Stuart
Stratford, Oliver Mears, Samuel Dale Johnson, Natalya Romaniw, Peter
Auty, Sioned Gwen Davies, Alison Kettlewell, Anne-Marie Owens, Graeme
Broadbent, Christopher Gillett, Alexey Gusev, James Platt, Matthew
Kimble
Grand Opera House, Belfast - 28 June 2018
Pushkin's
Eugene Onegin has been praised as "an encyclopaedia of Russian life" but
it's one of those works that manages to encapsulate the characteristics and behaviours of a nation within a story of the intimate sadness and tragic fate
that life holds in store for many of us. Pushkin wrote his own tragic
Russian story, killed in a duel over a romantic dispute like Lensky
in his great masterpiece, and Tchaikovsky poured his own personal, marital and
emotional struggles into his work here, and the personal input of both creators can be deeply felt in Eugene Onegin.
It's not much
to ask to have that reflected and expect to feel deeply moved by
a performance of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, and while it rarely fails to hit the mark,
there are many ways of approaching the subject. At one extreme you can
have Stefan Herheim turning the work indeed into "an encyclopaedia of
Russian life" complete with cosmonauts, Red Army troops and a dancing bear taking it right up to the
present day, making the point that the Russian character - as well as
the essential human character - remains largely unchanged. At the other
minimalist extreme, Robert Carsen ties the emotional impact of the work
and the course of a life to the colours of the seasons. Others, such as Krzysztof Warlikowski, have focussed
on how much of Tchaikovsky's life and troubled sexual identity can be
clearly mapped onto the characters in the story.
Oliver Mears, the current artistic director of the Royal Opera House in Covent
Garden and former director of NI Opera, makes a return visit with his
Scottish Opera production of Eugene Onegin and doesn't attempt anything
quite as radical as the above examples, but in another way it taps into
the idea of simple lives caught up in something greater. What it does manage to do
is grasp that sense of the scope of life and love, of the personal and
intimate placed within the greater context of life, memory and the
passing of time; the madness and insensitivity of youth that can have an
impact that resonates through a whole life and that we can only grasp
the enormity of it when it's far too late to change anything.
Mears
employs a simple enough device to get this across, having the silent
figure of an elderly Tatyana recall and rewatch a significant event in
her youth that would forever determine its future direction, all of it taking place in a single room of fading memory. I was immediately
resistant to the idea, since the ending in Tchaikovsky's opera - and the melancholic tone of the work throughout - already
places the work into the context of memory and the passing of time.
Tatyana's rejection of the repentant Onegin at the end of the opera,
even though she is clearly in love with him, is an immensely powerful
conclusion that could hardly be delivered in a more effective manner
with the addition of another rejection of Tatyana finally tearing up the
letter and forever setting the matter to rest.
On the
other hand it's quite plausible that the matter between Tatyana and
Onegin might certainly be over, but both will still carry the regret for
the rest of their lives. If it doesn't make the conclusion any more
devastating, it succeeds in driving the point home,
particularly as Stuart Stratford and the Scottish Opera Orchestra
deliver the final blows mercilessly after succeeding in holding the
audience in a state of romantic melancholy for the larger part of the
performance, conserving those energies for the other real moments of emotional
impact; in Onegin's rejection of Tatyana's love letter and in the
tragic and foolhardy death of Lensky in the duel.
There
are other ways of showing how we can end up paying for the folly of
youth later in life, but most obviously it's Onegin who carries this
burden. One of the best ways I've seen this done is in the 2013 Royal Opera House production, where Onegin is led during the Polonaise on a dance
through a constant progression of women that gradually wears him down
with the passing of the years. It leaves him in the perfect state to
have his eyes opened to the opportunities of real love and stability in
his life that have been lost. Interestingly, with an elderly Tatyana
coming back to a dusty, decaying Larin mansion, once filled with life,
Mears's direction makes you consider everything else that has been lost
over time. For the first time really the Lensky's tragedy carried through for
me, and I wondered what had become of Olga and the direction her life
subsequently must have taken. Would Lensky's death have stayed with her
or would the memory have faded with time and the other needs of life?
