Hosokawa - Stilles Meer (Hamburg, 2016)

Toshio Hosokawa - Stilles Meer

Staatsoper Hamburg, 2016

Kent Nagano, Oriza Hirata, Susanne Elmark, Mihoko Fujimura, Bejun Mehta, Viktor Rud, Marek Gasztecki

EuroArts - DVD

The impact of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami on Fukushima in Japan is unquantifiable in human terms and surely a challenge for any artistic endeavour, literature, film, or even documentary to fully depict. The nature of the event, the devastation it caused and the lives it took are difficult enough to deal with, but the longer term disaster set in motion by the damage caused to the nuclear reactor in Fukushima and the implications this has for future generations is a lot more to take on. That however is exactly what Toshio Hosokawa attempts to do in his opera Stilles Meer - Silent Sea, written for the Hamburg Opera in 2016.

Even before the opera starts, we get some indication of how the composer is going to approach such a task, introducing other sounds, influences and techniques in order to extend the range of what opera can achieve. Somewhat unconventionally, the first sounds that break the silence at the start of the opera are the sounds of the sea and the voice of a robot warning that the site at Fukushima is currently a safe zone free from radiation. Nature and technology sit uneasily side by side and the danger that they pose is underlined by the first heavy percussive sounds of an earthquake and aftershocks.

The stage set for the Hamburg world premiere of Stilles Meer also sets out to create a similar uncomfortable fusion of the natural and the synthetic. A platform leads down to a patch of blue sea that is covered with a circular glass framework that suggests the shape of a nuclear reactor. Rods hang down from the sky instead of clouds. The fishermen of Fukushima, celebrating the lantern festival of O-Higan, carry globes that look like they are glowing with radiation. The impression, matching the mood created by Hosokawa's music, is that everything has changed, all that is natural has been altered and distorted.

The human story that takes place in this environment is also one where the composer and librettist attempt a fusion of ideas and cultures in order to get across the deeper impact of the disaster on people's lives. Claudia's 12 year old son Max died when the tsunami struck the coast of Japan, lost when out on a fishing trip. His body and that of Claudia's partner Takashi have never been found among the debris that continues to be washed ashore. Stefan, Claudia's former partner and father of Max, has come to see her, but is shocked to find that Claudia still hasn't accepted what has happened.

Takashi's sister Haruko has a plan to help Claudia begin the grieving process. Claudia is a dancer who makes a living teaching the local children and Haruko believes that Claudia might be able to find a way to relate to what has happened through her love of the Nôh drama 'Sumidagawa'. It's the same Nôh drama that Benjamin Britten based Curlew River on, the story of a mother who has lost her son and is unable to accept his death. but here it retains its Buddhist origins. It is only through the chanting of a Buddhist prayer that the mother in 'Sumidagawa' is able to take her grief into another dimension and Haruko hopes that Claudia might be able to relate to her own grief on this same level.

Essentially, Stilles Meer is itself an attempt to collectively take the suffering of Fukushima to another dimension where it can be processed, and evidently that is through the transformative process of art in music and opera. That's a tall order and it's difficult to judge the merit of a work on those terms, but it's clear that the composer believes very strongly in the spiritual side of music and his opera is a sincere attempt to process a significant event of indescribable horror. The approach adopted by Hosokawa, director Oriza Higata and conductor Kent Nagano certainly makes every effort to create a suitable reflective environment for that to occur.

Hosokawa makes good use of silence and stillness to achieve that, using the rhythms of nature and obviously that relies primarily on the motions of the sea. The music rises and falls and maintains a low background presence even in the quieter moments. This allows room for reflection, which is also the role to a large extent of the other members of the Fukushima fishing community heard in the opera. There is indeed something of a tone of an oratorio or a requiem about the opera in these passages, a respect even for the power of the sea and a wariness of technology that would be instilled in the people who live there.

