right from the start, for there is not a great gulf between the rhythms of Czech and English.  Most voices projected very clearly but the surtitles were still a help.

The programme booklet was comprehensive, with scholarly articles by Nicholas Tarling and Nicholas Reid: well worth the money.

And there is no doubt about the fully international character of this latest production, hired from Opera North which premiered it in 1998; it was widely praised then, and at revivals.

The opening scene is something of a coup, with the villagers carrying chairs for a choir rehearsal under a stiff conductor who has them singing quite brilliantly to infectious Slav rhythms, in praise (ironically) of the country’s liberation. (The real chorus master was Michael Vinten). And though the chorus doesn’t sing a great deal, its contributions are always high points both through the music and their tight and energetic ensemble, in particular their coming in at the end of the Polka and during the circus scene.

Perhaps the most striking, and astonishing element is the troupe of acrobats who enliven all the dances, especially the Furiant and the circus itself with the Dance of the Comedians, where their spectacular juggling and hair-raising hurling of each other high in the air and trusting their catchers so implicitly adds a very singular element to the performance.

The lighting (Simon Mills) is so subtly executed that you are virtually unaware of it.

Roles are excellently cast, the chorus vivid and well schooled, and the orchestra plays with good ensemble, energy and colour; conductor Oliver von Dohnányi guides things spiritedly.

As usual, the cast is a mixture of New Zealand and overseas singers. The vivid Napier-born soprano Anna Leese fitted the role of Mařenka like a glove, with a strong, beautiful voice portraying intelligence and determination; her costume – an unstylish mix of bluish jerkin over pink skivvy and blue jeans  –  her demeanour, like those of almost all the cast did indeed recreate the look of the 1970s – anywhere – not merely in communist countries. (Anna gave a good interview in The New Zealand Herald: look at http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10834706).

Her boy-friend, Jeník, is English tenor, Peter Wedd, who has sung in Australia in two Janáček roles (and two roles in Kátya Kabanová elsewhere – looks as if he’s a Czech specialist); he wore a leather jacket and brown trousers (the designer of costumes and other aspects of the production was Opera North’s Robert Innes Hopkins). Wedd’s voice and lively performance were as arresting in his role as was Leese’s. The duets of Mařenka and Jeník are important moments of the opera and they carried them off as if they cared.

The arrival of Conal Coad on stage always seems to bring with it the feeling that, here is a truly polished and convincing production. I confess I didn’t become aware that Kecal had been transformed into the village mayor till I read it in the programme; and it didn’t make his bullying more or less acceptable. But he didn’t ham it or try to play for laughs; his performance, with brilliant patter-arias in the last scenes, simply fulfilled the role’s expectations splendidly, even in his devastating humiliation at the end.

The approved bridegroom for Mařenka appears after the second exciting acrobat-led dance – the Furiant – in Act II: the earlier invisible Vašek (New Zealander Andrew Glover) appears and explains himself in a mock stammering manner. But the scene was lustily funny in which Mařenka, pretending to be someone else, paints a terrible picture of her own self for Vašek’s enlightenment, causing him immediately to abjure her.

The interval came after Act II with preparations for the circus, one of the most spectacular scenes, with the Ring-master, played by actor Jeff Kingston-Brown who was given wittily topical (for 1972) lines touching life under communism. It also introduces what is little more than a brilliant cameo role, a circus performer, Esmeralda, sung by sparkling soubrette performer Taryn Fiebig, one of the most catchy and hilarious numbers. Vašek is paired with her and for a moment she serves to confirm Vašek in his determination not to marry Mařenka.

Mařenka’s parents had appeared in Act I in the dealings with Kecal. They are Australian John Antoniou and Patricia Wright, who is still one of the best sopranos in this country. Now, in Act III, Vašek’s parents and, it turns out, Jeník’s too, show up. They are very well delineated by New Zealanders Richard Green and Helen Medlyn and one wished they’d had bigger roles.  One feels a bit sorry for Vašek, as the unlikely match with Esmeralda doesn’t materialise.

It’s a pity that this splendid comic opera has not become a standard repertoire piece outside of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the homeland of conductor Oliver von Dohnányi, who has been its conductor for Opera North as well as many other companies (though I don’t see Bratislava or other Slovak cities among them). He led the singers and orchestra with energy and drew strong rhythms from the orchestra in the dances and the various ensembles and choruses built on Slavonic ideas.

From Austrian bucolic to heroic communist peasant?
Daniel Slater, the director, is quoted saying he thought a shift in era would make the characters more believable, and so he moved it from its original time, mid-19th century, to 1972, a few years after the Prague Spring when under an enlightened leader, Dubček, there seemed momentary hope that the harsh hand of communism might be at least softened, only to be dashed by the arrival of Warsaw Pact troops.

It was produced only eight years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the world was still fascinated by the events of 1989/90, dramatising the stark contrasts between the old evil days and the – well, what? – the bright optimism of the 90s punctuated with the happy scenes in the former Yugoslavia?

This production is already 14 years old.

And the world has moved on, a very long way, since then.

So is it dated already? To me it felt like that. There is a tide in the affairs of men (as Brutus said) – of history and art. What happened to the Soviet empire was momentous and amazing, and to transplant an old opera into that period was adventurous. But is it still, today?

The common justification for theatrical changes of time and place is the fresh perceptions and levels of meaning, insights about the story itself made possible. What did we learn about the nature of the Czech people, of political life, or of the psychology of human beings?

Apart from the very amusing promotional rave from the Ring-master at the start of Act III with his witty allusions to communist leaders and the threatening existence of Big Brother in Moscow, very little.

I approached it with an open mind, but the feeling grew steadily that the presence of a totalitarian regime in the background offered little more than a bit of visual ugliness in the set.

The opening chorus, directed in a somewhat martial manner to be sure, did not offer any special insights into the nature of life under communism.  It’s Liberation Day rather than simply a holiday, but that seems not to change the way the people behave.  There was no modification, nor could there have been, in the story that revolves round the planned marriage as a matter of financial convenience. Micha, a well-to-do merchant, was still able to exploit a poor peasant who seems still to own his own farm (though we know that collectivisation was not nearly as sweeping in the satellite countries as it was in the Soviet Union).

There were still plenty of typical country scenes and pretty villages in Czechoslovakia in 1972 – I spent a few days there in the 60s. I was bemused at Slater’s relating how he had toured the country looking for ‘an authentic Bohemian village, [one not] prettied for tourists’. (He could have done that a lot more cheaply by looking through media photos). To have fastened on this bleak scene seems sadly perverse.

Where do the comrades live, work and shop, and go to school and drink beer? On stage we see a big grey transformer, a couple of red steel drums, beer barrels on a table and four poles that might have been watch towers or carried search-lights. Was it a border post? But the folks gathered in this odd outdoor place to have their choir rehearsal. What an eccentric community!

While these feelings about the point of the change of era remained, my enjoyment of the performance grew. It’s the music, to be sure, but much more than the overture and the three well-known dances. It’s not one of those operas with an embarrassing libretto that survives entirely through the music, for the story is fairly adroit and credible, at least in theatrical terms. The only place that always seems weak is in the last scene where Jeník fails tell Mařenka at once, in simple terms about the stunt he has pulled over the broker which will make their marriage not only secure but financially rewarding. But theatre depends on characters who don’t ask the obvious question or offer the obvious explanation at the right moment.

In conclusion, the shifting of the production to the 1970s did no great harm; it allowed a few moments of amusement but really offered no fresh insights into the opera or into the human condition. All the important elements, of singing and orchestral playing, were of undisputed international quality and another opera has, at least for us, been admitted to the ranks of top 20.

Diverting variety of opera scenes in New Zealand School of Music’s annual opera fiesta

A Night at the Opera from the New Zealand School of Music

A review jointly composed by Rosemary Collier and Lindis Taylor who each attended one of the performances 

Eighteen singers accompanied by Mark Dorrell – piano;

A list of singers and the scenes in which they sang will be found at the end

Scenes from:
Mozart: The Magic Flute, The Impresario, The Marriage of Figaro;
A Hand of Bridge
by Barber;
Anna Bolena
by Donizetti;
Princess Ida
by Sullivan;
La Bohème
by Puccini;
Die Fledermausby J Strauss II

Director: Jacqueline Coats;
Vocal coach: Lisa Harper-Brown;
Tutors: Richard Greager, Margaret Medlyn, Jenny Wollerman

Adam Concert Room, Kelburn Campus

Friday 28 and Saturday 29 September at 7.30pm

This was a concert of opera scenes, arias and ensembles, a stand-in for the traditional opera production that the school of music has been mounting, with few exceptions, since the 1970s. In fact, considering that the former Polytechnic Conservatorium used also to stage an opera every year, Wellington almost always enjoyed two student productions a year, a valuable addition to the offerings (two or three a year) from the then Wellington City Opera.