It's
essential that, like Pushkin and Tchaikovsky, the reader or listener
identify with the characters in the story and see their lives in that
kind of context; Onegin as tragedy plus time. By casting the net of
time further - Herheim's production certainly does this, and so too does
Kasper Holten's doubling of the older Tatyana and Onegin looking back
on their younger counterparts - Oliver Mears captures that sense of the
work not so much as an encyclopaedia of Russian life, but just an
encyclopaedia of life. There are many perspectives you can place on
Eugene Onegin, but the most important one is what the individual
listener and spectator brings to it; and the passing of time, the
changes it brings and the regrets that still sting are something that
everyone can relate to.
That's not to say that the viewer
has to do all the work. Far from it. While the perspective Oliver Mears introduces sets the work in a wider context, Stuart Stratford and the Scottish Opera
Orchestra permit the listener to feel the heat of life and the
complexity of sentiments associated with it in every note of
Tchaikovsky's beautiful melodies and dances. The singing and
characterisation are critical however, particularly for Tatyana and
Onegin, and the casting was nigh on perfect here. Natalya Romaniw was
simply stunning. If she was a little blank and cool in her acting,
frozen mortification works well for Tatyana, and all the yearning was there
in a superbly sung performance. She had a perfect counterfoil in
Samuel Dale Johnson's Onegin, initially aloof (making an entrance on a
live horse!) and little by little falling prey to his own personality
flaws. There were certainly no flaws in his singing. The quality of
singing and characterisation of Olga and Lensky by Sioned Gwen Davies
and Peter Auty was evident in how much you cared about their fates.
Eugene
Onegin can sometimes risk being a little aloof and cool in its
mannerisms of detachment if the music and singing aren't all perfectly
aligned to bring out the true sentiments. That necessarily goes beyond
the principals, the larger picture of life and the impact of time
extending to the supporting characters, from Madame Larina and the nurse
Filippyevna's views and life experiences, to Prince Gremin's reflections on
married life and love later in life. The chorus, the dancers, also all
contribute to the sense of life viewed comprehensively in all its
richness, but with an underlying melancholy for the impact of that time exerts on it.
Everything that is great about Eugene Onegin comes together perfectly
in this Scottish Opera production.
Modest Mussorgsky - Boris Godunov L’Opéra national de Paris, 2018
Vladimir
Jurowski, Ivo van Hove, Ildar Abdrazakov, Evdokia Malevskaya, Ruzan
Mantashyan, Alexandra Durseneva, Maxim Paster, Boris Pinkhasovich, Ain
Anger, Dmitry Golovnin, Evgeny Nikitin, Peter Bronder, Elena Manistina,
Vasily Efimov, Mikhail Timoshenko, Maxim Mikhailov, Luca Sannai
Culturebox - 7 June 2018
There's
a sense of the epic in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov that is entirely in
keeping with the importance of the period in Russian history and with
the nature of the Russian characteristics displayed in it. What is also
essential about Mussorgsky's epic vision for the work is its ability
not just to capture a sense of intimacy and personal conflict within that
historical drama - a common enough characteristic in opera - but how he
is able to make those personal sentiments just as grand and epic without
losing their human character. Mussorgsky takes human sentiments of
sadness, regret, guilt and internal conflict and gives them a
Macbeth-like Shakespearean depth and complexity on a scale that befits their importance.
You get a sense of that
right from the start in the opera, with the people of Russia calling out
in chorus for him to be their new ruler. You also get a sense of how
Boris feels about this from his very first line: "My soul grieves". He
has a heavy duty to perform to live up to the expectations of the
Russian people and do them justice, but there is also a sense of guilt
and remorse for the manner in which he has come to power, with rumours
already accusing him of murdering the young Tsarevitch Dmitriy from the
line of Ivan the Terrible to ascend to the throne himself. An accumulation of
misfortune and other forces, including the rise of a Pretender to the
throne in Lithuania, turns the people against Godunov, and the combined
results strike the Tsar in deeply troubling ways. Finding
a balance of scale between epic and intimate is one matter, but there
is also the consideration of which version of Boris Godunov is the most
authentic and effective in achieving the necessary impact. Historically
it's been the revised 1872 version that has been most commonly used,
and understandably so as it contains many extensions to Mussorgsky's
brilliant score, but Rimsky-Korsakov's reworking of the original
materials has also been popular. Gradually however, we are seeing more
productions of the original 1869 version, commonly with a few additions
from the revised 1872 version that are deemed too good to be left out.
