RADAMISTO

13/10/10, ENO

3 hrs 15 mins. Handel's tale of a defeated prince (Radamisto), his loyal wife (Zenobia), the tyrant who defeats him and covets his wife (Tiridate) and Tiridate's own downtrodden wife (Polissena), the type of the willingly abused and submissive partner. Oh, and R's father Farasmane, Tiridate's prisoner; and Tiridate's ally, Tigrane, who is in love with Polissena and turns out to be a decent enough cove after all despite a not-always-successful penchant for interfering. Symbolised in this production by dressing him as a seedy representative of the Empire in rumpled white linen suit while all around are in exotic "Oriental" gear of one sort or another, including Japanese-style armour for Tiridate and harem pants for Zenobia. (Some reviewers had him down as a wily Armenian, and I grant the fez is suggestive, but I prefer to see Radamisto-land as Afghanistan and Tigrane as a representative of the British, Russian and American empires, all of which have meddled in that godforsaken land to disastrous effect.)

Much though I love his music, there's no denying that, until you're familiar with them, each Handel opera sounds much like every other, and this was no exception. But it was jolly enough. Zenobia (Christine Rice) has a fine aria in which she offers to sacrifice herself to save her husband. There are several other good tunes. Radamisto (an American counter-tenor called Lawrence Zazzo with a powerful voice) is somewhat underwritten. Tigrane was sung by Ailish Tynan and provided the comic relief (Dr T asked why the part was written for a soprano: it wasn't of course, as a glance at the casting in other recent productions, who usually ask a tenor to sing it, confirmed).

The evening passed agreeably if unmemorably. The theatre was half empty, which seemed a shame given the quality of the music, the singing and the production. Here are some other reviews:

http://classical-iconoclast.blogspot.com/2010/10/handel-radamisto-eno-coliseum.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/8055623/Radamisto-ENO-Coliseum-review.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/08/radamisto-eno-review

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.

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

MESSIAH

2/12/09, Cadogan Hall

English Chamber Orchestra, Howard Williams and "Choir of the 21st Century" which someone said was born, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of the Tallis Choir and which numbers my old friend A's university friend DL among its basses. We met him in the bar beforehand where he'd just met a man he knew who turned out to know Dr T. Then during the interval I met a man I knew at university. Small world.

First-class tenor, Nicholas Mulroy. Under-powered mezzo, Mae Heydorn. A bass called Hakan Vramsmo I thought was also underpowered until The Trumpet Shall Sound which he did jolly well. A very showy soprano called Ida Falk Winland who shoved in loads of decoration (is this appropriate in one of Handel's more religious items?) and wore a backless almost-strapless dress (it had a strap over one shoulder but was cut right down to the panty line) only held up by her bony shoulders ("flat as a washboard," said D) and what Kate calls tit-tape. She made a big impression on me, anyway, and could sing. Her biog shows she did Cleopatra in a Swedish Giulio Cesare; I'd like to see her as Semele.

It started indifferently. It got better as it went on. It dipped, as usual, in part two, but you really can't go wrong with part three and the end.

Vramsmo and Winland are both Swedish, Heydorn is Swedish-German. They looked amused/bemused when we all stood for the Hallelujah Chorus (I don't and didn't, a fact noted by DL).

We were in the balcony round to the side and may not have had the best of the acoustic: the band (22 players, plus two trumpets and timps) often seemed to drown the soloists.

SEMELE

27/9/09, La Monnaie, Brussels

Handel's opera, directed by a Chinese visual artist, Zhang Huan, trying his hand at opera for the first time. A curious East-West mix which didn't work (because the Eastern elements seemed entirely arbitrary) but which musically wasn't half bad. Christophe Rousset and Les Talents Lyriques were excellent, with wonderful colour and pace and tunefulness. Handel can sound bland sometimes, even with period instruments: here he never did.

The Semele (Ying Huang) was a bit dour and dumpy, and out of her depth and shouty-screechy in the dramatic aria towards the end ("No, no I'll take no less") and struggling a bit in "Myself I shall adore". In the latter she wasn't a patch on Carolyn Sampson at the Proms the other day (I watched it again online and it's a truly brilliant performance; though Rosemary Joshua in an exceedingly sexy version done in Aix in the 1990s, which I think was the basis of a version we saw with her at ENO, runs Ms Sampson exceedingly close).

This Semele did contemplative very well, though: "Oh sleep why dost thou leave me?" was beautiful; even better was "Endless pleasure", sung while suspended from a hanging moon at the end of Act 1.