The performance space was large with the audience spread round three sides and a huge white screen backdrop covering the chamber organ and the entrance.

Staging was minimal and with only the piano to support them, the singers were certainly more exposed than they would be in a full production. That probably made it harder to create a satisfactory depiction of a fairy-tale scene like Tamino’s meeting with the Three Ladies and Papageno, even with the brave attempt at projecting shadow puppets on the screen behind the performers.

The piano was played by Mark Dorrell who has made a deep impression in the city as an accompanist for singers as well as conductor of the Orpheus Choir. He drew sounds from the piano that seemed as if they had been written by the composer, conjuring such a variety of colours that I scarcely missed the presence of an orchestra.

Some of the singers in both The Magic Flute and The Impresario displayed some lack of ease in their performances, though most threw themselves into the roles with huge energy. Any weaknesses in the first half, however, were probably on account of the demands of Mozart which tended to test them both in terms of vocal refinement and variety, as well as being called on to express emotions of greater subtlety. Thus those same singers often seemed in slightly better control of their voices in later appearances.

Some of the male singers seemed unaware of the need to sing the words as though for the first time, in order to project the meaning and the drama.

The costumes and wigs of the Three Ladies (Christina Orgias, Awhina Waimotu and Rebekah Giesbers) were amazing, suggesting Valkyries perhaps, and they sang with Wagnerian strength. After one has become familiar with the Flute, any early impression that the roles of the Three Ladies are secondary is dispelled: not only are they vocally demanding but each needs individual characterisation, and the three singers showed a lively awareness of that, even if ultimate polish proved a bit further off.

The performances by Jesse Stratford and Rory Sweeney as Tamino and Papageno also showed that combination of good understanding and an awareness of what they aspire to.

The famous vocal duel between the two sopranos in Mozart’s one-act The Impresario (Der Schauspieldirektor) was a surprising offering, a particularly challenging scene to bring off with the necessary amount of hilarity.

The two roles are, of course, quite scary, and there was no concealing that in Esther Leefe’s and Tess Robinson’s daring and vivid performances of Madame Silberklang (Silverklang) and Miss ‘Sweetsong’ (Mlle Herz in the original), there were weaknesses which the nature of their ego-driven roles actually accommodated. In fact, the only other sung role in the original is that of Vogelsang, the company tenor who attempts the mediation. Here, that singing role was ascribed to ‘Eiler’, the banker, who, in the original, takes a non-singing role, threatening in the end to pull the funding in order to force the two vying singers to back off. The other spoken role is that of Frank, the impresario.

Esther Leefe, as the aging prima donna, wore a blond wig and carefully failed in her repeated attempts at top Fs. Tess Robinson’s voice was a little unsteady at the start but both did a great job. In the role of ‘Eiler’, William McElwee’s vocal colouring was a bit under-developed, but he showed more accomplishment in his later appearance as Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus, with fine comic flair.

The scene from Figaro was from the riotous second act in the Countess’s room from the point where Cherubino has jumped from the window as the Count and Countess return to break into the wardrobe where the Count thinks and the Countess fears that they’ll find him, through to the entrance of Basilio, Bartolo and Marcellina. Though all were costumed in period, the lack of stage amenities demanded more vigorous employment of audience imagination.

Angélique MacDonald’s Countess was visually and histrionically attractive though initially she was a little unstable in pitch. Robert Gray, the Count, didn’t really display the fury and frustration that is his hallmark in the entire scene, though his vocal quality is agreeable. Amelia Ryman created a spirited Susanna and Figaro (Christian Thurston), in a plum, velvet jacket, took his role excellently. Antonio the gardener was sung by Daniel Dew, who looked and delivered in perfect style.

The scene ends after the entrance of Basilio, Bartolo and Marcellina (respectively: William McElwee, Jamie Henare and Rebekah Giesbers) who reveal the earlier marriage contract between Marcellina and Figaro; their smaller roles at this point were very effective. The whole extended scene was carried of with as much wit and delight as could reasonably be expected.

After the interval Awhina Waimotu, Christina Orgias, Fredi Jones and Rory Sweeney entered chatting in good American accents before sitting down to a round of Bridge. It must be the shortest opera in the repertoire, allowing just one major monologue each to the four players, revealing their inner lives and suggesting two hopeless marriages, masked by social conventions. The performances were varied and variable, from the confident Bill of Fredi Jones to the pathetic lament of Geraldine excellently sung by Awhina Waimotu. In between were the slightly self-conscious performance by Rory Sweeney as David, dreaming of becoming rich, and the empty-headed Sally, whose childish longing for a fancy hat almost made us feel sorry for her.

The great scene from Donizetti’s Anna Bolena in which the name role (Amelia Ryman) and the woman who will be Henry VIII’s next wife, Jane Seymour (Angélique MacDonald), was a dramatic high-point of the evening. It rests as one of the pinnacles of the bel canto era, and one of the great scenes in opera. The Queen’s long solo grew in intensity and credibility as it unfolded, while Seymour’s responding monologue well displayed their entrapment. They were splendidly costumed, sang strongly if not with the ultimate degree of polish and accuracy, but compensating with the total conviction with which they invested their performances.

The scene from Princess Ida, one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s lesser operettas, did not much amuse me [comments in this paragraph are Lindis’s], though the three men (Daniel Dew, Jesse Stratford and Jamie Henare) carried it off with real flair, exposing individual delineation clearly, though they share the age’s ridiculously passé attitudes to women’s higher education. So the fundamental silliness of the piece rather got in the way of enjoying the quite well-executed nonsense.

The last scene of Act I of La Bohème gave two of the most experienced voice students a great opportunity: Tom Atkins as Rodolfo and Isabella Moore as Mimi created near professional performances, accurate in pitch, well phrased and finely detailed in timbre and dynamics. We heard both the great arias and the duet ‘O soave fanciulla’ splendidly sung, as well as the calls from the other three students from the street below, all of whom had featured in earlier excerpts.

The evening ended with the last phase of Prince Orlofsky’s party in Act II of Die Fledermaus. As with all the previous scenes, it was sung in the original language, with spoken parts in English, though the final ensemble was also in English. Imogen Thirlwall proved a most accomplished Rosalinde and Fredi Jones allowed himself to be gently disgraced in a convincing performance  of Eisenstein; we noticed earlier William McElwee’s well portrayed role as Orlofsky. All eighteen singers came to the party for the final ensemble which might have been one of the few places where the Straussian delight could have been heightened even more with the support of an orchestra.

The singers and their scenes:

Christina Orgias          Flute                Bridge
Awhina Waimotu        Flute                Bridge
Rebekah Giesbers       Flute                Figaro
Jesse Stratford            Flute                Ida
Rory Sweeney             Flute                Bridge
Esther Leefe                Impresario
Tess Robinson             Impresario
William McElwee       Impresario       Figaro              Fledermaus
Amelia Ryman            Figaro              Bolena
Robert Gray                Figaro
Angélique MacDonald Figaro            Bolena
Christian Thurston      Figaro              Bohème
Daniel Dew                 Figaro              Ida
Jamie Henare               Figaro              Ida                   Bohème
Fredi Jones                  Bridge             Bohème           Fledermaus
Tom Atkins                 Bohème (Rodolfo) I
sabella Moore            Bohème (Mimi)
Imogen Thirlwall         Fledermaus (Rosalinde)

Superb New Zealand premiere of Donizetti masterpiece in the Catholic Cathedral

Opera in a Days Bay Garden – Opera in the Basilica

Donizetti: Maria Stuarda

Lisa Harper-Brown (Elizabeth I); Paul Whelan (Talbot); Benjamin Fifita Makisi (Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester); Matt Landreth (Lord Cecil); Clarissa Dunn (Anna Kennedy); Rhona Fraser (Mary, Queen of Scots)
Producer: Rhona Fraser; Michael Vinten (conductor); Sara  Brodie (director)
Chapman Tripp NBR New Zealand Opera Chorus; orchestra

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart

Friday, 10 August 2012, 6.00pm

This was New Zealand’s first performance of Donizetti’s great opera, one of seven (I’m open to correction) that he wrote based on English and Scottish history and stories.  This one had a turbulent early history of censorship and numerous revisions because of its theme of battling royals and the execution of a crowned monarch.

