Wagner - Götterdämmerung (Zurich, 2024)

Richard Wagner - Götterdämmerung (Zurich, 2024)

Opernhaus Zürich, 2024

Gianandrea Noseda, Andreas Homoki, Klaus Florian Vogt, Daniel Schmutzhard, Christopher Purves, David Leigh, Camilla Nylund, Lauren Fagan, Sarah Ferede, Freya Apffelstaedt, Lena Sutor-Wernich, Giselle Allen, Uliana Alexyuk, Niamh O'Sullivan, Siena Licht Miller

Zurich Opera Ring für alle - 26th May 2024

If there's initially a sense that the 2024 Opernhaus Zürich's Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle is getting a little tired and lacking in surprises by the time we get to Götterdämmerung, it's probably as much to do with the opera itself as the production. When you get this far, it can sometime feel like a duty just to see the cycle through to the end rather than any expectation of surprises or twists being pulled out at this late stage in a production. But see it through you must, just for the powerful conclusion that the whole story had been moving towards from very early on, and even if those surprises are fewer, the quality and consistency that has characterised the previous parts is carried through here impressively.

The only ones indeed not able to predict how the remainder of the production play out are ironically the three Norns. The universe of this Zurich production remains within the familiar backdrop of a rotating stage of rooms, the high panelled walls white again after the darkness of Siegfried. Or a little off-white maybe. The world of Götterdämmerung looks worn and neglected, a little battered, the white paint yellowing, cracking and peeling. The three Norn struggle to hold the strands of the rope of fate together, the events that the gods have enacted have worn it down, their fate is now unknown. We on the other hand have some idea of what to expect, at least as far as how the colour schemes present it.

A Rasputin-like Hagen is most definitely dressed in black for this work's divisions of those who serve nature and those whose actions hasten its destruction. The Gibichung break the simple colour coding however; Gunther and Gutrune, wearing red jackets, are of a different mold to the grand mythical forces of black and white in conflict. The time of the Eternal Ones and heroes is past, Siegfried's grey turning into a black and white suit by the time of his wedding to Gutrune and betrayal of Brünnhilde. The thread has been broken, the Sacred Ash destroyed. the Norn perhaps colour blind and therefore unable to see into the unknown future where now only destruction looms.

In this world where we are heading towards the end of an era, the key scene of Siegfried's betrayal of Brünnhilde is crucial and achieved highly effectively here. Siegfried wears the Tarmhelm while Gunther shambles on like a monster version of himself in a mask. Brünnhilde’s horror is felt, but there is the suggestion when she accidentally tears off the Tarnhelm in a struggle for the ring and momentarily glimpses the true face of Siegfried, that she lets herself succumb to the curse that has befallen all of them, a fate that she has already been forewarned off by her sister Valkyrie, Waltraute.

Again, it's the smallest of touches that make the difference here, such as a dejected Wotan making a cameo appearance in Valhalla, Freia's golden apples untouched. It might look like it's just trying to fill out what otherwise looks fairly bare minimal staging, but it's not. Such little details count here, making it feel relatable, like something human is really at stake and not just a grand myth. If you want to see the destruction of the World Ash and demand of Waltraute that Brünnhilde abandon the Ring and all it stands for as a commentary of capitalism exploiting the natural resources and the end of that road leading to climate change destruction unless nature (the Rhinemaidens) is respected, it's there clearly if you want to see it that way, even if none of it is made explicit in the staging. Not that I'm claiming that Wagner was a very early advocate of Green policies, but it's a theme that is large enough to be held within the grand mythology of Der Ring des Nibelungen.

The singing keeps up the remarkably high standards and consistency of the previous parts of the cycle. And when you have good direction as you have here under Andreas Homoki, it means you can enter fully into the purpose and intent of the work. Klaus Florian Vogt can still get away with an ideal mix of youthful naivety and enthusiasm, if not quite the vocal force you expect (but which it rarely attains) for this role. There is an excellent performance here from Camilla Nylund as Brünnhilde, particularly in her confrontation and accusations of the betrayal by Siegfried. It's fitting that she outshines Vogt in this scene in her outrage. I was really impressed with her performance throughout the second Act, necessary to gives the opera the weight, grief and tragedy it needs at the tragic conclusion. David Leigh, who was the dragon Fafner in Siegfried, here takes the role of Hagen with great power and depth, his delivery clear and ominous throughout. Daniel Schmutzhard and Lauren Fagan sing the roles of Gunter and Gutrune roles well. Christopher Purves is once again brilliant as the dark and bitter Alberich.

Again, I am in awe of the musical performance here of the Philharmonia Zürich under Gianandrea Noseda. I've never rated Götterdämmerung all that highly compared to the more popular and widely performed parts of Der Ring des Nibelungen, once in jest unfairly and inaccurately suggesting that it was little more than as a compilation of variations of the leitmotifs from the earlier works, but the beauty and delicacy of the score, particularly in the linking orchestral interludes, is brought out wonderfully in this performance. The weight is perfectly balanced and emotionally attuned without ever slipping into bombast. Perhaps the close attention paid to the detail of the drama and singing help this, but that's not to take anything away from the quality of the musical direction and performance.

As the opera moves towards its conclusion it's clear that there are no major new ideas or grand concept employed here and that the success of the production lies rather in the fact that it is just very good direction that is completely in service to the drama. You look at the deceptively simple minimalism of the sets and colour schemes and wonder how it can still be so effective in establishing mood and drama, and yet it is indeed one of the most effective stagings of Der Ring des Nibelungen that I have seen. It doesn't put a foot wrong anywhere. The mood is right, the acting and singing is of the highest standard, it works hand-in-hand with the musical performance, but what really drives it is the interaction between all those elements. These are not individual performances or creative indulgences, it's a collective ensemble performance, interacting, giving and taking, acting and reacting. And maybe it's there, in how it finds a way for the spectator to connect meaningfully with this grand formidable work of mythology, that this Zurich Ring succeeds so impressively.