The rather more unpredictable side of the sea and the devastation that it can cause is there in the voices of the principal singers. Susanne Elmark gives a great performance, channeling the forces at work within her character that occasionally spill over into uncontrollable emotional outbursts. Mihoko Fujimura is like an unshakable vessel, battered and beaten by the tides but still afloat. There's deep emotion there too, her song to the "shoes on the beach" deeply affecting. Bejun Mehta sings "Claudia!" a lot, with an occasional exclamation of "Max!", but in many ways this is another refrain of appeal like the later Buddhist prayer, and Mehta's countertenor is still sweetly voiced.

Whether Stilles Meer achieves what it sets out to is difficult to say, but it's an important work that addresses a significant terrible real-world event and tries to make some kind of sense out it it. There might not be a sense of resolution or complete closure at the end of Stilles Meer, but unlike Philippo Perocco's similarly themed Aquagranda, which only seemed capable of providing resolution to the 1966 flooding of Venice in an historical context, there is an indication in Hosokawa's work that there's a deeper learning and healing process to follow and that the process necessarily must be an on-going one.

Links: Staatsoper Hamburg

Gluck - Orfeo ed Euridice (Český Krumlov 2013 - Blu-ray)

Christoph Willibald Gluck - Orfeo ed Euridice

Český Krumlov Castle, 2013

Václav Luks, Ondřej Havelka, Bejun Mehta, Eva Liebau, Regula Mühlemann

Arthaus Musik - Blu-ray

They don't often put on opera in Český Krumlov Castle, which has one of the oldest working Baroque theatres in the world and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The restoration of the theatre was celebrated in 2011 with a performance and subsequent DVD/BD release of Domenico Scarlatti's Dove è Amore è Gelosia. Hardly an important or great work, it was an entertaining opera buffa, more notable for its historical and rarity interest as the first work written to be performed in the original theatre, but it gained considerably from the authentic Baroque presentation in its original setting.

I don't know if Gluck has any historical connection with Český Krumlov castle, but in the 300th year of the composer's birth, it's a fine place to re-examine one of the most important works in the entire opera repertoire in hopefully a more authentic light. With Václav Luks conducting the period Collegium 1704 orchestra, a traditionally-informed stage production lit only by wax candles and countertenor Bejun Mehta as Orpheus, an alto-castrato role more often performed by a mezzo-soprano, this Orfeo ed Euridice is undoubtedly closer to the original than most other productions. There are however a few caveats that can be given about the nature of the film itself.

Primarily, this production of Orfeo ed Euridice is shot as a film rather than a concert, which does take away somewhat from the charm of seeing it performed in a Baroque theatre. It's not filmed in the traditional manner of a live theatre performance, but it is nonetheless clearly a live performance, shot in seven days over a number of takes, with perhaps a small amount of overdubs. That's fine, and it's a good account of the work that matches the stripped-back reformist nature of the work with a reduced period orchestra. The casting is also good with Bejun Mehta's sweet countertenor giving this Orpheus a suitably lyrical quality, Eva Liebau a strong Eurydice and Regula Mühlemann a bright Amore.

This works wonderfully when its performed in Act I on the stage of the Baroque theatre where Orpheus mourns the death of Eurydice who is laid out on a marble catafalque. It's old-style theatre, with painted forests to the wings and a sea at the back with old-fashioned pulley-operated rolling sea effects. Amore too descends in an authentically shaky manner on a mechanical cloud to give Orpheus a chance to bring his beloved back to the land of the living. Unfortunately, once Orpheus descends through the trapdoor to the Underworld, much of the remainder of the performance takes place in the wider setting of the backstage of the theatre and the castle caverns and - other than the Elysium scene - not on the stage at all.

The locations backstage and in the wings are at least well used in this respect, retaining the candlelight illuminations, giving the underworld a suitably eerie and otherworldly appearance. Even here, with wooden beams and stone staircases there are no anachronisms, although you would suspect that the Furies here might be familiar with the "zombie shuffle" choreography of Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' video. There are some clever touches like the play of shadows embracing and holding hands as Orpheus leads Eurydice out of the underworld that don't need to rely on special effects. The idea is nice, playing on the magic of the theatre experience and how it extends beyond the stage and takes on a life of its own, but I did find that the 'film' concept and editing distracted from the power of the work itself.

