Wagner - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Bayreuth, 2025)

Richard Wagner - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Bayreuther Festspiele, 2025

Daniele Gatti, Matthias Davids, Georg Zeppenfeld, Michael Spyres, Matthias Stier, Christina Nilsson, Christa Mayer, Michael Nagy, Jongmin Park, Martin Koch, Werner Van Mechelen, Jordan Shanahan, Daniel Jenz, Matthew Newlin, Gideon Poppe, Alexander Grassauer, Tijl Faveyts, Patrick Zielke, Tobias Kehrer

BR-Klassik Livestream - 25th July 2025

Matthias Davids' production doesn't look like any other production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg you might have seen. We expect that at Bayreuth of course, but we are definitely far removed these days from the more adventurous Meistersingers of Bayreuth in the recent past. Katharina Wagner's own controversial 2008 production was keen to genuinely tear down any familiar ground and truly put the work of German Art to the test just as Hans Sachs advocates, while last production by Barrie Kosky in 2017 had great fun turning the work inside out and putting Wagner on trial for antisemitism. Both were very much testing of Wagner's greatest expression of the power of art, the freedom of the artist and the artist as a revolutionary, as much in their conception as their adherence to the underlying intent of the work. Davids' view on Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg to see it as a paean to peace, love and understanding is not unreasonable and perhaps reflects our needs and desires in these troubled times, but it is a rather more limiting viewpoint on a work that contains so much more.

Better known as a director of musicals, Matthias Davids' lighter approach places emphasis on making the work look bright, colourful and comic. Those aren't characteristics that one typically associates with Wagner but Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is very much the exception to the typical Wagner music drama with its heavy emphasis on mythology. It's ambitiously expansive in its warmth, its humour, its insightfulness on a wider range of human experience and is more generously optimistic in its outlook. That's a lot to take in and consider, but it would be a mistake to emphasise the comedy and the romance to the exclusion of the opera's undercurrents of melancholy towards change and ...well, threats from 'outside'. I don't think Davids ignores this as much chooses to focus on the colour and setting and let Wagner's music fill in the rest. Wagner's miraculous music is more than capable of providing that with Daniele Gatti in the pit and a strong cast assembled for this production, but the production design and stage choreography does feel like a bit of a mess and distract from engaging with any deeper meaning in the work.

The best thing I can say about the first Act of the new Bayreuth Meistersinger is that it lays out the original premise of the opera clearly. It's not without a distinctive look and feel of its own with its long staircase up to St Catherine's Church in Nuremberg for the opening scene, the set revolving to a kind of lecture theatre setting for the marking of Walther von Stolzing’s first efforts at becoming a mastersinger. The street scenes for Act II look bewilderingly 'normal' as well, or not so much normal as picture book Nuremberg, an idealised non-period specific operatic setting the looks to tradition but modernises it to look bright and colourful. The buildings all look like the Keramikhäuser you find in German Christmas markets, or since this has a wooden appearance, more like a Christmas manger scene which kind of jars, in my mind anyway, with this being Midsummer's Eve.

The first half of Act II however is at least beautifully played, much more sensitively performed than Act I, but probably only because Wagner scored it with great warmth, nostalgia and human insight. Not so much in the acting, which is all broad gestures turning into slapstick inevitably by the end of the second Act. The director really hasn't got a handle on the nature of the people and the relationships between them as Wagner depicts them, or at least I never felt like these were real people with inner lives. It feels superficial, but Wagner's music soars under Daniele Gatti and has real heart and emotion behind it. It's not enough to carry the latter part of this act, and Beckmesser's wooing of Lena just feels agonising. It's surely impossible for this scene to be anything less than entertaining, but here it just drags with a lack of any kind of imagination or insight. The closing choral scene is chaotic, as it is supposed to be, but really shouldn't be this much of a mess.

Hans Sachs' workshop at the start of Act III brings a welcome change of tone; the spare set, the simplicity of the widower's home a wooden low wall circle, the loneliness of it all working with the melancholic tone. Georg Zeppenfeld can do deep melancholy well (not so great with humour), but his gestures remain broad. He is perhaps not everyone's ideal Hans Sachs, but his singing nonetheless carries the beauty and intent of this role in this scene. For me, these scenes with Eva and with Walther are the heart and soul of the work: they are filled with meaning, with the experience of life, looking back and looking forward and trying to come to terms with it all. Musically it's a marvel, the crowning achievement of Wagner's longstanding efforts to capture the essence of the German spirit through art, mythology and storytelling, but here without the usual grandiosity. He even quotes Tristan und Isolde (composed during the writing of Meistersinger), but instead of the despair of King Marke, Wagner's Sachs is inspired by or comforted by the optimism of youth and the new spirit of love in Stolzing, Eva, David and Lena. These scenes are beautiful and the best part of this new production at Bayreuth, as it ties in well with the director's approach and vision for the opera as a whole.

Of course it's nothing without the quality of the Prize song to prove it, and Michael Spyres brings out the full beauty of his Liebestraum. If Zeppenfeld's reactions of amazement and wonder at the knight's performance look a little exaggerated, you can nonetheless well understand it when you hear Spyres sing it like this. Although the poetry strikes me as rather flowery - literally - it still casts a spell of enchantment that is irresistible. It has to be believed that this song is near miraculous and Wagner composed it to have just that impact, more beautiful here in its moment of spontaneous creation than in the unnecessary spectacle of the final act performance - which of course Walther tries his best to reject. It can be just as wonderful at the conclusion, but it's not here and it's not because Walther and Eva do actually reject the nationalistic sentiments expressed by Sachs, but there are other issues with the staging of the scene that undermine it somewhat. Thankfully we have this 'demo' version before it becomes 'overproduced'.

The final scene suits the occasion to an extent, even if it is not particularly tasteful. The scene is set for a song contest in the style of Search for a Star, a regional Nuremberg heat of 'Germany’s Got Talent' or whatever the latest TV show incarnation of X-Factor is currently popular. It is indeed a popular scene involving the whole community so it is not inappropriate, even with a huge colourful inflatable cow canopy and bales of hay. Within that the concluding scenes play out in a fine if unexceptional manner and it's interesting that the decision to reject being the new idol of holy German Art is instigated or supported by Eva who whisks Walther off to seek live the lives they want to live.

For all my misgivings about the production, the scene was a moving one and, aside from the mixed response to the production team at the curtain call, the premiere performance of the new production appears to have been appreciated by the Bayreuth audience. I can't say it doesn't meet the intent of the work and do it justice, just that it felt unadventurous in not really interrogating the work, meaning we had some very dull passages, particularly in the first Act.

