31/7/10, Glyndebourne
The night of the bats. There was one flying round the auditorium when we entered which remained throughout the first act, flitting occasionally across the lights and adding considerably to the atmosphere. And when we got back to our (rather grand) B & B there was another flitting around in the hallway and landing which the landlady's son finally got rid of with the aid of a gigantic butterfly net.
The production itself was rather dominated by its set, an extravagant affair of hydraulics and walls (which became sloping playing areas) all turning on the revolve, which caught fire at the end of Act 1. Designed by Paul Brown. Surely, one thought, they cannot take that on tour but apparently they will. Though undeniably impressive it often gave the singers difficulty and limited movement.
Directed by Jonathan Kent, who chose to reimagine the Commendatore as a kind of B movie zombie (which worked well enough) but otherwise played this rather puzzling piece pretty straight.
The setting was 1960s Italy, Fellini-style. Luca Pisaroni was an engaging comic Leporello, played as a rather cringing character (though some of his music suggests a rather more self-confident character), a seedy paparazzo-style figure with a Polaroid camera (cf the version we saw at BAC a year or so ago). Gerald Finley sang his umpteenth Don Giovanni, looking a dead ringer for Marcello Mastroianni. It occurred to me that he doesn't have as much to do as you might expect: Leporello has more stage time.
Kate Royal (sigh) sang Donna Elvira in a belted raincoat: there is something gawkily restrained and rather English about her which suited the slightly loopy Elvira.
Anna Samuil as Donna Anna got the biggest cheers, which made me wonder who the star is meant to be. Donna A and Donna E have one big aria apiece in the second half. Zerlina (Anna Virovlansky) has more to sing and do: she was a sparky little thing in a ghastly blonde wig. Presumably Mozart's original cast included a first-rate omic actress who got the Zerlina-Susannah parts and a couple of stand-and-belters who couldn't act. Masetto (in shiny wedding suit) and Don Ottavio are rather thankless parts.
The plot really is very problematic. It relies on all the women being in two minds, up for it but then again not up for it (or instantly regretting it). Donna Anna's screams at the start in this production are not because Giovanni is raping her but because he's leaving and refuses to stay. Zerlina succumbs (in a nice touch when she and Don G first meet and she is easily seduced her high note comesas he runs his hand up her skirt) and willingly goes off in the party scene (another touch of Fellini, with everyone moving very slowly in a kind of three a.m. torpor) only to cry rape off-stage. It's not clear why.
You're left wondering what on earth all these women actually see in him. And you feel if women were as changeable and unreliable as this plot suggestsm Don G would have come a crashing cropper long, long ago.
At one point the party band (and chorus) went to the back of the circle, invisible from our seats, and created an intriguing stereo effect which was only partly spoilt by the fact that the party itself was very distinctly taking place on stage in front of us, not behind us.
I liked the quote from Figaro, and Leporello's "I know this".
David Hockney was sitting immediately in front of us. Norman Lamont was there with a tall and striking blode. Danielle de Niese was at the dinner but not, so far as I could see, at the show.
Showing posts with label danielle de niese. Show all posts
Showing posts with label danielle de niese. Show all posts
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
Saturday, 10 July 2010
SEMELE
8/7/10, Barbican
4 hrs. I thought myself very stupid when, weeks after buying tickets for this concert performance with the intention of comparing and contrasting with the Paris production we saw at the weekend, we discovered it was exactly the same cast and crew. Was this to be evidence that it is in fact possible to have too much of a good thing?
In the event, no. Perhaps the singers, without McVicar's staging and the costumes to help them, had to work harder and so projected and connected better. Perhaps we were just a better audience, for (most of) whom English was our first language. The Paris audience liked it a lot, to judge by the rhythmic handclapping and multiple curtain calls at the end, but their applause for individual arias was muted and sporadic and they only laughed once.
We were a much more enthusiastic bunch. Act 1 still dragged. The counter-tenor was no better and there are only three good arias in an hour or more of music, including one each for Semele and Ino (who got big applause) and, of course, Endless Pleasure, in which Claire Debono seemed a little nervous.
But Act 2 is a cracker, with Richard Croft in great form singing I Must with Speed Amuse Her and Where E'er You Walk and Vivica Genaux getting huge applause for Iris, Hence Away. Both left the stage immediately after they'd stopped singing, so weren't there to acknowledge the applause. But Croft's ovation was so loud and prolonged he decided to return to acknowledge it... but got his timing wrong. His return coincided with the applause dying away. We resumed briefly out of embarrassment.
