The production is by Götz Friedrich with set and costume designs by Günther Schneider-Siemssen and Aliute Meczies.  The first three acts look as if a not particularly good 18th century genre painting has come to life.  Act 4 looks like something out of Dune.  Every stage direction is followed literally and their is nothing to disturb or excite the imagination.  It’s very pretty and provides an eye candy backdrop for some fine singing.

The cast is stellar.  Placido Domingo sings Des Grieux with Kiri Te Kanawa as Manon and Tom Allen as her brother/pimp.  Forbes Robinson is Geronte di Ravoir.  They are all very good though Placido steals the show.  This must have been just about his peak as a romantic tenor and he is beautiful and exciting to listen to.  In the first two acts Kiri tends to do that thing where she generates a beautiful sound without much expression or emotion.  She comes to life though whenever Placido is on stage and in Acts 3 and 4 she really acts rather better than I thought she could.  Who can not be moved by the last two acts of this piece anyway?  Allen and Robinson act and sing very well and make good foils for the lovers.

Giuseppe Sinopoli is in the pit.  To me, the orchestra sounds a bit too refined and civilized for Puccini but part of that I think is the recording.  In any event the orchestra doesn’t get in the way.

Technically this recording shows its age.  The 4:3 picture is very soft grained and maybe a little washed out.  The Dolby 2.0 sound track is barely adequate.  The soloists are balanced a long way forward and both orchestra and chorus sound rather thin.  In the circumstances it’s hard to fault Humphrey Burton’s video direction.  Close ups are inevitable given the period and the relatively poor picture resolution.

The disk package is basic in the extreme.  Documentation is limited to a chapter listing.  There’s not even a cast sheet.  There are no extras.  Subtitle options are English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Japanese.

Despite showing its age rather badly this recording is a useful record of two very fine singers in their primes.

This is a really interesting production.  It’s genesis lies in the fertile brain of Nikolaus Harnoncourt who sees the piece as being a drama about relationships and only in the most cerebral way a comedy.  To back this Konzept up he has decided views on tempi and on the style of recitatives of which more later.  His ideas were taken up by director Claus Guth who decided that the emotional world he wanted was something like the plays of Strindberg or Ibsen or the films of Bergman; a world where people are trying desperately to escape from their emotions and their implications.  It’s a bleak world in which happiness is elusive and fleeting and as far from the commedia del’arte as one can get.  The excellent “Making of” documentary included on the disk shows how much work went into turning the basic idea into workable music theater.

The realisation of the concept is based around a number of key ideas.  The first is the introduction of a silent character; Cherubim, who is part Cherubino’s alter ego and part a force or deity driving the action at key points.  He appears to physically manipulate the actors as well as to comment silently on the action.  The intervention is especially dramatic during the Count’s aria Vedrò mentr’io sospiro where Cherubim rides the Count before dragging him, prone across the stage.  Feathers from Cherubim’s wings physical or projected, also play a role at times.  Next there’s a lot of ambiguity about love, desire and their objects.  Susanna clearly desires the Count as well as Figaro but in a monogamous world must certainly for one.  The Countess clearly has the hots for Cherubino who is off limits.  Cherubino (in which of his personae?) is the one character for whom multiple love interest seems sanctioned (though we must suspect that marriage to Barbarina will signify his incorporation into the world of repressed emotions of the adults).  Thus, the women’s agency here transcends the traditional one of them defending the honour of women in general and their own in particular and extends to exploring their own sexual roles and preferences. The ending, rather than the traditional “all tension resolved” denouement leaves us wondering about the future happiness of all involved given the choices they have been forced to make.

These ideas are played out on a simple set of an entrance hall with a wide staircase and multiple doors  This allows characters to come and go at various levels and offers multiple “hiding places”.  Except they aren’t.  Very little is hidden.  Most of the things that some or other character is supposed not to have seen are played out more or less in their full view.  It’s as if everyone is complicit in all the plots all the time.  Only briefly, at the beginning of Act 4, do we get away from this openness as, temporarily, the plot thickens and a screen with three large doors descends in front of the staircase.  In the ensembles, the relationship complexities are brought out in the careful choreography of Ramses Sigl.  In the septet at the end of Act 2 they are even graphed in video projection above the singers. There are also a myriad of small touches that it would be tedious to list and I’m not sure I understand them all anyway.