Lifeless scenes in the first half aside, musically and in terms of the singing performances this was indeed a very enjoyable production that took on a momentum of its own and made this just about a worthwhile experience. Aside from the capable performance of Georg Zeppenfeld and Michael Spyres' wonderfully sung Walter von Stolzing, the other performances all had much to admire. Michael Nagy sang well as Beckmesser, but deserved better than the role being reduced to little more than a sidekick for comic slapstick. Christina Nilsson's role debut as Eva was excellent. If she seemed occasionally overawed, that could also be attributed to her character's position in the work. She led the quintet in Act III beautifully. Matthias Stier made a strong impression as David and the reliable Christa Mayer was a fine Magdalena. Jongmin Park was a steadfast Pogner, and indeed all the Mastersinger roles (in their tea cosy helmets) were well defined and sung. The lightness of touch and warmth that Matthias Davids was aiming to achieve was certainly there in Daniele Gatti's conducting of the warm, luscious score, but somehow it never seemed to gel with any sense of genuine warmth and humanity reflected on the stage.

External links: BR-Klassik, Bayreuther Festspiele

Pfitzner - Palestrina (Vienna, 2024)

Hans Pfitzner - Palestrina

Wiener Staatsoper, 2024

Christian Thielemann, Herbert Wernicke, Michael Spyres, Wolfgang Koch, Wolfgang Bankl, Günther Groissböck, Kathrin Zukowski, Patricia Nolz, Michael Nagy, Michael Laurenz, Michael Kraus, Hiroshi Amako, Jusung Gabriel Park, Clemens Unterreiner, Devin Eatmon, Andrew Turner, Ilja Kazakov, Teresa Sales Rebordão, Marcus Pelz 

Staatsoper Live Streaming - 12th December 2024

It isn't often you get the opportunity to hear Hans Pfitzner's music or operas, which is a shame as Palestrina is a beautifully scored and arranged opera, but there are some valid reasons for this omission. Some composers fall out of fashion, their works no longer attractive to a modern audience and certainly the subject of Palestrina - an opera set around the Pope giving his approval at the Synod of the Council of Trent in 1563 for polyphonic music to be used in the composition of a mass - is not one that sounds like it will draw in big audiences. There are also are considerable challenges for orchestral and choral elements to consider, but perhaps the main reason why Pfitzner is rarely programmed are nothing to do with the quality of his music, but with the legacy of his association with the Nazis and antisemitism.

Whatever the reasons, Palestrina is rarely performed and it's true that the subject is a hard one to sell to a modern opera audience. Although it forms a considerable part of Act II, the opera is not really concerned with discussions between archbishops and cardinals disputing obscure esoteric religious dogma and heresies, but rather there is a clear underlying intent. Make that overt intent, since the opera is called Palestrina, after all, named after the choir master of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, Pierluigi Palestrina, who is tasked with the formidable and momentous task of writing music that will make polyphonic music an acceptable part of the celebration of the Catholic mass. It's then really about celebrating the magnificence of music, about celebrating composers for their art, for how they suffer to create. Through Palestrina, Pfitzner gives due recognition to "the art of masters of many centuries", to those who have contributed significantly to their art. And that includes Richard Wagner, whose Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is a clear reference point for Palestrina.

Still, a word-heavy, long-winded opera about an ancient former papal composer giving thanks to God through music isn't going to appeal to the masses either (not to be confused with appealing to masses in the religious sense) and Palestrina is indeed heavy going but, as with any great opera, you would expect there to be some correspondence with a deeper human experience, or perhaps a more common one, since you don't get much more elevated than striving to reach into the spiritual realm of human experience. Pierluigi Palestrina’s suffering that perhaps inspires such creativity is indeed a human one; sorrow for the loss of his wife. At the beginning of the opera however, still in the depths of grief, all inspiration has deserted him and he is unreachable. Such is the depth of his loss that he has no confidence that he can accept the commission from Cardinal Borromeo to write a new work, an eternal mass, and indeed he no longer even sees the point of value of his metier. He has reached Faustian levels of despair, abandoning himself to the 'Rien'. Evidently though in this case Palestrina doesn't submit to Mephistopheles but to a higher power; music. 

Somewhat appropriately then, Palestrina is far from a 'one-note' opera, but has many levels in its progression through its three acts. Just as Palestrina is the missing a note in the chord, so too pouring all the human contradictions and complexes that arise over the doubts, fears and all other kinds of human experiences - greed and pride come into play between the religious orders in Act II - all feed into the score that Pfitzner uses to construct a foundation and embellish it with beauty and spirituality. Voices, the outward manifestation of human expression is fully involved in this, from the individual grappling with their fears, weaknesses and limitations to the choral togetherness that elevates it and joins it with the rest of the world.

Bringing in the Council of Trent and its aims, its religious and political powerplays is another complication. Can polyphonic church music wrung from a reluctant choir master unite all the reform of ecumenical matters that are subject to discussion, dispute, heresy and schism, fraying tempers, the assertion of dominance of Pope or Emperor, carving up their domains of power and influence? Well, at long as you don't bring the Protestants into it! Despite the apparently elevated subject matter, the opera is not without a sense of humour at the pomposity and entitlement of it all, but there is a sense that power is respected and, where is the will, distinguished leaders can reach agreement and bring about important change. Not sure anyone who was following the outcome of COP29 will agree that this is a valid argument, but Pfitzner makes a compelling case for it here.

Directed by Herbert Wernicke, the production in Vienna matches intent of both sides of the work well, bringing music and majesty, order and elegance to the stage. The effects and sets are basic but effective. For Palestina's grappling with his muse and his human condition, there is an array of tiers for an orchestra with a large church organ, the back of the stage opening to reveal a chorus, heavenly choirs and angelic voices bringing light from darkness. It's almost overwhelming, which is the effect it should be aiming to achieve. Likewise for the Synod, the music stands are removed and the seats rearranged for the chamber, the assembled cardinals and archbishops all arranged in order of importance, stretching back and upwards into the choir gallery. There is none of the elaborate day-glo colour schemes of the Bayerische Staatsoper production from 2009, the only recorded stage production of this opera.

All credit to the Wiener Staatsoper for giving this work another opportunity to confirm that this is truly a magnificent opera. Whatever you think about what history has to say about the human weaknesses and failings of Hans Pfitzner, like Luigi Palestrina he manages to compose music that lives on beyond its creator. If the conservative nature of his writing has proved not to be the work of a master who went on to inspire other masters on a musical level, it nonetheless has an important message to impart - and a challenge to incorporate it - about the transcendental qualities of music, of how an artist can rise above human earthly constraints to aspire to a higher spiritual level.