The singers' entrances and exits struck me as pretty random. There were chairs for all of them on stage throughout, as for a conventional oratorio, and sometimes they sat in them when they weren't singing and sometimes they drifted off stage. Could have been tighter.
Act 3 has both Myself I Shall Adore and No, No I'll Take No Less, within a few minutes of each other. Danielle de Niese gave her all in both (much more vigorously I thought than in Paris); she seemed a bit wobbly once or twice and took some sips of water in between the two arias, so she may have been struggling, but heavens! what energy. Both arias are completely over the top, but quite thrilling. There may not be anything subtle about this kind of performance but it's as exciting to watch and listen to as top-flight sport. There was also some entertaining by-play with Christophe Rousset (conducting his Les Talents Lyriques), who at one point took the mirror away from her. De Niese can also act, as can Peter Rose, in a wonderfully old-fashioned way, telegraphing his characters' reactions at the audience: he got several laughs as Somnus.
De Niese was dressed for stardom, in a bright red backless, strapless, bra-less number held up by two bits of string crossed over at the shoulders and revealing 1) quite a lot of rather droopy cleavage and 2) that she's a bulkier lass than at first appears. But the star singer was Genaux, with a deep mezzo voice at once creamy and harsh. At the curtain call she and Croft held hands: are they perhaps attached? or were they just happy to have upstaged Danielle?
A note on acoustics. We were closer to the singers near the front of the circle at the Barbican than we were in the second circle at Champs Elysees. Yet the sound was better in Paris: in London it often seemed thin and echoey. They speak of the Barbican's poor acoustics and one sees what they mean. The best bit was when Semele went to the rear of the stage, behind the chorus, where she was surrounded on three sides by wood, to sing a lament and we could hear every note.
4 hrs. I thought myself very stupid when, weeks after buying tickets for this concert performance with the intention of comparing and contrasting with the Paris production we saw at the weekend, we discovered it was exactly the same cast and crew. Was this to be evidence that it is in fact possible to have too much of a good thing?
In the event, no. Perhaps the singers, without McVicar's staging and the costumes to help them, had to work harder and so projected and connected better. Perhaps we were just a better audience, for (most of) whom English was our first language. The Paris audience liked it a lot, to judge by the rhythmic handclapping and multiple curtain calls at the end, but their applause for individual arias was muted and sporadic and they only laughed once.
We were a much more enthusiastic bunch. Act 1 still dragged. The counter-tenor was no better and there are only three good arias in an hour or more of music, including one each for Semele and Ino (who got big applause) and, of course, Endless Pleasure, in which Claire Debono seemed a little nervous.
But Act 2 is a cracker, with Richard Croft in great form singing I Must with Speed Amuse Her and Where E'er You Walk and Vivica Genaux getting huge applause for Iris, Hence Away. Both left the stage immediately after they'd stopped singing, so weren't there to acknowledge the applause. But Croft's ovation was so loud and prolonged he decided to return to acknowledge it... but got his timing wrong. His return coincided with the applause dying away. We resumed briefly out of embarrassment.
The singers' entrances and exits struck me as pretty random. There were chairs for all of them on stage throughout, as for a conventional oratorio, and sometimes they sat in them when they weren't singing and sometimes they drifted off stage. Could have been tighter.
Act 3 has both Myself I Shall Adore and No, No I'll Take No Less, within a few minutes of each other. Danielle de Niese gave her all in both (much more vigorously I thought than in Paris); she seemed a bit wobbly once or twice and took some sips of water in between the two arias, so she may have been struggling, but heavens! what energy. Both arias are completely over the top, but quite thrilling. There may not be anything subtle about this kind of performance but it's as exciting to watch and listen to as top-flight sport. There was also some entertaining by-play with Christophe Rousset (conducting his Les Talents Lyriques), who at one point took the mirror away from her. De Niese can also act, as can Peter Rose, in a wonderfully old-fashioned way, telegraphing his characters' reactions at the audience: he got several laughs as Somnus.
