Thomas - Hamlet (Buxton, 2025)

Ambroise Thomas - Hamlet

Buxton International Festival, 2025

Adrian Kelly, Jack Furness, Alastair Miles, Allison Cook, Gregory Feldmann, Richard Woodall, Yewon Han, Joshua Baxter, Tylor Lamani, Dan D’Souza, Per Bach Nissen, John Ieuan Jones, James Liu

Buxton Opera House, 22nd July 2025

Adapting Shakespeare's Hamlet as a grand opéra would necessarily have imposed certain conventions that could only work against the dramatic flow of the play, not to mention the surely unacceptable requirement to rewrite the play's bleak conclusion, so you can't really fault Ambroise Thomas then for the approach he takes. I doubt that even Verdi, a contemporary of the French composer, would have done it much differently since his own versions of Shakespeare take similar necessary liberties with the plot and characterisation to fit with the conventions of the opera form. Well, he might not have included three (not just one, not just two, but three! Or at least two and a half) grand opéra drinking songs, but you can't fault Thomas for excess when it comes to this particular work. To state the obvious, there is a lot of drama in Hamlet.

And death. A lot of dark drama, death, madness, vengeance (you almost wish Verdi had given it a go on that basis, but we have Macbeth and Otello, not to mention Falstaff, and those are all great in their own way) and, drinking songs notwithstanding, that's the ominous tone that rightly dominates in Thomas's Hamlet. Correspondingly, that's the tone that is established in the 2025 Buxton International Festival production directed by Jack Furness and conducted by Adrian Kelly. It's dark, dramatic in voices, ominous in the music, dynamic in its performance, matching the pent up anger of the production's Hamlet, Gregory Feldmann, who paces the stage like a tiger, raging out self-absorbed soliloquies. It maintains this mood so effectively that it comes as no surprise then when we come to the Act IV, we find that Thomas has composed not just a mad scene for Ophelia, but a whole mad Act.

But there are genuine valid reasons for such excess of emotion in Hamlet. Perhaps Thomas's lyrical score and the truncated French language libretto shorn of the original's poetry don't get to the heart of the many factors that contribute to its depth of expression, but the music although romanticised is dramatically attuned. What it needs to work on stage (and rarely achieves in my experience) is a director who is prepared to delve into what remain contemporary and relevant themes in the play that are not fully exploited in the opera version. Jack Furness does just that in a direct and simple way without over-imposition. One of the many themes that can be drawn out of Hamlet for greater attention is the subject of what it is like to live under surveillance in a corrupt, self serving and authoritarian state and the impact this has on society. If there is any theme that is more relevant to the world (and the UK) today, a way that lets us see deep into the heart of the drama of Hamlet and see the changes happening in our contemporary world reflected back at us, it's this.

This is handled well by the director with simple side touches that don't impose on the dramatic content of the opera, but rather give it depth and context. We get a hint of it right at the beginning of the production when a lone protestor runs to the front of the stage during the wedding of the new king Claudius to his dead brother's wife Gertrude with a poster that suggests 'No Kings' or 'Not My King'. He is quickly bundled off stage by heavily armed militia who continue to carry out brutal arrests and beatings in the musical interludes between acts. At the beginning of the final act a hooded woman is led across the stage, knelt down and summarily shot in the back of the head to the shock of the audience.

Where this is relevant is in how it feeds into Hamlet's behaviour. With such state oppression and killing of civilians going on in the background, his fury at the man who he believes has killed and taken the place of his own father is compounded by his inability to translate that righteous anger into action and prevent such wider crimes against the populace. You can feel that in every scene; it's not self-pitying grief but self-questioning doubt. Hamlet rages impotently and hates himself for it, retreating into madness. In that context, the original 'happy ending' composed by Thomas which hurtles in there with no warning, works really well here. Or is made to do so by Jack Furness in the Buxton production.

Thomas's original ending sees Hamlet alive and crowned king, but since it wasn't felt that this twist would be accepted in Shakespeare's own country, it had to be reworked for the opera's London premiere a year later in 1869. Not that Hamlet expiring over the dead body of Ophelia in the final scene is any truer to Shakespeare, but letting Hamlet live and become ruler opens up more questions that it resolves. Here, since the director has laid the groundwork for what a corrupt ruler has done to his people, Hamlet knows that action is needed; the voices of the dead tell him. He knows also that he can't just unleash chaos and leave it for someone potentially worse to come along, but needs to own it. Even Shakespeare's play, although it ends on a completely different note, nonetheless has a similar message that Hamlet's story must serve as an example to others.

