Bellini - I Puritani

ONP Bastille, Friday December 6 2013

Conductor: Michele Mariotti. Production and Costumes: Laurent Pelly. Sets: Chantal Thomas. Lighting: Joël Adam. Lord Gualtiero Valton: Wojtek Smilek. Sir Giorgio: Michele Pertusi. Lord Arturo Talbot: Dmitry Korchak. Sir Riccardo Forth: Mariusz Kwiecien. Sir Bruno Roberton: Luca Lombardo. Enrichetta di Francia: Andreea Soare. Elvira: Maria Agresta. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.

Bellini in Père Lachaise

Apart from the very occasional aria, Bellini isn't a composer I listen to at home. My experience of his complete works comes largely from live performances, some of which played their part in the eventual naming of this blog, so I can't say I know them well - only well enough not to know they're not for me (a remark which will probably get me called arrogant, stupid and bitter again; that's the usual result when I say I don't admire either Bellini or Donizetti). But I'd read that I Puritani was possibly his best score and, to my untutored ear, it sounded a lot more convincing than others I've groaned through, though it runs out of steam towards the end. You inevitably wonder what he might have achieved had he only lived longer.

The plot, however, never had any steam to start with. That may be one reason I Puritani is a rarity, though on second thoughts if weak plots stopped operas getting performed the repertoire would be severely curtailed. More likely it's the fact it was premiered by Rubini, Grisi, Tamburini and Lablache (excusez du peu, as they say in France) and has a tenor part calling (in theory at any rate) for an F that keeps it off the boards. It isn't a work you're likely to programme if you aren't fairly sure of getting your hands on some brave and (very) capable singers - though it's useful to note that not even Florez goes for the very top note.

This being so, we probably had as good a cast as you're likely to get these days. My hero at the FT said Dmitri Korchak was "bewilderingly uneven, veering from suave declamation to reckless go-for-broke brawn at the drop of a hat," but there are moments in this part when go-for-broke brawn is probably about the best anyone can do. On YouTube, not even Gedda makes it sound easy or altogether beautiful.

Maria Agresta has a gorgeous timbre in the middle and lower range and her expressiveness improved as the role turned tragic. Also, those fearsome descending runs in "Vien, diletto" were more accurately tuned than is sometimes the case on well-known recordings, however illustrious the forbear, and to me by no means as "savonnés" or portamentoed as some critics said. It was a shame her top notes didn't ring out more: they lacked thrill factor: just when you wanted to have your socks knocked off, the voice shrank.

Oliver Cromwell

Pertusi and Kwiecien made a good pair, the former all avuncular elegance and experience, the latter contrastingly youthful, straightforward and in-your-face, and the rest of the cast were better than might sometimes be the case when all the budget's been blown on stars for the leading roles. The chorus seemed to me somewhat en retrait but perhaps that was a quirk of the Bastille's quirky acoustics. The orchestra was as attentive to the score, more deserving, as I said above, of their care than much Bellini I've heard, as Mariotti was of the singers. I should imagine they like him.

The production depended more on sets, costumes and lighting than acting. The sets were not solid, but open "filigree" ironwork, like giant, elaborate gazebos. Or, as the FT put it "Chantal Thomas’s elegant Meccano castle poetically presents Elvira as a prisoner in a birdcage." Openwork chimneys, coffered arcades, rooftops, battlements, spiral stairs and portcullis rotated, black, against a plain backdrop, subtly lit in coolly sophisticated, graded pastels. At one point a fire was lit in a filigree grate. Pretty, though the otherwise empty space is no help to singers struggling to project into the Bastille's gaping maw.

The chorus of puritans scuttled around busily, almost comically, in a way that didn't offend me but seems to have upset some critics, who felt Pelly wasn't taking things seriously enough. They wore stiff, stylised period costumes in black and all shades of grey; the women, in their conical skrts, whirling around with tiny, invisible steps, as if on casters. The equally stiff soldiers, dashing across the stage one after the other, strictly in line, reminded me of Playmobil roundheads. But the soloists were more or less left to their own, conventional devices, at the front of the stage, a surprising cop-out from a director who has given us so many memorable evenings. He seems to do a better job of comic works than serious ones.