The
2018 Paris production however, directed by Ivo van Hove and conducted
by Vladimir Jurowski, takes very much a purist approach by sticking to
the complete 1869 original version of Boris Godunov, with no Polish Act
nor any of the 1872 additions. It's purist at least in musical terms,
but clearly with the controversial Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove involved in the project it's going to be anything but purist as far as
the staging goes. That presents an intriguing team that should find a
good balance between the grandly epic and the deeper underlying personal
sentiments and in many respects both sides of the work are well
represented, but the production seems to be more effective for the
choice of the stripped down force of the 1869 version than for anything
that Jurowski or van Hove bring to the work.
As is usually the case with this director, van Hove relies on a minimal staging, abstract-modern
with no period or historical trappings. The use of the space, opened
up with back projections of the Russian people and landscapes that are
mirrored to the sides, permits a sense of epic scale that can also close
the work down to a more intimate level of intensity. A staircase is
often present, leading up and also leading down beneath the stage, the
symbolism of which is clearly apparent, representing rise and fall, and
the separation of the ruling classes from the people. Other scenes are
effectively austere, such as between Pimen and Grigoriy in the cell of
the monastery in Chudov, needing no further elaboration than two people
in near-darkness recounting events in words and divulging the thoughts
that run through their minds.
How much of the success in
getting this across is down to effective direction, how much is down to
the musical performance and how much of this is simply down to the power
of the story and Mussorgsky's scoring of it is debatable, but it seems
to me that it's Mussorgsky's score that does the bulk of the work. Even
then Jurowski's conducting seems rather restrained and unfocussed,
although it's hard to judge fairly from an internet stream (I'll be
listening again more closely to the live radio broadcast on France
Musique this weekend), and yet there's no question that the drama and the
dynamic is all there. Likewise Ivo van Hove doesn't seem to bring much
to an interpretation of the drama, but it doesn't get in the way of it
either.
There are a few stylistic touches applied, but
perhaps the only significant twist is at the conclusion. Not only does
Boris Godunov finally and dramatically succumb to the pressures of
family problems, famine blighting the country and growing instability in
his mind over his murder of Dmitriy, but his son dies too at the hand
of the Pretender Grigoriy. It's a dark dramatic moment that doubles
down on the music that Mussorgsky provides for this finale and, as
Boris's son's reign was indeed cut short in deference to the False
Dmitriy, it even effectively conveys the suggestion in Mussorgsky's
music that the conflict and turmoil of this historical period is far
from over.
Ideally you want a Russian cast in Boris
Godunov for maximum effectiveness, at least in the principal roles, and
there's little to find fault with in team assembled for the Paris
production. Ildar Abdrazakov is perhaps a little too smooth and lacking
the necessary depth and edge to get across the full conflict of Boris
Godunov. He sings the role well, but there's not enough emotion in the
voice and too much overplaying in the acting to try to compensate for
it. Ain Anger is an appropriately grave austere and occasionally
ominous Pimen, there's a similar good balance of restraint and gravity
in Maxim Paster's Shuysky, and Vasily Efimov brings vocal
colour and some hard truths as the Holy Fool. Lots to enjoy in the
singing performances then with strong a strong chorus combining to make
a convincing case for the original 1869 version of Boris Godunov
becoming the canonical version of this great work.
George
Benjamin, Katie Mitchell, Stéphane Degout, Barbara Hannigan, Gyula
Orendt, Peter Hoare, Samuel Boden, Jennifer France, Krisztina Szabó,
Andri Björn Róbertsson
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden - 26 May 2018
I
think it's fair to say that George Benjamin and Martin Crimp have paid
more attention to the structure than the plot of their latest opera, and
judging by the interviews with both of them in the Royal Opera House
programme for its world premiere they'd probably be the first to admit
it. That's not to say that there is anything wrong with that in an opera
where the abstraction of music and its construction have an important
part to play in addition to the dramatic narrative. As it happens
however, Lessons in Love and Violence is not only brilliantly
structured, it also seem to achieve exactly what it sets out to achieve,
and perhaps more than you might expect from the title.
Maybe
that kind of tight focus without any unnecessary over-elaboration is
all we need in a situation, and certainly Benjamin's previous
collaboration with playwright Martin Crimp, Written on Skin, is just as
tightly and effectively delineated. But there might also be something
more that we can derive from the artistry of the composer's musical
interpretation of the text, from Katie Mitchell's direction and from the
singing performances themselves. Certainly every element of the work
has had the utmost attention, thought, precision and talent applied to
its component parts, and in the combination of them raise the work to
much more than the sum of them.