What also helped the opera work so well in the Buxton International Festival production was a balanced restraint in the set designs and presentation. For the most part the drama takes place on narrow platforms on a wide staircase. It looked like Sami Fendall's set designs would be inadequate for such an epic drama but - a little like Olivier Py's production of this opera - it recognises that the real drama in Hamlet is an interior struggle. As such, Jake Wiltshire's hugely effective lighting and swirling mists provided a great deal of support to make Thomas's score feel much more ominous than it might have otherwise. There were however additional touches where required; a slatted wall a cage where Hamlet prowled like a tiger unable to pounce on his vulnerable uncle, and the riverbank scene for Ophelia; both scenes simple but effective. The underlying menace was ever present in the US ICE-like immigration military troops maintaining order by rounding up protestors and troublemakers.

Conducted by Buxton's musical director Adrian Kelly, the festival orchestra gave a balanced reading of the score with no inappropriate Verdi-like bursts of thunder. Instead, the flowing melodies and the dramatic accompaniment of the score were allowed to work within the context of the stage production to achieve the necessary impact. Best of all was the singing. There was well-deserved acclaim for Yewon Han's Ophélie. She very much has a key role in the opera and not just a scene stealing role despite being written to appeal to a French audience in thrall to the character, but here the role was dramatically coherent and, as sung by Yewon Han, vocally effective. Allison Cook was excellent as Gertrude. Often the victim of Hamlet's anger and abuse, she rose to the challenge of the role and you really felt Gertrude's conflicted position. Alastair Miles is still one of the best bass singers in the UK and was outstanding as Claudius. Gregory Feldmann's intensely delivered soliloquies as Hamlet were met with surprising silence during the performance. That was more of an indication that they were too raw, too real, and it seemed rude to intrude upon his grief with applause that would have broken the spell. At the curtain call however he received and deserved every plaudit and cheer.

I haven't had a lot of time for Thomas's Hamlet up to now, but to be fair it is not performed that often and as an opera it has to compete with one of the greatest plays in the English language, in French moreover and in a grand opéra format, so the challenges are considerable. The production I saw in Strasbourg in 2011 appeared to have been heavily cut and seemed to me disjointed and I couldn't get past what had been done to Shakespeare's poetry and dramatic drive, As an actor himself, Olivier Py showed that there was considerably more you could do with the work in his 2014 production for at La Monnaie in Brussels, but Jack Furness and Buxton have proved again that neglected works with perceived flaws can have those weaknesses turned into strengths. What they do here in opera terms is what any dramatic presentation should do when confronted with a complex work like Hamlet, which is make it feel vital, relevant and relatable. And any production of Hamlet whether theatrical or operatic should have you gripped, shocked and impressed, and this superb production at Buxton did just that.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Verdi - Ernani (Buxton, 2024)

Giuseppe Verdi - Ernani

Buxton International Festival, 2024

Adrian Kelly, Jamie Manton, Roman Arndt, André Heyboer, Alastair Miles, Nadine Benjamin, Jane Burnell, Emyr Lloyd Jones, Theo Perry

Buxton Opera House - 17th July 2024

"Please be aware: This production involves death, blood, themes of physical and mental abuse, torture and suggestion of gun violence"

If you didn't know which opera you were going to see, the trigger-warning signs placed around the Buxton Opera House would at least give you a reliable hint that it could only be an early Verdi opera. In fact it could be any early Verdi opera. In this case it is indeed one of those rarely performed works, Ernani, with Act II just before the interval resounding to cries of "Sangue e vendetta!" ("blood and vengeance!"). I wonder how they managed without trigger-warnings in Verdi’s time when this was first performed in 1844. Perhaps that's why there was so much oppression and war being waged by authoritarian rulers and dictators back then, whereas now ...oh, hold on…

Sangue e vendetta indeed, there is not a lot of subtlety in early Verdi, but as was noted recently in the early Verdi compilation opera Rivoluzione e Nostalgia at La Monnaie in Brussels, there is quite a lot of rousing music and singing and a lot of full-blooded drama in these works. Engaging plots not so much, in fact with three powerful men struggling for the hand of one woman, Ernani is not unlike the situation that La Monnaie developed for their early Verdi mixtape, in as much as it's fairly standard plot fare. Attila, I seem to recall, has much the same situation. It's tempting to compare this one with Don Carlos, which itself isn't perfect, but it shows up the vast difference between early and later Verdi. One need only compare how Don Carlo (later to become Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor) here reflects on power in his aria at the tomb of Charlemagne with a similar tomb scene in Don Carlos (over the tomb indeed of Charles V) and the difference in emotional torment and soul searching is apparent.