The Castrato Project

The Stile Galante baroque orchestra, under Stefano Aresi, plans to record a new CD with Ann Hallenberg devoted to one of the most famous, celebrated and important castrato singers of Mozart's age:

Ann Hallenberg

"Thanks to years of research we discovered the most extended collection ever found of original embellishments, da capos, cadenzas, variations connected to a single castrato's repertoire. The aims of our project are to record this music, to publish it in critical edition and to prepare a 50-minute documentary on this extraordinary discovery. We are going to record this music with original instruments, with the exact number of players of some of the orchestras originally performing the operas, with a choir, and in a theatre in Bergamo (Italy) perfectly preserved in its original shape. We found resources to pay the research work and the publication of the music, but we need to find some more funds for logistics, accommodations and travels for the musicians arriving for the recording from all over Europe. We need your help, and we really hope you will join us, on the frontline, to take this wonderful and dazzling discovery to all music lovers' homes!"

To read more about the project and contribute, as I have, click here.
To see and hear Ann Hallenberg singing arias for Farinelli by Broschi and Porpora, click here.

George Benjamin - Written on Skin

Opéra Comique, Paris, Monday November 18 2013

Conductor: George Benjamin. Production: Katie Mitchell. Sets and costumes: Vicki Mortimer. Lighting: Jon Clark. The Protector: Christopher Purves. Agnès: Barbara Hannigan. Angel 1 - The Boy: Iestyn Davies. Angel 2 – Marie: Victoria Simmonds. Angel 3 – John: Allan Clayton. Angels, Archivists: David Alexander, Laura Harling, Peter Hobday, Sarah Northgraves. Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.

NOTE: This will be a longish post, but only because, for a new work of this importance I think it's useful to offer a summary of the plot and give some background information. My report of the performance I attended is at the beginning; background notes and plot are at the end, for those interested.
________________________________________________

George Benjamin

George Benjamin's Written on Skin was a huge hit when it premiered in Aix last year and has continued to reap praise, with few dissenting voices, as it has toured, so of course I was glad to see for myself at the Salle Favart this season.

As usual, summing the experience of a new work up after a single performance is hard, in particular because it's obviously hard to put down in writing what a composer's music sounds like. Critics have referred to both Pelléas and Wozzeck. There's perhaps some of the former in the overall, oppressive atmosphere of the story; but there's more of the latter in the dramatic themes and score.

The Jewish Chronicle had a fair stab, saying the music is “at once exquisite, threatening, melodic and translucent". As I don't have an editor breathing down my neck, I can add to that. The score is rich and complex yet detailed, subtle and legible, sometimes powerfully dramatic, with ripe, raw brass sounds, sometimes lyrical, and sometimes downright ethereal: there's a glass harmonica in the pit, for example, and a harp. The paper added: "Better still, the match of music and libretto [...] is not merely seamless but organic.” Exactly: I thought of Händel matching sound to words. The work is short (90 minutes) but intense to the point of harrowing: the audience, themselves panting at the end, feel sorry for the singers, who must be drained and exhausted. So the overall experience of music + theatre brought Elektra to my mind as I left, but I suppose I could equally have thought of Wozzeck.

Anyway, the CDs are now out and a DVD is on the way, and I should think anyone seriously interested in opera will buy one or the other. (Here's a link to the ROH's trailer).