De Niese was dressed for stardom, in a bright red backless, strapless, bra-less number held up by two bits of string crossed over at the shoulders and revealing 1) quite a lot of rather droopy cleavage and 2) that she's a bulkier lass than at first appears. But the star singer was Genaux, with a deep mezzo voice at once creamy and harsh. At the curtain call she and Croft held hands: are they perhaps attached? or were they just happy to have upstaged Danielle?
A note on acoustics. We were closer to the singers near the front of the circle at the Barbican than we were in the second circle at Champs Elysees. Yet the sound was better in Paris: in London it often seemed thin and echoey. They speak of the Barbican's poor acoustics and one sees what they mean. The best bit was when Semele went to the rear of the stage, behind the chorus, where she was surrounded on three sides by wood, to sing a lament and we could hear every note.
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
SEMELE
2/7/10, Theatre de Champs Elysees, Paris
It was, admittedly, absurdly extravagant to go all the way to Paris to see Semele after going all the way to Brussels to see it last year. And it becomes even more absurdly extravagant when (to make the trip worthwhile) you go to another opera, the ballet and three or four exhibitions as well. Not to mention deciding to book tickets for a concert performance of Semele in London six days later without realising it was the same cast and production...
But it's such a wonderful piece and (happily) grows on one with every hearing.
This was a revival of a David McVicar production from a few years ago, with Danielle de Niese newly-cast as Semele. She looks the part, playing her as a sort of coquettish 16-year old taken up by a much older, much more sophisticated man. There was a nice moment in the first act when the rivalrous sisters had a spat from which their father had to separate them, de Niese pointing "It was her" as he did so. And they giggled together convincingly when Ino was catapulted into heaven at Jove's command. She was sly, mischievous, self-mocking. In other words she can act as well as sing.
As to her voice... She pulled out all the stops for Myself I Shall Adore (pretending to hide the mirror, smirking as she gazed at herself) and for No, No I'll Take No Less especially. There are plenty of vocal pyrotechnics. But while the English tradition is to enunicate each syllable in the showpiece arias with crystal clarity ("Gay-hazing, gay-ayzing, gay-hay-hay-ay-ay-hay-hay-hayzing") Ms de Niese seems to give each note a different vowel sound. The purist in me suspects this may be cheating, but it's undeniably thrilling. On the other hand it makes it hard to hear the words -- something you could level at most of her performance.
That couldn't be said of the bass Peter Rose, who sang Cadmus the father and Somnus: you could hear every word and as Somnus he even managed to get the solemn Parisians to laugh.
There was a disappointing counter-tenor as the rejected bridegroom Athamas. Richard Croft as Jupiter didn't quite have the necessary heft for some of the role but sang Wheree'er You Walk with beauty and grace and got a deserved ovation.
Ino and Juno were sung by the mezzo Vivica Genaux. I'd assumed from her name that she was a local lass, but it turns out she's American too, born in Alaska. She was suitably villainous.
Endless Pleasure was sung by another soprano, Claire Debono, as Cupid. I had forgotten/failed to realise that the song was originally written for someone other than Semele (scarcely surprising really: it refers to her in the third person). After that ravishing aria at the end of Act One she doesn't have much to do, a problem resolved by McVicar who dressed her in sequin-covered scarlet and a pair of dark glasses plus long stick and had her mime the role of blind Cupid in subsequent scenes as Jupiter's hanger-on, alternating between Ariel-like manipulator and hapless victim (he was left fumbling after Semele knocked aways his stick during No No I'll Take No Less, a sign presumably that love was on the wane).
Having Cupid in the cast reminds you what an ensemble piece this is. And what a lot of great songs, too! Including Jupiter's I Must with Speed Amuse Her and Juno's Iris, Hence Away and a first act aria for Semele which I don't recall from earlier productions and which she sang solo in front of a drop curtain while the scene was changed behind it. It was a device McVicar used several times, and it worked perfectly in the highly artificial and stylised context of an 18th century work, though in the case of one of Juno's arias the curtains were closed not for a scene change but to draw a discreet veil over Jove and Semele's love-making. When they reopened he was smoking a post-coital cigar.
The principals were in immensely elaborate 18th century costume (or plain brown broadcloth for Cadmus and Athamas and for Ino); the chorus (men and women alike) in white tie and tails. The set, by Tanya McCallin, was a semi-circular back wall with three doorways; a central disc rose at an angle for the scenes set in heaven, an enormous bed covered in cushions at its centre on which Jove and Semele made love and Somnus slept. Towards the opera's end the bed had disappeared, and Semele made her final exit as she burns in Jupiter's fire through a circular trap while Jove held her cloak. A puff of smoke emerged.