Not that it matters greatly as far as Ernani is concerned. Plot and character isn't everything. Well, it is perhaps for most other works of opera and drama, but Verdi is a special case. In some respects the composer is tied to tradition and to the taste for historical melodrama of the day, to characters making wild romantic gestures and binding themselves unforced into grand promises that only serve to make the plot even more dramatic. There is only one thing that can make that even more dramatically powerful (powerful doesn't necessarily mean credible) and that’s Verdi's music played at full tilt.

And he really goes for it in Ernani, as does the Opera North orchestra under conductor Adrian Kelly at the 2024 Buxton International Festival. The music is not as heavy-handed as you might think, but never passes up an opportunity to throw in a huge chorus with a punchy flourish at the end. The main feature that Verdi also relies on is the need for singers of an exceptionally high standard for the four of the demanding central roles. You get that right and you have something powerful on your hands, but weaknesses in any of those roles and the whole thing falls apart. There is no question that the exceptional cast assembled here were as good as you could hope for this opera a fighting chance of success, but the options for the director Jamie Manton were limited and despite the strengths elsewhere in the music and the production, he wasn't able to find a way to make it work successfully as a drama.

Considering what he had to work with as a plot, it seems like a reasonable idea to focus instead on character and the interaction between the principal figures of the drama. It's an option I suppose, but it turns out not to be a particularly fruitful avenue to explore. The plot and the motivations of the characters are not complicated as much as a bit daft, or daft to non-existent, certainly in the first two acts. Somehow all three pretenders for the hand of Elvira all contrive to be in the same place as the unfortunate lady is being prepared for marriage, and they have a big row about it. That's about the height of the first half of the work. 

Acts III and IV involves some contrived twists around a secret society of conspirators,  the secret identity of the bandit Ernani being in reality Don Juan of Aragon, a king in disguise and an unusual vow where Ernani promises to kill himself on the sound of a bugle. You would hope that he doesn't come within earshot of just some random bugler. If it wasn't for the fact that they are notable medieval historical figures all squabbling for the hand of the Duke's niece (including the Duke himself), it would be a banal romantic drama. Which, since it's not being played historically in this production, I'm afraid that's how it comes across. It's undoubtedly hard, but with Verdi's score surely not impossible to make these figures something a little less one-dimensional.

The stage production design relied on dramatic lighting which was highly effective for the charged scenes, the all-purpose triangular recessed set serving well for bedroom, court and crypt. Not related to any period however, it felt rather generic and it didn't place the drama into any kind of meaningful context that would make it feel relatable or even credible. That's a tall order I must admit, and based on a previous viewing of this opera in a more traditional setting it may indeed be an impossible ask, but it didn't get a lot of help in direction and character that lacked the conviction to match the overheated drama.

The singing and dramatic performances however were not lacking in any way. Let's start with the chorus as they play a major role in ramping up the tension throughout. They were in fine voice here, providing those big moments to lift the work up above the banal individual romantic and personal dramas. All too often in these Verdi works it's the female soprano in an extremely demanding role that is often the weak link, but that certainly wasn't the case here. Nadine Benjamin was simply outstanding as Elvira with a big voice and fiery delivery. Roman Arndt was terrific as Ernani, presenting a strong pairing with Benjamin's Elvira. The the other two pretenders for her hand also have to be made of stern stuff, as Don Carlo is a king and Don Ruy Gomez de Silva is a duke, both needing to be formidable challengers to Ernani. André Heyboer and Alastair Miles ensured that was the case.

Musically, this was a thrilling account of Ernani, certainly worthwhile to demonstrate the often underrated qualities of Verdi's early work, particularly when you have singing and musical direction of this calibre. Unfortunately, Francesco Maria's Piave's libretto for this old-fashioned romantic melodrama does not hold up well, and despite his best efforts of the director Jamie Manton, there is little depth of human character to be found in these stock historical caricatures.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Schreker - Die Gezeichneten (Munich, 2017)

Franz Schreker - Die Gezeichneten

Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich - 2017

Ingo Metzmacher, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Tomasz Konieczny, Christopher Maltman, Alastair Miles, Catherine Naglestad, John Daszak, Matthew Grills, Kevin Conners, Sean Michael Plumb, Andrea Borghini, Peter Lobert, Andreas Wolf, Paula Iancic, Heike Grötzinger, Dean Power

StaatsoperTV - 1 July 2017

Franz Schreker's opera Die Gezeichneten is an unusual work, characteristic of a very specific style and of the period of its composition. It's a fairy-tale for the turn of the 20th century, with a late Romantic approach to its ideas and musical development that is perhaps a little too decadent and rich for modern tastes. In this opera, as in much of his other lyrical-dramas, Schreker poses some interesting questions in relation to the function of art that the post-Wagner opera world was (and perhaps still is) struggling to resolve. After 100 years of near neglect, the growing popularity of this particular opera suggests however that it's a question that is not only still relevant but becoming a more urgent issue for our contemporary society.

