Ponchielli - La Gioconda

Amilcare Ponchielli - La Gioconda

Opéra National de Paris, 2013

Daniel Oren, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Violeta Urmana, Luciana D’Intino, Orlin Anastassov, María José Montiel, Marcelo Álvarez, Claudio Sgura

Viva l'Opéra Cinema Live in HD, 13 May 2013

Ponchielli's La Gioconda is a work that seems ideal for the French lyric stage, but although written in 1876, it has never been performed before at the Paris Opera.  Watching it via cinema broadcast from the Opéra National de Paris in its first ever production there, a few reasons come to mind why this work of undoubted quality hasn't been performed more often.  Firstly, it probably falls into the same category as Meyerbeer's operas, works that are a bit old-fashioned and overly ornate, their melodramatic content too exaggerated with Grand Operatic mannerisms for the tastes of a modern audience.  Ponchielli was a contemporary of Verdi, but perhaps more significantly, Puccini was one of his pupils and the verismo style of the next generation of Italian composers undoubtedly played a large part in consigning many of the absurdities of the old style to the past.

The other reason why La Gioconda perhaps hasn't been performed more often is probably for much the same reason that the bel canto repertoire fell into neglect for almost a century - it really takes exceptional singers of personality and stature to really bring its qualities to life.  It's no surprise that the last time the work enjoyed popularity was when it was performed by Maria Callas and by Renata Tebaldi in the 1950s, but it's rarely been heard since then.  I wouldn't say that Violeta Urmana is in the category of the world's greatest sopranos, even by contemporary standards, but she certainly attacked the role with passion and distinction here in the Paris Opera's production.  What the Paris La Gioconda revealed however is that the work doesn't just rely on the quality of the soprano singing the title role, but that there are five other difficult and challenging roles that it is essential to get right.  Here, the Paris production was less convincing.

The set design for the opera's Venetian locations at least looked terrific.  Pier Luigi Pizzi creates the kind of typical big, bold design in primary colours that works so well at the Bastille, and works particularly well for this work.  The action in the first two acts takes place on a piazza in Venice, and that's recreated here well in Pizzi's neo-classical style with canals and gondolas that seem to float naturally along them.  A good sense of space is also created with bridges that serve to bring the choruses and the principals onto the scene.  It's all rendered in black and red, with a bright background that sets it in silhouette against a blazing sunset over the lagoon.  The latter two acts simplify the design to a series of steps that allow space for the work's most famous centrepiece, the Dance of Hours ballet, while also creating the necessary space for the focus to remain on the dramatic developments of the denouement.  The set looks good and it functions well with the requirements of the drama.

The acting direction however is simply dreadful.  Rarely do the singers interact with one another, but rather they pace up and down the stage in an old-fashioned style, directing their performance out to the audience.  Once again, Marcelo Álvarez is the worst culprit.  He's a fine singer, but he has no sense of character and plays every role in exactly the same declamatory way, striking a pose, one arm stretched out, hand clasped in a fist and then swung into his chest, his delivery pitched at the back of the gallery with big gestures so that the audience can see the sincerity of his emotions.  It looks even more ridiculous in close-up in a filmed performance.  La Gioconda's ripe melodrama, it has to be said however, does call out for this kind of performance from Enzo, and Álvarez has clearly been encouraged to play it to the hilt.

The other male roles could use this kind of energy and conviction, but it wasn't much in evidence in Claudio Sgura's Barnaba or Orlin Anastassov's Alvise.  Barnaba is an out-and-out villain, the scheming jealous mastermind who manipulates all of the characters, but is unable nonetheless to achieve the one thing he wants - making la Gioconda love him.  It's not particularly strong characterisation - Arrigo Boito's libretto isn't as refined here as it is for Verdi's later works (although some of that may be to do with Victor Hugo's source since Barnaba is no Iago) - but Sgura isn't strong enough for the vocal demands that might make him more convincing.  Even if his actions are equally villainous, Alvise is perhaps a little more nuanced in character, but it would require a singer with more acting ability than Orlin Anastassov to bring it out.