The cast was faultless, so much so it's hard to know what to say. Iestyn Davies had a great deal more oomph than I expected (perhaps because a friend had written: "He sings beautifully but you always feel he's going to sing Evensong at you"), looked as British as HP Sauce and had a wonderfully wry way with his eyes. Barbara Hannigan literally threw herself into the part (perhaps I should say was literally thrown about, like a rag doll, while singing it) in the most physical way. That was less unexpected, as I'd already seen her somehow singing Lulu on points in Brussels, apparently to no ill effect. Benjamin's score is as taxing as Berg's; Hannigan's mastery of/in it was simply astounding.

Librettist Martin Crimp

Christopher Purves started the evening coughing discreetly into his hand, but when he occasionally sang with a frog in his throat, or his voice croaked in very quiet passages, it only made his characterisation that much more convincing, and when his contained menace broke out into violence there was no doubting he could still command a full, rich, resounding voice. His diction, at all times, was even clearer than the others', though on that score, Benjamin's score is, at all times, sensitive.

Victoria Simmonds was good. Allan Clayton was excellent - I wonder if he might be a potential Janacek tenor?

The staging dealt well with the "time travel" aspects of the libretto, setting the action in a dusty two-storey house of indeterminate date with, to the left, a cloakroom and, upstairs, a kind of laboratory or workshop for the preservation of manuscripts; in the middle, a kitchen or living room or bedroom, depending; and to the right, a forest growing through the broken parquet and the ceiling, held up by modern steel props. Angels and archivists (when not archiving in the upstairs workshop) in Uniqlo-plain, dark, contemporary clothes helped the singers in and out of their costumes or led them round the sets. And the "medieval" characters blinked and frowned at the bright, electric lights that "sprang" on to highlight where the action was taking place. The acting, sometimes vicious and/or sexually violent, i.e. seriously risky, was perfect. The orchestra, under the composer, was on excellent form. The (choc-a-bloc) house, at the end, erupted. And people will tell you opera audiences are all fainthearted conservatives and opera is dead.

The coughing, however, from the other side of the pit, was dreadful. It must be the same all over Europe at the moment - a famous diva I occasionally get sloshed with over kebabs was complaining only the other day about the racket she had to sing through in Madrid...

Background

I have selected extracts from background information published in English on the Opéra Comique's website:

The libretto draws its subject from a Provençal medieval legend that became a literary motif: the eaten heart [...] Written on Skin can be likened to an archaeological gesture which consists in removing the asphalt of our streets in order to revive the feudal world of large estates and lords haunted by their salvation and the survival of their lineage and renown. One of these great landowners is the first protagonist in the opera, the Protector. [...]

In that world, troubadours, scholars and illuminators shape medieval history [...] The second protagonist in the opera, a young illuminator called the Boy, belongs to this caste of artists who master the techniques and issues of representation. Since these artists always work in accordance with the will of God, [...] they share certain attributes with the angels, the ministers of Heaven. In the opera, the Boy can see into the future: the urban realities whose strata will cover his story and the Protector’s. [...]

Martin Crimp relied on a passage by German philosopher Walter Benjamin from his Theses on the Philosophy of History: “There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. It depicts an angel [...] His eyes are staring, his mouth is open and his wings are spread. This is how the angel of history must look. His face is turned toward the past. Where we see a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe that unceasingly heaps ruins upon ruins and flings them at his feet. He would like to stay, awaken the dead and reassemble what has been shattered. But a storm is blowing from paradise which has been caught in his wings, and it is so strong that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly drives him into the future to which he turns his back, while the heaps of ruins before him pile up to the sky. This storm is what we call progress.”

Written on Skin is suggestive of parchment – animal skin that preceded paper in the West and resulted in the development of written literature and illustration thanks to its smoothness and strength. By making the original troubadour an illuminator, George Benjamin and Martin Crimp endowed the Boy with a crucial part: that of bringing to light, both literally and figuratively. [...] 

The character who undergoes the deepest transformation is the wife, who is metamorphosed from object into subject. Another, more real story is written on skin. [...] Agnès embodies access to the status of individual, one of the great advances of the Middle Ages, which pervaded society and the arts. But at the core of the work, her conquest of carnal pleasure resonates more widely with the modern world in which the evolution of women’s status turns out to be discordant and uneven. 