As far as Schreker is concerned, the pressing question of what should be the function of art and the role of the artist as an outsider is similar to the one considered by Wagner in nearly all of his important opera works. Composed in 1919 however, the world that Schreker explores in Die Gezeichneten is a very different place, and the rules and guidance that might have served as an example no longer seem relevant or are unable to take hold in a rapidly changing world that has gained a new perspective on humanity through Freudean psychoanalysis and the horrors of the First World War. If Die Gezeichneten follows the path of a fairy-tale, it's a fairy-tale where the darker undercurrents are now laid bare on the surface to serve as a reflection of what they say about modern society.

The post-Wagner/post-Parsifal/late Romantic composer/artist/idealist would like to believe that art provides a means of human transcendence from these horrors, but the former ideas about what constitutes art and beauty are now no longer quite as clear or as pure as might once have been thought. Elysium, the Utopian island of marvels and beauty created by the deformed dwarf Alviano Salvago in Die Gezeichneten, has become corrupted as a playground for the rich and the powerful to cultivate 'exotic' tastes, abducting children and exploiting the misery of others for their own pleasure. As Count Tamare describes it, it's a corruption of the realisation of a dream of beauty. There's clearly something there that resonates with our own times and this is keenly explored by director Krzysztof Warlikowski in his new production of the work for the 2017 Munich Opera Festival.

With its creator a deformed and ugly figure of ridicule, the Elysium created by Alviano in Die Gezeichneten (The Stigmatised) is in himself representative of the function of art to transform the ugly reality into something beautiful. Carlotta is another artist capable of recognising the beauty of Alviano's true nature and expresses it in the painting of his pure soul. It's the validation of their belief in a higher purpose for art that leads them to love, but also to believe that they have a true and purer understanding of art and beauty. Unfortunately their great ambitions prove to be not only incompatible with the reality of the world, but they prove to be corrupting of their own nature. The seductive power of beauty in the form of Graf Andrea Vitellozzo Tamare leads Carlotta astray, while for Alviano, love has given him god-like aspirations that reveal an ugly side to his nature.

"Give me Carlotta" pleads Alviano when he is in danger of losing her love to the debauched libertine Tamare, "then I'll be a prince, a king, a god". Love has conferred Apollo-like aspirations in Alviano that align with the Wagnerian ideal of the supremacy of the artist in society, but instead he shows himself to be vindictive and egotistical, a "troll" at heart. It seems that the moment the true nature of beauty is grasped by the artist, it confers a sense of power and influence that turns him into a monster who is incapable of responding to that supreme vision of beauty without corrupting and destroying it by his very nature.

That's certainly the image that Krzysztof Warlikowski emphasises in the 2017 Munich production with his usual cinematic references. The director relies on the imagery of David Lynch's depiction of 'The Elephant Man' as a beautiful soul trapped in a monstrous body, but there are also significant scenes projected for classic silent horror films. There is the scene from 'Der Golem' where the monster is confronted and destroyed by the beauty of a child with a flower; a similar confrontation in that famous scene at the lake in 'Frankenstein'; the unmasking of 'The Phantom of the Opera' reveals the ugly side of his nature; and in 'Nosferatu' beauty will expose the monster to an unbearable light that destroys him. Apart from a scene of Duke Adorno working out in a boxing ring and figures starting to appear as mice, Warlikowski sticks fairly closely and directly to this principal theme in the first half, with Elysium a modern art gallery, replete with a Tate Modern style turbine hall showing a brilliant disc, where the idea of art is something living rather than traditional.

In Act III however, after a spoken word reading of Schreker's account of himself as an artist that associates him with Alviano, Warlikowski and Malgorzata Szczesniak's sets and costumes take these themes in an entirely unexpected and unpredictable new direction. So rich is the enigmatic ideas and imagery of the latter scenes of Die Gezeichneten, and so untethered to any kind of musical resolution, that you would expect a similarly free-associative and imaginative response from the director and he certainly delivers. There is an acceptance of art as a "realm of magic" and for Warlikowski the realm where all these concepts can be considered and explored is indeed that of the opera stage. So figures with heads of mice, virtually naked dancers, a reclining figure in a glass cage, all form part of the Elysium of the opera stage, where art is beauty, but it is also challenging and - vitally - alive.

The performances of John Daszak and Catherine Naglestad in particular are perfect fits for Warlikowsi's ideas. Daszak is simply outstanding, his voice lyrical and flexible, full of expression and capable of revealing a darker edge. Catherine Naglestad has a rather more robust soprano voice than the usual piercing but brittle edge of Straussian sopranos like Manuela Uhl or Anne Schwanewilms with whom we usually associate Schreker roles, but her voice brings a rich corrupting glamour to Carlotta. Christopher Maltman is a strong presence as Tamare. I'm not a fan of Tomasz Konieczny's bass-baritone voice and don't find it pleasant here, but as Duke Adorno it doesn't have to be and it strikes an appropriate note of discordance that lies within the music also.