External links: Opernhaus Zürich, Ring für alle Video on Demand

Photos - Monika Rittershaus

Wagner - Siegfried (Zurich, 2024)

Richard Wagner - Siegfried

Opernhaus Zürich, 2024

Gianandrea Noseda, Andreas Homoki, Klaus Florian Vogt, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, Tomasz Konieczny, Christopher Purves, David Leigh, Anna Danik, Camilla Nylund, Rebeca Olvera

Zurich Opera Ring für alle - 24th May 2024

Following the first two installments of the Andreas Homoki Ring Cycle for Zurich there was good reason to look forward to their continuation of the epic work in Siegfried. That's not always the case for me. After Das Rhinegold and Die Walküre, I often feel it's more of a duty to see a Ring Cycle through to the end, and it can even be a bit of a chore in some rare cases. Not so here. Even if Andreas Homoki directing and Gianandrea Noseda conducting just continued along the existing path without feeling the need to add any other new ideas, such was the standard and quality of cast in the first two parts that I was confident that the remaining two long evenings of Der Ring des Nibelungen would continue to be hugely enjoyable and as impressive as the first two.

And indeed it does, at least as far as Siegfried goes. There is nothing exceptional about the opening scene other than a sense that it is as good as and consistent in tone with what has come previously inside the house of the Ring. What is noticeable is that the white panelled walls have been swapped for a darker rooms for what takes place in Siegfried. Act I's room contains oversized pieces of furniture (presumably since its inhabitants are dwarf and youth) that hasn't been well cared for, all of it dull, worn, upturned and scattered around. The set doubles up as a forge and workshop very effectively when it comes to repairing Nothung. It matches the sense of disregard of Siegfried by Mime, whose focus is single-mindedly on one thing; the Ring.

Appearances aside, the real attention is given over to the detail of the musical performance that matches the alternatively playful and sensitive sides of the scene, a tone that is likewise conveyed though consistently fine singing performances that have been a hallmark of this Ring Cycle. Here Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke reprises his anxious and animated Mime, Tomasz Konieczny again the Wanderer, and Klaus Florian Vogt is introduced as Siegfried, each of them solid, reliable and playing to their best. You have everything necessary here to engage you in the drama that is to unfold over the course of the work, while the recounting of what has come before is anything but a chore.

Set up as such, more than any other time I can remember (other than expecting to be taken aback by the unpredictable in Frank Castorf's Ring cycle - who can forget the Mount Rushmore of Revolutionaries in his Siegfried?) I very much looked forward - this time for consistency rather than surprise - to seeing how the subsequent Acts would play out. Of course, it helps that since Zurich are using the same cast in the same roles almost throughout, you have the return of Christopher Purves as Alberich to look forward to in Act II. As expected, he is fantastic again here. The scene of Siegfried's reflection on his mother and his failed attempts to communicate with the Waldvogel feel a little overplayed in Act II, but it presents a lovely little oasis of beauty within a very dark scene of greed, treachery and dragon-slaying.

While such touches and little details are well-considered to balance out the tone of the work, and the consistency of the quality of the musical and singing performances count for a lot, there remains a niggling feeling that they could do a little more, that the production could benefit from a deeper exploration of some of the themes typically found in this work. The stage direction, lighting and costume design do give some clues however, gentle ones maybe, nothing too imposing, and it's literally all spelled out in black and white. The use of black and white clothing is a fairly obvious convention, but it's how it is applied here that adds another dimension and gives the work a little commentary worth considering. All the figures here are mythological, but there are some who are closer to nature and purer in their motivation and duty than others, uncorrupted by greed for money and power. The Rhinemaidens, Erda, the Valkyrie, the Waldvogel all are pure white spirits within the context here, as does the change to the basic set colour scheme in the two halves of the tetralogy. That's a fairly strong adherence and visual representation of a central theme of the work.

You can see Siegfried (in shades of grey) in those terms, his refusal to accept the authority of Wotan, laughing at his pretensions that rely on a past reputation that no longer has any currency (literally) in a new world. In that light, it makes the confrontation between them as effective as it can be. Siegfried is not overawed by the golden majesty of the expensively built Valhalla shown to him. He has purer motivations, motivated by love for the mother he has never known and the promise of the maiden surrounded by fire. And, as far as those sentiments go, in Siegfried anyway, it's all about maintaining a coherence, a consistency, an equilibrium between the disparate elements and factors that come into play over the course of the opera, recognising the key scenes and giving them due attention in the direction of the performances.

I'm not sure you can extend this theory to the rapturous declarations of the final scene of Siegfried's awakening of Brünnhilde, but there's a limit to what you can do. Even as Klaus Florian Vogt and Camilla Nylund give it their all, it's all still a bit overly glorified, but in some ways you could look at this as perhaps a necessary scene to counterbalance what comes next in Götterdämmerung. As if recognising this, director Homoki includes some moments of fun - without making fun of it - when Siegfried and Brünnhilde get down to business in a playful clinch after Vogt shows his concern for the lack of respect shown to the hastily cast aside Nothung. 