Best of all was Jupiter (Jeremy Ovenden), who sang "Where e'er you walk" better than I've ever heard it, while washing Semele's feet: hairs on the head time (the same went for "Endless pleasure" and "Oh sleep"). And honorary mentions for the father, Iris (Sarah Tynan) and Somnus.

The best of the Oriental interpolations was the set, a genuine 12th(?) century Chinese temple which we saw in a black and white documentary, projected onto the front cloth during the overture, being demolished and then re-erected in the artist's hangar-like studio in Shanghai, while subtitled locals told us its somewhat lurid recent history (someone was executed for plotting a murder) and we met the son of the owner, who hoped for something more modern to impress potential brides.

And then the curtain rose to reveal the very same temple, its wooden framework fitting the stage almost exactly, with massive round wooden columns and even more massive cross-beams. It was an appropriate setting for the opening marriage scene; filled with shrubbery for the scenes in heaven; appeared covered in a great crimson cloth across the roof in which Somnus slept at the start of Act 3.

The costumes were a curious mix of European Renaissance (husband in tights and tunic; Iris in black dress and white ruff) and classical Chinese, for the women especially. The chorus wore orange or red Chinese robes which they discarded to reveal slate blue pyjamas and polka-dot underpants in the orgy as Jupiter and Semele make love.

Other eastern elements: a pantomime donkey at the start (donkeys are apparently associated with peasant weddings in China), which reappeared in the orgy scene with an enormous phallus ( wonder how the mother in the audience with three young kids explained that to the little ones?), and two sumo wrestlers at the end of Act 2. At one point a Mongolian throat-singer entered through the audience, singing unaccompanied, her rills and trills reminiscent of Handel's, and picking up a white chiffon scarf that Semele drops as she is translated to the heavens (a bit like the bride's bouquet, perhaps?). In the final scene there's a white Chinese dragon, and we last see Semele wrapped in its coils, lamenting her fate ("Ah me! too late I now repent").

Finally the conventional happy ending was dropped for a humming chorus of the Internationale as Semele's red coffin is carried off. Much of this was frankly baffling, though it kept one's interest. A helpful gloss was provided by this review in the New Tork Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/arts/17iht-LOOMIS.html

There were some other good bits. Somnus was awoken from sleep in a vast blanket on the roof of the temple, a topless Penthesilea beside him: the pair then fly off (there was a lot of flying, and it was well done). While he sang a huge inflatable doll beside him was gradually blown up... then deflated again.

And "Myself I shall adore" was sung in front of a vast mirror filling the whole stage, reflecting the audience as well as Semele. We liked that, and laughed: about the only moment the audience roused itself as this Sunday matinee. We were a pretty unenthusiastic lot, and there was no applause for even the most finely-sung arias.

VARIOUS PROMS

25/8/09 and 1/9/09, Royal Albert Hall (Proms)

25/8/09
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by Roger Norrington with Joyce DiDonato singing; in the second half they played Mendelssohn's Symphony No 3, the Scottish.

I failed to make proper notes at the time but I did scribble in the programme. We had Purcell's suite from the incidental music to Abdelazer, and then La DiDonato came on in a green, full-skirted strapless dress to sing Ombra mai fu from Xerxes and Ah mio cor from Alcina. The former was funereal, though she sounded gorgeous. The second was much better, faster, and there was something she did at the segue into the middle section unaccompanied when her voice soared and fell and changed key and all sorts, and we all held our breath.

And then we had Handel's Water Music, which is too familiar and I fell asleep.

And that was followed by our Joyce back for Haydn's Scena di Berenice which is a splendidly dramatic concert aria. She was great: lyrical, highly dramatic, thrillingly low at times.

The Mendelssohn contrasts light and dark in the first movement (the Scots weather?), first brassy, then flute and clarinet. There are lovely melodies in the third movement. And a bouncy finish.

G didn't like Norrington: he thinks he's a show-off, turning to the audience at the end and bouncing like a schoolboy.

1/9/09
Royal Concertgebouw with Mariss Janson doing Haydn's Symphony No 100, the Military, and Shostakovich's Symphony No 10.

I failed to make a note at the time and remember nothing of it.

The reviews below help bring some of it back, notably the four percussionists marching on at the end of the Haydn.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/proms/6126100/BBC-Proms-Mariss-Jansons-and-the-Royal-Concertgebouw-Orchestra.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/sep/06/bbc-proms-classical-music-review-maddocks

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8b2f6ada-98aa-11de-aa1b-00144feabdc0.html

1/9/09
Late-night Prom with the Michael Nyman Band.