The lesson in love and
violence that Benjamin and Crimp (and Mitchell and Degout and Hannigan
et al) give us - or rather the lesson that they show us being passed on
from one generation to the next - is thematically similar to Written on Skin and likewise based on a historical event
and an old text, but reflected to some extent through a modern-day
perspective. Drawn from, or perhaps more inspired by Marlowe's play
'Edward II', Lessons in Love and Violence is based on the situation (and
violence) that ensues when the king's military advisor Mortimer takes
offense at the favour and influence that Edward II's lover Gaveston has over the king,
over the position it leaves the queen Isabel in, for the scandal it is
causing and the harm that is doing to a nation slipping into
instability and civil war.
Divided into seven scenes,
running to only 90 minutes without an interval, the drama and phrasing
of the dialogue is certainly mannered and not particularly naturalistic,
but the focus is more on mood than exposition, on the accumulation of
slights and conflicts, on personality and behaviour, all of it leading
from love to acts of cruelty and barbarism. Watching its delivery and
trajectory, it's easy to think that the work is rather laboured in terms
of being meticulously thought out and almost, some might say, too
academic an exercise in putting a situational drama to music. That might
be the case but for the fact that in performance it really doesn't
show.
All you see is a drama of remarkable concision in
its concentration of musical and dramatic forces towards those essential
themes, the work breathing sensual fire and menace. Crimp's phrasing is intense, direct and unadorned, repeating
phrases, overlapping dialogues. Benjamin's score matches the
fluctuations of mood and dynamic, dreamily sensual one moment, slow and
sinister the next, harsh and dissonant the next. Combined they provide
not so much a history lesson as a lesson in how love is viewed as weakness
and how violence permits one to achieve personal and political ends.
The lesson is well learned by the young king who observes the
machinations of Mortimer and Isabel, and the result is that the violence
is turned back on them. At the same time however, the underlying story,
character and personalities revealed by the music, the direction and
the singing ensure that this is never purely considered in an abstract
or academic manner but closely related to human emotions and behaviours
which can then be applied in a wider context.
Which is
what Katie Mitchell's contribution brings to the work in collaboration
with set and costume designer Vicki Mortimer, using some of their familiar
traits. The setting is relatively modern-day, removing the subject from
being tied to a historical period drama. The characters sometimes move
in slow motion to enhance action or freeze the surrounding drama to
bring focus to the singer, but the mood and rhythms are always fully
attuned to the score and the text. There is also not unexpectedly a
strong feminist vision the Mitchell brings to the work that is not
necessarily explicit in the drama. Although it's the king's young son
who brings to an end (or perpetuates) the cycle of violence at the
conclusion of the opera with the execution of Mortimer, it's his young
sister (a non-singing role) who wields the gun here - a turn of events
that puts you in mind of Mitchell's work on the Purcell derived opera
Miranda.
Hand-picked for the roles, the cast is simply
superb and it's really hard to imagine any better singers fulfilling the
roles, complementing each other and striking exciting contrasts.
Singing impeccably in English, the French baritone Stéphane Degout
sounds better than ever as the King (he's never mentioned by title as
Edward II), striking out away from being the go-to Pelléas, but still
bringing a wonderful soaring lyricism to another role that flirts with
the danger in his relationship with Gyula Orendt's Gaveston. Barbara
Hannigan has also recently sang in Pelléas et Mélisande, but there's a
rather more steely edge to her character as the queen Isabel, delivering
barbed inflections to the text that rise of course to shrill heights of
imperiousness and ruthlessness. Peter Hoare is terrific as Mortimer,
and Samuel Boden impressively assertive as he takes command later in the
opera.
I mention Pelléas et Mélisande because it did
come to mind now and again watching Lessons in Love and Violence. Not
that it sounds at all like Debussy's masterpiece, but it is similarly structured
into distinct intense dream-like scenes with quite beautiful
instrumental passages between them. There's a darker outlook here
however that is also reminiscent of Berg's Wozzeck, another precisely
controlled and intense work. Benjamin however very much has his own
voice, and it's one that clearly works tremendously well in
collaboration with Martin Crimp. Their previous work Written in Skin was
deservedly hailed as a modern masterpiece soon after its initial run
and Lessons in Love and Violence is every bit its equal, on an initial
viewing perhaps an even more brilliant a work in its concept and
execution.