Days Bay Opera was not in a garden this time, but appropriately in a Catholic church bearing the inscription ‘Sub Maria Nomine’.  It was virtually full of people; they witnessed an absolute triumph!  Days Bay Opera, principally the work of Rhona Fraser, producer and soprano soloist), gave us a performance of a very high standard and fully professional in all its elements, while conductor Michael Vinten and director Sara Brodie allowed their experience and their imaginations to invest Donizetti’s great opera with musical and acting delights.  It is worth noting that the sponsor of this enterprise was none other than Jeremy Commons, world expert on the operas of Donizetti.

In 1992 I attended this opera performed by Australian Opera in the Sydney Opera House.  It was notable that not only was the essay in the lavish printed programme written by Jeremy Commons, but three of the six principals (though not Elizabeth or Mary) were New Zealanders: Rodney Macann as Talbot, Anson Austin as Leicester (who was indisposed the night I attended) and Heather Begg as Anna.  A brief quotation from the essay sets the scene: “A beautiful and rewarding opera in itself – a fascinating study of two queens held apart by politics – a sensitive and moving representation of the final hours of one of the most unfortunate figures in British history – an intriguing window upon the theatrical world of its day – Maria Stuarda is all of these things.”

This choice constituted a departure for Days Bay Opera, whose previous productions have been of a lighter cast: The Marriage of Figaro, Journey to Rheims, and Alcina (which is not as light as the other two, but has a happy ending).

The change to an indoor venue in winter from a beautiful garden and watery view in summer is also major.  Sara Brodie used the building to great effect, its architectural features enhanced by lovely lighting, with action taking place in various parts, although predominantly at the sanctuary end, where the small orchestra was placed.  Action further back could not readily be seen by those near to the front; however, the acoustics are so fine that the sound could be heard anywhere.  The action in the central aisle and side aisles enabled other parts of the audience to see and hear well at different times.  The use made of the many points of entry into the church was imaginative; the coup de grace (coup de l’église?) was at the end, when Mary and her retinue walked the length of the nave and out the west door (to her execution).

There were no weak links in this production; the cast was very thoroughly rehearsed, knew their words well, and projected them more than adequately. I noticed that the soloists seldom looked at the conductor, yet they were spot on in entries and timing.  The English version used was that of Amanda Holden, who created it for English National Opera in 1998.  It was described by the Sunday Telegraph as ‘Amanda Holden’s racy new translation’.

The orchestra comprised eight players, plus a pair of trumpets that appear only in one short scene, ‘off-stage’ (out the side door, in fact), when Elizabeth arrives to meet Mary.  Vinten’s reduction of the score was masterly, with sufficient of both volume and content to render the music with enough variety of timbre and dynamics.  The five strings, flute, clarinet and piano all worked hard and played extremely well, with many wonderful moments.  Early on, I especially noticed beautiful playing from the clarinet.  The piano never intruded, but gave a firm base for the other players.  Later in the first Act there was winsome flute playing accompanying Mary and Anna.  A lovely prelude preceded Act II (Act III in most 20th century performances), full of foreboding and anticipation.

Costuming a period production can be an expensive business.  The solution here was to dress the characters mainly in modern dress, including lounge suits and ties for the men (although Elizabeth’s queenly robe, and her hunting costume deviated from the modern), apart from Mary Queen of Scots and her attendant Anna, who wore period costume.  Director Sara Brodie explained to me in the interval (which was deliciously lubricated with mulled wine) that this was to convey the idea that Mary and her court were in a ‘time-lock’, while the court of Elizabeth had moved on in time.

The cast was uniformly good. What a coup to have Paul Whelan as Talbot – a bass-baritone who sings in opera houses around the world!  While he was the principal singer in that register, he was not the leading soloist.

Lisa Harper-Brown played Queen Elizabeth I with great dignity and hauteur, her vocal coloration and facial expression always apt for the moment.  Her voice was rich and expressive.  Donizetti took her to both the top and the bottom of her range in quick time, but this seemed to present no problem.

In the first Act, she had a delightful lilting solo with pizzicato accompaniment.  Her Scene Two solo in the presence of Mary was delivered with a sense of foreboding, as Mary and Talbot intoned their reactions against the floating notes of Elizabeth; Anna joined in to make a gorgeous ensemble.  There was a slight lack of co-ordination, but considering the distance the singers were from each other, ensemble was very good, featuring masterly, controlled tone, while Mary’s soliloquy that followed was dramatic and agitated.

Ben Makisi sang Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, with passion and to great dramatic effect.  His voice had full, ringing tones, producing (as always) lovely soft top notes; in the case of his duet with Elizabeth, these were unaccompanied.  The men’s duet that followed was full of drama, as was Elizabeth’s anger with Leicester. Makisi, of all the performers, managed to get a look in his eye that expressed his emotions and his objections to Elizabeth’s wishes (since his greater affection was for Mary).

Rhona Fraser’s singing as Mary Queen of Scots was magnificent.  I have heard her sing in each of the operas.  Here, her role was much larger, more dramatic and more difficult than those she had previously essayed, and she rose to the occasion superbly.  Her intonation was perfect, her runs thrilling, and her acting thoroughly in keeping with the role, as indeed was the acting of all the cast.  Her tirade against Elizabeth in the second Scene of Act I incorporated coloratura runs, +and was impressive, the voice ringing out strongly, but with no hint of forcing.  Again at the end of Act II there were superb coloratura passages, while Fraser’s low notes were dramatic and mellow, helping to bring the audience into the passion and drama.

The following duet between Leicester and Mary, in waltz time, revealed a wonderful bloom to Fraser’s voice, and how splendidly both singers used their resonators.

At the beginning of Act II there was a stunning duet between Makisi and Whelan, as they discuss plots against Elizabeth, their double lives, of service to Elizabeth, but their love for Mary, and in Talbot’s case, the fact that he was a clandestine Catholic. Whelan was at his best in the scene with Mary, his voice fully resonant in the sanctuary of the church.  Here, Mary had yet more beautiful period clothing.  Her solo with chorus, Talbot and Anna was mellifluous, enhanced by the acoustic.

Mary’s prayer was exquisitely sung, and Fraser’s facial expression conveyed tragic feeling.  The lighting contrasted the light and space of Elizabeth’s court of the first scene with the confined, darker castle at Fotheringay where Mary was imprisoned.  Presumably for this reason also, there was less movement in those scenes.

In the final scene, leading to the execution, the crew erected barriers to keep back the crowd.  The chorus began here rather weakly, but improved as they went on, though facial expressions were mostly too dead-pan.  Their placards read “Shame on England”, “We love you Mary” and other 21st century phrases; very telling.  Makisi was very strong here, and the chorus became more involved.

Clarissa Dunn was effective as Anna, Mary’s companion.  Her acting as the calm, comforting, dutiful servant was just right; her relatively small amount of singing revealed a very attractive voice, and good enunciation.  She acquitted herself well in the ensemble in the first Act with Mary and the soldiers, and again in the final scene.

The chorus was first heard behind the audience, in the gallery, making a great impact and their work, vocally, was consistently good.  Paul Whelan also first sang from behind where I was seated; he produced a magnificent sound, powerful and intense and projecting the words strongly. The brass and off-stage chorus were sonorously splendid as they announced Elizabeth’s arrival at Fotheringay Castle to visit Mary (historically, this never happened).

This opera features many duets and ensembles.  Early on, Elizabeth and Leicester  sing a tender duet that soon turns to fire; this was splendidly done – but so were all the ensembles.

Some aspects of the production were less convincing than others.  Both Elizabeth and Mary used the pulpit on occasion; the first time, it was Elizabeth, holding a dog, which she hands to Cecil (Matt Landreth, a cynical courtier who sang expressively, though with sometimes insufficient volume though at others, strongly) while she sings her first aria; this was excellent.  But the photographers doing a photo-shoot of Elizabeth in the first scene (complete with make-up brush) was perhaps a little OTT, especially the distracting flashes.  Elsewhere in the production had Elizabeth using a laptop, Cecil using a cellphone, but these features were not overdone.