Synopsis

This neat summary of the plot is from The Guardian:

A rich, powerful land owner, called the Protector in Crimp's libretto, commissions an artist, the Boy, to celebrate his life and the achievements of his family in an extravagant illuminated book. As the Boy painstakingly creates his manuscript, he attracts the attentions of the Protector's much younger wife, Agnès. His imagery empowers her, and she begins to assert her independence as a woman, rejecting her role as the childish property of her husband, to the Protector's angry dismay. So, he brutally kills the Boy, and forces Agnès to eat the heart; she then jumps to her death from a balcony before he can kill her, too.

Crimp's finely chiselled text gives the story a contemporary perspective by having three characters he calls Angels bring the medieval figures back to life and reflect on what happens, and by having the protagonists, especially the Boy, sing about themselves and their actions in the third person.

Richard Strauss - Elektra

ONP Bastille, Paris, Monday November 4 2013

Conductor: Philippe Jordan. Production: Robert Carsen. Sets: Michael Levine. Costumes: Vazul Matusz. Lighting: Robert Carsen, Peter Van Praet. Klytämnestra: Waltraud Meier. Elektra: Irene Theorin. Chrysothemis; Ricarda Merbeth. Aegisth: Kim Begley. Orest: Evgeny Nikitin. Die Aufseherin: Miranda Keys. Fünf Mägde: Anja Jung, Susanna Kreusch, Heike Wessels, Barbara Morihien, Eva Oltivanyi. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.

“Sobriety” may not be the word you expect to settle on to sum up a performance of Elektra, as I did this Monday. This could explain why some critics have claimed this production was “tame”.

R. Strauss

Musically, taken on its own terms, it was excellent – but some people might not subscribe to the terms. The orchestra was on magnificent form, playing Strauss better than I can ever remember; an amazing feat, to those of us old enough to remember when the Paris Opera orchestra couldn’t play Strauss at all. But Jordan kept them reined in: this was restrained Strauss, not paroxysmal. Not exactly “like fairy music by Mendelssohn,” as the composer suggested it should be played, but relatively cool and calm and collected, rather as Jordan, with his undemonstrative conducting style, appears to be. Strauss played, so far as such a thing is possible, like Haydn or Beethoven.

I’m also old enough – in fact you don’t have to be all that old – to remember Dame Gywneth Jones pounding the Bastille’s cavernous space into submission as Elektra and Deborah Voigt at her absolute peak as Chrysothemis. I even remember, clearly, Voigt’s unforgettably exciting note (a B, I think it is) on “Bru” in “Elektra, ich muss bei meinem Bruder stehn!” (Anyone interested can thrill to Voigt in the same role at around the same period with Marilyn Zschau on YouTube.) You can’t help comparing, but comparisons are odious, and this cast was beyond reproach – even, I might add, Jörg Schneider as the chap calling for “a horse, a wild ass, or a mule, or if not that, a cow,” a brief appearance that usually ends with a distinctly dodgy top note, but not in this case. He gets extra marks for that.

But again, “sobriety” was the operative word, and the dialogues, of which this work is, after all, largely a series, were sung with daring intimacy. Elektra’s confrontation with her mother was thus fascinatingly different from the usual panting slug-fest. The only question was, could people up on row 382 at the back of the second balcony actually hear the wonderful (and visually glamorous) Waltraud Meier? I was in row 15, and with the aisle (row 15 is great for stretching your legs), the fourteen rows in front plus the gaping orchestra pit between me and the stage, already I found the singers looking and sounding distant any time they moved away from the apron.