Again it's a case of little details making a big difference, but aside from that it's left to the singers to deliver the impact of each scene in the opera, and there is no doubt they all carry it through brilliantly, as they did in the earlier parts. New here in the lesser roles are Rebeca Olvera as a bright Waldvöglein, we have a different Fafner here, but arguably he has transformed from Giant to Dragon and David Leigh sounds superb. Anna Danik's Erda makes the most of her brief appearances again here. What really counts of course is your Siegfried and while he might not be anyone's idea of a heldentenor, Klaus Florian Vogt’s unique voice yet again feels absolutely right for this production as it does for whatever Wagner tenor role he undertakes. He makes it seem effortless, which is quite an achievement.

External links: Opernhaus Zürich, Ring für alle Video on Demand

Photos - Monika Rittershaus

Wagner - Das Rheingold (Zurich, 2024)

Richard Wagner - Das Rheingold

Opernhaus Zürich, 2024

Gianandrea Noseda, Andreas Homoki, Tomasz Konieczny, Christopher Purves, Claudia Mahnke, Matthias Klink, Xiaomeng Zhang, Omer Kobiljak, Kiandra Howarth, Anna Danik, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, David Soar, Brent Michael Smith, Uliana Alexyuk, Niamh O'Sullivan, Siena Licht Miller

Zurich Opera Ring für alle - 18th May 2024

Das Rheingold opens to what is a familiar Zurich opera ‘house’ style, certainly under the direction of Andreas Homoki, as in his Der fliegende Holländer, but also Orphée et Eurydice and I Capuleti e i Montecchi, which is to say it takes place in a revolving set of white walls of elegant rooms. The intent here is at least more readily apparent even if it takes place nowhere near the Rhine, the playful Rhinemaidens skipping through the rooms in white silk pyjamas, all of this appearing to represent an ideal, a freshness, a world as yet untainted. That's all about to change, and Alberich's appearance and presence does feel intrusive and dangerous, Christopher Purves just superb in this scene with the Rhinemaidens and later also in the Niebelheim scene. I'm already seduced by the beauty and relative simplicity of Homoki's approach to Opernhaus Zürich's Das Ring des Nibelungen.

I'm getting ahead of myself of course, always thrilled by the possibilities opened up in the "preliminary evening" of this expansive work and this one looks promising, not trying too hard and risking tripping itself up further down the line as some do when they accumulate symbolism and buckle under the weight of a concept stretched too far to remain coherent. As far as taking this stripped down elegant house idea through just within the span of Das Rhinegold - which is challenge enough - it succeeds marvellously, directing the focus onto the characters and the significant roles they play within the drama and in Wagner's musical telling of it.

Superficial appearances aside, although it contributes to the mood of the whole production, creating a wonderful unity with the lighting, the richness of the musical performance of the Philharmonia Zürich under Gianandrea Noseda and the distinct character that they are attempting to establish from the outset, the real strength here is the stage direction. It's immediately obvious that the singers haven't been left to their own devices, but have been given purposeful direction and given something to work with, bringing life, personality and motivation to the work. There are no 'park and bark' performances here. It makes it fully engaging and entrancing, not to mention that the singing is also uniformly superb. What you have here is the full package, a considered approach that brings this vast enterprise to life with a lightness of touch that is uncommon in this work, but which suits it very well.

Are we seeing or are we likely to see any new angle on the work or any new ideas proposed? Well, it's too early to say for sure, but this doesn't look like a Ring Cycle that is going to run away with wild ambitious concepts. If it doesn't at this stage appear to be proposing anything new, if it is successful even just for finding a core purpose, sticking with it and bringing it out clearly, then along with a solid musical and singing performance, this is really all you need. That's established straightaway with Wotan first appearance, gazing on a landscape painting of his Valhalla within it. The dream of asserting his will and presence within a perfect world of splendour and magnificence; a noble nation with Valhalla at the summit. The lust for power/money is never satisfied, always wanting more, and there is a high price to be paid for that.

The lesson is one that Alberich learns to his cost as well, abandoning any love for his fellow man (or dwarf), exploiting their labour to satisfy his own lust for power. Whether you want to paint this - as others have done - as the Earth paying the price for unregulated capitalism, there are other ways of putting this across. In fact, Das Rheingold is a moral tale on the same level as Tolstoy's novella, 'The Forged Coupon', powerfully adapted for cinema also by Robert Bresson as 'L’argent'. No good ever comes from a false act. In fact, the harm of the original act, the stealing of the Rhinegold in the opening scene, is multiplied in severity all the way through the acts of bad faith employed by Wotan and Loge's deception of Alberich and then Fasolt and Fafner. Handed down to Siegfried, we see how this original act leads to the ultimate collapse of the Gods. Money is the curse, the lust for it by individuals over love for one's brother, enslaving and corrupting, the world ultimately destroyed by it.

There is no cleverness or symbolism employed or required to make this point clear. Rather there is a balance between the literalism of the mythological setting and serving the intent underlying the myth. The set gives this world a feeling of solidity, of a drama played out in the real world (so to speak). The images employed by Wagner just as effective in this context as they are in the original, the Tarnhelm a hood forged out of gold chainmail, Alberich's transformations indeed into a dragon and a frog. The ring here is an actual ring, the misappropriated Rhinegold piles of large solid gold nuggets. In keeping with the late 19th-early 20th century setting of the stately house, Donner and Froh wear blazers and straw hats and wield cricket bats, all of this just adding to the richness, taking nothing away from it. The acting, with this music associated with the actions, just adds to the sense of their being something real and important at stake in this Das Rheingold.