Initially riveting: loud, repetitive, rhythmic with a spectacular sense of impetus and drive. Think Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds, the theme tune from The Draughtsman's Contract.

The trouble is, they all sound like that: same minimalist techniques, same (amplified) instrumentation.

Alas it became boring in the end

ADMETO

29/8/09, Festival Theatre (Edinburgh Festival)

3 hrs 45 mins. Handel's opera in a production for the Gottingen Festival directed by Doris Dorrie, who is apparently a well-known German novelist and film-maker and (these days) opera director, conducted from the harpsichord by Nicholas McGegan with around 30 musicians ranged all round him in the Festival Theatre's shallow pit.

Sheep, deer, naked dancers, Japanese costumes, shadow play, lighting that threw washes of colour over a white stage with black cloth wings: visually ravishing.

Admeto is dying. His wife Alceste volunteers to die in his place. He recovers and sends Ercole (Hercules) to bring her back from the Underworld. Meanwhile Antigona, who is loved by Admeto's brother Trasimede, makes a play for Admeto and he finds himself torn between love for her and for Alceste. Alceste returns in disguise, there is a predictable mix-up, until all is resolved and Antigona is paired up with T.

The singing had its ups and downs. Tim Mead as Admeto had the most beautiful counter-tenor; David Bates as Trasimede sounded totally out of his depth. Kirsten Blaise as the naughty temptress Antigona was a fine singer and entertaining actor (slapping away at her spurned lover Trasimede's horizontal sword as it rose towards the perpendicular while he sang "a ha ha"). Marie Arnet as Alceste had a lovely voice but lacked power (from where I sat somewhere round to the side at the front of the circle). Her dying aria was especially beautiful, sung in a huge white kimono, before she went behind a screen to expire; it rose to reveal spreading blood, represented by a red carpet gradually pulled outwards across the stage, and her spirit rising slowly from her body.

The spirt in question was the veteran butoh dancer Tadashi Endo, in long wig and white weeds, who also supplied the choreography. I'm beginning to get the hang of butoh, which seems to involve a lot of stylised and grotesque movement, white body paint, few if any clothes and much grimacing. This is the Wikipedia definition: "It typically involves playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, extreme or absurd environments, and is traditionally "performed" in white-body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion, with or without an audience. But there is no set style, and it may be purely conceptual with no movement at all."

At the very start the ten dancers played furies, tormenting the dying Admeto: they looked for all the world like a bunch of Gollums. Later they attacked Hercules (William Berger, dressed in a fat suit to resemble a sumo wrestler) as he freed Alceste from Hell: he shouldered them, threw them and bellied them aside. Then he was tempted by naked dancers, thrusting them too aside with superhuman effort. Before that we'd seen them dressed as sheep in silly woolly costumes accompanying Antigona, a princess masquerading (for reasons never made clear) as a shepherdess. Later they played deer in a hunting scene, the men with magnificent antlers on their heads.

At the end of Act 1 I decided this production was definitely camp, but respectful, and the Japanese setting was plausible.

In Act 2 Admeto laments that he loves two women while two dancers, one dressed in white and one in black, drift across the stage behind him: they used at this point the whole stage, right to the back, and very impressive it is too, reputedly the largest in Britain. The act ends with showpiece arias for the two sopranos; Alceste's is accompanied by half a dozen naked dancers in see-through chiffon kimonos tempting him/her (for she is now dressed as a samurai warrior). That seemed inappropriate since what she is singing has to do with discovering whether he husband (not she) is faithful or not; but maybe the director's aim was just to plant a suggstion of "temptation" generally.

Act 3 concludes with a solo dance for Alceste's spirit. I never felt the production fully integrated the spirit (unlike the rest of the dancers, who were fine). Before that there was an ensemble song, and before that a beautiful duet for Admeto and Alceste as the lovers are reconciled; but it was undermined by some silly business as Trasimede flits around surreptitiously with a drawn sword plotting to murder his brother.

This was also the only act in which the prevailing Japanese aesthetic was undermined for some reason with European baroque elements: a painted backdrop of a garden, then two drops of baroque palace interiors with windows and arched doorways. They flew up suddenly and disappeared just before the triumphal conclusion. I couldn't see the point, though one reviewer suggested it may have been a way of highlighting the forced, artificial, "stagey" nature of the proceedings at this point.