It was a wittily-characterised production with sensible business, quite unlike the weird production at the Monnaie last year, presumably a reflection of the fact that McVicar has complete faith in the quality and dramatic carrying-power of his material.
The music came from Christophe Rousset and Les Talents Lyriques, however: who were also the band in Brussels. Not quite as nuanced a performance as John Eliot Gardner's, which we have on disc.
Jupiter was portrayed as a rich man who might just be starting to tire of this pretty little plaything he's acquired: so much so that at one point he takes off his black necktie and apparently contemplates using it as a garrotte, before employing it as a blindfold instead... and singing Where'er You Walk. That was the only point where the interpretation jarred (as in Idomeneo the other night): such a beautiful love song comes oddly from a character you've just seen exasperated.
It was a very hot night but the Parisians were dressed largely for comfort not speed, cool rather than elegant. Which was reassuring because the walk to the theatre (which is not, as billed, in the Champs Elysees but several blocks away) takes you past the likes of Dior and Chanel in the Av Montaigne and some seriously rich people.
It's also a beautiful theatre, and an historic one, with a spectacular art deco exterior, with massive square recessed panels and windows and three huge bas reliefs at the top, and an elegant curved moderne corner, but an art noueveau interior, with banisters and motifs on the doors of the boxes which could have come from Charles Rennie Mackintosh. I thought it was designed in the 1920s or even the 1930s. It turns out to have been built in 1913, and it's where Stravinsky's Rite of Spring had its notorious premiere.
Inside there's a dome filled with pastoral scenes of dancing and singing, packed with frankly sexy nudes and a series of inscriptions about music, opera etc which I couldn't entirely follow running round the bottom. There are four roundels dedicated to the orchestra, the choir, the sonata and the organ (the theatre has one, its pipes visible above and beside the proscenium).
Front of house space is generous though the bars undermanned and over-priced. The acoustic is lively (as evidence when someone dropped something during a quiet moment in Act 1). There is no opera pit as such, merely a simple step down from the front of the stalls.
The Arts Desk review of the show (with which I largely agree, including the slightly catty remarks about de Niese) is here:
http://www.theartsdesk.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=1762:semele-th%C3%A9%C3%A2tre-de-champs-%C3%A9lys%C3%A9es-opera-review&Itemid=14
It was, admittedly, absurdly extravagant to go all the way to Paris to see Semele after going all the way to Brussels to see it last year. And it becomes even more absurdly extravagant when (to make the trip worthwhile) you go to another opera, the ballet and three or four exhibitions as well. Not to mention deciding to book tickets for a concert performance of Semele in London six days later without realising it was the same cast and production...
But it's such a wonderful piece and (happily) grows on one with every hearing.
This was a revival of a David McVicar production from a few years ago, with Danielle de Niese newly-cast as Semele. She looks the part, playing her as a sort of coquettish 16-year old taken up by a much older, much more sophisticated man. There was a nice moment in the first act when the rivalrous sisters had a spat from which their father had to separate them, de Niese pointing "It was her" as he did so. And they giggled together convincingly when Ino was catapulted into heaven at Jove's command. She was sly, mischievous, self-mocking. In other words she can act as well as sing.
As to her voice... She pulled out all the stops for Myself I Shall Adore (pretending to hide the mirror, smirking as she gazed at herself) and for No, No I'll Take No Less especially. There are plenty of vocal pyrotechnics. But while the English tradition is to enunicate each syllable in the showpiece arias with crystal clarity ("Gay-hazing, gay-ayzing, gay-hay-hay-ay-ay-hay-hay-hayzing") Ms de Niese seems to give each note a different vowel sound. The purist in me suspects this may be cheating, but it's undeniably thrilling. On the other hand it makes it hard to hear the words -- something you could level at most of her performance.
That couldn't be said of the bass Peter Rose, who sang Cadmus the father and Somnus: you could hear every word and as Somnus he even managed to get the solemn Parisians to laugh.
There was a disappointing counter-tenor as the rejected bridegroom Athamas. Richard Croft as Jupiter didn't quite have the necessary heft for some of the role but sang Wheree'er You Walk with beauty and grace and got a deserved ovation.