The only slightly negative note was the appearance of the chorus.  Most had not memorised their music, which was perhaps understandable, but their scores were held at sundry angles, and in the last scene some of the chorus held protest placards as well, which added to the problem. More uniform handling of the scores would have improved the look. Nevertheless, the chorus shone vocally.

Here we had a team of individuals performing impeccably, both dramatically and vocally, conveying expertly Donizetti’s music and drama at his melodic, harmonic and rhythmic best.  Congratulations to all concerned with this stunning production – not forgetting the effective lighting.  Particular praise must go to the two female leads, who were outstanding, and to Rhona Fraser for producing a performance of such quality, with tension, drama and momentum maintained throughout the performance, with no dead spots.

The second and final performance is on Saturday, 18 August at 8pm.  Go if you possibly can!

 

 

Views of the NZSO’s epic “Valkyrie”

WAGNER – Die Walküre

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Pietari Inkinen (conductor)

Cast:  Simon O’Neill (Siegmund) / Edith Haller (Sieglinde) / Jonathan Lemalu (Hunding)

Christine Goerke (Brünnhilde) / John Wegner (Wotan) /  Margaret Medlyn (Fricka)

The Valkyries : Morag Atchison, Amanda Atlas, Sarah Castle, Kristin Darragh,

Wendy Doyle, Lisa Harper-Brown, Anna Pierard, Kate Spence

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Sunday 22nd July, 2012

Antony Brewer – guest reviewer

Wagner wrote works of enormous complexity. They make extraordinary demands on conductor, singers and players especially the music-dramas of Der Ring des Nibelungen. So performing Die Walküre in New Zealand is ambitious to say the least. We certainly have the orchestra and, somewhat to my surprise, the conductor Pietari Inkinen. We also have our own Simon O’Neill, a leading artist at Bayreuth, Covent Garden, La Scala and the New York MET. We have a riveting Fricka in Margaret Medlyn, we have the Walküren (a fabulous team!) and a Hunding of ideal voice in Jonathan Lemalu. Australia provided the (unfortunately indisposed) Wotan, John Wegner, whose efforts to stay the course were  extraordinary considering the demands of the role. The Sieglinde and Brünnhilde were non-antipodeans and also magnificent.

I do not share the belief, expressed in another review, that we should put up a totally Kiwi cast for such an event. If we have the singers, as we did for the Parsifal, we can do so with pride. Already for our size we have had and have New Zealand Wagnerians who can shake the stages of the world. Pushing the wrong voices at the wrong time into Wagner is both unnecessary and damaging.

And what voices we had! Simon O’Neill’s Siegmund rang out with intensity and a touch of real metal in the voice. As do most Siegmunds, he made a bit of a meal of “Wälse, Wälse” but that was easily forgiven when his “Winterstürme” was phrased with such rare beauty. His Sieglinde, Edith Haller , was that operatic rarity, a singer whose singing and acting were outstanding while she also looked the part. It was a wonderful experience to feel convinced at the visual level as well as the aural. Her instrument is not unlike that of classic Sieglinde Leonie Rysanek, a full and beautiful mid-voice with a clarion top register: “O Herstes Wunder” rang out with full and intense tone, supported magnificently by Inkinen and the orchestra.

John Wegner’s indisposition has already been noted. Yet he held the stage as a Wotan should, despite a disappearing voice. He has that special ability to be still without seeming immobile and because of the stillness, movement and expression gain in power when they occur.

Fricka can be a bore if she be more sanctimonious than angry. The great Frickas ( e.g. Elisabeth Höngen, Rita Gorr, Christa Ludwig) always have a more or less imperious outrage barely concealing the painful indignation of a woman scorned by her partner. I admit to being a huge fan of Margaret Medlyn. She was in fine voice and she was Fricka. What an artist she is.

Jonathan Lemalu was HUGE as Hunding. The voice and expression worked superbly, especially his ability to darken the voice and inject it with so much menace.

I’ve left Christine Goerke as Brünnhilde to the end because of the singers she was, for me, the great discovery of the evening. Her stage presence, her facial expressions and her acting in general were quite magnetic: she has that rare ability to draw attention to herself without compromising the other artists, in fact enhancing what they are doing by association. I felt myself involved with Brünnhilde’s dilemma in a way that only the great Brünnhildes manage to convey. Obviously her interpretation will mature; in many ways it is fine and wonderful already.

As to the voice, WOW. Used as I am to the dearth of true hochdramatisch voices available to sing these roles since Nilsson retired, it is amazing to hear not a spinto voice pushed out of it’s natural fach but a richly coloured and powerful dramatic soprano with the top gleaming, the middle darkly tinged and lower register (so crucial, say, in  “War es so schmälich” ) full-toned without that “chesty” quality.

My sense of Pietari Inkinen’s conducting in the past has been of refinement and structural cohesion rather than emotional intensity. Even in the music of Sibelius which he conducts so well, I have experienced a feeling of emotional restraint and even compression of climaxes. He has certainly refused to flirt with brass in full cry and timpani, for example, at levels of ear-thwacking intensity.

Die Walküre is clearly different emotional territory for him. His direction of this performance had all the qualities of his best work and a new frisson of freedom and excitement. The orchestra provided some of the finest climaxes I’ve ever heard in Wagner, along with some exquisite playing in soft passages: the shaping and sifting of the orchestral tracery in the introduction to Siegmund’s “Winterstürme” was simply magical, just as it should be. I’ve seldom heard this wonderful orchestra of ours play with such unanimity and beauty of tone. The strings in their many hushed passages played as if their tone were suspended in mid-air, tangible but of the finest grain.

Inkinen’s decision to seat the orchestra with violas to the right front and cellos behind was inspired. Wagner’s orchestration is masterly and his writing for violas crucial to the “mix”. We heard every detail, while the cellos and basses (who were missing a player I heard later) had plenty of power to be heard perfectly.

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Die Walküre – another review of the Wellington performance, by Peter Mechen

Mention Wagner to the average person in the street, and if you get a response it’s more than likely to be along the lines of something to do with the “Ride of the Valkyries”, one of those pieces of music that have become icons in their own right and perfectly capable of standing alone and being appreciated in splendid isolation. I myself still remember as a musically inexperienced twenty year-old hearing a recording of Die Walküre for the very first time, and being electrified by the beginning of the opera’s third act, which of course opens with those well-known irruptions of orchestral energy that herald the Valkyries’ wild ride.

But as for the other four hours’ worth of music, I was equally captivated, drawn into a fantastic world by the range and scope of Wagner’s creative imagination. I recall on this first occasion late at night playing the opening of the first LP side of the impressively packaged set (the famous Decca recording with Solti conducting) which I’d borrowed from the Palmerston North Public Library, intending to “sample” a few minutes of the music and play the rest in the morning if I liked what I heard. I think it was at about 4:30am or thereabouts that I finally came out of my trance, having ignored sleep and simply kept going to the very end of the opera, all ten LP sides of it – I was unstoppable, and so, it seemed, was Wagner.

On Sunday afternoon at the Michael Fowler Centre just as captivating (and unstoppable) were Pietari Inkinen and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, plunging whole-heartedly into the Prelude from Act One of Die Walküre (which the publicity called “The Valkyrie”) and never relinquishing their grip upon the music throughout, right to the last few strains of the glorious “Magic Fire Music” which concludes the work. What followed was, in my experience, unprecedented, a standing ovation from the MFC audience for all of those performers concerned, a tribute whose enthusiasm truly reflected the efforts of singers and players and conductor to present to us something very special indeed.

This Walküre, though worth the wait, was a long time in coming to Wellington, fifteen years after the groundbreaking concert performances of Das Rheingold which the orchestra had given, also in semi-staged form in the Michael Fowler Centre, under the leadership of its conductor-in-chief at the time, Dr. Franz-Paul Decker. My belief at the time was that the NZSO and Decker were planning to work their way, at various intervals, through the remaining “Ring” operas, making the venture a “first” for this country. Alas, due to sponsorship difficulties, the plan was scuppered, or at least put on indefinite long-term hold.  I greatly admired Decker as a conductor of the Austro-German repertoire, and loved his Rheingold, as I had equally enjoyed his concert-hall performances of Mahler and Richard Strauss. It was a numbing disappointment that we weren’t able to experience any further Wagnerian efforts on this kind of scale from him and the orchestra.