People don’t seem to have liked Carsen’s production very much, even criticising it for having too many wrong ideas. Yet coming after Py’s gimmick-filled Aida, it seemed to me positively minimalist. It was, again, sober. There was no curtain: Jordan slipped in in the dark. As the music started, and some light came on we discovered a titanic* space with sheer, vertical walls (and no doors) in what looked like slate, curving inwards at the base, and a brown, peaty floor. More like Agamemnon’s tomb than his palace, I thought, and that’s what it turned out to be when, once that tedious opening section with the maidservants was thankfully out of the way, a grave opened up in the floor and Elektra rose from her foetal position, in a disc of white light, and fished out his naked body to hug.

This was, I suppose, one of the ideas people didn’t like. Another was Elektra’s movements being mirrored, or emotions acted out, by 20-odd acolytes in the same plain black dress as hers. It's true there was, at least once, something perilously Busby-Berkeley-ish about this. They paraded the body around. Then there was Klytemnestra’s arrival, carried aloft by more women-in-black, on a litter: in fact, her bed, with silky white sheets matching her plain white slip. Aegisthus would later make his appearance in similarly silky white pyjamas and robe. The litter/bed was disposed of into the grave, which also served as palace entrance. This took flak for being somewhat incoherent. Elektra didn't dance at the end, apart from moving her hands (and I admit I missed the dance), but collapsed into the same position, face down in the peat, as at the start. Even the stark lighting, sometimes vertical, sometimes lateral and casting expressionistic shadows on the walls, somehow got some people’s goat.

I wonder what other productions they’ve seen? This cool, dark, choreographed show was perhaps more aesthetic than dramatic, but it suited the overall “sobriety”. And while Elektra is usually fairly well sung – I assume because nobody would be foolish enough to sign up for it without being sure of pulling it off – it isn’t necessarily well staged. None of the Paris productions I can remember, from post-nuclear bunkers to red-and-blue phalluses to gigantic, rattling metal structures, was especially brilliant. This, I decided as I walked out for dinner, was the best yet for me.

*OK, I was at the War Requiem the day before.

Britten - War Requiem

La Monnaie – Bozar, Brussels, Sunday November 3 2013

Conductor: Ludovic Morlot. Soprano: Sabina Cvilak. Tenor: Mark Padmore. Baritone: Dietrich Henschel. Orchestra and Chorus of La Monnaie. Flemish Radio Chorus. Vocaal Ensemble Reflection. La Monnaie Children’s Chorus.

Wilfred Owen

It's probably simplistic of me (and yet another sign of my lack of proper musical education) to imagine, when a composer decides to score for both full and chamber orchestra, that he expects the small band to make less noise than the big one. The main shortcoming of this performance of Britten's wonderful War Requiem was, to me, lack of dynamic variety. It was mostly loud to very loud, with Ludovic Morlot apparently making little effort to coax some more subtly nuanced playing from La Monnaie's players (or to cue his soloists' entries properly). As a result, tenor and baritone often seemed forced to bawl their parts and the best bits were either those that Britten undoubtedly intended to be loud - the outburts of the Dies Irae, the Hosanna, the Libera Me once it picks up steam... - or those where the scoring is at its most minimalist.

It was in the latter moments that Mark Padmore was able to sing with admirable masculine delicacy and tenderness and Dietrich Henschel, though his voice sometimes shows signs of wear, with his customary combination of elegance and dramatic conviction. Sabina Cvilak, billed on the web as a lyric soprano, was perhaps a bit "short" for this part, in volume and range (her topmost notes were sort of "snatched" at) though it appears she has sung it before. She seemed rather distant from the proceedings. Perhaps she had been bussed in at the last minute. Olga Guryakova's photo was still on the TV screens in the Bozar foyer, so Sabina Cvilak's appearance with the other solists came as a surprise and, I must say (no fault of hers of course) a disappointment. This concert was in partnership with Amnesty International and even I could tell that the little speech in Flemish beforehand included something about human rights in Russia under Vladimir Putin. I wonder if that's why Guryakova wasn't there?