These are extremely difficult roles to sing however, almost as challenging in their range and expression as the writing for the character of La Gioconda, and what the work really needs then to really achieve its impact is six strong singers.  The female singers thankfully fared rather better than the male roles.  Violeta Urmana's top notes aren't particularly beautiful and getting up there is not a smooth process, but her interpretation has all the passion and strength of character required here and she copes exceptionally well with a very challenging role.  Luciana D’Intino also sings Laura well, and the two ladies stand-off in Act II over who loves Enzo more was, as it ought to be, one of the highlights of the evening.

Laura: I challenge your heart, o rival!
Gioconda: You blaspheme!
Laura: You lie!  I love him as the light of Creation.  Like the air that enlivens the breath. Like the heavenly and blessed dream from which came my first sigh.
Gioconda: I love him as the lion loves blood and the whirlwind its flight.  And lightning its peaks, and halcyons the whirlpools and the eagle the sun!

This is a prime example of the kind of ripe and floridly over-written lines that the singers are expected to deliver in La Gioconda, so full credit to Violeta Urmana for being able to sing "I love him as the lion loves blood" and being able to convincingly look as if she could eat her rival alive as well.  Urmana's scenes with her blind mother La Ciega are also excellent throughout on account of another strong performance from María José Montiel.

La Gioconda might be a work of a bygone age and the Paris Opera might not have made a totally convincing case that it can be staged well, but there are a couple of reasons why Ponchielli's work has the ability to endure.  One is the beautiful and famous Dance of Hours ballet sequence, which was exceptionally well-choreographed here and impressively performed, even if it wasn't particularly in context with the rest of the work.  With gold-coloured topless male and female lead dancers, it looked more like something from the Crazy Horse on the other side of town.

The other reason is the final fourth Act, which fully lives up to the contrived melodrama of the previous scenes.  La Gioconda is a surprisingly dark work - and it's in this you can see the impact the Ponchielli would have on the next generation of Italian verismo composers - with what little romance there is in it is tainted by jealousy, bitterness and hatred with one of the bleakest and unforgiving endings in an opera prior to Puccini's Tosca.  If the singing couldn't always reach those heights, the full power of the work's qualities were at least brought out in a terrific performance by the Paris Orchestra conducted with true dramatic energy by Daniel Oren.

Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin

Royal Opera House, 2013

Robin Ticciati, Kasper Holten, Simon Keenlyside, Krassimira Stoyanova, Pavol Breslik, Elena Maximova, Peter Rose, Diana Montague, Vigdis Hentze Olsen, Kathleen Wilkinson, Elliot Goldie, Thom Rackett, Christophe Mortagne, Michel De Souza, Jihoon Kim, Luke Price

Royal Opera House Cinema Season Live, 20th February 2013

The very nature of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin is one that often makes it difficult to cast and present.  The opera is all about the arrogance, impetuosity and naivety of youth seen refracted through a lifetime of regret.  As such, it has the near impossible task of needing its performers to be able to express both youthful idealism and the regret that comes with experience through same person and - just to make it more difficult - express both positions almost simultaneously.  Tchaikovsky's remarkable highly romantic musical score is able to do that, but finding singers who have the exact balance of youth and experience needed to express and actually sing the challenging roles is rather more difficult to achieve.

If it were a film, it would simply be a matter of just casting younger actors to play the youthful roles in Eugene Onegin and then bring in experienced stars to play their older counterparts.  In the opera house it's not possible - or at least not common - to cast in this way, and certainly not for roles like those in Eugene Onegin that have very specific singing and continuity demands.  Certainly in the case of the young romantic and bookish 16-year old Tatyana, the director has the choice only of casting a younger singer who looks credible in the role but who may not be able to meet the extremely difficult singing demands, or else sacrifice credibility for a singer with the voice, maturity and the experience to make it work musically.  In the days of High Definition broadcasts, the chances are that the director will opt for the former (as in the case of Krzysztof Warlikowski's 2012 Bavarian State Opera production with Ekaterina Scherbachenko), when the latter is what the work really needs.  There is however another way, a way explored by Norwegian director Stefan Herheim for example in the 2011 production for De Nederlandse Opera, but it involves the kind of directorial playing around with the essential elements and timeline of the work that some find intrusive in what ought to be a stripped-back and intimate work.