So, it was in this context that I awaited the present Walküre, my excitement at the prospect coloured, I admit, by my previous encounters with the conducting of Pietari Inkinen. I’ve had occasion to admire him greatly in the past as a musician – his technical aplomb, his intellectual grasp of scores and works, and his ability to extract beautiful and accurate playing from the orchestra. But up to now, I had always thought his music-making somewhat inhibited emotionally – to my ears he seemed reluctant to bring out from his players any kind of no-holds-barred realization of what was in the music. It seemed enough that he was getting the orchestra to play beautifully, and at times brilliantly, and thereby avoiding those moments when the music’s expression demanded a darker, deeper, more desperate and urgent approach – when, in fact, beauty and brilliance were simply NOT enough to realize the music’s fuller expression.

Perhaps it took me the whole of the first Act of Walküre to be completely and utterly won over by Inkinen’s conducting – but there were plenty of excitements and intensities along the way. The tempestuously-driven Prelude was a great start to the performance, the string-players bending their backs to the task, and the winds and brass sounding the growing warnings of the storm’s thunderous arrival (the timpani absolutely shattering at the climax). By contrast, the tenderness of the string-playing throughout the first exchanges, sung and unsung, between the fugitive Siegmund (Simon O’Neill) and his long-lost sister, Sieglinde (Edith Haller), was heart-melting, with Andrew Joyce’s ‘cello solo one to literally die for.

I did think the playing of the motif associated with Hunding (Jonathan Lemalu), Sieglinde’s husband, needed more brassy girth, a blacker-toned brutality (Hunding is a particularly nasty customer, after all!). But the bite and impact of the orchestral accompaniment to Siegmund’s account of his earlier encounters with Hunding’s own murderous kinsmen was thrilling projected, as was the trenchant support for Siegmund’s scalp-prickling cries of “Wälse”, desperate invocations of his father’s guiding spirit, underpinned by fierce string tremolandi, and radiant contributions from trumpet and winds pinpointing the presence of the sword in the tree. And there was more orchestral radiance framing Siegmund’s poetic “Winterstürme”, the excitement building within the orchestra surrounding the singers’ exchanges as they ascertain their true brother/sister identities as well as acknowledging their love for one another. The Act’s last couple of pages were a ferment of newly-awakened passion between the lovers and great orchestral excitement, by which time I was convinced this was a different Pietari Inkinen at the orchestral helm to that which I’d encountered before.

If Act One had built gradually to that point of intensity, Act Two was on fire orchestrally right from the beginning – and so it went on with scarcely a falter, right through to the end, Inkinen seeming to revel in the intensities and unleash his players’ capabilities to realize those same impulses. My notes are filled with comments such as “wonderful atmosphere – orchestra terrific!” during the exchange between Wotan (John Wegner) and Fricka (Margaret Medlyn), and “the music’s darkness strongly brought out by Inkinen” when Wotan voices his fear of the Nibelungen, and “terrific vehemence in the orchestra” during Wotan’s grief at “Das Ende”. Tremendous stuff from conductor and players, here, as well as throughout Act Three.

All of which would have gone for very little without the singers, who with one disappointing exception made the most of the wonderfully-wrought orchestral support. To get it out of the way, the disappointment came with German-born Australian John Wegner’s Wotan, the singer developing problems with his throat during the course of Act Two, and having to seriously conserve his voice right throughout the following final Act. As the latter contains some of the character’s most significant and memorable moments of the entire cycle Wegner’s ailment was a blow not only for him but for his Brünnhilde and for the audience – instead of the glorious and heartfelt resolution of father-daughter conflict which makes the third Act so very memorable, we had the admittedly absorbing spectacle of an experienced singer intelligently using what vocal resources he still had to get through an extremely demanding series of episodes. He succeeded creditably, but I thought that there ought to have been some kind of announcement made beforehand concerning his ailment, as is done in opera houses, to put the audience in the picture, as it were.

By way of compensation (one of many), we were able to enjoy American soprano Christine Goerke’s debut as Brünnhilde, an assumption that I found gave so much pleasure for a number of reasons – for a start I loved the SOUND of her voice, rich, warm and flexible, drawing me further into the character she was creating with her whole demeanour. Everything her face and body did seemed to flow from the text and its meaning, giving a natural, organic quality to her impulses towards interaction with the others (generally, the three leading women seemed more at ease than did the men in their use of the narrow stage and their interplay with other characters). But Goerke and John Wegner, despite the latter’s vocal ailments, managed to convey plenty of musical and dramatic ebb and flow between them, especially in their Act Two confrontation over the fate of Siegmund. And Goerke brought the same heartfelt qualities to her interactions with each of the Volsung twins, a gravely beautiful Todesverkündigung (announcement of death) with Siegmund, and great and vigorous compassion for the bereft and defenceless Sieglinde.

As Siegmund Simon O’Neill was truly resplendent of voice, if not quite as easeful and fluent in his gestures and movements as his Act One on-stage partner Edith Haller, who took the role of Sieglinde. The “edge” to O’Neill’s bright, heroic tones I always find takes a bit of getting used to at first – but there’s straightaway also that wonderful freshness of aspect and manner, which gives me the impresion that he’s singing all of his music for the first time and is enchanted by its discovery. By the time O’Neill had reached the point of recounting his adventures to the vengeful Hunding, the voice had relinquished its “bleat” and acquired proper warmth and girth, exemplified by those thrilling cries of “Wälse!” already referred to. His delivery of “Winterstürme” was sheer poetry in its effect, and his wholehearted give-and-take with Sieglinde in their increasingly passionate exchanges towards the end of the Act had just the right amount of animal energy and excitement, singers and orchestra catching fire and conveying the sheer exhilaration of it all to us in no uncertain terms.

As his partner and lover-to-be Sieglinde, Edith Haller looked and sang like an angel. She brought to the performance recent experiences in the role at both Bayreuth and the Vienna State Opera, and thus seemed readily able to turn her uncompromising “acting-space” into a vibrant and believable world of repressed emotion, which was then unleashed by Siegmund’s arrival. Equally telling was her desperation in flight from Hunding with Siegmund, and her fierce joy at the thought of carrying her brother/lover’s child, though she suffered, along with everybody else on the platform, through a lack of strong dramatic direction and vision regarding the actual staging of Siegmund’s death. But her Sieglinde was a joy, an unalloyed delight to encounter.

Besides Simon O’Neill, two more New Zealanders took important roles, Jonathan Lemalu as Hunding, the brutal husband of Sieglinde, and Margaret Medlyn as Fricka, Wotan’s long-suffering wife, and guardian-goddess of marriage. Jonathan Lemalu’s darkly-resonant tones made Hunding sound a truly menacing figure, his singing compensating for a rather too-static stage presence – I couldn’t understand why he and Edith Haller didn’t seem to take any notice of Wagner’s quite explicit music-cues during the sequence when Hunding orders Sieglinde to bed, for example. By contrast Margaret Medlyn as Fricka was able to demonstrate her wonderful stage-instinct throughout her scene with Wotan, conveying both the umbrage of a dishonoured goddess and the frustration of a long-suffering wife. I thought her voice seemed more effortly-produced, and not as resplendent as with her Kundry of a few years ago on the same stage – but she successfully brought the character and her underlying motivations to pulsating life.

There would be no show without the Valkyries, “those noisy girls” as comedienne Anna Russell called them during her famous tongue-in-cheek analysis of the Ring Cycle. Here they were gloriously noisy, mainly due, I think, to their forward placement on the platform, in a “stand-and-deliver” line singing directly at the audience (again, a stage director would have almost certainly effected a more interesting configuration), as opposed to their usual deployment in places around the stage. It was all extremely visceral and thrilling!

Again, the “evening dress” made initially for an incongruous effect (what today’s young Valkyrie is wearing when she rides into battle…), which was soon forgotten in the cut-and-thrust of the singers’ exchanges with one another and with the orchestra. I liked the differentiations between the individual voices, some stronger than others, some differently focused – just like any average group of people – but no-one should be singled out, because each voice played its part in giving the scene its astonishing impact.