Ino and Juno were sung by the mezzo Vivica Genaux. I'd assumed from her name that she was a local lass, but it turns out she's American too, born in Alaska. She was suitably villainous.
Endless Pleasure was sung by another soprano, Claire Debono, as Cupid. I had forgotten/failed to realise that the song was originally written for someone other than Semele (scarcely surprising really: it refers to her in the third person). After that ravishing aria at the end of Act One she doesn't have much to do, a problem resolved by McVicar who dressed her in sequin-covered scarlet and a pair of dark glasses plus long stick and had her mime the role of blind Cupid in subsequent scenes as Jupiter's hanger-on, alternating between Ariel-like manipulator and hapless victim (he was left fumbling after Semele knocked aways his stick during No No I'll Take No Less, a sign presumably that love was on the wane).
Having Cupid in the cast reminds you what an ensemble piece this is. And what a lot of great songs, too! Including Jupiter's I Must with Speed Amuse Her and Juno's Iris, Hence Away and a first act aria for Semele which I don't recall from earlier productions and which she sang solo in front of a drop curtain while the scene was changed behind it. It was a device McVicar used several times, and it worked perfectly in the highly artificial and stylised context of an 18th century work, though in the case of one of Juno's arias the curtains were closed not for a scene change but to draw a discreet veil over Jove and Semele's love-making. When they reopened he was smoking a post-coital cigar.
The principals were in immensely elaborate 18th century costume (or plain brown broadcloth for Cadmus and Athamas and for Ino); the chorus (men and women alike) in white tie and tails. The set, by Tanya McCallin, was a semi-circular back wall with three doorways; a central disc rose at an angle for the scenes set in heaven, an enormous bed covered in cushions at its centre on which Jove and Semele made love and Somnus slept. Towards the opera's end the bed had disappeared, and Semele made her final exit as she burns in Jupiter's fire through a circular trap while Jove held her cloak. A puff of smoke emerged.
It was a wittily-characterised production with sensible business, quite unlike the weird production at the Monnaie last year, presumably a reflection of the fact that McVicar has complete faith in the quality and dramatic carrying-power of his material.
The music came from Christophe Rousset and Les Talents Lyriques, however: who were also the band in Brussels. Not quite as nuanced a performance as John Eliot Gardner's, which we have on disc.
Jupiter was portrayed as a rich man who might just be starting to tire of this pretty little plaything he's acquired: so much so that at one point he takes off his black necktie and apparently contemplates using it as a garrotte, before employing it as a blindfold instead... and singing Where'er You Walk. That was the only point where the interpretation jarred (as in Idomeneo the other night): such a beautiful love song comes oddly from a character you've just seen exasperated.
It was a very hot night but the Parisians were dressed largely for comfort not speed, cool rather than elegant. Which was reassuring because the walk to the theatre (which is not, as billed, in the Champs Elysees but several blocks away) takes you past the likes of Dior and Chanel in the Av Montaigne and some seriously rich people.
It's also a beautiful theatre, and an historic one, with a spectacular art deco exterior, with massive square recessed panels and windows and three huge bas reliefs at the top, and an elegant curved moderne corner, but an art noueveau interior, with banisters and motifs on the doors of the boxes which could have come from Charles Rennie Mackintosh. I thought it was designed in the 1920s or even the 1930s. It turns out to have been built in 1913, and it's where Stravinsky's Rite of Spring had its notorious premiere.
Inside there's a dome filled with pastoral scenes of dancing and singing, packed with frankly sexy nudes and a series of inscriptions about music, opera etc which I couldn't entirely follow running round the bottom. There are four roundels dedicated to the orchestra, the choir, the sonata and the organ (the theatre has one, its pipes visible above and beside the proscenium).
Front of house space is generous though the bars undermanned and over-priced. The acoustic is lively (as evidence when someone dropped something during a quiet moment in Act 1). There is no opera pit as such, merely a simple step down from the front of the stalls.
The Arts Desk review of the show (with which I largely agree, including the slightly catty remarks about de Niese) is here:
http://www.theartsdesk.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=1762:semele-th%C3%A9%C3%A2tre-de-champs-%C3%A9lys%C3%A9es-opera-review&Itemid=14
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