Conducting the work, Ingo Metzmacher wrings all the troubling beauty out of chromatic lines that suggest that a resolution to the themes raised in the opera is unattainable, but between Schreker, Metzmacher and Warlikowski you almost feel that this is as close as the work can come to a state of transcendental perfection. An ambitious selection of works have been instrumental in the success of the Bayerische Staatsoper's exceptional 2016-17 season, attaching creative directors to the projects, finding the right conductor and singers who can bring some new and original ideas to them, and Die Gezeichneten is no exception.

Links: Bayerische Staatsoper, Staatsoper.TV

Wagner - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Richard Wagner - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Glyndebourne, 2011

Vladimir Jurowski, David McVicar, Gerald Finley, Marco Jentzsch, Johannes Martin Kränzle, Alastair Miles, Anna Gabler, Topi Lehtipuu, Michaela Selinger, Colin Judson, Andrew Slater, Henry Waddington, Robert Poulton

Opus Arte

It’s tempting to make a snap judgement about a production of a Wagner opera right from the first note, and it’s surprising how just accurate that judgement can often turn out to be. I’d suggest that you can get a feel for the tone of the whole 2011 Glyndebourne production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg just from Vladimir Jurowski’s conducting of the London Philharmonic Orchestra through the opera’s beautiful overture. Being Wagner, everything is there upfront in the Vorspiel to Act I, and in such a work with its richness of meaning and infinite ways of interpretation, you could aim for an approach that is respectful and serious, emphatic and declamatory, sensitive and romantic, even playful and irreverent and you would still be touching on vital ingredients that are all part of the make-up of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. You might well pick up elements of those qualities in this Glyndebourne production - and by rights they should all be in there - but from the very first note my overriding impression was that there was a particularly English touch to the delivery that emphasises the qualities in this remarkable work that one doesn’t find so readily in the composer’s other grand music dramas - a lightness, a warmth, a sense of humour and an air of melancholy, the tug of deep human emotions bound up in something great and beautiful.

Fortunately, the whole production is working from the same hymn sheet - quite literally, as the curtain rises in Act I on the domed arches of the interior of St Catherine’s Church in Nuremberg, the figures in the pews suffused in the bright midsummer morning light, and the youthful, lyrical voices of this production’s Walther, David, Eva and Lena confirm the initial impression. Die Meistersinger however is a work of magnificent balance and it needs to be. The lightness of the ecstatic emotions of youthful love and idealism expressed in the opening scenes must be tested against the realities of the world when Walther realises that his only hope of marrying this beautiful girl Eva is to win her by proving himself as a Meistersinger. It’s a mark of the depth of his love, a proof of his own individual worth and talent, and a sign of respect for the tradition, the hard work and the craft of the townspeople of Nuremberg. It’s not enough here then for Wagner to focus on the all-consuming passion of love (we have Tristan und Isolde for that), but here he explores how that kind of idealistic purity - expressed in the singing in the music - can find its own voice while respecting tradition and achieving the acceptance of the wider public.

That encompasses a lot of intangibles - expressed powerfully nonetheless in Wagner’s near-miraculous score - relating to the feelings and the experience of the older generation, as personal, unfathomable and unreachable in the past (in the case of Hans Sachs) or as ridiculous (as in the case of Beckmesser) as they might sometimes appear to the youthful apprentices. Wagner accords equal importance to the lives of these characters, respecting their traditions and the craft, finding beauty and truth in it, something that the younger generation can learn from, expand upon and develop into something new, original and personal, yet at the same time something still inherently German. Evidently, the opera - apart from everything else - is also a case of special pleading for Wagner’s own reform of the music-drama and art as the highest expression and extension of true German tradition and values, and he could hardly make a finer case for it than Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, the work demonstrating the poetic beauty and complexity of the composer’s writing at its highest maturity, not weighed down by the heavy declamation and language of ancient myths, nor overburdened with leitmotifs and symbolism as in some of his other works, but the one Wagner opera most open to the wonder of the human soul, as expressed in the human voice and in musical accompaniment, in art or simply in the craft of honest labour.