To make this all work clearly required enormously detailed work on the parts of the singers, director and conductor.  There’s not an unconsidered movement, gesture or phrase in the whole piece.  The hard work paid off because there are some really strong performances across the board.  Anna Netrebko’s Susanna is completely right for the piece.  This is one performance where Susanna cannot be described as “pert”.  It’s a moving portrayal of a young woman with very ambiguous feelings and it’s beautifully sung; respecting both Harnoncourt’s sometimes unusual tempi and Guth’s physical demands.  The Countess of Dorothea Röschmann is equally fine.  She’s never content, as so many in this role are, merely to sound beautiful.  Her interaction with Cherubino in Act 2 is borderline pornographic and she delivers the most emotionally intense Dove sono that I have ever heard.  Christine Schäfer is brilliant as Cherubino.  In this production he’s rather an unkempt, gangly adolescent and nobody does grubby and unkempt like Schäfer.  The men are just as good.  Bo Skovhus is a neurotic and troubled Count but he sings with great refinement despite the physical demands placed on him.  His refinement contrasts brilliantly with Ildebrando d’Arcangelo’s darker voice.  His tone isn’t very beautiful but it’s exactly right for this interpretation and this ensemble.  There’s some pretty spectacular physical acting from him too.  The rest of the ensemble is excellent.  there’s some pretty luxurious casting for minor parts with the result that it’s easy to include arias by Marcellina and Basilio that usually get cut.

Harnoncourt’s musical direction is fascinating.  Some of his tempi are unusual and not all are slower than usual.  Deh vieni, non tardar for example is rather faster than usual.  He is though consistently slow in the recitatives.  He gives full value to the text and sometimes pauses for effect.  It’s a polar opposite to the breathless “let’s get on to the next aria” adopted in many productions.  He also gets a very specific sound from the orchestra.  There’s a lot of “attack”, especially from the strings and it sounds almost like a period instrument performance which is not what I expect from the Wiener Philharmoniker!  It’s very effective and, again, works with the whole concept.

All in all, I can see why this production was so enthusiastically received in the theatre if not entirely appreciated by the more conservative critics.  However I didn’t see it Salzburg but in the version that Brian Large committed to disk.  It’s one of his better efforts but it’s still infuriating in places.  I can take the close ups and weird angles.  To some extent the staircase layout encourages that.  Where i part company is in the treatment f the ensembles.  These are staged to serve a very specific dramatic purpose and mucking around with irrelevant close ups and silly angles undermines that purpose.  It’s particulary egregious during Voi signor, che giusto siete and Riconosci in questo amplesso.  Also for some reason he insists on filming Via, resti servita as if it’s a tennis match rather than a duet.  Fie upon him!

Technically this is a superb disk.  The picture is gorgeous 16:9 1080i.  There are three sound options; PCM 2.0 PCM 5.1 and DTS-HD 5.1.  I sampled both surround tracks as it’s a rare opportunity to do a direct comparison.  The PCM track was a clear winner.  It’s extremely natural and brings out Harnoncourt’s punchy sound choices more vividly than the DTS.  There are English, Italian, German, French, Spanish and Chinese subtitles.  The trilingual booklet has track listings, a synopsis and a short essay but much better to watch the “Making of” documentary which covers the same ground in more detail.

This is a very individual Figaro and maybe not anybody’s idea of a “reference edition” but it is fascinating and the disk package, reservations about Mr. Large notwithstanding, is excellent.  Definitely worth a look.

Here’s the official trailer but a quick look on Youtube will find tons of extracts if you want to explore further.