Directing the Royal Opera House's new production, and clearly focussing on those essential themes of love and regret, Kasper Holten has opted for an approach similar to Stefan Herheim, using doubles for Onegin and Tatyana - dancers who enact their younger selves - and having them both on the stage together in order to allow both those interlocking sentiments to play out simultaneously.  As a response to the themes and the actual music itself it's a valid idea, but it's one that is rather more difficult to pull off theatrically.  Holten's direction, it has to be said, is rather less convoluted than Herheim's all-encompassing approach that takes in aspects of the Russian temperament revealed in the work across the ages, and in that respect the Royal Opera House production works quite well while at the same time being relatively more faithful to the intentions of the composer.  One can't help but wishing however that the director (both Herheim and Holten) would just put their trust in the singer when they a Tatyana as accomplished as Krassimira Stoyanova who is capable of delivering such a sensitive and deeply nuanced performance as she does here.

And not just Stoyanova.  The Royal Opera House's production benefitted from the casting and terrific performances of Simon Keenlyside and Pavol Breslik as Onegin and Lensky.  Both played these roles opposite each other in last year's Bayerische Staatsoper production and were marvellous there.  Here, unconstrained by the Krzysztof Warlikowski's attempts to bring out a gay subtext in their relationship (attempts it has to be said that were largely successful and certainly relevant to the composer's own personal circumstances), they were free to concentrate on those expressions of deep emotional wounding and eternal regret.  The title of the interval feature 'Love and Regret' describes Kasper Holten's focus for this production, and he couldn't have been better assisted in getting this across than the exceptional, nuanced and deeply moving performances from the cast or from the superb account of Tchaikovsky's majestic score from the Royal Opera House orchestra superbly conducted by Robin Ticciati.

A performance of Eugene Onegin perhaps doesn't need anything more than that, but there were more than a few other beautiful little touches that validated the director's approach.  When you see the youthful idealism and romanticism embodied in the expressions and the fluid movements of dancer Vigdis Hentze Olsen during Stoyanova's moving account of the letter scene - the older Tatyana regretful of her younger counterpart's painful naivety - it does actually enhance the scene and reflect those simultaneous contradictory sentiments.  Keenlyside is a marvellous actor as well as a fine singer in this role, but the look of nervous excitement on the young Onegin (Thom Rackett) as he picks up a duelling pistol, oblivious to the reality of what he is about to do, while the older Onegin looks on with painful regret, unable to avert the disaster, is also justified and well handled.  The death of Lensky, leaving Pavol Breslik lying there at the front of the stage through the remainder of the opera, doesn't work quite so well.  The dead branch that he symbolically drags onto the stage would have been enough on its own.

Any such reservations however are few and minor when taken alongside the evident consideration behind the directorial choices elsewhere in this Eugene Onegin.  The Polonaise was more than just a beautiful interlude, but threw Keenlyside's Onegin with abandon into the midst of swirling ballet dancers that he would attempt to grasp but be unable to hold.  Tainted by his past and his behaviour, it seemed like everything he touched would just die in his hands.  Mia Stensgaard's set - a framing set of doors, opened or closed as necessary, with suitable backgrounds and lighting - was also highly effective in establishing a consistent look and feel for the work.  The role of the chorus - again often neglected for their dramatic contribution in favour of providing "folk" colour - were recognised here as being the social context of the work.  The Royal Opera House have been criticised, with some justification, for a lack of adventure in their recent programming of revivals and some failed or misguided experiments (Rusalka, Robert le Diable), but when they bring together a strong cast for a thoughtful account of a major work like the 2011 Tosca or this year's Eugene Onegin, they are simply unbeatable.

Britten - The Turn of the Screw

Benjamin Britten - The Turn of the Screw

Glyndebourne 2011

Jonathan Kent, Jakub Hrůša, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Miah Persson, Susan Bickley, Toby Spence, Giselle Allen, Thomas Parfitt, Joanna Songi

Live HD Broadcast, 21st August 2011

Although Glyndebourne haven’t been associated with perhaps the most famous name in modern English opera until relatively recently – a longstanding feud between the Suffolk opera company and Britten creating a thirty-five year gap up that lasted until the 1980s – they have put on some notable productions since. Two of Britten’s most famous operas however have had to wait a considerable time before they made their first appearance on the Glyndebourne stage, but with a production of Billy Budd conducted by Mark Elder in 2010, and a 2006 production of The Turn of the Screw, Glyndebourne can certainly be seen to have made amends for those notable absences. If it’s not quite as definitive a production as their remarkable staging of Billy Budd last year, The Turn of the Screw, Jonathan Kent’s 2006 production revived here for the latest season, recorded and broadcast live in HD, is however a very different kind of opera that demands a different kind of treatment and performance.