I repeat myself in saying that La Monnaie's orchestra is not the VPO, but I think they are capable of more sensitive playing. I'm told Ludovic Morlot is a rising star. After his rather flat Clemenza and now this, I'll continue to wait and see. The massed choruses were excellent. So was the children's choir, singing with distinct clarity through open doors from the corridor outside.

I was glad, of course, to hear the piece live again after more than 30 years (unless I've forgotten something). I just wish they hadn't bashed their way through it so. My neighbours, not familiar with the work, loved it, which is the main thing, really.

Verdi - Aida

ONP Bastille, Friday October 25, 2013

Conductor: Philippe Jordan. Production: Olivier Py. Sets and costumes: Pierre-André Weitz. Lighting: Bertrand Killy. Il Re: Carlo Cigni. Amneris: Luciana D’intino. Aida: Oksana Dyka. Radamès: Marcelo Alvarez. Ramfis: Alexei Botnarciuc. Amonasro: Sergey Murzaev. Sacerdotessa: Elodie Hache. Un Messaggero: Oleksiy Palchykov. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.

By the time I got round to seeing Paris's first production of Aida in half a century (not counting extravaganzas in sports arenas) it had already been booed in the house and battered by the press, so much so that I had an e-mail from a friend the morning before saying "As for Aida, you've seen such negative feedback that you'll probably enjoy it". He wasn't exactly right, but I did wonder what all the kerfuffle was about. Kerfuffle there was even last night, well into the run, by which time things have often calmed down. "C'est pire que la bataille d'Hernani !" said the lady next to me at the interval, clearly delighted, as insults were traded between those against and those in favour.

Verdi

There was nothing wrong with the overall concept, to those of us willing to accept the ensuing mis-matches between the text and what we saw.

The plot was transposed to make Egypt the Austro-Hungarian empire and the Ethiopians Italian rebels, though the idea that an Austrian empress might keep an Italian slave was of course odd, and we were all puzzled (the man behind vocally and loudly: that was what triggered the “bataille d'Hernani”) by the appearance in Memphis/Vienna of a gigantic brass monument to Vittorio-Emanuele Re D'Italia, even if it was clear from that superfluously capital D that Py wanted us all to think of VERDI. (The suspicion that Py assumes all opera-goers are a bit thick and need things rubbing in is never far away.)

The production's intention was also to remind us that Aida isn't necessarily just a tragic love story with engaging local colour and ballet dancers got up as picturesque Ethiopians (as the Met sees it, for example, in what is to me a far worse production), but involves serious Verdian themes: fanatical religion (and in this transposition a colonialist bourgeoisie) urging empires on to war, which in turn involves death, whether in battle or in camps, and bodies: naked ones piled up and trampled on in a charnel house under the raised stage: this production made full use of the Bastille's formidable machinery. The subsequent generalization of the themes of religion egging on power to oppress and destroy, by introducing deliberate anachronisms is also, now, a frequently effective operatic device: modern soldiers in camouflage battledress (well, half in, half out: they were usually impressively bare-chested so the ladies of the chorus could admire and even fondle them) with modern weapons; Radamès' golden tank; the fascistic art-deco look of that mysterious monument to Victor-Emmanuel; the Ethiopians/Italians huddled together in ragged wartime clothes, clutching suitcases.

This was not a complete relecture, as the French call it. Once you accepted the concept, the transposition, the intention to take the story seriously and tease out its implications, the jumbling of eras to imply timelessness... the action was scrupulously (sometimes almost laughably) faithful to the libretto. For example, when Amonasro sang “Pur rammenti che a noi l'Egizio immite / Le case, i tempii e l'are profanò / Trasse in ceppi le vergini rapite / Madri, vecchi e fanciulli ei trucidò” a naked female dummy was pushed through the brass columns above to hang from a rope. When he got to “Su, dunque! Sorgete / Egizie coorti / Col fuoco struggete / Le nostre città…” the maquette of the Vittorio-Emanuele monument towering over the surrounding city, on castors to the right, duly burst into flames*.