Ileana at the Stella Maris competition

It’s that time of year again. With a few months left in the opera season in Toronto today saw the first “farewell” concert by a departing member of the COC Ensemble Studio. It was a solo recital by dramatic soprano Ileana Montalbetti, quite possibly the best sounding thing ever to come out of Saskatoon. Ileana is the only full on dramatic soprano I’ve seen in the few years I’ve been following the Ensemble Studio and, as ES boss Liz Upchurch pointed out, they are rare so it’s always interesting to see another one come along. Fair to say too, I think, that it’s not the voice type that is treated most kindly by a piano recital in a fairly intimate space. That said, it was a very enjoyable performance.

Ileana kicked off with O Sachs! Mein Freund! from Die Meistersinger. Any reservations I have about dramatic sopranos and piano recitals come redoubled in spades where “big” opera arias are concerned. The kind of volume and tone needed to sing against a large orchestra in a big theatre tends not to sound too lovely when throttled back with only a piano for support and, honestly, I don’t think this piece was a great idea.

Things improved enormously in the next section though. This was the song cycle Ekho Poeta; Pushkin texts set by Benjamin Britten and written for the Rostropoviches. It’s a rarity; a Britten song cycle I don’t recall hearing before, and it’s very good. It was a much better vehicle for Ileana who displayed plenty of power, well controlled vibrato and pleasing and varied tone colours especially in the middle register. Her high end was much sweeter here than in the Wagner too. Where she needed a lot of attack, as in the rather spiteful Epigramma she could certainly produce it. Being Britten, the piano part in these pieces was really quite demanding too so kudos to pianist Rachel Andrist for excellent and sympathetic musicianship.

The second half of the programme was all Strauss. It started with Arabella’s final aria, which I enjoyed more than the Wagner but about which I have similar reservations as a recital piece.  Then we got a selection of songs from Op. 37, Op. 48 and Op. 32 before finishing up with Zueignung from Op. 10. This was all good stuff with more excellent control and very good German diction. The final number was particularly lovely. For an encore we got a spirited rendering of Sweet Polly Oliver in the Britten setting.

I think Ileana is a very considerable talent and I’m sure she’ll do well in the wider operatic world.  Liz Upchurch and the COC certainly seem to think so.  Liz  “leaked” that Ileana will be back in an as yet unannounced major role. Putting two and two together and making something like e^iπ and adding in a dose of wishful thinking I’m wondering if there is any connection between Ileana’s first piece today and the long rumoured Toronto debut of a certain ex-pat Canadian baritone.

Also, à propos not much, it was nice to see a certain world famous dramatic soprano in sneakers and sans make up watching from the standing room section.

Kušej’s Konzept really turns on two ideas; the exploration of sex, violence and power or, as he puts it, orgasm and murder, and the universality of the piece which causes Kušej to downplay the Russianness of the piece.  The set, pretty much throughout, consists of two elements a well lit glass “cage” and, surrounding it, a peripheral region of dark and dirt.  Katerina is trapped in the glass cage.  Her meaningless bourgeois existence is symbolised by more shoes than Imelda Marcos ever owned.  Most of the violence takes place in the peripheral area.  The scene where Aksinya is raped is played out in a sea of mud.  It is quite revolting and rightly so.  It also features one of the finest pieces of operatic singing and acting in extreme conditions I have ever seen and Carole Wilson, the Aksinya, really deserves some kind of medal.  The somewhat less violent but no less intense sex scene between Katerina and Sergei is played out on a strobe lit stage.  It brilliantly avoids the impossibility of portraying realistic sex on stage while letting the very explicit music tell the story.

The extreme acting continues through a bloody flogging scene and a brilliant drunk scene where Alexandre Kravets, as the Shabby Peasant, staggers around all over the place before finding Zinovy’s body and hauling it off to the police station.  Those who know the work well will realise that this involves a departure from what the libretto is telling us.  I didn’t find it problematic.  There’s a similar, perhaps larger, issue in Act 4 which is set in a prison not an overnight rest stop on the march to Siberia.  There’s no material rationae for Sonyetka to want Katerina’s stockings but perhaps the power to humiliate is even more convincing as a motivation than a simple desire to keep warm.  There’s no river and no suicide.  In this version the convicts hang Katarina with her own stockings.  It’s not what the libretto is saying but it is dramatically powerful.  All up, I felt Kušej’s Konzept and his realisation of it were very powerful and true to the spirit of the piece.