That's still a challenge to get across in an epic work of this length, and it's clear that it needs the highest level of performance and interpretation here to lift it up to its fullness. With Christian Thielemann at the helm, attention to detail and considered personal interpretation is assured. The casting is also superb with excellent performances throughout. Familiar with Michael Spyres mainly as a lyric tenor who can sing baritone with a sweetness of voice that is ideal for Rossini and Mozart, I was thoroughly impressed with his performance as Pierluigi Palestrina. Considering that he has to embody the spiritual, the artist, the human, there is a lot to take on and a lot of singing for intense though well-dispersed periods of a long opera. Wolfgang Koch is also excellent in the role of Cardinal Borromeo.

External links: Wiener Staatsoper, Wiener Staatsoper Live Streaming

Mozart - Idomeneo (Aix-en-Provence, 2022)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Idomeneo, Re di Creta

Festival Aix-en-Provence, 2022

Raphaël Pichon, Satoshi Miyagi, Michael Spyres, Sabine Devieilhe, Anna Bonitatibus, Nicole Chevalier, Linard Vrielink, Krešimir Špicer, Alexandros Stavrakakis

ARTE Concert - July 2022

There's no question that Mozart's operas are beautifully expressive of the whole range of human feelings and experience. Even at the age of 24 in his earliest masterpiece Idomeneo, Re di Creta he defies the often dry conventions and expectations of the opera seria format to create a work that imbues ancient Greek mythology with a rare humanity and authenticity. A stage director can choose to work to bring those human elements out, to interpret or reinterpret them, or they can quite reasonably rely on the music to speak for itself. That appears to be the intention of the director Satoshi Miyagi at this production for Aix-en-Provence 2022, but whether it supports Mozart's music or works against it is less certain.

There is certainly nothing wrong with updating the setting of Idomeneo or using it to express the original ideas and themes in a different context. I must admit I had my doubts about it being a neat fit for the director's proposed intention of using the Japanese wartime emperor Hirohito as a substitute for Idomeneus the King of Crete, or whether this would be in any other way meaningful or revelatory, but it has to be said that this notion never really asserts influence over the performance of the work here. What is far more significant to how the opera plays out in this production is decision to present it in a Noh drama fashion, with minimal but highly stylised sets and movements.

It certainly looks impressive, achieving the same kind of glacial quality that Robert Wilson employs in his opera and stage productions, and they are - usually but not always - none the worse off for it. Consequently, the principal performers here, dressed in stylised Japanese costumes, remain expressionless with minimal movement, often raised on their own platforms at a distance from one another. The chorus meanwhile, wearing more familiar military uniforms, merge with the sets, becoming part of them, part of the while fabric of the opera.

As far as that goes it's fine, the sets remain fluid and slowly moving and changing, ensuring that everything doesn't remain too static. If Idomeneo were a typical opera seria, it might not be enough to enliven the work and make the drama come to life, but despite the qualities of the music and the fact that it does indeed speak for itself, it seemed to me that it didn't do Mozart any favours. Not only does the intention to relate this to Hirohito and the Japanese people fail to make any impression - the opera has been staged as a modern post-war conflict much more successfully elsewhere in numerous updated productions - but it even seems to almost work against and neutralise the music, and that is not a good thing.

Fortunately it doesn't quite do that thanks to conductor Raphaël Pichon. If there are any doubts that remain about the quality of this early Mozart opera and how it stacks up against his mature works, this was certainly dispelled by the musical direction. Sure, the composition of Idomeneo can't compare to the great Mozart operas with Da Ponte, but much of what is great about those later works can already be heard developing here in a truly exciting way. It's a strong enough work on its own terms - more than strong and certainly if compared to what preceded it in opera seria, it's hugely progressive, devoid of the mannerisms and much more relatable, the characters really seeming to engage with one another and not just wrapped in their own worlds. Which, when you get right down to it, might just be what Mozart's operas are all about and what makes them great.

Unfortunately the production's stylised Noh influenced staging pushes the opera back onto those mannerisms, removing emotional connections, putting physical distance between the characters. I personally found Satoshi Miyagi's direction cold and distracting, at odds with Mozart's warm sympathetic and deeply expressive music. Worse, it simply offered no way in to relate to the plot and the drama to find a reason to care about each of the characters, much less offer an interpretation as to their motivations and behaviours as others have done, particularly into the complex nature and behaviours of Elettra and the king himself. There is no denying however that the set designs and the lighting were terrific and this was beautiful to look at, and it did suit the elegant formality of Mozart's music, if not bring out anything deeper from it.

Up until the conclusion, that is. A blood red backdrop is projected against the characters, showing them set against the horror and devastation that their decisions have caused. While mainly abstract in its human shapes and shadows cast against the horror of war, the suffering, the trauma, the eventual release and the recognition of the folly of its leaders acting like gods, it did hit home effectively, particularly with Mozart's music and with the soaring singing of the principals and chorus. It's here that Hirohito is most effectively evoked through the voice of the god Neptune, his broadcast voice coming from a record player that appears on its own raised platform. The slow and detached build-up might have been testing, but by the time the conclusion was reached, you were left in no doubt that this production did justice to Mozart, if perhaps not exactly find anything new in it.

Despite the impositions placed on the singers to remain mainly impassive and inexpressive, there was also much to enjoy in the singing. These are already challenging roles - Mozart composing this in 1781 for the best singers in Munich at the time - and the casting of the right kind of Mozartian voices is ideal for this production at Aix-en-Provence's Théâtre de l’Archevêché. If the director had little in the way of showing any nuance in the character of Idomeneo, who can be played sympathetically or as a misguided relic of the past who gets his just desserts, Michael Spyres's soft timbre brought warmth and humanity to the role. Soprano Sabine Devieilhe's singing brought more feeling and drama to the role of Ilia than the minimal direction allowed. Anna Bonitatibus as Idamante and Nicole Chevalier as Elettra were more constricted by their roles having little room for interpretation, but both sang superbly. With a cast like that and Mozart's music beautifully interpreted by Pinchon and the Pygmalion orchestra and chorus, the greatness of Idomeneo remains indisputable. 

Links: ARTE Concert, Festival Aix-en-Provence

Mozart - Don Giovanni (Salzburg, 2021)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Don Giovanni

Salzburger Festspiele, 2021

Teodor Currentzis, Romeo Castellucci, Davide Luciano, Mika Kares, Nadezhda Pavlova, Michael Spyres, Federica Lombardi, Vito Priante, David Steffens, Anna Lucia Richter

ARTE Concert - 8th August 2021

There are many facets to Mozart and Da Ponte's trilogy of operas, many facets of human behaviour that can be explored in them, universal traits that provide no easy answers to questions that on the surface can appear - and be played - as comedies but which underneath touch on some very disturbing subtexts. Don Giovanni can be depicted as villain or a victim of his own lusts - someone who loves too much, as someone who just isn't used to taking no for an answer, or in today's view, as a sexual predator and abuser of women. Don Giovanni is always worth a fresh perspective, but - perhaps more controversially (and it isn't often you can say that there is something more controversial in a production than the stage direction of Romeo Castellucci) - Mozart's score is also worth looking at in new ways. 