I’ve already mentioned the “semi-staged” aspect of the performance – the singers were able to use a narrow space in front of the orchestra and conductor, with entrances and exits on each side. There were no costumes as such, and no props at all, so what was mentioned in the libretto – a sword, a spear, a drink – had to be mimed (Wotan’s plastic drink-bottle which he discreetly brought on during Act Three hardly counted – and it was certainly no drinking-horn!). It all worked sufficiently well to further the drama, even if some of the movements, particularly from both Siegmund and his enemy Hunding seemed too stilted and contrived.

The women, I thought, were at an advantage over the men in the matter of “concert attire”, because they were at least able to dress colourfully and suggest different personalities, while the men were confined to their very formalised tuxedos. This seemed to work against whatever theatricality the singers were trying to generate – Siegmund at the very start looked as if he had just come home from an all-night party somewhat the worse for wear, for example. However, as the work progressed we were able to shift our focus away from what people were wearing, and instead concentrate on what they were doing with their faces, bodies, and, of course, voices.

The other thing I thought could have been given more thought, to the work’s overall advantage as a piece of music-drama, was the lighting. Nothing needed to be distractingly over-the-top – just subtle touches letting the music give the cues, would have, I think, enhanced the feeling of a story being enacted. Who would possibly want to insist that a “concert version” of an opera has nothing that suggests the theatre? I thought the red glow which grew out of the opening strains of the Magic Fire music at the opera’s end was entirely apposite, and thought that there were other places throughout the work where changes of ambient light would have added to the sense of dramatic action initiated by the music.

These criticisms are like thistledown planted on the wind, as Denis Glover’s Harry might say, blown away by the staggering achievement of singers, players and conductor with this presentation of one of the world’s mightiest music-dramas. It joins a small, but significant and ever-promising group of Wagner productions in this country, each of which represented for its time hitherto undreamed-of heights of local performance achievement, and has since become legendary. The NZSO and Pietari Inkinen can be justly proud of what they have done to add to that list of legends.

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A magnificent Rigoletto, almost too close for comfort….

Giuseppe VERDI – RIGOLETTO

Production by NBR New Zealand Opera  / Director : Lindy Hume

Cast:  Warwick Fyfe (Rigoletto) /  Emma Pearson (Gilda) / Rafael Rojas (Duke of Mantua)

Ashraf Sewailam (Sparafucile) / Kristin Darragh (Maddalena) / Rodney Macann (Monterone)

Emma Fraser (Countess) / James Clayton (Ceprano) / Wendy Doyle (Giovanna)

Derek Hill (Borsa) / Matthew Landereth (Marullo)

Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus  (Michael Vinten – Chorus Master)

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Wyn Davies (conductor)

St.James Theatre, Wellington

Saturday 19th May 2012

Very much an opera-going experience for our time (and thus ostensibly at the mercy of the “updating” phenomenon which subjects present-day opera-goers to all kinds of directorial mayhem), this latest NBR New Zealand Opera production of “Rigoletto” seemed to me to be a triumph of substance over flash, of intelligence over sensation-mongering.  One goes to the opera these days ready for anything, expecting to be challenged as much as entertained, and in some cases as affronted as much as delighted by what one encounters (and not always merely on stage). One or two semi-gratuitous “blips” aside, I thought this production delivered a well thought-out and properly mind-provoking  set of scenarios which brought the original impulses of Verdi’s inspiration all-too-close for comfort to aspects of the 21stCentury world we live in.

I know a number of opera-lovers who won’t go to contemporary productions any longer because of what they consider to be “violence done to the original” by presentations which seem deliberately to set out to gratuitously either titillate and cheapen, or else  shock and affront audience sensibilities. While there’s nothing wrong in principle with certain of those processes being brought to bear on people’s experiences in the opera house, it’s obviously too much for some people to stomach when a theatrical work’s traditional ethos is jarringly overlaid with elements suggesting imported and irrelevant agendas.

Nowhere did I feel that director Lindy Hume’s setting of Rigoletto’s story within a contemporary scenario of razz-matazz politics did either Victor Hugo’s original story or Verdi’s own conception of his work any disservice. True, a Mediterranean ethos was suggested by things like the overtly demonstrative and masochistic manner of the Duke, the Mafia-like aspect of his henchmen (though the “gorillas-in-suits” phenomenon is a commonplace, these days), and the dubious “imprimatur” of a Catholic cleric in full regalia among the entourage – a cardinal, or monsignor at the very least! But it was actually a way of giving the problematical “curse”,  brought down upon the head of Rigoletto by the wronged nobleman Monterone,  rather more “clout” than is usually the case with modern recastings of the story. No matter how sophisticated, worldly-wise and updated the setting, such dark, forceful utterances of vengeance  for wrongdoing can still pack a primordial punch. And especially in this context  –  an old-world culture beset by superstitions and haunted by gods both ancient and more recent, whose shadows of influence can still come out at night and linger beyond realms of reason.

And it is night and darkness that largely predominate in the opera’s action – only the third Act  suggests “the morning after”, while the other three parts of the story are played out against the dark. It’s a world of concealment (Rigoletto and his daughter, Gilda), of dark business (the courtiers’ abduction of Gilda), of murderous intent (the assassin, Sparafucile), and of secret trysts (the Duke, first of all with Gilda, then with the assassin’s sister, Maddalena). Right from the beginning, there was darkness at the heart of it all – the curtain slowly lifted as the orchestra tuned up, showing Rigoletto sitting alone in a room in the dark, except for a “home theatre” screen which gave us none too naturalistic footage of ravens during the Prelude  (supposedly portentous imagery, but surely the music alone at this point was doing enough!), fortunately uncharacteristic of the production over the span of the evening.

Contrasted with this was the glitter and sparkle of the Duke’s residence, which the preludial scene “morphed” into cleverly, walls and doors lowered, furniture revolved, and  the darkness flooded with light, all done expertly and unobtrusively. The characters were suddenly animated and vibrant, Warwick Fyfe’s Rigoletto breaking his dark reverie to become the Duke’s energetic factotum,  part evil genius, part buffoon, cynical and dismissive of all, seemingly unmoved by his master’s political success of the evening.  As the libertine Duke, Mexican tenor Rafael Rojas (a splendid Canio in last year’s NBR NZ Opera’s Pagliacci) looked and acted the part from the beginning, revelling in the media attention (the group photograph splendidly choreographed to be “captured” at a musical climax) and readily displaying his lascivious impulses (with plenty of noticeably bimbo-ish allurement close at hand throughout).

It’s the Duke’s voice which is the first of all to compel attention with “Questa o quella”,  delivered by Rojas with plenty of insouciance and nicely ringing top notes, his energies and tones echoed by the Vector Wellington Orchestra’s expert accompanying under conductor  Wyn Davies.  The others, including Rigoletto, have mostly one-line declamations and conversational utterances throughout the act, with strong contributions throughout the opening exchanges from Derek Hill’s Borsa, and then from Matthew Landreth’s Marullo, when breaking the news to the “chapter” regarding Rigoletto’s supposed  mistress.  As well, we were given convincing cameos from both Emma Fraser’s glamorous Countess Ceprano and James Clayton as her boorish husband.

It’s not until right at the end of the act that Warwick Fyfe’s vocal mettle as Rigoletto is really tested, with his mocking  response to the tragic entrance and vengeful utterances of Count Monterone, come to denounce the Duke for misusing his daughter. Unfortunately, that fine singer Rodney Macann seemed to me vocally out of sorts on the night, not able to muster up the power and focus needed to make his curse really sting.  If the intention was to convey a man already broken by his daughter’s downfall at the Duke’s hands, then this Monterone certainly succeeded, but in the process the curse’s power was somewhat muted, and made Rigoletto’s horror-struck reaction a shade pantomime-like. To Fyfe’s credit his character steadfastedly maintained an agitated state right into the heart of the Second Act’s opening, convincing us that Monterone’s pronouncements had indeed struck home.