Musically however, it sounds wonderful, the theatre creating a natural acoustic reverb rather than an amplified sound. It's not the clean, precise HD audio you might be used to, but there's no big orchestra here and neither should there be. There is rather a harder edged gut string pluck and rhythm that isn't quite so smooth, and heard this way it does present the opera in a new light. The original 1762 Vienna edition of the work has however been cut back slightly with most of the ballets shortened or excised entirely. The Act III, Scene 3 dances, for example, are all missing here. I suspect that the decision was made for artistic reasons (Bejun Mehta is credited also as Artistic Advisor here), since they get in the way of the clear narrative flow that is needed more for the film than a stage production, but such cuts aren't unusual.

On Blu-ray, this looks very fine indeed. There's a slightly softer edge to the image on account of it being filmed by candlelight, but it's clear and detailed with lovely tones and textures. The audio mixes are PCM stereo and DTS HD-master Audio 5.0. The mix is bright but there's a pleasant naturalness to the sound. The balance between the voices and the orchestra is different in the two mixes, the surround track seeming to make more use of reverb and give prominence to the voices, while the stereo track is more direct and evenly balanced. There are no extras on the BD25 region-free disc, but the booklet gives some background on how the film was made and the history of the Baroque theatre. There's no synopsis provided, but the plot of Orfeo ed Euridice is simplicity itself. Subtitles are in Italian, English, German, French, Spanish and Korean.

Benjamin - Written on Skin

George Benjamin - Written on Skin

Royal Opera House, 2012

George Benjamin, Martin Crimp, Katie Mitchell, Christopher Purves, Barbara Hannigan, Bejun Mehta, Victoria Simmonds, Allan Clayton

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

It's hard to judge and define what makes a work of modern opera great when you don't have history and the legacy of the composer to look back on. One traditional indicator is whether the work continues to gain new productions and draw audiences over the next few years, but in the age of recordings and Blu-rays you can judge for yourself whether a work has merit by how much it draws you back to view it again. On that basis, George Benjamin's Written on Skin is undoubtedly one of the best new opera works of recent years, a work that creates a compelling musical and narrative language of its own that draws you into its world and resembles nothing else out there.

The question of events retaining or gaining significance with time is, not by chance, a large part of what Written on Skin is all about. Based on a 13th century work by the troubadour Guillem de Cabestaing ('Le Coeur mangé'), Written on Skin intentionally and very specifically filters a very old story through new eyes and with a modern sensibility. Can a story that is over 700 years old really have meaning to a modern audience? Can we wipe out the intervening years and understand how a medieval audience would have related to the story? Is there really any way of bringing the past back to life? The intention of playwright Martin Crimp and composer George Benjamin is clearly to show not only how storytelling can be made vital but how great art - and specifically opera - can also be transforming, violent and even dangerous.

To take us back however and indicate that we are exploring narrative, Martin Crimp creates a framework around the original medieval story. The opera opens with a team of 21st century angels erasing the time that has intervened between the period of story and the present day - "Fade out the living, snap back the dead to life" and "shatter the printing press" in order to "make each new book a precious object written on skin". The story they (and the composers) recreate is also a story about creation, going back to the very beginning where the old style of belief that has persisted is embodied in the Man. The Protector is a landowner who believes himself to be the centre of the universe, owner of everything he sees (including his wife's body), deserving of his position, one for which the sun has been designed for only one purpose and that is to shine on his land.

The man however wants his achievements to be immortalised and hires a Boy (a part taken by one of the angels) to create an Illuminated book that testifies to his greatness and the rightness of this order. This is a world where it was seen necessary to "Invent a woman... blame her for everything". His wife however doesn't recognise the Boy's depiction of woman and asks him "Can you invent another woman?  A woman who's real?" This new page in the book has unexpected consequences, the woman starting to think for herself, have desires of her own and act of her own accord. This disturbs her husband who, when he discovers (the vanity of the woman can't hide it) that she has been having a sexual liaison with the Boy, kills him and serves his heart up to her to eat.