Teodor Currentzis has been upsetting those who like their Mozart played in the familiar Classical style for quite a while, but he's certainly not the only conductor finding more interesting facets to Mozart using historically informed direction on period instruments and using reduced ensemble orchestration. With Mozart's opera seria works that might be more palatable - and Salzburg have presented interesting Currentzis directed productions of La Clemenza di Tito in 2017 and Idomeneo in 2019 - but Don Giovanni is a different matter altogether. Rather than simply playing it to a way that has become rote and unadventurous over the years, Currentzis again seeks new ways to explore and express the wealth of character that is within Mozart's music. Forcing the listener to really listen to it. Making it feel fresh, shiny and new again. Like a virgin.

There's a theme that a director like Castellucci would certainly seize upon in a work like Don Giovanni, but there are less obvious ways to approach that. And there's maybe an allusion to stripping away the image of the sanctity of Mozart being forced into accepted conventional interpretations in the opening scene of Salzburg's Don Giovanni. In a white temple like setting, workmen strip away the Christian iconography of a church, leaving the elegant bare white edifice to show its basic underlying structure, ready to be built upon anew. A flame burns away any remaining holiness and indeed, the first person seen on the stage is a naked woman (well, it is Castellucci), one presumably no longer a virgin, since she has evidently been seduced/raped by Don Giovanni.

Rather than keep it simple and minimal, Castellucci then bombards the stage with all manner of effects, symbols and supernumeraries. A car crashes down on to the stage, a wheelchair, basketballs, a broken piano. Don Giovanni, Leporello and the Commendatore are dressed in white, while the avenging Donna Anna comes storming on in black with a retinue of Furies that surround and strive to bring Don Giovanni to justice for his crimes against women. It looks like Don Giovanni has juggled too many basketballs this time. The recitative as Don Giovanni and Leporello make their escape is played out with cartoon eyes on a black screen, Donna Anna mourns the crutch of Commendatore, Don Ottavio pours red powder on his arms and punctures a line of basketballs in his promise of securing revenge.

This is evidently not the Don Giovanni you might be familiar with but neither is it inappropriate to the tone of the work and its treatment by Mozart and da Ponte. It might do something different with the visuals and the pace, the use of instruments and emphasis of the music, but it still engages with the themes and the tone of the work. It's not so much Don Giovanni's debauchery and libidinous lifestyle that are condemned here as much as his failure to accept responsibility for and deal with the consequences of his actions. He leaves death and the destruction of lives behind him (something seized upon with a more political slant in Michael Haneke's version), including a suggestion that he has abandoned a pregnant Donna Elvira (Federica Lombardi doubled with a naked pregnant woman), while a child also pursues Don Giovanni on the stage.

The lightness of the treatment and the heaviness of the underlying implications is borne out in the music. Leporello's 'Madamina, il catalogo è questo' has a lovely lightness, the piano weaving in and out of the musicAeterna arrangement, the beauty of the aria contrasted with the sinister note behind the revelations of conquests. Castellucci provides plenty of contrasting imagery, mixing the absurdity with the comedy, with pointed symbolism and contemporary references that include a photocopier. Likewise he brings Michael Spyres's Don Ottavio on wearing a Danish mountaineer outfit (a familiar inscrutable symbol also used in his Moses und Aron) accompanied by a poodle. It looks ridiculous (several characters have a live animal avatar - Masetto a mouse, Don Giovanni a goat) but takes nothing away from the chilling account of Donna Anna on the recognition of her father's murderer, the scene re-enacted as a Greek tragedy.

Which is something that the legend of Don Giovanni could certainly be said to aspire to, it not being entirely out of place with the opera seria reworkings of mythology that preceded Mozart in the earlier part of the 18th century. Just as Mozart brought a contemporary edge to that genre in his progressive music and Da Ponte in the humanisation of the drama while still retaining the otherworldly elements that elevate it to grand drama - so Castellucci brings a corresponding touch of re-interpretation of an epic myth for a modern age while reflecting and respecting the underlying complexity of the work's blend of surrealism, comedy, tragedy, symbolism and instruction on the consequences of moral dissolution. In an expansive gesture that brings 150 women as extras to the stage, Don Giovanni here is held to account for his crime not by a stone statue, but by the women he has wronged. 

Teodor Currentzis seems to be doing his best to submerge as much as possible any of Mozart's familiar melodic embellishments. Whether this is for the sake of upsetting those who like their Mozart played in a conventionally acceptable way, whether it's out of sheer bloody-mindedness to stake out is reputation for being a fearless re-interpreter of Mozart, or whether he finds it appropriate to reevaluate and strip away the varnish of mannerisms that the work has accrued over the years and present a more historically informed account of the score is something the musicologists can argue over. Aligned with the drama an Castellucci's sensibility, the music however doesn't lose a fraction of its distinctive Mozartian qualities of beauty, sensitivity or dramatic flair.

Think what you might also of Romeo Castellucci's contribution, whether it adds any value or provides any new insights but - much like his stunning Die Zauberflöte for La Monnaie - it's certainly original, often spectacular and rarely dull, always surprising with some new idea that puts emphasis on different aspects of the work. It's also not without the occasional bit of flash/bang showmanship, which Mozart wasn't beyond employing himself. Castellucci has become a stylist in white haze, his productions as distinctive now as Robert Wilson's geometric minimalism in blue, and just as visually arresting in their conception, design and execution. This looks simply stunning and impressively choreographed.

It has to be said however, that it's more of an "interesting" production than a great one. Despite the efforts to bring "real people" onto the stage (see Castellucci's rather more successful Die Zauberföte again) and the impressive efforts to pull it all together into a coherent whole, it doesn't always succeed in finding the human warm within the work where it traditionally should. The idea of making Don Giovanni and Leporello look almost identical is another fine idea that makes the identity confusion more realistic, but it also loses something when the two baritones are practically indistinguishable.

Perhaps just as much at fault as the production, the singing didn't quite measure up or compensate for the lack of human warmth in the production. The singing is generally fine, and of a very high standard, as you would expect, but despite good performances from Davide Luciano as Don Giovanni (stripped fully naked at the finale) and Vito Priante as Leporello, and with perhaps the sole exception of a mighty performance from Nadezhda Pavlova as Donna Anna, the production never allowed you to engage with any of the characters of at least sympathise with their dilemma. Overall, this feels like an admirable production with good ideas and visuals, that despite its controversial trappings, plays out nonetheless in a rather run of the mill fashion.