Back to darkness with the beginning of Act Two, out in the street and next to a bus shelter, from which came the assassin (or, in present-day vernacular, the hit-man) Sparafucile, sung by Egyptian-born Ashraf Sewailam, physically threatening and vocally imposing, his exchanges with Rigoletto beautifully underpinned by rich, grainy string playing and voice-of-doom percussion work from the pit.  The whole scene was brilliantly effective, with its urban jungle backdrop of darkness, against which Warwick Fyfe was finally able to open up his soul and bemoan his fate as a misshapen jester, as well as ruminate further upon the curse. A revolve of the stage and we were taken to Rigoletto’s house, and to his daughter Gilda, Emma Pearson’s silvery tones, physical beauty and add-water vulnerability straightaway capturing audience hearts.

What a psychoanalytical field day a modern family therapist would have with Rigoletto’s relationship with his daughter! Perhaps a casualty of the opera’s updating to the present was Rigoletto’s refusal to allow his daughter any sense of her own identity, a situation one imagines any modern child would rebel against and probably have the means to do something about. Of course, whatever the time or place, such parental strictures produce time-bombs, intensities producing like intensities, whose explosions may be delayed, but not denied – and so the case proved with Gilda, her father’s intransigence merely fuelling the underground fires further.

The Duke’s appearance out of the dark which surrounded Rigoletto’s house, and his complicity with the servant Giovanna to gain entry had a “Marriage of Figaro” air about the proceedings, (and Fyfe’s admonishing of Wendy Doyle’s servant by means of a less-than-convincingly-delivered slap in the face was not a great moment). More important were the passionate declarations of promised love between the Duke and Gilda, those breathless figurations at the end of their farewell duet understandable in the circumstances. Then came Gilda’s beautifully introduced “Caro Nome”, orchestral winds catching in advance the character’s purity of utterance and direct and unequivocal wholeheartedness. It took Emma Pearson’s voice a few measures to settle, but then it found its poise, the singer by the end integrating it all so naturally into a most believable stage presence.  And while the aria spoke of visions of love’s delight, the prevailing dark around the edges of the stage relinquished darker purposes – this time the courtiers from the Duke’s palace, who proceeded, with clever use of powerful, blinding torches, to outmanoeuvre Rigoletto, and abduct his daughter.

By this time we had surrendered ourselves to the drama entirely, irrespective of time or place, so focused were the different elements which made up the experience, to the point where the nude figure on the Duke’s couch at the beginning of Act Three scarcely made any lasting impact as the form stood up, re-vested and moved away. More to the point was the Duke’s lament at losing Gilda, as he had found the house empty – Rojas’s pitching of the notes showed some strain, at this point, though his interactions with the spry, well-drilled chorus seemed to refocus his efforts. In the following scene with the chorus, during which Rigoletto reveals that Gilda is not his lover but his daughter, I thought Fyfe extremely fine, terracing his intensities unerringly, and conveying the sense of someone in the grip of a deadly obsession,  vowing after the brief reappearance of the disillusioned and downcast figure of Monterone that he, Rigoletto, shall avenge the wrongdoing of the Duke once and for all.

One doubts whether there exists a more perfectly- and potently-conceived final operatic act than this of “Rigoletto”. It abounds with imaginative touches, such as the wordless chorus intoning in places the moaning of the wind, a haunting, scalp-pricking effect. The music surprises us with things like the Duke’s famous “La Donna e Mobile” aria, and afterwards the wonderful vocal Quartet, an episode which both unites and underlines the barriers between two sets of people, while the situations unpredictably swerve and double back on themselves. Fittingly, the prevailing dark has the last word, as the story’s convolutions lead to the death of Gilda instead of the Duke as the jester intended. As the assassin Sparafucile’s sister, Maddalena, whom the Duke makes love to and who enables his life to be saved, Kristen Darragh exuded a vamp-like allure, along with an ever-burgeoning murderous determination to sacrifice another person for the sake of the life of the Duke, her new lover. Naturally, heartrendingly, the other person is Gilda, the graphic depiction of her despatch, fittingly by Maddalena herself (often not shown onstage), both shocking and piteous, but I thought not inappropriate.

Hence Rigoletto’s moment of intended triumph turns to tragedy, a cruel twist of fate I thought brilliantly, searingly conveyed by Warwick Fyfe, with at first almost public-servant detachment when taking receipt of the body he imagines is the Duke’s, but allowing flashes of anticipation of his revenge’s fulfillment, before cooly gathering his thoughts and energies to focus on the act of despatch – only to hear the Duke’s voice right at that moment of owning his triumph – what devastation, what new anguish followed! As with Shakespeare and other great theatre, we may already know the end, but the situation has the power, as here to move us anew, because we are not as we were – and therefore it touches us in different places every time. Warwick Fyfe and Emma Pearson, as Rigoletto and his dying, transfigured Gilda, their characters borne upwards and onwards as throughout by wonderful orchestral playing from the Wellington Orchestra and conductor Wyn Davies, spoke volumes to us at the end on behalf of all who had contributed to a marvellous production,  with so many things to say – a stunning achievement by Lindy Hume and her entire creative team.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hutt Valley Orchestra – “What did you say they were playing?….!”

RACHMANINOV – Piano Concerto No.3 in D Minor

MASCAGNI – Cavalleria Rusticana (Concert Performance)

Melanie Lina (piano)

Hutt Valley Orchestra

Brett Stewart (conductor)

(Cast of Cavalleria Rusticana: Ruth Armishaw (Turidda) / Sharon Yearsley (Santuzza)

Kieran Rayner (Alfio) / Jody Orgias (Mama Lucia) / Alison Hodge (Lola) / Chorus)

Expressions Art and Entertainment Centre

Upper Hutt

Saturday 5th May 2012

I must confess to surprise upon hearing about the Hutt Valley Orchestra’s proposed Sounds Expressions concert – the Rachmaninov Third Piano Concerto? And Cavalleria Rusticana? – the whole of it? Perhaps my response was due in part to my experiences as a player in an amateur orchestra in Palmerston North during the 1990s, though I must say we also attempted things of reasonable difficulty, like the Borodin Second Symphony and the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony, and had a lot of fun, and made splendidly outlandish and occasionally reasonably musical noises.

I had heard pianist Melanie Lina being interviewed on RNZ Concert, and liked what she had said about performing the Rachmaninov Concerto, and was impressed by the quiet confidence she exuded about it all. So I was intrigued, but thought that, however good the soloist might be, the work would still be quite a challenge for the orchestra, in fact, any orchestra. Again, I was basing these reactions upon what I knew of amateur orchestral playing, and wondered whether the Hutt Orchestra (whose work I didn’t know at all – in fact, I didn’t even know they existed!) was going to be up to the task – and then, after the Rachmaninov, there was Mascagni’s “Cav”, for goodness’ sakes!

It turned out to be an evening of surprises, involving a full gamut of reactions, a process whose exact order had considerable bearing on my own responses to the evening’s music-making. It was very much a concert of two halves – first up was the Rachmaninov Concerto, one which soloist Melanie Lina began confidently and nearly always securely, with steady, if rather muted support from the orchestra. I noticed from the outset that the orchestral winds seemed to find it difficult to actually “sound” their notes, though the violins were a little better – though somewhat “seedy” the first orchestral tutti had recognizable shape and form. And conductor Brent Stewart seemed to make all the right gestures and work collaboratively with his soloist throughout.

The only problem was that Stewart seemed to have considerable difficulty getting any actual tone from many of the players, who appeared for long stretches as if they were “cowed” by the music. It was left to Melanie Lima to make her own performance of the work for much of the time, because despite the conductor’s best endeavors, she got precious little help from the orchestra, save for one or two details, such as a sensitive horn solo answering one of the piano’s phrases in the second subject group. The horns actually seemed in places reasonably onto things, because I picked up some nicely etched-in muted notes from them just after the pianist’s reprise of the opening theme.

During the piano-and-orchestra exchanges that followed the players kept things rhythmically together,  though the lack of any impactful tone from the orchestra made the episode a one-sided affair, the brass hardly registering at all. I found it difficult to understand why the players didn’t seem to want to “play out” more – as I said earlier, my own orchestral experiences involved at least making with my colleagues plenty of noise, quite a lot of which was musical. I wanted these players to similarly hurl themselves into the fray, take more risks, and in the right places, roar, blare, rasp and bray, but at least give the soloist something reasonably substantial in places to actually play along with or against (this is a romantic concerto, after all!). Perhaps Brent Stewart had been reading Richard Strauss’s tongue-in-cheek essay “Advice to conductors”, containing statements such as “Never look at the brass – it only encourages them”!