Plausibility, as so often, wasn't one of the librettist's strong points. Antigona has been obsessively in love throughout with Admeto, at one stage wrapping herself in a giant cloth portrait of him hanging from the flies (she is dressed only in a black swimsuit affair at this point). At the very end she is suddenly, instantly persuaded to switch her affections to Trasimede, the man she has energetically spurned throughout. Bizarre.

It was a delight, after a succession of 50 minute fringe productions, to have something really meaty and substantial to get one's teeth into.

PROM: HANDEL

12/8/09, Royal Albert Hall

2 hrs 15 mins. Harry Christophers and The Sixteen (who on this occasion numbered 32 plus band and soprano Carolyn Sampson for the solos) in an all-Handel programme.

All four 1727 Coronation Odes (George II), interspersed with a rousing overture (Arrival of the Queen of Sheba: she got there first, I arrived too late), plus extracts from Semele, a lush 1707 Italian setting of Salve Regina and a 1735 Organ Concerto. A clever blend of the familiar and the unfamiliar and pretty much unalloyed joy.

Salve Regina (with Carolyn Sampson as soprano soloist in a demure black dress) was delightful and sensuous, with a brief, quiet coda.

The organ concerto (Alastair Ross) was apparently written to be played at performances of the oratorio Athalia, drawing on Handel's reputation as one of the finest organists of the age (according to the programme). There really wasn't much for the band to do, though it did end with a rousing Alleluia chorus to trumpet and drums accompaniment. A fizzy, showy work.

Carolyn Sampson was one wonderful form as Semele, playing the coquette in a startling backless dress. I thought she was a bit underpowered at the start, her voice getting lost in the Albert Hall's vast spaces, but she turned out to be perfect. They did three numbers: Endless Pleasure; My Racking Thoughts (a slow, reflective number sung to an unusual continuo accompaniment by cello, harp and theorbo playing a repeated, syncopated figure); and Myself I Shall Adore. For the last one Christophers handed her a mirror (the concert was televised) and she had enormous fun pouting and preening, especially in the da capo repeat with spectacular ornamentation and a positive unaccompanied cadenza at the conclusion.

The anthems build steadily to the triumphant Zadok, which made the hair stand on end just as it's supposed to. A musically-sophisticated composer who nonetheless knew how to engage an audience with directness and simplicity. Handel's choral writing at its finest.

MESSIAH

14/04/09, Westminster Abbey.

2hrs 50mins. The 250th anniversary of Handel's death; live broadcast on Radio 3; the Abbey choir; top-notch soloists (Paul Agnew, tenor; Ailish Tynan, soprano; Sarah Connolly, mezzo; Jonathan Lemalu, bass-baritone); a band, St James's Baroque, we'd never heard of but who did a decent job under the Abbey's choirmaster, James O'Donnell; lots of atmosphere. Yet rather disappointing. "Not the best Messiah I've heard," G said, and he's heard a good few.

One problem was the acoustic, which swallowed the words and much of the detail and decoration. We were sitting about two-thirds of the way back in the Nave, but without a stage or a rake we could see little beyond the heads of the soloists and the back row of the choir, on a dais behind the band and in front of the screen. I could hear well enough, but D, who is much shorter, could neither hear nor see properly. God knows what it must have been like with those acoustics in the days of Handel celebrations in the Abbey with massed bands and choirs: nothing but a wash of sound, one imagines, though I seem to recall Haydn heard one of these extravaganzas and was sufficiently impressed to compose The Creation in imitation. (Half the audience were behind the screen and beyond the choir stalls; after we'd applauded the performers they all went down the other end and you heard them being applauded again. Heaven knows what it sounded like down that end, though.)

There was also a problem with the choir: 21 trebles, plus five each of tenors, basses and male altos. They lacked attack at times: "Their sound has gone out..." actually went out rather feebly, though the Hallelujah went well, if rather dominated by timps and trumpets and some other brass I couldn't see, hidden away behind the pillars. The choir make a lovely sound when soaring in unison, but the combination of forces and cathedral echo did them few favours in some of Handel's more intricate part-writing.

I jotted a few notes in the programme as we went along (having words helps enormously in pinpointing the musicial moments that make an impact). The tenor aria "Comfort ye, my people" was exquisite, the long, quiet "comfort ye" immensely long drawn out but beautiful. "For he is like a refiner's fire" was sung by Connolly, not the bass Lemalu, though he sang the recitative: I think this is quite often done, but it was regrettable because she didn't seem to be in great voice, and his was the only voice that cut through the echo, so I'd have loved to hear him sing it. On "be not afraid" in "O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion" the choir were electric.