Links: Salzburg Festival, ARTE Concert

Gounod - La Nonne sanglante (Paris, 2018)

Charles Gounod - La Nonne sanglante

L'Opéra Comique, Paris - 2018

Laurence Equilbey, David Bobée, Michael Spyres, Vannina Santoni, Marion Lebègue, Jérôme Boutillier, Jodie Devos, Jean Teitgen, Luc Bertin-Hugault, Enguerrand De Hys, Olivia Doray, Pierre-Antoine Chaumien, Julien Neyer, Vincent Eveno

Naxos - Blu-ray

Composed in 1854, Gounod's second opera La Nonne sanglante ('The Bloody Nun') is very much a numbers opera, a five-act Gothic horror in the manner of Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable featuring the expected family affairs and romantic complications, all mixed up in war, religion and high drama. Although Gounod takes full advantage of the situations and brings a particular French romantic touch of melody and dynamic to it, for various reasons La Nonne sanglante failed to make an impression or gain a foothold in the repertoire, and it has taken the centenary celebrations of Gounod's birth in 1818 to raise the bloody nun from the dead, so to speak.

The fate of the opera was sealed during its initial run, the profane subject matter of the vengeful ghost of a murdered nun regarded as being distasteful by the new director of the Paris Opéra, the style out of fashion with changing tastes in the theatre. La Nonne sanglante was immediately cancelled and it's been buried ever since. On its own terms however, La Nonne sanglante was far from a failure, Gounod taking advantage of having a much broader canvas to work with, composing marches and choruses, love arias and religious prayers, weddings and drinking songs that he would unquestionably turn into something greater in Faust a few years later.

The setting of the scene for the high drama that follows is established well in the Opéra Comique's production directed by David Bobée. A single murder - which is to have further significance later - is followed by a pitched battle that indeed has the ferocity of one long fought. A feud has been running in Bohemia between the Moldaw and Luddorf armies for many years, and played out in slow motion during the overture, there's a repetition, a constant rising and falling that makes it seem never-ending. A priest however brings the feud to a provisional halt by suggesting that Agnès, the daughter of the Baron of Moldaw marry Théobald, one of the Baron of Luddorf's sons.

Luddorf's other son, Rodolphe isn't best pleased when he hears the news. He's been in love with Agnès, intending to marry her himself. He suggests to Agnès that they meet at midnight and run away together. It won't do much for the peace settlement, but the notion holds more terror for Agnès than that, for it's at midnight that the ghost of the Bloody Nun makes her rounds of Moldow castle. Dismissive of the ghost story, Rodolphe turns up at the appointed hour and swears eternal allegiance to Agnès who he believes has come disguised as the ghost in order to escape but in reality Rodolphe has sealed his union with the Bloody Nun. To be released from her power he must avenge her death, and her killer is revealed to be Rodolphe's own father.

Up to that point, La Nonne Sanglante is tremendously entertaining, but inevitably it runs out of steam as the composer is required to fill in all the usual expected numbers and situations. There's a now unfashionable ballet which is included here, but neither Gounod nor the director really know what to do with it, so there's a lot of standing and shuffling around instead of dancing. We get a requisite love aria as Rodolphe believes his love for Agnès can be rekindled that is beautifully sung but a little bit dull, so dull that Rodolphe's page Arthur falls asleep during it. Add a raucous wedding and a drinking song, and it pads out the next two acts fairly conventionally.

The stage direction begins to run out of ideas too, although it makes the most of the first half of the work. There's not much required or presented in terms of sets, the stage dark and monochromatic, giving a fine Gothic character and more than adequate mood for the appearance of the ghost of the nun in her blood-stained white robes. It's Michael Spyres who has to carry much of the drive and conviction of the work, and his sweet tenor is well suited to the role of Rodolphe, but there are solid performances also from Vannina Santoni as Agnès and Jérôme Boutillier as Luddorf. Jodie Devos is a bright Arthur and Marion Lebègue presents a suitably scary presence as the nun, even though you think a bigger voice could have done more with this role.

If there's any reason for reviving La Nonne sanglante aside from mere curiosity value, it has to be for Gounod's score and how he skillfully and entertainingly brings all those elements together, particularly in the first two acts. Laurence Equilbey and the Insula Orchestra make the most of the drama and the melodic flow of the score, which is not as overblown or overheated as Meyerbeer. Amends are made for the injustice of the nun's fate after 150 years of neglect, but as entertaining as its return from the dead might be, the fate of La Nonne sanglante after the Gounod centenary celebrations could well be burial once again.

At the very least however, it has been given an extended life in a stunning HD presentation on Blu-ray from Naxos. This is a great time to be enjoying opera. Not only are we able to share in the brief revivals of such fascinating rare works on DVD, but the High Resolution audio presentation of works like this is just incredible. The Blu-ray of La Nonne sanglante is all-region compatible, with subtitles in English, German, Japanese and Korean. The clarity of the image and the recording of the live performance is excellent, the performance thankfully not obscured by dry ice. All the atmosphere is there in Gounod's score.

Usually there's little to choose between the stereo and surround mixes other than preference (and individual home system setups); here both are marvellous but the atmospheric surround mix has the edge. The LPCM stereo mix sounds great on headphones, with marvellous clarity to the score and a good balance between the music and the singing. In DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 however the opera really comes alive, the music beautifully distributed to the surrounds, exhibiting all the clarity and detail of the score and the performances, creating a wonderful theatrical ambience. Voices ring out - particularly Spyres lyrical tenor voice - and the big dramatic moments hit home.

Links: L'Opéra Comique

Handel - Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (Aix-en Provence, 2016)

George Frideric Handel - Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno

Festival d' Aix-en-Provence, 2016

Emmanuelle Haïm, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Sabine Devieilhe, Franco Fagioli, Sara Mingardo, Michael Spyres

ARTE Concert - 6th July 2016

Written by the young 22 year old composer in 1707, Handel's first oratorio, Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno ('The Triumph of Time and Disillusionment') is quite evidently an allegorical work. As such there can surely be no objection for a director like Krzysztof Warlikowski applying his usual (unusual) distinctive treatment in this production at Aix-en-Provence. Warlikowski's production succeeds on both those levels, and under the musical direction of Emmanuelle Haim, it's something of a musical delight as well.

The main purpose of a staging of such a work is surely to find the universal characteristics within the oratorio's contemplation of the struggle between the Beauty, Pleasure, Time and Disenchantment and present it in such a way that makes it meaningful to a modern audience. If you can dramatise a work that was never intended to be performed theatrically in a full staging, so much the better. Warlikowski makes his pitch perfectly clear, as he often does, through an opening short film.

Beauty has been indulging in rather too much Pleasure, popping pills in a nightclub, ending up looking rather the worse for wear on a trolley being wheeled through the corridors of a hospital's emergency unit. When she comes around, Beauty finds herself in a room that is a cross between a cinema and an operating theatre, a place of the mind evidently where - sprawled out, still looking somewhat wasted, mascara running and throwing up occasionally - she can contemplate the ravages of Time and the Disillusionment for the truth of what follows on from her devotion to Pleasure.