Inevitably, the framing device of the angels is a very post-modern idea. Recognising that the drama is an artificial construct, the spoken dialogue is even related as if reading from a text, the characters referring to themselves in the third-person and ending sentences with, for example "...says the Boy". Even the fact that the main characters have generic names (Protector, Woman, Boy, Angel 1, Angel 2, Angel 3) is a recognition of this, but significantly, names do come into being with personality, the woman becoming "Agnès". This is particularly a commentary of the power of opera, since few art forms rely on such evident artifice as stage props, music and singing, yet few are as capable of reaching the heart of drama and emotions as this 400 year-old art-form.

The intention then is not to distance the viewer from the original story, but to actually show that despite the passing of time, despite the artifice of staged drama, that the story and the methods employed still have relevance and power. The opera itself is an Illuminated book that immortalises events and puts them into a format that can allow others to viscerally experience the past. That's actually quite an ambitious aim, since if it doesn't engage the viewer or is unable to make the characters come to life then the whole premise falls apart and the work fails. It's a testament then to the strength of the idea and the ability of the creators that the process of creation, the manipulation and playing-out of the story by the "angels", in no way detracts us from the "reality" of the drama recreated in front of your eyes. But then, that's the whole point of opera.

If at times Written on Skin does then feel like a calculated intellectual exercise, it's not a cold one, but one rather that is bursting with ideas, passions and meaning. Much of that is down to the concision of the dramatic setting and the precision of the words used in Martin Crimp's text, but it's brought to life by the equally precise and considered musical score by George Benjamin. It does exactly what the music ought to do flowing behind the words and "illuminating the page", accompanying the emotions, pushing them, but also filling in-between the layers, and in this particular work, short and succinct as it might be, there are many, many layers. Using a variety of ancient, modern and unconventional instruments including a bass viol and a glass harmonica, using discordant jarring modernist sounds and soft beguiling music, Benjamin's score also strives to bring it all together, taking the whole of now and looking back to then.

There's a similar level of concision, complexity and passion in the singing and Benjamin's musical writing allows room for the words to be heard and clarity to allow the voices to express them. It's not about singing beautiful phrases, but finding a voice that dramatically expresses the text and character. You can't ask for better singers in that regard or more fully committed or indeed technically accomplished performances than those given here at Covent Garden (as at the original world premiere in Aix-en-Provence), by Christopher Purves as the Protector, Barbara Hannigan as Agnès and countertenor Bejun Mehta as the Boy. Katie Mitchell's direction makes note of the artifice in Vicki Mortimer's boxed design with angel workshops surrounding the scenes where the drama is played out, but fully recognises the human passions that are played out within it. As with the world premiere in Aix, the composer George Benjamin conducts his own score.

That score is given a beautiful sound stage in the audio tracks on the Blu-ray release. It sounds great in LPCM Stereo, but has a greater depth and ambience in DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1. The image is clear and, with a wider than usual 2.35:1 image (with thin black bars at the top and bottom of the screen), it looks quite cinematic. Overhead cameras with wide angles are occasionally used to present a different perspective on the drama. The extra features on the BD are brief but informative, with a 5-minute Introduction to Written on Skin, a 2-minute interview with George Benjamin and a Cast Gallery. Subtitles are in English, French, German and Japanese only.