"The people that walked in darkness" was top notch: authoritative and stirring. G said: "You won't hear it better sung!" though at the end he also said he thought Lemalu had taken time to warm up, so maybe one might hear it better sung. And when he sang "have seen a great light" one of the lights illuminating the screen behind the choir actually went out; it was dodgy throughout the first half, though they got it fixed for the second.

And the screen featured in the chorus "For unto us a child is born", when two trumpeters joined in from the top of the screen.

The soprano aria "Rejoice greatly" was taken too fast: even so, it sent shivers down my spine. But the energy flagged towards the end of the first half, when the soprano and the mezzo share the honours with some melodic but unexciting writing. I saw one of the little choir boys yawn vastly at one point.

Sarah Connolly finally came good in part two, in "He was despised", with some wonderful decoration in the da capo repeat. But unless I mistake they cut the da capo in the bass aria "Why do the nations?", which is one of the highlights.

The soprano had to cope with not one but two wailing sirens outside the Abbey in the final section, alas, in "I know that my redeemer liveth" and "If God be for us", but it didn't seem to put her off her stride. Lemalu gave "The trumpet shall sound" lots of oomph, which was good, but the tenor-mezzo duet, "O death, where is thy sting?" was, it says here, "odd". I think I meant their voices weren't quite as well matched as they should have been.

Two contrasting reviews here: I agree in general with the Guardian, though not with his detailed assessments of the singers. But maybe it sounded different where he was sitting. Certainly, it was one of those occasions when you felt the radio version would have been preferable.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/17/messiah-westminster-abbey-review

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/michael_white/blog/2009/04/15/a_splendid_messiah__but_why_does_westminster_abbey_depict_handel_as_a_sitcom_spiv

HAYDN SYMPHONIES AND ARIAS

12/3/09, King's Place.

Two Haydn symphonies, No 26 Lamentatione and No 45 Farewell, plus half a dozen solo arias for tenor and soprano, played by a period band we hadn't heard of called the Orchestra of the Classical Opera Company founded and conducted by a chap called Ian Page. Around 20 musicians, two-thirds women, dressed in black, augmented by a harpsichord for the songs. The tenor a chap called Joshua Ellicott whose voice G especially liked; the soprano a rather self-satisfied lady called Gillian Ramm with an ill-judged dress and fringe but a cracking voice.

Five days later I can of course remember almost nothing in detail about the music (mark you, I could remember almost nothing in detail five hours later).

So let's review the venue instead. It's a basement concert hall, rectangular, pale wood (as at Glyndebourne, and presumably for the acoustic), with a narrow balcony running round the back and sides and a surprisingly high ceiling. The chairs are uncomfortable (according to G) but have individual heating/air conditioning in the base, again as at Glyndebourne. There are clever but understated lighting tricks: when the performers enter or exit the stage they do so through wooden doors that open to reveal a blue-lit area behind them; there are drapes hanging from the back wall lit by subtly changing lighting.

The public areas are exceptionally spacious: a large entrance hall which seems to occupy half the building's footprint, with box office, sandwich bar, bar-and-restaurant-with-canalside-terrace at the far end, and a great well in the middle through which you travel on an escalator down to the concert hall (Hall One: there's also a Hall Two rehearsal space) past a gallery floor on a semi-basement balcony or mezzanine. Ceiling heights are everywhere generous. Off the ground floor is an entrance to the offices of musical organisations like the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and another to the Guardian offices which occupy the lion's share of the building. The Guardian has another entrance on the corner as you approach from King's Cross: more escalators, this time going up. As you stand in the ground floor atrium you can look up through the glass walls of the newspaper's offices to see signs like "arts and culture" and "interview room two" and "society".

Like a lot of modern buildings it's a pleasant contrast to the penny-pinching, cramped and often surprisingly dark developments of past decades, especially the 60s and 70s. Compare the National Theatre, whose public areas get much more crowded more quickly and which has to deploy plush carpets to fight the oppressive quality of the bare concrete walls. Or the Barbican, which is also in a basement and more spacious than the National but much gloomier than King's Place. Perhaps it's the plain white walls and pale wood; perhaps we're just better at lighting these large spaces. (Whichever it is the environmental implications are probably horrendous.)

As for the music... I'm ashamed to say I hadn't realised Haydn wrote any operas. Perhaps they're rarely done; several are lost with only isolated arias surviving. L'infidelta deluso was his fifth, but the earliest to survive in completed form. The arias we heard were spectacular, tuneful and charming by turns.