And really you need someone like Warlikowski directing a somewhat 'academic' work like this. There's nothing academic about Handel's music of course - Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno has many pieces that would later feature in some of the composer's greatest works, and the oratorio itself would be revised a number of times - but its sober reflections on mortality in the dry oratorio format don't necessarily lend themselves to great stage drama. There's is however never a dull moment here. Warlikowski brings it to life, and it is full of life, finding the human sentiments that lie behind the allegory and relating it to the tragedy of it all.

Helping fill up the stage Warlikowski inevitably employs a larger cast than the four singers and the chorus who contribute to the oratorio, but the extras are not just there to make up the numbers. Most prominently there is a young man, dancing to the rhythms on his headphones - which nonetheless fits the youthful rhythm of Handel's music perfectly - who perhaps represents Youth. His function is to illustrate how beauty, caught up in its own pleasure, is oblivious to time. Youth passes however - quite literally here, the young man ending up on an operating trolley, mourned with heart rending sadness by Beauty. But there are also many other young women who look on at the spectacle of Beauty's fall, all of it reminding you that there is nothing 'academic' about the subject.

This is by no means Warlikowski's only idea or contribution. The director includes a short film before the interval to bring the ghost of Jacques Derrida into the equation, and the division of the stage itself perhaps even resembles the two hemispheres of the brain separated by a corridor or cortex. One side is lit up while the other is in darkness but occasionally both sides spark with life, the left largely being the domain of Beauty and Pleasure, the right Time and Disillusionment. At significant points all four figures come together gathering around the table like a family; always in dispute, but dependent on each other to maintain a happy equilibrium.

There's much to admire in the staging and in how it manages to engage the spectator, but the beauty of Handel's music and the singing of the cast assembled here would be impressive enough on its own. Emmanuelle Haïm and her period instrument Concert d'Astrée ensemble give the work a wonderful edge, energy and rhythmic precision. Sabine Devieilhe is unquestionably the star that carries the show here, always impressive in technique, range and timbre, but investing the role of Beauty here with some degree of sensitivity. Her sparring and harmonising with Franco Fagioli's countertenor Pleasure is magnificent, the two making an attractive team. Michael Spyres is a wonderfully lyrical singer but his tenor voice is perhaps too 'sweet' for Time. Together with Sara Mingardo's Disillusionment however, this was a strong cast capable of finding the human depth and meaning in Benedetto Pamphili's libretto and Warlikowski's concept that is already there in Handel's music.

Links: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Culturebox

Rossini - Aureliano in Palmira (Pesaro, 2013 - Blu-ray)

Gioachino Rossini - Aureliano in Palmira

Rossini Opera Festival, 2013

Will Crutchfield, Mario Martone, Michael Spyres, Jessica Pratt, Lena Belkina, Raffaella Lupinacci, Dempsey Rivera, Sergio Vitale, Dimitri Pkhaladze, Raffaele Costantini

Arthaus Musik - Blu-ray

Perhaps the most notable thing about Aureliano in Palmira (apart from the ancient Syrian town of Palmyra making headlines in the news at the moment) is that it was the first serious opera performed at the newly opened La Scala in Milan in 1813. What is also of musical interest is that the work catches Rossini in an intermediate period, paying homage or drawing inspiration from the 18th century opera seria, but really making strides to set the standard for a style of Italian opera that would predominate for most of the 19th century and achieve completeness in the works of Giuseppe Verdi. The opera itself, one of the last rarities to be revived at the Rossini Opera Festival, is however unfortunately rather less inspiring nowadays.

Dramatically, Aureliano in Palmira is a very dry affair. The libretto, replete with da capo arias, is unfashionably Metastasian in form, and it's not all that different in plot or treatment from Rossini's 1817 Adelaide di Borgogna. It's the familiar story of a romantic entanglement in a time of war, Aureliano the conquering power of Rome, demanding that Zenobia the strong female leader of Palmyra yield also to his romantic advances otherwise he will kill her imprisoned lover, Arbace. Rather than be dispirited by the shame and humiliation inflicted upon their ruler by the Roman aggressor, the people of Syria rally behind Zenobia and Arbace in their quest for freedom.

With its theme of a people oppressed, the opera even opening with a chorus lament, there are clear comparisons that can be drawn with Verdi's Nabucco. And even though the arias are often opera seria in style and delivery, they are dramatically attuned to the plot, developing into duets and inevitably into choruses. All of these look towards the cavatina and cabaletto structures of the bel canto and High Romantic Italian numbers opera style, and it's unquestionably fascinating to see their development here in this Rossini rarity. It's an area that has been under-explored at the Rossini Opera Festival, where the emphasis has been more on rediscovering the early comedies and doing justice to the grand operas of Mosè in Egitto and Guillaume Tell.

Aureliano in Palmira evidently doesn't hold the same kind of allure, but what this production has going for it is the team that made the revival of another 'special interest' Rossini opera such a marvel. Will Crutchfield, Jessica Pratt and Michael Spyres all contributed to making Ciro in Babilonia (1812) something much greater than it might otherwise have been, and they are also what makes this production of Aureliano in Palmira worthwhile. You could say the same about any Rossini opera, but it's a work that really needs a strong, understanding and sympathetic treatment, to say nothing of the highest musical standards.

Unfortunately, what Ciro in Babilonia also benefited from and which Aureliano in Palmira lacks is an engaging visual hook. Davide Livermore's 'silent movie' production might have seemed arbitrary, but it perfected suited the old-fashioned nature of Ciro and found a good context that would bring out the qualities of the work. Film director Mario Martone's production doesn't make any such wild leaps or modernisations in its setting (certainly nothing on the scale of Graham Vick's Bin Laden in Mosè in Egitto). It respects the Syrian/Roman period in the costumes and in the delivery, only occasionally using shifting and sliding screens to suggest distance/discord between the characters.

The most unusual element of the staging is the placement of a fortepiano on the stage itself which, along with a cello player, provide the recitativo accompaniment. That's partly down to space restrictions in the pit, but there's some effort made - not entirely successfully - to integrate it and the otherwise dry recitative into the staging itself. There are a few walk-ons in and around the audience to try and make the staging a bit more active and engaging, and the director tries to rewrite the forced happy ending with an account of the real historical facts, but none of these devices really serve to make Aureliano in Palmira any more dramatic or help drag it out of its rather predictable conventionality that borders on tedium.