With its organ-like brass colonnades framing the stage; its brass neoclassical palaces rotating to reveal ballrooms with giant chandeliers or the gigantic columns of that curving brass V.E.R.D.I. monument; its golden Arc de Triomphe and a ballerina in a white tutu welcoming the victors home; bright, warm lighting dazzling the audience as it glanced off the revolving brass; the shimmering grisaille backdrop of a war-torn city, especially when a cross burst into flames behind it; the impressive raising of the stage to reveal the charnel house house beneath (there's a necropolis under the July Column on the square outside the opera house, for the bodies of those killed in the 1830 revolution; I wonder if Py was also thinking of that? I did); the magnificent, sober 1870 costumes and hairstyles... this production delivered many magnificent images.

The trouble is Olivier Py piles idea upon idea with apparently no sense of which are simply corny (soldiers frantically threatening everyone and anyone with plastic Kalashnikovs), ridiculous (the cleaning ladies polishing up the brass; that woman's rubbery body popping out to hang: as one reviewer said, Py's dummies were “too bouncy”; Amneris aimlessly waving a pistol, as convincing as Fischer-Dieskau with his hammer in Ponnelle's film of Le Nozze), or one reference too many (the Inquisition as KKK; the chorus, in 1870s dress, brandishing modern placards with slogans such as “Long Live our Colonies”, “Death to Foreigners” or the highly topical* “Droit du Sang”).

And not only do the massive, totalitarian sets deliberately overbear; they push the singers to the front of the stage, where Py leaves them entirely to their own devices, as if a forgotten detail – just as in his recent Alceste. My personal conclusion was that a different director could take the same transposition and basic concepts, the same sets and costumes, strip out the silly gimmicks, above all train the singers to act (which is surely what he's really there for) and make a magnificent show of it. I'm not sure, as it was, it deserved all the booing - the kerfuffle.

It was certainly idiotic to go so far as to boo Oksana Dyka. From where I sat the poor girl looked close to tears. Hers is a big, steely Ukraininan voice, more di forza than di grazia, sometimes hard to keep under control and not really suited to Aida, whose part calls for more delicacy and douceur than she can manage - though it is not true, as some reviewers claimed, that she made no attempt to sing piano, and it's definitely to her credit that she can at least sing all the notes with ease and, in the vast Bastille house, is audible beyond row 10.

Marcelo Alvarez does have the delicacy and douceur required and was without doubt the vocal star of the show. I think, though, he may have been a bit off-colour on Friday evening, so while he's definitely a fine Verdi tenor, his more heroic moments had less than the expected éclat. He is no more a born actor than Oksana Dyka is a born actress: both, left to their own devices as I mentioned, gesticulated conventionally at the front of the stage.

One critic I read unkindly quipped that Luciana D'intino gives you "two voices for the price of one". It's true that her voice changes audibly (clunkily, you might say) from one register to another and on Friday evenings she had some distinctly rocky moments, but there are times when she has a marvellous grainy sheen and, whatever some reviews may have said, I didn't find her outrageously chesty. She had the merit, at least, of being a seasoned (OK, perhaps a bit overseasoned) trouper, though she somehow gave off a vague impression of wishing she hadn't got herself into this mess, as it were: all that effort, waving pistols and clambering over rubber bodies, to get booed every evening.

Some of the rest of the cast could have been better; I don't think I ned to go into more detail. The chorus were on form and were loudly applauded; and the orchestra was at its best, delivering solidly magnificent Verdi (possibly more solid than Verdi ever expected from his contemporary orchestras) under Jordan.

*I got that wrong. The dummy popped out after the flames, at "Tua madre ell'è… ravvisala… Ti maledice…" A useful reminder that I write these reports from memory, and that my memory, these days, is shot.
**France is currently up in arms over the expulsion of a family of illegal immigrants.