Benjamin - Written on Skin

George Benjamin - Written on Skin

Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, 2012

George Benjamin, Katie Mitchell, Christopher Purves, Barbara Hannigan, Bejun Mehta, Rebecca Jo Loeb, Allan Clayton

ARTE Live Web, Internet streaming, Aix-en-Provence - 14 July 2012

Commissioned by the Aix-en Provence Festival to have a Provençal theme, George Benjamin’s Written on Skin takes an interesting approach to the task in his second opera. With a libretto written by Martin Crimp, Benjamin mixes classicism with the avant-garde to powerful effect in his 21st century perspective on a 12th century legend composed by the troubadour poet Guillaume de Cabestany. It’s not just in the unusual mix of musical instruments that have been used however - the orchestration coloured by as varied a range as a viola de gamba, mandolins and glass harmonica - or even the use of a countertenor in a modern opera, but it’s the necessity of viewing the past through the eye of the present, of breaking down myth into reality, that is evident throughout every element of the production. Viewed here via internet streaming during its world premiere run at Aix on 14th July 2012, Written on Skin is consequently an intense operatic experience.

The story itself seems to be a relatively minor one, but it does nonetheless make some interesting observations about the nature of self-deception, the exercise of power over others and the difficulty of coming to terms with an understanding of one’s true nature. The drama plays out principally between only three main characters - a man, a woman and a boy. The man, known as the Protector, is a landowner, a man “addicted to purity and violence”, proud of his achievements (”I own the fields, I own everyone in them”) who likewise regards his wife as part of his property. He engages the Boy, an artisan, to create an illuminated book for him to record his great achievements and to depict the glorious ascent to Paradise that awaits him. The woman, Agnès, however seeks something else in the Boy, is attracted to him and asks him to create “another woman” for her, one who can open the eyes of her husband to his failings. For the Protector, the book is to put a spin on his belief in himself as a great man, for Agnès, it’s an opportunity to reveal the real woman and her desires that are suppressed by the man. Vanitas vanitatem. The outcome is inevitably tragic.

What makes this simple story rather more interesting is in how it is viewed from a modern perspective. The story is narrated by three Angels - the Boy is also one of the Angels, the other two play the parts of Marie, the sister of Agnès and her husband - who seem to exist in a separate dimension, and along with other stagehands, they seem to be recreating the events, directing the actors into their places, viewing the sequence of events as they play out and commenting on them. All the characters recite their words as if reading them from a narrative text - Boy: ”What do you want, says the Boy”, Agnès: “To see, says the woman”. Vicki Mortimer’s stage designs, the stage divided into discreet locations seem to emphasis these separations between the reality and the meta-reality, between the story and its creation, between action and commentary on it. Most of the drama takes place in a thin lower strip of the stage, wooden, brown coloured that becomes a room and a bedroom leading to an exterior or a staircase, while the “angels” and their assistants look on form a modern blue-lit side-room and upper level “back office”.

While you are made aware of the characters relating their own words, playing a role, recreating events, it in no way however takes away from the intensity with which the story is depicted through the singing, the performances and in the brooding, probing, revealing musical score - the Mahler Chamber Orchestra conducted here by Benjamin himself - and through Katie Mitchell’s stage direction. The strength and power of the voices, as well as their combination of soprano, baritone and countertenor, are well arranged to achieve the necessary impact, but the actual casting of Barbara Hannigan, Christopher Purves and Bejun Mehta is critical in the ringing clarity of tones and in performances that push the violent passions to their limits. “Shatter the printing press. Make each new book a precious object written on skin“. Can you exhume and invoke the passions of the past and bring them to back to life in a manner that makes them meaningful and immediate to a modern audience? With opera - and the richness of musical and theatrical resources that it places at the disposal of a composer with the necessary ability - apparently you can.

Written on Skin is currently available to view via internet streaming on the ARTE Live Web and on the Medici website. Some region restrictions may apply. The new work will also be able to be seen at the De Nederlandse opera in Amsterdam and at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden later this year.

Handel - Orlando

George Frideric Handel - Orlando

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2012

René Jacobs, Pierre Audi, Bejun Mehta, Sophie Karthäuser, Kristina Hammarström, Sunhae Im, Konstantin Wolff

Internet Streaming, 12 May 2012

As conductor René Jacobs observes in the programme notes for this production of Orlando for La Monnaie-De Munt (watched via their Internet streaming service), Handel - like many other composers who have tackled the subject - must have felt somewhat inspired by the subject of Ariosto’s ‘Orlando Furioso’, for in contrast to some of his works for the Kings Theatre in London where he reworked music from other earlier pieces, Orlando is composed of entirely new music. It may even be the case that Handel took a hand in the writing of the libretto itself, drawing from a libretto by Carlo Sigismondo Capece, introducing some new characters and arrangements to suit his own ideas.