Will Crutchfield had the unenviable task of creating a new critical edition of a work that had to be largely reconstructed on a best guess basis from various sources. To his credit he doesn't attempt to 'soup up' this Rossini with an expanded orchestra or a slick modern reading of the score. It's played with a period-sized orchestra and an authentic feel and drive for the opera seria roots of the work, as well as for its dramatic content. The overture it shares with Il Barbiere di Sevilla given a slightly different tone and meaning in the process. It also means we get more of the generic Rossini here in the playing and conventional rhythms, where it's left to the voices to carry much of the melody and the more sophisticated colouring.

As noted earlier then, the real delight of this production is in the casting of Michael Spyres and Jessica Pratt as Aureliano and Zenobia. As well as commanding great presence, Jessica Pratt's high note coloratura is impressive in range and expression. Her voice is less robust in the more dramatic register, but she doesn't have a lot to work other than the generic in those passages anyway. Michael Spyres is tremendous. The clarity of diction, the resonance in his voice and the lyrical force of that distinct beautiful timbre is well suited to the role and really makes it come to life. Lena Belkina has to contend with playing the castrato role of Arsace as a mezzo-soprano. She does as well as can be expected but is clearly challenged and, focussed on delivery, her performance lacks a dramatic edge.

The production is well presented on Blu-ray disc. Image and sound are both outstanding, the image perhaps slightly softer than usual on account of the low stage lighting. There's a 'making of' feature on the disc that discusses the history of the work and the efforts made to bring it back to the stage at Pesaro. The DVD is a BD50, all-region compatible, with subtitles in Italian, English, German, French, Korean and Japanese.

Berlioz - Benvenuto Cellini (ENO 2014 - Cinema Live)

Hector Berlioz - Benvenuto Cellini

English National Opera, 2014

Edward Gardner, Terry Gilliam, Michael Spyres, Pavlo Hunka, Corinne Winters, Nicholas Pallesen, Willard White, Paula Murrihy, Nicky Spence, David Soar, Morgan Pearse, Anton Rich

ENO Screen - 17 June 2014

The 'opera semi-seria' is a curious beast. Are you supposed to take it seriously or not? Half-seriously maybe? I find it a particularly problematic term when it's applied to Benvenuto Cellini. The plot of Berlioz's opera is inspired by a real historical figure (1500 - 1571) and from events described in his autobiography, but there's a considerable amount of both farce and pomposity in Berlioz's treatment of the subject. It's hard to really know what to make of it.

Benvenuto Cellini is not in any case a work that is performed very often. A production for the 2007 Salzburg Festival by Philipp Stölzl didn't make the work any easier to get on with, his staging exaggerating the farce with colourful cartoon robots, while the orchestra romped through the overblown score. I expected much the same from ex-Monty Python director Terry Gilliam, but surprisingly, the English National Opera's 2014 production of this neglected and misunderstood work actually finds a balance that is better suited to drawing out the musical and dramatic qualities of the work.

The association of Terry Gilliam with the English National Opera has clearly been creatively revitalising for both parties. As a filmmaker, Gilliam's irreverence and his single-minded determination to put his surreal and uncommercial vision up on the screen (regardless of budget) has frequently put him at odds with the Hollywood movie industry. Creatively however, Gilliam has slipped into a bit of a rut and any efforts to so something groundbreakingly different (such as the extraordinary Tideland) have proved to be box-office flops. The box-office is of prime consideration for the ENO in these ties of austerity and arts budget cuts, but there's also been a concerted effort by the house to reach out to a new audience, and Gilliam's invitation to direct opera has been very much part of that design. It's one that has drawn a lot of publicity and, most importantly, acclaim.

While Gilliam and the ENO have proved to be a good match, the combination of a maverick director like Terry Gilliam with a rather conventional and mainstream establishment composer like Hector Berlioz didn't seem to be the most natural pairing. Berlioz however, for all his considerable ability and creativity, was never fully embraced by the French musical establishment as an opera composer and struggled all his life to get his works off the ground. There are definitely parallels with Berlioz's efforts to stage his hugely ambitious grand opera Les Troyens, only to see it drastically cut and only half of the work performed in his lifetime and Gilliam's very public battle to screen his 1985 masterpiece Brazil after the film was taken out off his hands and cut into an entirely different movie by the studio.

The Damnation of Faust, Gilliam's first production with the ENO however proved beyond any doubt the viability of the director applying his talents to the opera stage as well as the suitability of his vision and temperament with that of Berlioz. It seems only natural then, looking at Berlioz's other works and discounting (for the moment) the challenges of taking on a beast like Les Troyens, to invite Gilliam back to tackle another Berlioz opera. Benvenuto Cellini is the perfect work with a central character very much in line with Gilliam's sensibility and imagination. It's a work full of colourful figures, with tragic and comic elements and grand creative and romantic gestures made in the story (in the pressures of Cellini's commission to create a vast statue for Pope Clement VII) and in the score itself.

Surprisingly, Gilliam's Benvenuto Cellini resists unnecessary clutter and caricature and plays the work fairly straight, or at least at straight as it's possible to play this work. He reserves the really big gestures for those moments (the Mardi Gras, the arrival of Pope in all his pomp and ceremony) where it's necessary to make a specific impact. All the rest is lavishly scored by Berlioz, and Gilliam wisely doesn't seek to compete with it or contribute to setting it up as parody. There are a few typically Gilliam touches in the drawing of grotesque characters and he can't resist allowing the dancers a few camp gestures, but they're just flourishes to decorate the effect and perfectly in keeping with the overall tone.

There's not much else required in the way of interpretation in Benvenuto Cellini, and there's nothing really to be gained from a modern updating either. It's a colourful historical episode that takes its amusement from the personalities involved, and Gilliam accordingly sets his staging as stylised period. Cellini, his reputation and his exploits are enough to work with on their own terms, the statue he is preparing for Pope Clement VII big enough in scale to tell you everything you need to know about the extravagance of the commission. Gilliam cheekily (ahem!) places a large model of a bottom among the work-in-progress casts littering the sculptor's workshop, but it's the perfect antidote to the grand declarations of the Pope and his dire threats to Cellini should he fail to deliver his commission.

For most of the production, Gilliam lets the work speak for itself, focussing mainly on keeping the characters personalities real and defining their relationships credibly without letting too much farce get in the way. With Edward Gardner conducting, this works very well. Berlioz's score emphasises and underlines, swirling with clever flourishes, harmonies and melodies, and Gardner just goes with the flow. Musically and dramatically,it's enough to keep things moving, and Gilliam clearly has a good team of movement directors and choreographers who know how to keep it all visually interesting. When those grand gestures are called for however, Gilliam pulls out all the stops, converting the Coliseum itself into a grand Mardi Gras celebration, with colourful tickertape parades of huge puppets, whirling acrobats and dancers.

The attention to detail in the characterisation is extended to the cast, who similarly play their roles without unnecessary exaggeration. Most of them are caricatures of one sort or another, either romantic love-interests or cartoon villains, but are played and sung with verve by the cast. The most flamboyant is Pope Clement VII - but this is clearly called for in all the ceremonial music that accompanies his entrances. Willard White however anchors it with a solid, serious performance, his Pope seemingly oblivious in his self-importance to how ridiculous he looks and acts. 