Mozart - La Clemenza di Tito

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday October 13 2013

Conductor: Ludovic Morlot. Production: Ivo van Hove. Sets: Jan Versweyveld. Costumes: An D’Huys. Video: Tal Yarden. Tito Vespasiano: Kurt Streit. Vitellia: Véronique Gens. Servilia: Simona Šaturová. Sesto: Anna Bonitatibus. Annio: Anna Grevelius. Publio: Alex Esposito. Orchestra and Chorus of La Monnaie.

Visually, this handsome new Brussels production of Clemenza was as chic as it gets. Musically, taking its cue from the hero, perhaps, it was a model of civilised restraint.

Mozart

Let’s take the unrelenting chic first. The single set was a textbook display of understated, contemporary glamour. Forget bling. This was über-cool. Think Wallpaper magazine. Think designer lodges in rich resorts. Think Singapore Airlines’ flagship lounge at Changi. Think Scandinavian revival: tan carpet, sleek, teak furniture, autumn colours, burnished silks. On the right, a desk with drinks and diary. At the back, twin beds against a teak headboard, with matching bedside cabinets and scrupulously un-flashy velvet designs, bronze and cream and turquoise, in the bedding, bolsters and cushions. On the left, an oval mirror and a strictly rectangular, studded lit de repos in plain brown wool. All around, low teak chairs with fawn seats, and discreetly luxurious standard and table lamps with plain shades shedding soft, gold light.

This all-purpose room was surrounded, in the first half, by black curtains, parting to reveal glass to sides and rear. In the second half, it was surrounded simply by black tiers of black chairs, with the chorus wandering in, one by one, to observe Tito’s last judgement. When the Capitol burned, red lights glowed in the gloom. When the room’s meticulous order was disturbed as events unfolded, it was not by violent action of any kind, but by staff, male and female, smartly dressed in neat, grey suits displacing the cushions and ruffling the bedclothes or, the only sudden visual “clash” allowed, forensic teams in white jumpsuits.

The costumes were so totally Prada I checked the programme (in vain) for credits: Prada throughout, they looked to me, from Tito’s black trousers, smart black shoes, black V-neck tee-shirt and, later, navy blue shirt, to Vitellia’s stunning frocks - the smartest-of-smart cocktail numbers cut from flimsy, slinky, sheer materials in subtle shades of fawn and flesh, encrusted with glittering appliqué work, worn with low-heeled shoes.

The similarly cool and understated action was followed, live, by hidden (or occasionally visible) cameras connected to a screen over the stage, highlighting the acting detail, as perfectly regulated as the set. Tito read a Kindle at his desk, got his messages by Blackberry and his news off an iPad.

Titus

There were no vocal outbursts, either: as I said, it was all civilised restraint. The cast was typical of La Monnaie’s team approach to Mozart and the stars (probably not unexpectedly, given the arias they get) were the cool but sumptuous Véronique Gens and Anna Bonitatibus, whose near-flawless agility made up for her rapid vibrato (which in any case is not everyone’s bugbear, only mine).

Kurt Streit’s voice is remarkably light and clear in recitatives, considering his maturity, but capable of strength in more dramatic moments. His top end was erratic on Sunday afternoon, but I think I saw him coughing discreetly at one point, so maybe the foul October weather outside was to blame. The remaining three members of the sextet were irreproachable, with a special mention for Alex Esposito (in Prada-style lie-de-vin suit). The orchestral playing was as unflashy as the rest: this was plain Mozart, not fancy. The chorus, in ordinary day clothes, was on form.

The show would make a nice video, and on a recording the occasional deficiencies in vocal projection, due probably to the lack of reflecting sets, wouldn’t be a problem. The only question really is whether it wasn’t all a bit too chic and tasteful and understated for its own good. A Duracell rabbit, Ronald McDonald or a spot more “violence,” as my neighbour put it, might have been welcome.

Il giardino di Armida has also reviewed this, twice.