Ever the businessman, there is clearly a calculated approach to Handel’s arrangements for Orlando, which works within the strict conventions of opera seria that audiences and singers would have expected, but seeking to make Italian opera a success in London, Handel also ensured that there is something in it for everyone. Even within the limitations of dramatic action that you can expect from such Baroque work, Handel extended the frame of the unrequited love story between the great warrior Orlando and Angelica, the Queen of Cathay through the introduction of the characters Dorinda and Zorastro - neither of whom appear in Ariosto’s source work - bringing a lighter element and even some comedy with the former and a supernatural aspect with the latter. This gives Handel scope to extend the emotional range of the work to some extent, but the majority of the work is still based around the expression and hiding of feelings between characters who still conform very much to commedia dell’arte types.

The origins of the work extend back to ‘Le Chanson de Roland’, written by a monk at the end of the 11th century, which relates the tale of Roland (who becomes Orlando the story was developed into Italian by Ariosto) set against the background of Charlemagne’s campaign against the Saracens in 778. At the heart of the work is the supremacy of reason - symbolically shown with the appearance of an eagle in the third act - which helps quell the fires of passion that have been aroused during the romantic complications that have taken place. Dorinda is in love with Medoro, the wounded soldier she has been tending, but he is in love with Angelica, who shares his feelings. Orlando however is also in love with Angelica, but she can’t bring herself to admit to the heroic warrior who has saved her life that she is really in love with Medoro and, having been warned by Zorastro of Orlando’s jealous rages, she is somewhat frightened of the consequences should Orlando find out about her love for Medoro. And she has good reason to be cautious, for when Orlando discovers their names carved together on a tree, he burns down Dorinda’s house with Medoro inside and attempts to murder Angelica, until Zorastro’s intervention finally brings him back to his senses.

Concerned very much with inner feelings and emotions expressed and kept hidden, their force given expression through a descent into madness, Orlando does inevitably present a challenge when it comes to staging it. For Pierre Audi, the director of the De Nederlandse Opera, Orlando is very much a psychological drama, and his production accordingly uses the burning of Dorinda’s house as the key symbol of Orlando’s state of mind throughout. It’s certainly a valid way to approach the work, but Audi’s method introduces a few complications that don’t always seem to be entirely coherent or successful. The decision to portray Orlando as a fireman in Act I is a strange one - although one can see how it relates to a modern depiction of his heroism and the esteem that he is held in, as well as relating it to the notion of playing with fire, the fire of passion, and the pyromaniac actions that ensue later - but apart from the wearing of a helmet and some barrels and hoses on the stage, this occupation isn’t over-emphasised. Perhaps even more difficult to grasp however is the fluid approach towards the timeline of events that Audi sees as a reflection of Orlando’s perspective in his madness.

In Act I then, Dorinda’s house has already been burned, the charred remains of its frame are all that are left of it, and Orlando and his firecrew are gathering the hoses back in. An altered view of the destroyed house is shown in the second act, which is where the derangement of Orlando’s nightmare is most pronounced, believing himself to be on the banks of the Styx and drawn to the land of the dead. Projections are used to emphasise his delirium, with repeated imagery of Orlando walking through fields of fire. Act III, where the house is actually burnt down, instead focuses on reconstruction, with a new frame being built, although - in line with the open ending - the rebuilding is necessarily left incomplete. Audi’s other idea for the stage treatment is to often have the characters remain on the stage even after their have sung their aria and should normally be making their exit. This is a fairly standard Brechtian device now, revealing the construct behind the drama, and it has relevance to the psychological nature of the opera’s themes, reflecting the mindset of Orlando’s nightmarish descent into madness, the jumbling of timelines in his mind and his presence at scenes where he is not normally involved reflecting his imagining or reconstruction of events in his mind.