Where it not for the fact that the performances are universally good, you suspect that Michael Spyres could carry this production almost single-handedly. His is a gloriously sung and warmly characterised Cellini. Even singing in English - translated well, if not quite with the same lyrical flow of the original French (now competing on an international stage via live cinema relays, the ENO really need to review this English-only policy) - Spyers rich musical voice is a delight, ensuring that there's real character and personality behind all the visual and aural extravagance of Benvenuto Cellini.

Rossini - Ciro in Babilonia

Rossini - Ciro in Babilonia

Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro, 2012

Will Crutchfield, Davide Livermore, Ewa Podleś, Jessica Pratt, Michael Spyres, Robert McPherson, Carmen Romen, Mirco Palazzi, Raffaeli Constantini

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

Dressing Rossini's Ciro in Babilonia up as a silent movie sounds like a bit of an arbitrary or frivolous choice, but there's no denying that Davide Livermore's production does at least inject some life into Rossini's otherwise stodgy Biblical drama.  I was going to say "inject some colour" into the work, but since the colour scheme here is primarily black-and-white, that doesn't seem appropriate, particularly when all the colour the work needs is already there in the detail of Rossini's writing for the singers, and that hasn't been neglected here either.  Singing and staging combined in this way, the impact achieved for this particular Rossini work - one that would unlikely ever be considered as one of the composer's greats - is simply tremendous.  This is another coup for the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro.

More than just being a random concept however, there's some method and perhaps even some playful commentary behind David Livermore's silent cinema concept.  The director previously styled Rossini's earliest work Demetrio e Polibio as a backstage recreation of the ghosts of the opera's first performance - which, considering that it had remained in obscurity for centuries since its first performances, was a clever and meaningful touch.  By setting Rossini's first religious drama for the Lenten festival in Ferrara in 1812 as a silent Cecil B. De Mille Biblical epic, Livermore is also in a way looking back to a past and making a commentary about the nature of art and performance, and silent cinema perhaps has more in common with opera than you might think.

Ciro in Babilonia is, it has to be said, a terribly old-fashioned work and not one that is likely to stand up well to modernisation.  It's not Mosè in Egitto (or indeed Moïse et Pharaon), and it's unlikely to be able to sustain a radical exploration of its concepts by a director like Graham Vick.  There's an acknowledgement however here that the work - like silent cinema - has nonetheless a certain charm and a quality in its unique means of expression.  The dialogue is far from naturalistic, the treatment of the Biblical story is hardly historically accurate but, like the old-fashioned gestures and expressions of silent-movie actors, the declarations and old-style operatic mannerisms are similarly a now dated means of expression used to reach out and communicate deeper sentiments to an audience.  Without resorting to irony then, Davide Livermore's silent movie concept - complete with projections, tramline scratches and even with fortepiano continuo - works on that level.

Delivered on commission, presumably rattled out at speed in the composer's customary manner, Ciro in Babilonia might not seem like a work that is likely to reveal any new depths or facets, but the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro once again prove that even the most minor Rossini works have considerable qualities and individual merits.  Ciro in Babilonia doesn't have the gravity of later Rossini in attention to musical expression and characterisation, the all-purpose melodies used here apparently with little consideration for tone of mood and situation and somewhat at odds with the inflated pronouncements of the Biblical declamations, but there is nonetheless a degree of thoughtfulness and sophistication in the writing and in the construction of the work itself.  Directing from the fortepiano, Will Crutchfield leads an fine account of the work that shows that the opera indeed has qualities worth examining.

The production then plays fully to the strengths of the subject as well as the nature of Rossini's vibrant and melodic score.  The silent movie concept is very clever in the way that it allows the old-fashioned nature of the opera to actually "work".  I can't imagine any other way that this could be done that would be half as effective.  It's entertaining, it's involving, it's highly entertaining and simply just marvellous to watch.  If this were indeed a movie, there'd have to be an Oscar award just for the Costume Design and Make-up alone.  The stage concept can however only take this so far, and unless there are real merits in the work itself, it's not going to be enough to hold you for the full three hours.  The Pesaro team (and Caramoor from where this production originated) recognise however that the true worth of Ciro in Babilonia lies in the singing performances, and accordingly they bring together a remarkable cast here that individually and collectively deliver one of the most astonishing performances seen at the festival in recent years.

Evidently Rossini tailored his writing to suit specific singers, but more than just to show off their range, the composer clearly took advantage of their abilities to place it in the service of the drama.  We can never know how such works sounded in their original performances, but on the very rare occasion when you have singers of sufficient ability, stature and character who understand the nature of bel canto, you get a glimpse of the true quality of a Rossini opera.  The cast in this production are, quite frankly, just phenomenal.  The role of Ciro, for example, requires the full richness of sound and the range of tessitura that only a true contralto can achieve, and you only realise that when you hear Ewa Podleś sing the role.  Her first scene in Act I, 'Ahi! Come il mio dolore, come calmar potrò?' is astonishing in its delivery, performance and technique, but it's the combination of that contralto voice with the other singers that gives the work real depth and range - and Rossini even provides an unaccompanied trio at the end of the prison scene in Act II to show this off.

Ciro is however by no means the only challenging role in the opera, and this production benefits from - and actually needs - exceptionally strong performers in the other roles.  Jessica Pratt impressed in the Pesaro production of Adelaide di Borgogna (even if the work itself and the production were a little bit lacking), and she's even more impressive here as Amira.  It's a spellbinding performance of extraordinary technical virtuosity, but more than that it's also fully in service of the drama and the nature of the production.  Michael Spyres also plays up the silent movie villain role of Baldassare, but has a gorgeous lyrical deep rich tenor that navigates the demands of the role consistently and with wonderful expression.  Robert McPherson's Arbace is more in the style of the light Italian lyrical tenor and just glides along here beautifully in a way that perfectly complements the other voices.  Mirco Palazzi's solid, deep and resonant bass has been noted before and his Zambri here is just another element that contributes wonderfully to the quality of the production as a whole.

Released on Blu-ray by Opus Arte, the presentation is impeccable.  This is what High Definition was made for.  The image is clear, detailed and perfectly toned, and the whole performance is well filmed, with quite a lot of tight close-ups.  The quality of the PCM and 5.0 Surround audio tracks also contributes to an appreciation of the performance and indeed the music itself.  Other than a Cast Gallery there are no extra features on the disc.  The enclosed booklet however gives information on the work and the production and also has a full synopsis of the opera.  The BD is all-region, full-HD, BD50, with subtitles in English, French, German, Japanese and Korean.