Since the focus is firmly on the drama being brought out of the underlying motivations of the protagonists, it is essential that you have singers of sufficient quality to really bring this out. Personally, aside from the terrific performance already mentioned by Christopher Purves as Alberich really nailing this down from the outset, Claudia Mahnke is an outstanding Fricka and Brent Michael Smith a menacing enough Fafner without having any need of the giant's height. But really, there are any number of performances to enjoy here, including Matthias Klink's entertaining Loge, which he plays like Master of Ceremonies on occasion. It's wonderful that this Zurich Ring Cycle will also have a rare consistency of the performers in the same role all the way though. Personally, I still can't warm to Tomasz Konieczny's Wotan, but it's indisputably an excellent performance. All things considered, when a Das Rheingold is this good, it increases anticipation for how the rest of this Ring Cycle will play out.

External links: Opernhaus Zürich, Ring für alle Video on Demand

Photos - Monika Rittershaus

Handel - Saul (Glyndebourne, 2015)

George Frideric Handel - Saul

Glyndebourne, 2015

Ivor Bolton, Barrie Kosky, Christopher Purves, Iestyn Davies, Paul Appleby, Lucy Crowe, Sophie Bevan, Benjamin Hulett, John Graham-Hall

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

Very much old fashioned as they might be as a form of music, Handel's oratorios have proven to still have tremendous vitality in modern performances. More informed use of specialised period instruments in the hands of skilled musicians helps and some fine singers can bring the wonder of the music to life, but the works benefit just as much from efforts to make them visually appealing as stage works. The nature of the Biblical origins of those stories and the format Handel developed in the oratorio present some difficulties on that front, but Glyndebourne's acclaimed 2015 production of Saul is a perfect example of what can be done with an imaginative director on board.

As far as the musical performance of the work goes, there's little cause for concern. The composer's first English oratorio Saul has a tremendous character of its own, Handel by-passing the limitations that the opera format had placed on him by keeping arias short and free from repetition or da capo, using a larger scale orchestration than previously and introducing new instrumental colour, punctuating the work with short instrumental "Symphony" passages and high-impact choruses. Even if it wasn't written to be performed like an opera, there's a lot of dramatic colour in Saul and Ivor Bolton conducts the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment with all the necessary dynamic, capturing the sheer exuberance of the heightened passions while at the same time retaining the beauty and subtlety of more noble qualities expressed in the work.

Director Barrie Kosky's approach to the staging is a little less straightforward. The Australian director, who is also the Intendant at the Komische Oper in Berlin, operates in a style that is very much his own. A distinct, individual approach however works well in translating and putting across all the colour of Baroque opera for a modern audience who might otherwise find its structure and conventions dry, unappealing and unapproachable. Kosky's productions for Rameau and Monteverdi consequently can divide opinion, since they are unlikely to meet any preconceived ideas you might have for how those works should be staged. There's not much dramatic action in opera seria or in an oratorio like Saul, so an imaginative response is precisely what is required here.

Coming from the Biblical story of the Book of Samuel, the story of David and Saul is a familiar one, but not one that you would immediately consider lending itself to great music theatre, much less a high concept reinterpretation of it. Handel, with his librettist Charles Jennens however really give the story a colourful setting, with a particularly explosive opening and a magnificent finale. Barrie Kosky's approach seems to be simply to put those musical flourishes into visual terms, but not entirely in abstraction, retaining as much as possible of the essence of the emotional sentiments and the dramatic situation that provokes them in order for it all to remain meaningful.

You might think never think of the opening of Saul in the context of a huge feast on a banquet table before a colourfully dressed group of Israelites in 18th century costume, but there's no question that Kosky's vision for this setting entirely gets across the essence of Handel's music. It even invites you to listen to the music more closely to hear how the sentiments of joy are mixed with horror and fear at the sight of the decapitated head of Goliath lying gruesomely before them. Katrin Lea Tag's set designs don't elaborate on that a great deal over the three acts, remaining simple and expressive, but Kosky's finds other extravagant, surprising and grotesque ways of putting the dynamic across, using dance, movement, shouted interjections and shock imagery.

All of this is justified by the exuberance and extravagance that is found in Handel's composition itself - or if not justified, it at least abiding by the spirit of work. It might not appear to follow the stage directions of the libretto to the letter (although strictly there are no real stage directions to be followed in an oratorio), it still manages to adhere to the essential themes and intent of the work. Joyous celebration at the start of Saul is followed by anger, jealousy and love complications and ends in tragedy, mourning and reflection, but Handel no longer has to compartmentalise these sentiments according to old opera seria rules in the musical construction he develops for his oratorio.

That richness is reflected in the musical interpretation at Glyndebourne under Ivor Bolton, and it certainly finds an equivalent visual representation under Kosky's direction, but it's also matched on a performance level by the singing. Handel's music is a driving force in itself, but the dramatic emphasis that it requires often comes from the strength of individual performances. Unquestionably, it's Saul who is the centre of all the dramatic conflict in this oratorio, and it could hardly have a more driven Saul than the interpretation given here by Christopher Purves. Under Kosky's direction he's given full rein here to delve deep into his character's torment, and Purves expresses that fully in the beauty and nuance of the voice as well as in the very physical performance.

Saul then provides a solid core of anger, jealousy and hatred that inspires differing reactions and responses from all the other characters. Despite being charged with arranging for the death of David, Jonathan's inner compassion and his friendship with David overrides any hatred and jealousy that Saul tries to sow between them. David's response to Saul's actions are likewise more reflective and compassionate, and both men's character finds perfect expression in the performances of Iestyn Davies's lyrical countertenor David and Paul Appleby's noble Jonathan. The roles of Saul's daughters Michal and Merab are less well established, but the more sympathetic Michal comes across better in Sophie Bevan's performance, her undisguised glee at Saul's change of heart over her love for David adding another level of tone and amusement that fits in well with the intentions of the production. The gorgeous chorus writing that also plays such an important part in the overall tone of the work is superbly handed by The Glyndebourne Chorus.