I’m not sure that this reorganisation of the events or their altered perspective really makes anything any clearer, whether it really gets into the mind of the character, or even that it makes the stage action any more compelling to watch, but it does seem to work well with the rather complex psychology and inner turmoil that is sung about and reflected in the score. That is brought out wonderfully by René Jacobs and the playing of the Baroque Orchestra B’Rock, Jacobs making the most of the freedom open to the conductor and the resources at their disposal by expanding the instrumentation for the basso continuo for the brief excerpts of recitative for a more fluid arrangement. The casting for this production is also very strong for all five main roles. Bejun Mehta sings Orlando with an otherworldly quality that doesn’t however always seem to get to the heart of his passion and rage, but he is a very fine countertenor. Sophie Karthäuser is a marvellous Angelica and mezzo-soprano Kristina Hammarström handles the role of Medoro well, but again, you never feel any of them completely get to grips with the characters. In line with Handel’s revisions of the character dynamic in the work however, Sunhae Im displays the most personality as Dorinda, singing with a light beautiful Mozartian voice, and Konstantin Wolff adds the necessary weight as Zorastro.

Orlando is available for viewing free online on the Internet streaming service of La Monnaie-De Munt until 2nd June 2012.

Handel - Belshazzar

George Frideric Handel - Belshazzar

Grand Théâtre de Provence, Festival Aix-en-Provence, 2008

Berlin Akademie für Alte Musik, RIAS Kammerchor, Christof Nel, René Jacobs, Kenneth Tarver, Rosemary Joshua, Bejun Mehta, Kristina Hammarström 

Harmonia Mundi

Belshazzar, written in 1744, was among the first English oratorios composed by Handel after he had abandoned the Italian opera form, and consequently has an interesting place among the composer’s works, still retaining some the dramatic content and style of opera composition. The dramatic content comes about due to the nature of the subject, which is biblical in nature, if not entirely a religious piece of work. So while there are contemplative hymns to God and fervent pleas for deliverance sung throughout, the historical and religious conflicts means that there is a bit more variety to the content and the tone, as well as the opportunity for a staging to apply other meaningful references that could have some present-day significance.

Taking place in 539BC, the Babylon of King Belshazzar is under siege from Cyrus, Prince of the Medes and Persians. The king’s mother Nitocris has a grim foreboding that the city will fall, and this is confirmed by the prophet Daniel. Cyrus has comes up with a plan to divert the Euphrates, and enter the city through its channel while Belshazzar and his men are celebrating the feast of Sesach, the god of wine. Despite warnings and pleas from Nitocris and Daniel, Belshazzar uses the occasion to extend the drunkenness to sacrilegious behaviour that horrifies the Jewish population that are held in captivity in the city. Cyrus enters the city and liberates the Jews from bondage, promising to set up a new Jerusalem.

The plot is not overly complicated for a three-act, almost three-hour oratorio, but there is a certain amount of dramatic ground to cover, which means that there is more opera seria-like recitative in Balshazzar, and consequently, it may not be always quite as musical and melodious as later Handel oratorios. And if the individual sections are not the most memorable or notable Handel however, the impact of the oratorio is on a dramatic level and in the piece as a whole. It’s staged here for the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2008 by Christof Nel in a manner that doesn’t set any modern agenda or updated interpretation of the work, letting the dramatic action be dictated by the words of the libretto. One can see nonetheless that Belshazzar is not just a biblical or historical work, but that it applies as much to the role of a monarch or ruler, which has meaning for the period that the work was written, as well as having relevance to present-day conflicts not so far away from where this is set in antiquity.