The Turn of the Screw is similar to Billy Budd – as Mark Elder oberved – in that it deals with the theme of the loss of innocence, but, adapted from a short novel by Henry James (1898), the loss of innocence seems even more distressing when it is applied to the corruption of young children. In some respects a ghost story – one of the most famous and enigmatic of ghost stories ever written – The Turn of the Screw is also one of the first works to consider its hauntings and apparitions in psychological terms, the sightings of sinister figures seeming to be extensions of the hysterical imaginings of a sexually repressed Victorian governess. Charged with looking after two young children, Flora and Miles, by their uncle who is always away elsewhere on business, the Governess – with perhaps a bit of a crush on the man she only meets once (he’s not seen at all in the opera version) and who has forbidden her having any further contact with him unless absolutely necessary – the desires of the woman and her own repressed emotions become reflected and even enacted out on the lives of the children.

There are however many possible readings of the material which defies easy analysis and intentionally – to rather more disturbing effect – leaves plenty of room for ambiguity and personal impressions. Britten’s opera plays on this, or at least takes account of the potential that can be drawn out further through the use of equally evocative, ambiguous and often disturbing musical motifs and even nursery rhymes. The opera can be seen as a ghost story where the ghosts of Miss Jessel and Peter Quint are indeed present and interact with the children and the Governess, as a psychological reading where they are the manifestation of a heightened or disturbed mental state brought about by sexual repression (the Governess first sees Peter Quint on a tower after thinking about the children’s uncle, believing it to be him), and it is indeed also about the loss of innocence. It is not so much the suggestion of child abuse enacted upon the children by the malevolent servants – although that reading is certainly suggested – as much as the consideration that Flora and Miles will not remain innocent children for long, but will inevitably be “corrupted” by the world, by knowledge, and perhaps unwittingly even by the over solicitious behaviour of the Governess herself, conscious and feeling guilty about her own repressed adult desires.

Musically, all these thoughts and emotions are evoked magnificently in the chamber orchestration, where even the smallest of sounds, tones and emotional states have complex meanings and are often picked out by individual instruments. Jonathan Kent chooses to set the opera in the 1950s as the last period of innocence (a period and theme he would reuse in his 2010 Glyndebourne production of Don Giovanni for similar reasons), which doesn’t really add anything – although it does have additional significance as being the original period in which Britten’s opera was composed – but likewise, it doesn’t detract at all from the tone or the content of the opera. Much more importantly, Paul Brown’s set designs for the country house at Bly remain sparse and fluidly changeable, like the moods of the score and the tone of the whole piece itself. The walls surrounding the starkly lit set give an enclosed claustrophobic quality to the isolated drama being played-out, the centre of the stage dominated by a set of French windows that likewise suggest closedness, as well as showing a world outside, marked by a twisted tree branch. It’s a strong representation of the interior world in which Mrs Grose and the Governess want to keep the children protected and the external world which holds horrors that irresistibly attract them. Britten’s score likewise plays with this ambiguity, with plaintive violins relating to closed internal emotional states, while flutes and harps suggest the open air, as well as a more floating spiritual domain, but one that also has a more sinister touch.

The sets and music working in perfect accord, with concentric platforms swirling objects fluidly and hauntingly into place with perfect timing, the players of the London Philharmonic Orchestra marvellously conducted by Jakub Hrůša to draw all the necessary tension out of the score, the singing was also perfect for the occasion. Really, it would be hard to say which side of the physical/spiritual divide held the upper hand, such was the strength of expression, deluded and dangerous though it might be, of Susan Bickley’s Mrs Grose and Miah Persson’s Governess, their terror over the apparitions powerfully delivered. They were however more than matched by Toby Spence’s Peter Quint and Giselle Allen’s Miss Jessel, who both asserted a forceful and appropriately sinister physical and vocal presence. The ensemble pieces with the children Thomas Parfitt and Joanna Songi were most effective in this regard, Songi in particular an impressive young talent. Pitched perfectly on every level, form and content working in perfect accord, this was a fine performance of another impressive Britten production at Glyndebourne.