Links: Glyndebourne

Schoenberg - Moses und Aron (Paris, 2015 - Paris)

Arnold Schoenberg - Moses und Aron

L'Opéra National de Paris, 2015

Philippe Jordan, Romeo Castellucci, Thomas Johannes Mayer, John Graham-Hall, Julie Davies, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Nicky Spence, Michael Pflumm, Chae Wook Lim, Christopher Purves, Ralf Lucas

L'Opéra National de Paris, Bastille - 20 October 2015

You really shouldn't expect anything different from Romeo Castellucci directing Schoenberg's only opera, written in the difficult form of twelve-tone serialism, but apparently there were some people in the audience at this production's premiere in the Bastille in Paris who weren't too pleased with the staging and booed the director at the end. There very few admittedly and they were drowned out by the overwhelming applause, but really, what were they expecting here? Something traditional? Something biblical?

Schoenberg's Moses und Aron is by no means a straightforward telling of the biblical story of the Exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt, and it never has been. It's immediately apparent that Schoenberg is trying to deal with some very personal and artistic questions in the work, identifying to a large extent with Moses. He's not setting himself up as a God, but certainly as something of a prophet for a new gospel of dodecaphony, inventing twelve-tone serial music and giving it its greatest and most convincing expression in this opera. It's a gospel that had some notable disciples, and to a certain degree it still does have influence on the world of contemporary classical music.

As important as it would be on that experimental musical level alone, Moses und Aron would not be the great opera it is if it did not also connect in a meaningful way to the deeper human questions it raises and yes, some of those difficult issues that he is grappling with are to do with religion. For Schoenberg, the Jewish question was a very real issue that could be seen as instigating this musical epiphany. A convert to Protestantism, Schoenberg was unable to deny his Jewish roots and nature when he was still confronted with antisemitism in 1921 and attacked also when Hitler and the Nazis came to power. This had a profound impact on the composer and a great deal of soul-searching that he found himself impotent to articulate in words.

Words are the problem Moses has in the opera and he leaves it to his brother Aron to find a way of bringing God's word to the people without resorting to idolatry while he contemplates the "invisible, incommensurable, infinite, eternal, omnipresent, all-powerful" God who has revealed himself in the form of a burning bush. Language and expression to convey the infinite and indefinable without words or the use of image is a difficult concept. Even musical language has baggage associated with it, so Schoenberg invents a new way of composing music for Moses und Aron which involves serially playing every note in 12-note tone row, as well as pitching the work closer to oratorio than traditional opera, with the chorus taking prominence both as God and as the people.

Musically, Moses und Aron is extraordinarily difficult to interpret and perform (which accounts to a large extent for its rarity on the stage), but the effect is not at all difficult to appreciate. In live performance - judging by its Paris Opera production - it is also evidently a work of enormous power, certainly one of the most important works of the 20th century. And, like many of those important works, Berg's Lulu would be another, it's a work that was never finished by the composer. Following its first performance in 1954, three years after Schoenberg's death, Moses und Aron has been rarely performed and almost always in the form of the two acts written by Schoenberg with the unscored Act III omitted.

How then to interpret all of this in a stage production? Simply replaying a version of the biblical theme would undermine the importance of what is being said and how it is being said. At the same time, particularly in the unfinished version, there are irreconcilable contradictions in the work itself between form and representation that a director would be wise not to ignore. Romeo Castellucci is evidently a director who will provide a unique perspective on such matters, but that still doesn't entirely account for the spectacle that was presented on the stage of the Bastille in Paris in its première performance there.

Representation of the word and mistrust of the image is always going to be at the heart of Castellucci's production, and that's clear from the moment that Moses encounters God here not in a burning bush but in a tape recorder unreeling black tape. Moses's staff meanwhile doesn't transform into a snake exactly, but becomes a long spaceship like construction (worship of technology?). The first half of the production furthermore takes place behind a white screen that creates a haze of undefined shapes as Moses grapples with the infinite and his own personal conflict over being charged with delivering a message that he knows his people will find difficult to accept. He leaves those matters for his brother Aron to deliver, and this takes on a more concrete form in Act II, but the message is one that is inevitably corrupted in the telling.

In his 40 day absence while Moses taking to a Mount Sinai that looks like it is in the Alps, Castellucci finds increasingly strange ways to represent the rituals that Aron and the Jews enact in the licence of Act II's frenzy of sacrifice, murder, idolatry, drinking, dancing and orgy. A huge live yellow bull is led out onto the stage during the worship of the Golden Calf and tar-like black ink is poured over it. A river likewise opens up in a ditch on the stage into which the followers are bathed in black ink. The ink is also the blood of sacrifice of the four naked virgins, spread and smeared across the stage. There's little that could be said to be a literal enactment of the stage directions, but it very much adheres to the themes and to the intent of the libretto.

Adhering to the intent of the word rather than its literal depiction in untrustworthy images is evidently the key concept here, but the irony it seems is lost on a small proportion of the audience who didn't like what they saw. In such a work - unfinished and nearly impossible to stage - it hardly seems worth questioning whether Castellucci's concept bears any greater examination or analysis. What matters is whether it gets across the force and import of what is being expressed here in the music according to the intent of Schoenberg, and that it undoubtedly does.

I've seen Jordan explore the wonders of Lulu marvellously back in 2011 and he also gets a fine performance from the Paris Orchestra here. It flows beautifully as a whole but is also richly attentive to detail, even if at times Jordan seems a little less animated and confidently in control of the serial form here. Thomas Johannes Mayer's 'Sprechgesang' (sing-speak) Moses is perfect here alongside John Graham-Hall's impressive high lyrical tenor Aron, but it's in the remarkable chorus work that the true force and magnificence of the work is revealed.