This is a light, delicate and sensitive treatment of a beautifully balanced, thoughtful and considered work then, a far cry from the most recent Bayreuth production. I don’t always like the odd touches that David McVicar adds to his productions and I often find him weak on a cohesive concept, but I can rarely fault him on his ability to hit on the perfect mood and find the most effective way of expressing it through the performers and in their relationship with all the other aspects of the production and musical performance. His work for this Glyndebourne production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is just about flawless. It’s perhaps a little unadventurous - setting the work within the years of Wagner’s “apprenticeship” around 1820 rather than the original 16th century setting - but his handling of the diverse moods and rhythms of the work is masterful throughout. Having established that mood in the church scene of Act I and achieved the balance though the sacred test of Walther’s Meistersinger ambitions, McVicar likewise strikes the perfect balance between the tricky mood swings of Act II, between the romantic idealism of Eva, the melancholy of Sachs, the despair and hope of Walther through to the comedy of Beckmesser’s serenade and the uproar of the finale. It’s a complete night of midsummer madness, and absolutely riveting. The incredible journey of Act III’s even wider range of emotions that has Hans Sachs at its heart, takes in all the melancholy of the Vorspiel, the slapstick of Beckmesser’s interfering, the community aspect of the festival and the ‘Prize Song’ without ever missing a beat or hitting an incongruous note that isn’t suggested by the score.

Everything about the production respects this, having a cohesiveness in the period design, in the enclosed sacred locations - the church as much as the craftsman’s workshop or the community square - in the lighting, in the little touches of humour and irreverence. There’s also a recognition that everything important that needs to be expressed is there in the music itself, within the very structure of Wagner’s composition which is the very definition of his views on the strength and power of the music-drama, the two aspects conjoined and inseparable, each supporting the other to create a rhythm and balance between the surface drama and the inner nature, with all the contradictions and complexity that this implies. It’s enough to give the work room to breathe and allow the performers of the music and the singing to consider the detail, interpret it and express it through their individual strengths of personality. There’s never a moment where you are waiting to get to the next more interesting scene, every moment has its own magic and Jurowski and McVicar give the singers all the opportunity they need to luxuriate in the beauty and the rich wonder of Wagner’s incredible score, revealing it in all its majestic glory.

Gerald Finley’s performance of Hans Sachs is the best example of this. Rarely have I ever seen Finley look so at home in a role, his lovely baritone sounding warm, rounded and unforced, not over-expressive, but arising naturally out of consideration for his character, rolling around the beauty and the very sound of the words, taking the time to consider their meaning and luxuriate in their phrasing. But it’s far from the only impressive singing performance, the clear lyrical lightness of Marco Jentzsch’s Walther and Topi Lehpituu’s David both perfect foils for Anna Gabler’s emotional Eva and Michaela Selinger’s Lena. If their singing could be considered to lack traditional Wagnerian force, the work gains from their youthful sincerity of feeling. On the other side of the coin, but perfectly complementary, Alastair Miles displays a studious good natured gravity and solemnity as Pogner with a tone that is as beautiful as it is expressive. You could listen to this for hours. Beckmesser’s comic value is easy to overplay and demonise and the role consequently has a tendency to be underrated in comparison to the earnestness of the other characters, but he’s no less a vital component to the overall structure and tone and Johannes Martin Kränzle brings colour and personality to the role, with lots of comic grimacing, slapstick and double-takes, all of which fit in perfectly with the tone presented here.

This is as memorable as Meistersinger as any you’ll find, one that capitalises on the intimacy of the Glyndebourne theatre and finds an appropriate tone in the performance, the staging and the singing to delve more deeply into the particular human qualities that are unique to this Wagner music-drama, expressing everything that is great about this work on levels I’ve never considered before. The Glyndebourne effect and the challenges of staging Wagner there is explored in the concise extra features, in interviews with Jurowski, McVicar and Finley, with particular consideration on the approach taken for this work. The Glyndebourne relationship with Wagner is also covered in the accompanying booklet, which also contains a full synopsis. The quality of the Opus Arte Blu-ray production is exemplary in every respect, from the screen direction by François Roussillon, to the well-lit High Definition image and the lovely detail revealed in the HD audio mixes. The 2-disc BD set is of course compatible for all regions, but includes only English, French and German subtitles.

Mayr - Medea in Corinto

Giovanni Simone Mayr - Medea in Corinto

Bayerisches Staatsoper, Munich 2010

Ivor Bolton, Hans Neuenfels, Nadja Michael, Ramón Vargas, Alastair Miles, Alek Shrader, Elena Tsallagova, Kenneth Robertson, Francesco Petrozzi, Laura Nicorescu

Arthaus

The Medea myth has provided great material for opera composers over the years, and it’s not difficult to see why. It has all the ingredients – as it’s played here in this version – for the operatic favourite, the ‘melodramma tragico’. A Greek mythological tale of royal kingdoms at war, marriage alliances and a sorceress who seeks to disrupt it all, it’s a storyline nonetheless that can be accessible to a modern audience, dealing with very real human emotions. There’s a joyous wedding – between Creusa and Jason – but a psycho ex-wife, Medea, who still represents a threat to the union, and a struggle over custody of the kids from her and Jason’s previous marriage, which he wants annulled based on the fact that the witch cast a spell over him. Don’t they all. And would you believe it, the ex turns up at the wedding and causes a bit of a scene. Nightmare.