René Jacobs conducts the Berlin Akademie für Alte Musik and the RIAS Kammerchor through a fine live performance of Belshazzar at Aix. The singing in English, from principals and chorus soloists alike, is uniformly wonderful across the whole range of voices – tenor, counter-tenor, soprano, mezzo-soprano, bass and male alto – that Handel brilliantly composes for and blends together. Bejun Mehta (whose crystal clear countertenor can also be heard to terrific effect in a recent production of Handel’s Theodora) is notable here as Cyrus and Kenneth Tarver is fine as Belshazzar, but even more impressive are Rosemary Joshua as Nitocris and Kristina Hammarström as Daniel. Such fine singing could not have been easy either with the acting demanded – a drenched Tarver clearly finds it too much – but a good balance between both is achieved in the staging.

I’m not entirely happy with the HD transfer on the Blu-ray from Harmonia Mundi. Even though it’s on a BD50 disc, the encoding is not great, resulting in a faint jerkiness and blurring when there is movement on the screen. The effect may be variable on different players with better refresh rates, but this is the first BD I’ve come across with such a problem. There isn’t enough movement on the screen for this to become a significant issue, but it could be a minor irritation. The audio tracks are in the standard PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 and are both fine for the demands of the orchestration and the singing. Subtitles are in English, French and German only. Other than a text synopsis, there are no extra features on the Blu-ray disc. 

Handel - Theodora

George Frideric Handel - Theodora

Salzburg Festspiele, 2009

Christof Loy, Ivor Bolton, Freiburger Barockorchester, Salzburger Backchor, Christine Schäfer, Bejun Mehta, Joseph Kaiser, Johannes Martin Kränzle, Bernarda Fink, Ryland Davies

Unitel Classica - C-Major

Presented at the Salzburg Festival in 2009 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death, Theodora isn’t a Handel opera, but rather a staged version of his 1750 oratorio. It would however be more accurate to say that this is semi-staged, and perhaps even more accurate to say it’s barely staged at all. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination, and it certainly doesn’t place any demands on the costume or set designers, to scatter a few chairs about the stage and have the chorus and principal singers dress in the modern formal black evening-dress of a concert performance, unless there’s some hidden significance in updating the martyrdom of Theodora and Didymus from Antioch in 3AD to a concert stage. It’s semi-staged in that rather than face the audience, the singers move around a bit, remove the occasional item of clothing and put a little more acting into the singing.

As it turns out though, it doesn’t matter in the slightest if it seems like the production team earned an easy paycheque for this one, because it works. Theodora is not an oratorio that lends itself easily to a dramatic staging and attempts to do so (such as Peter Sellars’ Glyndebourne production) can potentially detract from the true qualities of this remarkable work, so thankfully this version hasn’t been messed around with at all. The oratorio considers the fate of Theodora, a Christian woman who tries to hold her virtue from the assaults of the Roman governor Valens and refuses to worship Jupiter, who is eventually martyred along with a young Roman soldier Didymus who attempts to help her escape from the life of forced prostitution that is her punishment. It’s a religious work, made up of contemplative prayers that espouse virtue and chastity, but, along with the fate of Didymus, who loves Theodora in a pure fashion, there are other noble sentiments in the work that celebrate valour in the face of tyranny and martyrdom.

The music itself – really some of the most exquisite music Handel ever composed – expresses this perfectly and as evocatively as you could imagine. The music is warmly rapturous, the singing heavenly and the choruses inspiringly uplifting. The producers clearly recognise where the strengths of the piece are and give them centre stage, doing nothing in the loose dramatisation that could interfere with the singing performances. Those performances are magnificent, the English diction perfect in every case, with Christine Schäfer’s Theodora exhibiting fragility turning into steely determination, Bejun Mehta a glorious countertenor Didymus and Joseph Kaiser a fine, emotionally moved Septimus. Ivor Bolton conducts the Freiburger Barockorchester with great sensitivity through a breathtaking performance. This is a stunningly beautiful work, perfectly performed and very well presented in High Definition, with a terrifically detailed image and two fine audio tracks in LPCM Stereo and DTS HD Master Audio 5.1, where every element of the mix is crystal clear and perfectly balanced.