Links: L'Opéra National de Paris, ARTE Concert

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.

Glass - The Perfect American

Philip Glass - The Perfect American

Teatro Real, Madrid, 2013

Dennis Russell Davies, Phelim McDermott, Christopher Purves, David Pittsinger, Donald Kaasch, Janis Kelly, Marie McLaughlin, Sarah Tynan, Nazan Fikret, Rosie Lomas, Zachary James, John Easterlin, Juan Noval-Moro, Beatriz de Gálvez, Noelia Buñuel

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

It's not too hard to see the point being made about in Philip Glass's new opera based on the last days of Walt Disney. The irony is hammered home repeatedly and with no great subtlety in either the libretto or the musical arrangements. Disney's animation and the safe family-friendly ideals they espouse may be revered by generations of children and their parents, but those values are derived from a rather more flawed human individual. An old-fashioned, small-town country-boy with Republican ideals, intolerant of progress, race equality or union activity, Walt Disney is depicted in The Perfect American as a megalomaniac who not only took the credit for the hard work and talent of others, but he treated them appallingly as well. So he wasn't a nice guy. Why make an opera about him?

Well, if Walt Disney and his works are held up as being the epitome of "the perfect American", even ironically, then there might be some merit in exploring prevailing bigoted attitudes and intolerance in the USA, but there's little evidence of that here.  It doesn't help that Rudy Wurlitzer's libretto is filled with repetitive, expositional and declamatory dialogue that attempts to find significance in banalities. Walt's vision for America is determined by his own small-town upbringing ("Everything that I've become has its roots in Marceline"), and that vision is defined as little more than "a magical place where dreams and miracles come true". Elsewhere, Walt's nature and achievements are summed up in snappy mottos ("Never say die!"), common clichés (Disney and his creations being "more famous than Santa" and "more recognisable than Jesus") and dull observations ("That's what he does, spares everyone the worst").

There is some attempt to find a less literal approach in the consideration of notions of immortality, but the observations are similarly trite. Walt expresses his desire to a nurse at the hospital to be cryogenically frozen so that he can be revived in the future, and hubristically compares his cartoons to Greek gods, believing that his work and his beliefs in good conservative American values will "live forever". A little more colour is added when Walt is contrasted with Andy Warhol, who was born in the same year, or in a sequence where Walt has a conversation with a reanimated robot of Abraham Lincoln, but even there, it seems like just thrown in as an opportunity to allow Disney to express some pretty distasteful views on the abolition of slavery leading to the degradation of traditional American values. The latter sequences at least allow director Phelim McDermott and designer Dan Potra a bit more freedom to experiment with the staging which, even without having recourse any actual representations of Disney characters, is impressive and colourful throughout.

The cast and performances are also exceptionally good. Despite the deficiencies of the libretto, Christopher Purves and the rest of the cast (in particular Zachary James as Abe Lincoln and Rosie Lomas as Lucy/Josh) manage to inject some personality into their characters and even some sense of melody into the singing. The musical score however is mostly lifeless orchestration of bland repetition, deadened even further by an inordinate amount of tapping percussion. It lacks any real dynamic or variety in tempo and has no sense of a distinct dramatic character or expression for the work. It's a long way from Glass at his most original and operatic best in his early Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha or Akhnaten portrait operas, but Glass has shown himself in more recent times to still be creatively inspired when the subject (Kepler) or the source (Kafka, Cocteau) are worthy. Walt Disney and The Perfect American just don't seem to fire the composer's imagination this time.

On Blu-ray and in High Definition, the recording of the opera during its world premiere run in the Teatro Real in Madrid at least looks terrific. The staging is impressive and it's well filmed, the HD image capturing the wonderful colour and lighting of the production. The audio tracks also give a clear presentation of the music and the singing both in the stereo (LPCM 2.0) and surround options (DTS HD Master Audio 5.1).  Other than a Cast Gallery, there are no extra features on the BD, but there is an essay and a synopsis in the enclosed booklet. Subtitles are in English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese and Korean.

Britten - Peter Grimes

 Benjamin Britten - Peter Grimes

Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 2012

Robin Ticciati, Richard Jones, John Graham-Hall, Susan Gritton, Christopher Purves, Felicity Palmer, Ida Falk Winland, Simona Mihai, Peter Hoare, Daniel Okulitah, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Christopher Gillett, George von Bergen, Stephen Richardson, Francesco Malvuccio

Opus Arte

The main strength of Britten's Peter Grimes, and one of its main themes of course, is its essentially English character.  That is challenged in two ways in this 2012 production of the opera.  One is that it is performed at La Scala in Milan and not at Aldeburgh or somewhere more appropriate with a feeling for the vitally English smalltown seaside location of the work.  The second challenge to the integrity of the work is that the period of the setting is somewhat inevitably updated to the near-present by director Richard Jones.  In the event not only do neither of these choices prove detrimental to the piece, but they actually manage to bring something new and fresh out of the work.  With an opera like Peter Grimes and the sensitive subjects and themes it touches on, that's exactly the kind of challenge and contemporary relevance you want to remind you of the importance of this work in the composer's centenary year.