There are many other facets to this storyline, from the classical mythological view of the relationship between humans and the gods to the character-driven human drama full of emotional turmoil and conflicts between duty and desire. It’s a subject consequently that has been covered many times in opera over the centuries, and is still returned to even by modern composers, with Aribert Reimann’s 2010 Medea viewing Jason’s entering into prestigious marriage to Creusa as an act of social climbing, leaving behind his past for an alliance with Corinth. For the director of this production of Mayr’s 1813 opera Medea in Corinto, Hans Neuenfels, the story is about people living in fear and acting out of fear. You might not get that quite so much from the original score and libretto, but that at least is the spin put on this production of a rarely performed opera recorded in 2010 at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich.

In Medea in Corinto, the forthcoming union between Creusa and Jason (Giasone in Italian) is a promise to the end of the long wars that have devastated the nation and an end to living in fear. But right from the beginning, Neuenfel’s radical staging puts forward a view that Corinth – perhaps on account of having to deal with the constant threat of violence – has become a corrupt and violent police state, with a cruel and sadistic king, Creon/Creonte. There are threats to the marriage also not only from Medea, who has turned up demanding an audience with Giasone, but – in this version – from Aegeus/Egeo, who is still engaged to Creusa and has brought his own personal army with him to push forward his claim to the throne.

Much of this interpretation of the myth is, it has to be said, suggested by the staging rather more than anything in the score or the libretto. That kind of practice can often be a valid exercise of theatrical interpretation, but it’s perhaps a little more dubious here since it seems to be acting in a way that is contrary to the intent of the piece, the kind of director-imposed Regietheater view that is despised by a certain (intransigent) section of the opera-viewing public. In the opening scenes then, while Creon is talking about peace, he and his troops are at the same time engaged in the abuse, torture and execution of ordinary citizens in a sadistic manner that clearly evokes Pasolini’s Salò (thankfully without its worst excesses). In other scenes, either the director doesn’t trust the singing to be strong enough or the score to be deep or interesting enough, and includes silent background figures of Hymen and Amor, who play out mimes in the background, as well as solo musicians to highlight and contrast the actions with the words of the libretto.

Whether it’s true to Mayr’s vision of the Medea myth, this kind of reworking of the material is of course valid in the context of the nature of the opera’s theme of shifting political agendas, where the stated aims of those in power is often contrary to their actions and their actual intent. More than that however, without a little bit of subversion to enliven it, Medea in Corinto might otherwise be a very dull opera indeed. Musically, the studied classicism of Mayr’s arrangements – stately Mozart-like opera seria without the recitative and singing that is heading towards bel canto – is quite beautiful, but can come across as rather bland, certainly when compared to Cherubini’s fiery version, which is an evident model here. Although the qualities of his composition here are debatable, or at least unfashionable as far as modern opera tastes go, the composer now almost forgotten in the history of opera, Mayr could once count both Bellini and Donizetti as pupils, and Medea in Corinto is consequently not without a considerable amount of interest.

If the Bayerische Staatsoper production then is somewhat radical, it at least tries to make the classical themes relevant to a modern audience, the three-level stage reflecting the three periods through which the audience view this opera – a modern view of Mayr’s period interpretation of classical antiquity. The motivations and intentions can however be a bit dubious in some other respects – Medea first appearing in a witch-doctor costume, Aegeus bizarrely killing his own men in the second act – but it certainly holds the attention better than a more straightforward traditional production might. The production however also benefits here from some fine singing, Nadja Michael in particular delivering a fabulous rich deep almost mezzo performance as Medea – here as elsewhere a real showpiece role – but the singing all round is of a very high quality. A slimmed-down Ramón Vargas is notable as Giasone, but the role requires a deeper near-baritone range in some parts that the Mexican tenor can’t reach with sufficient force. Unfashionable it may be, but if you are looking to study the often fascinating intricacies and colour of the score, it’s superbly delivered by the Bayerisches Staatsorcheter under Ivor Bolton.

Enjoyment of this rare opera is assured however by the High Definition quality of the Arthaus Blu-ray release. The image quality is flawless, the filming making use of frequent close-ups, but also allowing the (sometimes distracting) background drama to be followed. The audio tracks are LPCM Stereo and HD Master Audio 5.0, both of which are simply outstanding with remarkable clarity and bass presence, and only a little reverb of stage ambience on occasion from the microphone placements. Extra features include a 30-minute Making of – which is made up entirely of interviews with the cast and production team – and a very informative 16-minute Interview with the president of the Simone Mayr institute.