The individual performances are excellent.  Clearly, everyone concerned is totally committed to bringing off this production.  Eva-Maria Westbroek is really impressive.  At the beginning she oozes anger and sexual frustration, at the end, despair.  She sings brilliantly throughout.  She’s very well supported by Christopher Ventris as Sergei  He oozes sexual menace and arrogance.  Vladimir Vaneev is appropriately brutal, coarse and lecherous as the patriarch Boris.  Besides Carole Wilson and Kravets there are excellent performances from Lani Poulson as Sonyetka, Alexander Vassiliev as the Priest and Nikita Storojev as the Chief of Police.  Ludovit Ludha does a pretty decent job in making something interesting out of the rather thankless role of Zinovy.

I can’t imagine a better reading of the score than Janson’s or more idiomatic and incisive playing than the Concertgebouw provide.  If you have heard this orchestra play Shostakovich symphonies you wil know what to expect.  It’s quite thrilling and fully justifies Kušej and Jansons’ decision to play the interludes in front of a blank curtain.  The chorus sings splendidly despite some extreme acting demands.

The video direction by Thomas Grimm is OK.  We get enough to see, most of the time, what Kušej is up to although are were many occasions when he has the camera in way too close and some of the camera angles are a bit odd.  In the interludes he chooses to focus on Jansons who is extremely energetic!  It’s not the best video direction ever but it’s better than the typical Large or Halvarson production.

Technical quality is a s good as it gets which is about par for Opus Arte Blu-ray.  The picture is 16:9 1080i and crystal clear.  The sound is extremely vivid PCM 5.0 (there’s also a PCM stereo option) although there are times when I think the voices are balanced a little further forward than they should be.  There are subtitles in English, French, Italian, Dutch, German and Spanish. Extras include a synopsis, a cast gallery and a one hour “making of” documentary by Reiner Moritz.  It’s pretty much essential viewing for this production.  The trilingual booklet includes a track listing, a historical essay and short notes by the director.

I still don’t have a way of doing screen caps from Blu-ray so, in lieu, here’s a Youtube clip.  It includes the Aksinya rape scene which gives a pretty good idea of the overall commitment involved in this production.  It is, quite emphatically, not safe for work.

They kicked off with Brahms’ Liebeslieder-Walzer.  They were performed with verve and skill and quite a bit of humour but I’m afraid it was still Brahms.  In my book Brahms should be loved from afar.  I much preferred the selections from Schumann’s Spanische Liebeslieder which followed.  I particularly liked Russell’s rendering of Flutenreicher Ebro which showed great feeling for the words and real skill in articulating different moods through voice colour.  Krisztina also gave us a ravishing version of Hoch, hoch sind die Berger.

The revelation for me though was John Greer’s settings of Canadian folk songs; All Around the Circle.  Looking at the words I thought this was going to be really hokey but in fact both the vocal arrangements and piano accompaniments are really pretty sophisticated and right up there with better known English and Australian folk song settings for voice and piano.  The quartet gave them all they had.  Lots of attack, good ensemble work and tons of humour.  (One needs humour with a line like “She’ll be waiting for me there with the hambone of a bear”!).  Terrific piano playing here too from Johannes and Carolyn.  It was fun!  (And great value for money)

This is, in every respect, a model of what a DVD ought to be, a perfect realisation in picture and sound of Debussy’s sole and inspired opera.

Followed by a good deal more in the same vein.  This, regrettably, tells us more bout the Gramophone Guide than about this DVD(1).  Actually it’s not bad at all by 1992 standards but “a perfect realisation” it isn’t.