The principal theme of Peter Grimes is one that underlies much of Britten's work and is evidently one that has significance and meaning for the composer himself - the corruption of innocence.  That theme is developed in a much wider context however here in Britten's first fully orchestrated opera than it is, for example, in The Turn of the Screw or Billy Budd.  At the same time, Peter Grimes itself is a much more intimate and personal case, since it takes in the circumstances of individual identity that is corrupted by the nature of the wider society in which it struggles to exist.  This is a society where money is respected and where what is deemed respectable behaviour is determined by the nasty, narrow-minded parochialism, wagging tongues, gossip and pointing the finger at others.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?  You don't have to look far beyond the headlines of today's Daily Mail to see that those attitudes persist and are not confined to small English seaside towns.  Based on a poem by George Crabbe called 'The Borough', I'm sure that's exactly what Benjamin Britten wanted to get across.  An unconventional outsider, himself the subject of gossip, rumours and attacks in the press, living at the time in California with his partner Peter Pears as a conscientious objector against the war, this was a subject that was close to the composer's heart.  Britten's approach to the work is consequently all the more daring and challenging for Peter Grimes not in any way being painted as sympathetic character, but he's certainly preferable to the vicious, prejudiced mob who hound him for his inability to behave in any conventional manner.

Who is really to blame for what happens to the fisherman's apprentices?  By today's standards Grimes would hardly meet regulations governing health and safety or child employment legislation and social services would undoubtedly have something to say about allowing children to be in close contact with such an individual.  Ultimately however the pressures placed on Grimes that drive him to make mistakes are those of social acceptance.  He may want to marry Ellen Orford, but he needs to earn enough money to make that alliance worthy in the eyes of the general public and he consequently takes risks that place the young boys in his care in unacceptable levels of danger.  It's the interference and the spreading of gossip by busybodies that create such an environment of instability and uncertainty that things inevitably take a turn for the worst.

There are no easy answers to be found in such a situation and all the complexity of the character of Peter Grimes and his reaction against social norms is there within Britten's score.  And more besides, the composer's own sensibility refracted through Crabbe's drama in an intriguing and personal way.  Britten finds a language for the anti-hero individual set against the mob in Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtensk and in Berg's Wozzeck, but the expression is entirely Britten's own and its temperament is completely English.  His first traditionally structured and fully orchestrated opera, there's consequently a sweep to Peter Grimes that you don't find in any of Britten's other works, the score weaving in sea-shanties to haunting and sinister effect, creating an evocation of lives being subject to the brutal force of tides - tides of public opinion as much as the sea.  

You might expect that an English orchestra might be more attuned to these rhythms, but the orchestra of La Scala conducted by the young English music director Robin Ticciati give a remarkable account of the work.  There is always the danger of over-emphasis or heavy-handedness within Peter Grimes, but Ticciati directs with quiet reserve, allowing the swells to rise and the rhythms to assert their authority, building towards the tragedy in a manner and with a drive that seems as unstoppable as the outcome is inevitable.  There are no concerns about the singing either, but wisely that's because there's a predominately English/British cast.  John Graham-Hall sings Peter Grimes with the right tone of edgy fragility and steely determined defiance, never seeking to endear him to the audience, but rather plunging right into the dangerous nature of this impassioned but deluded character.  Most impressive of all however is Susan Gritton's Ellen Orford.  It can be possible to underestimate her character, but she is the heart and conscience of the opera and Gritton makes you quite aware of that with her heartwrenching performance.  With a cast that also includes the impeccable Christopher Purves and a fine Auntie in the form of Felicity Palmer this is a most impressive and complete account of the work.

The choice of Richard Jones is also a good one for bringing out the essentially English character of the work, particularly in a modern-day context.  (It's nominally set in the money-loving 1980s, but that makes little or no difference to its contemporary relevance).  All the little details are there without any sense of caricature or parody which can always be a danger with Jones.  You might see football tops and trainers and all the indications of class and profession that are equally an important part of the work, but the telling details are in the gestures and movements.  Whether it's Auntie's "nieces" swaying down the street in their high-heels curling fingers through hair, whether it's figures in the background smoking cigarettes and chewing gum, dancing in Moan Hall or whether it's more ominous rows of the chorus, watching, observing and passing judgement, it's as good a visual representation of the social context of the work as Britten's music.

Stuart Laing's sets also reflect the context well and even if there are a few curious touches here and there, not least of which is the intriguing final image of Ellen that we are left with.  All of this nonetheless gives cause for reflection on the deeper meaning of the work and the ambiguities that lie within it.  There is little sense of a seaside town, although static seagulls are mounted on the walls of the buildings and seem to become increasingly agitated - in a static kind of way - as the work goes on.  The rooms of each of the scenes all seem to be self-contained and "boxed-in", again reflecting the nature of this society.  Some of them even tilt and sway, rocking from side to side in the stormy conditions and according to the general instability of what is going on.  It's by no means a flattering portrait of the English, but then Peter Grimes isn't supposed to be.

The Blu-ray from Opus Arte looks and sounds great in High Definition.  The sound mixes are in PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1.  The BD is region-free and subtitles are in English, French, German, Japanese and Korean.  The booklet has an essay that makes good points about the production, particularly relating to the use of movement and dancing in it, and also some interesting observations about Britten learning from Verdi and Strauss.  There's also a good set of interviews on the disc itself and a cast gallery.