Donizetti - Lucrezia Borgia

Gaetano Donizetti - Lucrezia Borgia

English National Opera, London

Paul Daniel, Mike Figgis, Claire Rutter, Michael Fabiano, Elizabeth DeShong, Alastair Miles 

The Coliseum, London - February 18th, 2011

Even without reading the programme notes for Mike Figgis’ production of Lucrezia Borgia for the English National Opera, it’s clear from very early on that the medium isn't an environment that the film director feels entirely comfortable with. Even before the opera proper starts, some flashback scenes written and filmed in Rome by Figgis as a background to what takes place in the opera, are projected onto a white screen hanging over the stage, making it clear that he has approached the opera in much the same way that he would make a film.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing – opera is open to incorporating many disciplines and giving them varying weight, as well as being open to the kind of reinvention that new technology and modern ideas can bring to it – and there has accordingly been a healthy cross-over of film directors between the cinema and opera. While the short films that accompany the opera then are not at all needed, they are nevertheless a valid response to what the director sees as a need to give psychological, real-world depth to a character who is larger than life and, in Donizetti’s opera, played larger than life. There are, one could say, inconsistencies in the characterisation and gaps in credibility that arise out of its novelistic source in the work of Victor Hugo and its attempts to provide redemption for a complex and really quite notorious historical figure whose vile nature and her murderous inclinations towards anyone who criticises her family name is scarcely tempered by her love for her lost son, Gennaro.

In this case however, the impression is given that not only does Figgis not know his audience – an opera audience does not need the same kind of literal, realist approach as cinema, with the psychological background of the characters laid-out in this way – but it seems that he doesn’t understand opera, and the fact that, in a strong well-written opera (and Lucrezia Borgia certainly falls into that category), all the explanations that are needed, all the expressions of personality and the motivational factors – the guilt and the passion that lies at the heart of the characters – are all contained within the music and within the singing itself, even more so than in the narrative of the libretto, which can otherwise seem contrived and scarcely credible.

This failure to understand and get to grips with the medium he is working in or the audience he is working for, results in a rather over-literal, static and reductive approach for a director who can otherwise be quite avant-garde and experimental when it comes to filmmaking (Timecode, Hotel, COMA). A measure of his mistrust of opera, his audience and his own reaction towards it is in his choice to play Orsini (a female playing the role of a male), as a female, as if an opera audience couldn’t possibly grasp this convention that is so far removed from the rather more literal approach of cinematic realism. On his approach to the actual staging, there is also some merit to reducing the amount of clutter and glitz that usually accompanies a period, bel canto opera, and just letting the music and singing stand on its own. For the most part, the performances are certainly up to that task, particularly from Claire Rutter in the role of Lucrezia, but there is also a strong performance (particularly in the brindisi scene) from Elizabeth DeShong as Orsini, and the bond of love and friendship that lies between them actually does take on an interesting dimension and create other resonances with Orsini played as a female.

There is however an additional constraint that Figgis finds himself struggling with, and that is the policy of the English National Opera to perform opera in English wherever possible, regardless of the suitability of the opera. Admittedly, some opera can work surprisingly well in English – Wagner’s Parsifal, seen at the same opera house the following night – worked no less effectively in English than it does in German, but bel canto opera, for me at least, is entirely associated with the qualities and sounds of the Italian language. Conductor Paul Daniel worked on the translation himself, and really, he failed to do justice to the work, with some of the choices made provoking chuckles from the audience at inappropriate points, not at all helping to establish the desired tone, and making Figgis’ attempt at psychological depth and realism all the more difficult. Significantly, the short film segments made by Figgis himself were in Italian with English subtitles.

The reduction of the staging and the simplification of movements does have some impact then in reducing the over-the-top propensities of the opera that Figgis evidently feels need to be constrained, and while it restricts the dynamic and results in what is not the most eye-catching of productions, it does at least focus the attention on the singing. One gets the impression however that the reduction of the staging into smaller areas is an attempt by Figgis to scale down the canvas, as per the framing in his film work, and break it down into discreet, static, sections that can be brought together when reworked for the cinema or television screen. As such, it would seem that Mike Figgis has been brought in more with the first ever 3-D Live opera broadcast in mind (tomorrow 23rd February 2011 for Sky Arts 2 HD and for cinema). Here one can imagine the director being more at home, progressively experimenting in a filmed medium, using simultaneous action and multiple angles. As such however, unfair though it might be for the theatrical audience, his stage production of Lucrezia Borgia feels like an unfinished product that will only come to fruition when it is brought to the screen.