Peter Stein’s production is semi-abstract and monotone.  The tone is “dark”.  There’s some interesting lighting but visually it’s pretty nondescript.  The director’s focus is clearly on the actors and their interactions and in a work like Pelléas et Mélisande that makes sense.  There is some very good acting, especially from Alison Hagley as Mélisande.  The tower scene is brought off rather well with perhaps the most extravagant hair extension in the history of opera.  This also features in a disturbingly violent Act 4 Scene 2.  Act 4 also sees a brief appearance by a live sheep, no doubt in deference to local sensibilities.  I’m not entirely convinced that Stein gets enough complexity from his cast to really raise the psychology beyond the cardboard cut out level.  Donald Maxwell’s rather crude and coarse Golaud doesn’t really make a case for his descent into jealousy, madness and murderous rage based on not much at all really.  He’s not helped by the rather colourless Pelléas of Neill Archer.  On the other hand Alson Hagley conveys the fragility and mystery of her character exceptionally well.  (I also wondered whether a visual reference to Gerald of Wales’ Melusine was being made in the tower scene but maybe that’s over-theorising).  She’s very much in the same frantic and febrile mould here as Natalie Dessay on the Theater an der Wien recording.  Kenneth Cox gives a strongly characterised Arkel with particularly good chemistry with Hagley.  Stein uses a boy treble, Samuel Burkey, in the role of Yniold.  It works dramatically but I don’t much care for it musically.

In general the singing is very good.  All the principals have adequate French at least, though they can’t quite match Vienna’s line up of Francophone star talent.  Pierre Boulez conducts.  He gets a very detailed, transparent reading from the WNO orchestra while occasionally pushing out a genuinely Wagnerian dramatic climax.  No complaints here.

Stein also directed for TV/DVD.  It’s pretty conventional 1992 TV direction.  There are lots of close ups but generally there’s no sense that one is missing anything.  Although recorded live, there is no applause and no sign of an audience.  During the orchestral interludes we get film of the orchestral score which is an interesting treatment but tends even more to make this like a film rather than a theatre performance.

The picture is average DVD 16:9 and the sound options are PCM stereo, Dolby 5.1 and DTS 5.1.  The surround tracks were created from an original stereo source using DG’s AMSI II technology.  The DTS track is very decent but not quite up to best modern standards.  Extras include a trailer, a picture gallery and some DG promo material.  Subtitles are French, English, German, Spanish and Chinese.  There’s a trilingual booklet with track listings, synopsis and a short, not very useful essay.

This is a good (though far from perfect!) effort.  It’s definitely worth a look though I personally prefer the more recent Vienna recording.

fn1. I’ve long been skeptical about reviewers who claim that the best recording of a well known work is one made by Fritz Busch in his garden shed in 1935.

Julie Makerov and Anne Larlee in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre

For the Valentine’s Day lunchtime concert at the Four Seasons Centre American dramatic soprano Julie Makerov chose a series of art songs by English and American composers on various aspects of love.  I was familiar with the English works by Quilter and Britten, though more used to hear them sung by male singers, and not at all familiar with the American works by Berger, Barber and Heggie.  It made for an interesting mix.

A dramatic soprano wouldn’t normally be my first choice for a song recital but Ms. Makerov is very skilled.  She scaled her voice back nicely and had her vibrato well under control.  She also had excellent diction and a good feel for the text.  She didn’t have the most interesting range of tone colour I’ve ever heard but it was a most musical and enjoyable performance.  She performed the whole set from memory which is nice.  The highlights for me included a couple of Quilter settings; Weep You No More Sad Fountains and The Faithless Shepherdess, and a really moving account of Britten’s setting of O, Waly, Waly.  I also really liked the three songs by Berger; In Time of Silver Rain, Heart and Carolina Cabin.  In case we thought the whole thing too serious she encored with an appropriately over the top rendering of Heggie’s Alas, Alack.

Anne Larlee, on piano, once again showed what a fine accompanist she is and there was a very good cameo for cellist Paul Widner in Heggie’s What My Lips Have Kissed.

It was well worth braving the driving sleet of a truly dreich Toronto day.