Glass - The Perfect American

Philip Glass - The Perfect American

Teatro Real, Madrid, 2013

Dennis Russell Davies, Phelim McDermott, Christopher Purves, David Pittsinger, Donald Kaasch, Janis Kelly, Marie McLaughlin, Sarah Tynan, Nazan Fikret, Rosie Lomas, Zachary James, John Easterlin, Juan Noval-Moro, Beatriz de Gálvez, Noelia Buñuel

Medici.tv / ARTE Internet Streaming, 5th February 2013

It's not too hard to see the point being made about in Philip Glass's new opera based on the last days of Walt Disney.  The irony is hammered home repeatedly and with no great subtlety in either the libretto or the musical arrangements.  His animation and the safe family-friendly ideals they espouse may be revered by generations of children and their parents, but those values are derived from a rather more flawed human individual.  An old-fashioned, smalltown country-boy with Republican ideals, intolerant of progress and union activity, Walt Disney is depicted in The Perfect American as a megalomaniac who not only took the credit for the hard work and talent of others, but he treated them appallingly as well.  So he wasn't a nice guy.  Why make an opera about him?  Well, if Walt Disney and his works are held up as being the epitome of "The Perfect American", even ironically, then there might be some merit in exploring prevailing bigoted attitudes and intolerance.  If that's its purpose however, the opera singularly fails to make its case.

Whether Walt Disney should be accorded the stature of being the subject for opera isn't so much in question then as much as whether a study of the animation giant as the "Perfect American" really has as much to say about the society we live in today as the subjects of previous Glass biographical works - Einstein (Einstein on the Beach), Gandhi (Satyagraha) or the great reforming Egyptian pharaoh (Akhnaten).  Whatever you think of Walt Disney or his children's animation films, he's not exactly the first person who comes to mind when you look around for a representative icon of American values.  Yes, the Disney animation studio was certainly one of the earliest and biggest exports of American family values, the empire of the Mouse and the Duck expanding to conquer and achieve universal recognisability in even the most remote corners of the world.  As for whether the personal attitudes of Disney persist and hold influence, there's a case could certainly be made for that, but not laid specifically at the door of Walt Disney the man.

The idea that he may have been as important as Thomas Edison or Henry Ford may form a part of Walt Disney's self-delusion, but there is no reason given why the audience should believe it or even any suggestion that anyone takes the comparison seriously.  This is a fault that lies throughout the whole premise of the opera.  Based on a novel by Peter Stephen Jungk, a fictionalised account of Walt Disney that recounts the last few months of his life, The Perfect American seems to be attempting to suggest that the flaws and delusions of one man have some kind of wider implication, but in reality it just presents the twisted views of one small-minded individual that seem to have no place or purpose on the operatic stage.  The same could perhaps be said about Mark Anthony Turnage's Anna Nicole, but the tragic story of the rise and demise of Anna Nicole Smith could arguably be said to reflect the pitfalls in following the American Dream with a broader historical scope (Marilyn Monroe) and more cutting social observation, at least on the compromised position of women within that Dream.

Like Anna Nicole, The Perfect American similarly relies heavily on a depiction of the corrupting influence of smalltown America.  But whereas Anna Nicole Smith saw it as a "shithole" that she had to escape from, Walt Disney - in the kind of obvious expositional language that is prevalent throughout Rudy Wurlitzer's libretto ("Everything that I've become has its roots in Marceline"), looks back fondly on his origins, seeing in his hometown all the good old-fashioned American values that he holds dear.  Just to emphasise his position as a reactionary and an unpleasant man, his relationship with Wilhelm Dantine - an animator on 'The Sleeping Beauty' - and their fall-out over union activities is the linking element between the three acts, but Dantine is still devastated when Walt dies.  The libretto's idea of any other kind of character development is limited to snappy mottos ("Never say die!"), common clichés (Mickey Mouse being "more famous than Santa" and "more recognisable that Jesus") and banal observations ("That's what he does, spares everyone the worst") that don't so much highlight the nature of Disney as illustrate the lack of imagination of the libretto and the treatment.

Even those areas where the work tries a less literal approach, the implications are no less obvious and at the same time no more revealing of the man other than the scale of his self-delusion.  He expresses his desire to a nurse at the hospital to be cryogenically frozen so that he can be revived in the future, and hubristically compares his cartoons to Greek gods, believing that his work and his beliefs in good conservative American values will "live forever".  A little more colour is added when Walt is contrasted with Andy Warhol, who was born in the same year, or in a sequence where Walt has a conversation with a robot Abraham Lincoln, but even there, it seems like just thrown in as an opportunity to allow Disney to express some pretty distasteful views on the abolition of slavery leading to the degradation of traditional American values.

The latter sequences allow director Phelim Mc Dermott and designer Dan Potra a bit more freedom to experiment with the staging, but to be honest, it's impressive throughout.  It's not on the same scale of brilliance of McDermott and his Improbable ensemble's work for Glass's sublime Satyagraha a few years ago, but that narrative-free work called out for a strong collaborative theatrical expression.  Here however, they still manage nonetheless to find an imaginative way to work with the rather more banal reality of The Perfect American, keeping it visually engaging and thematically relevant through projected animation sequences and supernumeraries playing the larger-than-life rabbits of Disney's mind, avoiding any Mom and Apple-Pie clichés or overly literal depictions of small-town Americana.

The performances of the cast at the Madrid world premiere run in the Teatro Real (viewed via Internet streaming) were also exceptionally good.  Christopher Purves was an outstanding Walt Disney, but all the cast managed to inject some personality into their characters and even some sense of melody into their singing.  As scored by Glass however, there wasn't much of that in the lifeless orchestration of bland repetition that lacked and real dynamic or variety in tempo and seemed to have no sense of a distinct dramatic character or expression for the work.  It's a long way from Glass at his most original and operatic best in Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha or Akhnaten, but Glass has shown himself in more recent times to still be creatively inspired when the subject (Kepler) or the source (Kafka, Cocteau) are worthy.  Walt Disney and The Perfect American doesn't seem to fire the composer's imagination this time, and it seems hardly likely to excite audiences when it comes to the English National Opera this summer.

The Perfect American is available to view via internet streaming - with some region restrictions to the UK - on Medici.tv and on ARTE Live Web.