Of the symphonies I remember little of the first except its generally plangent tone. The last was introduced by the conductor, who said he hoped there were at least some people in the audience who didn't know how this symphony ended, and explained it was a kind of coded message to Prince Esterhazy that his musicians, who had been away from home in Eisenstadt at the prince's new palace at Esterhaza throughout the summer of 1772, wanted to go home now please. Since I had no idea how it ended this merely reinforced the impression I often have at classical concerts that everyone else there is far more familiar with what we're about to hear than I am, can hum the music backwards and knows exactly when to applaud.

(Look away now if you don't want the ending spoilt.)

In fact the symphony bowls along merrily for three movements. Then, during the fourth, the musicians leave the stage one by one until only the leader and the principal second violin are left. It's very effective.

There seem to be lots of non-musical hooks like this in Haydn's music, or what I know of it: jokes, gimmicks, back stories. He seems to have been a rather engaging as well as remarkably hard-working fellow. His stuff is tuneful, long on musical variety etc etc. So why don't I know it better? Why do I dismiss him as a rather boring composer who wrote too much and whose music all sounds the same? You could say the same about Handel, and I adore Handel. Perhaps the problem is that, unlike the earlier Handel, he was oveshadowed by the romantic composers who came after him and who found a musical language (helped by the development of larger ensembles and more advanced instruments, perhaps?) to express heightened emotion that Haydn couldn't quite manage, trapped as he still was in the polite conventions of 18th century music.

Either way I should find out more. Memo to self: listen to more Haydn. Read a biography.

PARTENOPE

12/11/08, ENO
3 hrs incl 2 x intervals. Robert Fox, Peter Taylor and Stephen Thingummy who used to be the controller of editorial policy in the Upper Circle audience. Why this affinity between Handel and middle-aged male employees of the BBC?

(Popbitch, the following week: "David Attenborough spotted nodded-off at Handel's opera Partenope, at the Coliseum." Bet he wasn't in the Upper Circle.)

A Handel comedy with a plot even more implausible and convoluted than usual. The princess Partenope (Rosemary Joshua, soprano, a bit shrill but lots of very showy arias) is loved by Armindo (A1, counter-tenor, with unexpected vocal power and expressiveness) but loves Arsace (A2, another soprano) who used to be in love with Rosmira (Patricia Bardon, mezzo, marvellous – you could hear every word). R has returned, disguised as a man, reveals herself to A2 but swears him/her to secrecy. Much confusion and unhappiness ensue. There’s also a bass in a dodgy red beard and the tenor John-Mark Ainsley camping it up as an invading prince who also fancies Partenope and must be defeated in battle. The usual succession of de capo arias (except for one, late on, which doesn’t repeat – unexpected and unsettling). We applauded virtually every aria, deservedly.

The directorial masterstroke was to relocate the whole thing to the 1930s and the Paris of the surrealists. The “battle” becomes a series of encounters during a party. The defeated prince is incarcerated in the loo. When A2 sings “How long must this go on, how long?” he/she sits unravelling a roll of lavatory paper. Later the door opens to reveal him/her almost completely buried in the stuff. P is the party hostess, dressed in a succession of elegant little numbers; the men (or “men”) all wear baggy 1930s suits, helpfully colour-coded. Most problematic, but most entertainingly, the invading prince is an Andre Breton/Man Ray character, with electric hair and a splendid camera-plus-flash-gun, who spends much of the last act up a ladder, pinning photographic prints on the wall: they gradually resolve themselves into a giant still of a nude woman’s torso (a genuine Man Ray). There was a very silly moment when a duel is about to be fought and the bass with the bushy red beard comes on in a lurid pink tutu. Earlier, R undresses to prove her gender to the Ainsley character. She is wearing sock suspenders. (She opens her shirt to prove she’s a woman, but Ms Bardon modestly kept her back to us). At the very end R appears dressed as a woman in flapper dress and far too much make-up: she looked much prettier as a man, notwithstanding a pair of substantial moustaches.

Beneath the silliness and the cross-dressing you might find a serious point about the delusions and illusions of love, not to mention its fickleness. Or you might not. At the end of this “comedy”, A2 is obliged to shack up with R, who apparently accepts the outcome joyfully despite his/her earlier betrayal; P, having lost A2 (the one she really fancies) is obliged to accept the drippy A1, in what looks like the beginning of a distinctly sado-masochistic relationship. Scarcely a promising start to a life of married bliss in either case. Surprisingly, some of the music is downright touching. Shivers down the spine more than once.