The soloist made a good fist of her “dying fall” music just before the cadenza – she played the shorter of the two written by the composer (though probably the more difficult, less chordal and more quicksilver an affair),achieving real grandeur at the climax.Though entering late the flute sounded its solo evocatively, as did all the winds and the horn. In fact the horns again stood out, making the beautiful “sounds of evening across the meadow” sequence (my favourite bit in the first movement) just before the final reprise of the opening, really tell, with secure chording and nicely-floated tones.

I hoped that, with more room to breathe, away from the strictures of the first movement’s driving rhythms, the orchestral tones would sound more fully during the slow movement – but apart from a nice-phrased oboe solo, the rest of the orchestra, alas, sounded fairly inert and hardly preparing of the way for the piano’s tragic downward entry, here beautifully sounded by the soloist, moving from anguish to warmth as the music proceeded. What passionate writing here! – and how involved Lina sounded! To my delight she and conductor Brent Stewart kept intact the vertiginous passage that’s often cut, the sequence thus able to fully express the music’s somewhat Bronte-ish wildness and gradual descent into loneliness. I thought Lina everywhere had the full measure of the work’s emotional contourings, setting romantic sweep next to poetic expansiveness, but always with the music’s overall shape kept in hand.

Occasionally the winds would nose their way up and out of the misted orchestral textures and make a phrase “tell”, both clarinet and oboe managing to sound some of their counter-theme against the pianist’s skittery central-section waltz-like rhythms. And the strings did conjure up enough tone to recognizably sound the final tragic outburst of the movement, just before the soloist’s dangerous-sounding flourishes heralded the finale.

The “galloping horse” motive rang out splendidly from Melanie Lina’s piano throughout the finale’s opening, the violins actually managing to sound their counter-melody against the pianist’s forthright second-subject measures. Then, in the haunting nocturnal episode that followed the orchestral tones filled out and the players made something of the music’s dark pulsings underneath the piano’s quixotic chirruping. Another section sometimes cut in performance was here restored, with swirling figurations from the piano supported by strings, and with the flutes sounding their repetitions of the piano’s nocturnal birdsong.

A pity the violas and cellos couldn’t muster up enough tonal weight to help usher in the beautiful return of the first movement’s second subject – like an old friend returning after a long absence! Happily flute and horn amply supported the piano here, just like during the “old times”. For the rest of the work, the piano took charge, driving the music towards the “big tune” at the end, Lina phrasing her lines expansively and romantically, pulling the orchestra along with her, and achieving real grandeur to finish.

The pianist was accorded a great ovation, and, I thought, deservedly so. I wondered in fact whether it was I who was at fault here, underestimating the demands made of the players by the sophisticated nature of the work’s sinuous, often somewhat elusive orchestral quality. Still, even so, I found it hard to understand the lack of sheer orchestral NOISE in places where surely the musicians would have “felt” the need to fill out tones and expand phrases naturally.

Judge of my surprise after the interval, when, right from the beginning of Mascagni’s score, the orchestra came alive! The strings dug into the melody and actually made it sing, while the winds and harp made a lovely impression, leading up to the first singer’s entry. This was Turidda (not Mascagni’s original “Turiddu”), sung by Ruth Armishaw, the character’s sex-change presumably the company’s response to the lack of an available tenor for the part. At least one hoped so, because despite one’s most liberated and politically-correct instincts, the scenario was always going to flounder spectacularly with the so-called “duel to the death” between the wronged husband and his wife’s lesbian lover at the story’s denouement – even in an age ridden with wholesale scuppering of traditional operatic presentations, this seemed a more than particularly perverse way of rearranging things.

Though obviously a concert performance, surely it would have been better to present the character as a “trouser role” in this case, a la Baroque opera, or one of the Richard Strauss stage works such as “Rosenkavalier”? Still, all credit to Ruth Armishaw, whose stylish singing certainly didn’t lack ardour – whether or not it was latent homophobia on my part, or merely my inability to make the “leap of imagination” required, I must confess I found myself ignoring her feminine attire, and responded to the strength of her commitment to the role as if she was a “Turiddu”.

Once again, the “second-half” orchestra amazed me with its energy and fullness of tone after the bells sounded, and the waltz tune took up its insinuating gait – the Italianate winds did exceedingly well, especially the piccolo. The chorus, seriously lacking weight of numbers, made up for a lack of tonal splendour with energetic and accurate singing. The brass seemed to have found their voices, and with the timpani, made telling contributions to the cadence-points. Everything had the kind of “schwung” (yes, I know, this isn’t German opera!) that one imagines one would find in the average Italian provincial opera house in this repertoire.

Sharon Yearsley (as Santuzza, the would-be lover of Turidda) and Jody Orgias (as Lucia, Turidda’s mother) made the most of their exchanges in their somewhat fraught opening scene – both alive to their characters’ dramatic possibilities and using their voices accordingly, Yearsley’s particularly heartfelt. Also right into his part, as with almost everything I’ve seen him do, was baritone Kieran Rayner as Alfio, the village carrier, his voice bristling with energy and rustic directness, unaware at this stage of his wife Lola’s affair with Turidda, and single-mindedly intent about his business.

The whole Easter Hymn sequence that followed swept us up satisfyingly and carried us along – it’s music that almost blackmails the listener emotionally, so direct is its lyrical and cumulative appeal. Everybody on the performance platform seemed totally committed and involved, at one with conductor Brent Stewart’s impressive control of the buildup to the soprano’s’ thrilling climactic note at the chorus’s end.

Wholly admirable was Sharon Yearsley’s pacing of her role, outlining the complex history of the knot of relationships between the main players in the story to Jody Orgias’s patient and responsive Mama Lucia, then pulling out the stops with Turidda’s entry. With two women singing the impassioned encounter between them that followed, the scenario seemed almost to transcend time and place and take on the power of an opera seria scene from a work by Handel – great singing from both Armishaw and Yearsley, nicely interrupted by the flirtatious Lola (Alison Hodge oozing charm and insouciance with her Waltz-Song), but rising again to a furious climax as Turidda rejects Santuzza and follows Lola, voices and orchestra again delivering plenty of raw power.

More goings-on bubbled up with Alfio’s arrival, Yearsley and Kieran Rayner making the most of their dramatic exchange, as the hapless Alfio was told by Santuzza of his wife Lola’s renewed involvement with Turidda. Not surprisingly, at one point Yearsley almost faltered, but rallied splendidly – throughout, the orchestra surpassed itself. with splendidly baleful tones. What an emotional contrast provided by the famous Intermezzo! – the violins struggled a little at first, but were more securely-toned when doubled by the lower strings for the “big” melody – the whole nicely shaped by Brent Stewart, and marked by some sensitive harp playing.

The few bars of waltz music that follows always makes the hairs at the back of my neck stand up, for some reason, and this performance made no exception – Ruth Armishaw, chorus and orchestra tore into the Drinking Song with gusto, despite a few scratchy ensemble moments, and caught the excitement of the last few bars with a will. The baleful brass accompanying Alfio’s entry, and the subsequent viola solo  (so darkly poised) helped create real menace, even if the ‘cellos couldn’t advance the feeling with the same surety.

Plenty of support was forthcoming from the strings for Turidda in her impassioned “farewell” aria, and the orchestral energies continued right to the end – here was the “noise” that was wanted so badly earlier in the concert. Throughout the fateful offstage cries announcing Turidda’s murder and the subsequent whiplash chords, the sounds struck home splendidly.

So, very much a “tale of two halves” here, I felt, as far as the orchestra was concerned. Perhaps most of the rehearsal time was taken up with the opera (in which case it certainly showed) – but there again, perhaps it was the music. Mascagni would have had a fair idea of what the average Italian opera orchestra could play and tellingly deliver – raw emotion taking precedence over subtlety and shades of expression – and so his music would have probably been an easier proposition, especially for non-professionals, than that of Rachmaninov’s. Whatever the case, all credit to pianist Melanie Lina for her marvellous exposition of a redoubtably difficult work, both technically and interpretatively – I hope we see her back in the Wellington region before too long – and to the concert’s second-half singers, players and conductor for a thoroughly invigorating “slice of Italian verismo life” (with intriguing variations) – hugely enjoyable.