Bellini - I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Buxton Festival, 2016)

Vincenzo Bellini - I Capuleti e i Montecchi

Buxton Festival 2016

Justin Doyle, Harry Fehr, Luis Gomes, Stephanie Marshall, Sarah-Jane Brandon, Jonathan Best, Julian Tovey

Buxton Festival - 20 July 2016

Opera, if you want to try to pin it down to a popular definition, is an artificial narrative construct given a heightened reality through music and singing. The archetypes that would best fit this definition in the consciousness of the general public are those that go for the heightened emotional jugular - La Traviata, La Bohème - but it's practically the entire raison d'être for the bel canto style of opera. Bellini's work evidently fits the bill, and while Norma and I Puritani might be better known works, it's I Capuleti e i Montecchi that probably best meets the definition of the popular archetype.

Shakespeare would have a lot to do with turning the historical struggle between the political factions of the Guelph and Ghibelline into the two rival households of the Capuleti and Montecchi into what has become the archetype or by-word for the romantic tragedy in Romeo and Juliet, even though Bellini doesn't use Shakespeare as his primary source for I Capuleti e i Montecchi. Just like Shakespeare however, the story gives Bellini everything he needs to make this an operatic drama of the highest order.

Harry Fehr's production of I Capuleti e i Montecchi for the 2016 Buxton Festival would seem to be reaching for all those grand archetypal moments and images that everyone can relate to in Shakespeare's version and in Bellini's operatic interpretation. You have to really, as expecting realism or naturalism in a bel canto opera isn't going to get you anywhere. You do however need to find a balance that creates real insurmountable obstacles that only lifts the love story of Romeo (from the Montecchi family) and Giulietta (from the rival Capuleti family) to a higher romantic reality.

Several recent productions have reached for strong imagery to match those heightened sentiments. Arnaud Bernard brought a grand tableaux to life in a museum in his La Fenice production, and Christof Loy drew on imagery from the Godfather for a successful production in Zurich. Buxton also go for a mix of iconic imagery that strives to match the heightened passions of Bellini's writing, depicting the Capuleti as a military unit in army uniforms and the Montecchi in the dark dress of undercover operatives or even terrorists. It's not so much to make any contemporary allusion as much as find imagery that strikes a note of deep conflict and danger.

Yannis Thavoris's set design don't present a lot of variety to the scenes, and there's precious little traditional Verona here, but the set does capture a sense of the external and the internal reality in a clever way. The Capuleti compound is surrounded by a secure fence topped with barbed-wire that at the same serves as the walls of the bed chamber where Giulietta is kept, the two blending into one. It works on a functional level too, the world outside the wire cage masked by black curtains into which figures emerge and dissolve. It could be a barrier that is meant to protect from threats from the hated Montecchi, but it could just as easily be there to keep Giulietta locked inside.

As seemingly insurmountable as this high fence and the armed protection ought to appear, it's still not enough to keep out Romeo, whose love for Giulietta is such that no barrier will stand in his way. Despite having unintentionally killed Giulietta's brother in a dispute, Romeo is able to come and go much as he pleases in this opera, entering the compound in disguise, as a 'goodwill ambassador' and simply just as the necessity of the plot demands. Such contrivances are fine if there is at least an element of danger present in his incursions, and all the military regalia and security measures give that appearance.

The set, costume design and direction all go some way to establishing the necessary tone for the artificiality of the narrative, but it's the music and singing that really carry the full extent of the heightened emotional reality in I Capuleti e i Montecchi. Justin Doyle's musical direction led the Northern Chamber Orchestra through the rattling dramatic twists and turns, while the dramatic and singing performances of the cast were all terrific. It would serve no useful purpose to compare anyone to Joyce DiDonato in the role of Romeo - that's a whole different order of performance - but Stephanie Marshall carried the mezzo-soprano trouser-role well on her own terms. She hit all the necessary points, matching the raised tensions in the drama, and in a production where there were many stand-offs with pointed guns, that was very dramatic indeed.

Sarah-Jane Brandon was also great as Giulietta, probably the stand-out performance of the evening really. The beautiful but drama-stalling love duets in this opera would have been much duller without her intensity. There were no weak points anywhere in this cast however, with Luis Gomes a bright and fervent Tebaldo and Jonathan Best an imposing and even dangerous presence as Capellio, Giulietta's protective father. Unlike Shakespeare's drama, where the families united in grief for the harm that their feud has wrought, I Capuleti e i Montecchi ends on a note of anger. As the culprit blamed for it all, Capellio got his just desserts in this production a bloody manner that matched the crashing finale that was fully in the spirit of this strong production.

Links: Buxton Festival

Mozart - La Finta Giardiniera

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - La Finta Giardiniera

Buxton Festival, 2013

Nicholas Kraemer, Harry Fehr, Christopher Lemmings, Ellie Laughame, Stephanie Corley, Andrew Kennedy, Catherine Carby, Anna Patalong, Matthew Hargreaves

Buxton Opera House - 6 July 2013

Now this is how you do Mozart!  La Finta Giardiniera may be a relatively minor work in the Mozart canon, the youthful product of an 18 year-old composer, but even this early opera contains seeds of the greatness that would follow. If you set the right tone between all the old-style 'woe is me' arias and Mozart's playful interpretation of them, La Finta Giardiniera can be a surprisingly entertaining and revealing piece.  Buxton clearly recognise the potential within the work and they get it marvellously right in this delightful production at the 2013 Buxton Festival.

La Finta Giardiniera can potentially be a little dull and static in places due to its structure and the necessity of the singers to deliver plot exposition through recitative and arias, but even that is dealt with in a clever way here in Harry Fehr's production that keeps everything visually interesting and mobile.  The tricky backplot of Count Belfiore's attempted murder of the Marquesa Violante is covered during the overture ("Previously on La Finta Giardiniera...") with a couple of flash-frame scenes and newspaper headlines that set the tone perfectly for what follows, injecting a little humour but also working to make the plot comprehensible and meaningful.

The main setting for the production is classically contemporary, retaining the setting of Don Anchise's mansion and garden, but updating it to a marquee that has been set up on the estate for the forthcoming wedding of the Count Belfiore to Arminda.  In disguise as Sandrina, Violante with her minder Roberto - going under the name of Nardo - are not so much servants in the employ of the Podestà as employees of the catering firm contracted for the wedding.  Not so much a gardener either, Sandrina is more of a florist preparing the bouquets and garlands for the tables.  Every other updating is along similar lines and works wonderfully, not just in keeping with the tone of the work but truly invigorating it.

It helps that there is good choreography of the action and that's there is careful and realistic attention paid to the characters and the interaction between them.  In the early scenes then, not only does everyone have to sing complicated arias that express their situation, but they have to do so while setting and arranging tables.  It could be distracting but it's not and there's actually a sense of things being constructed and pieced together, of preparations being made for a wedding that's not on a terribly stable foundation, each of the characters finding themselves sat at a table on their own by the time we get to Mozart's delightful ensemble at the end of the first Act.

All of this helps to give substance to what can be a rather confusing and open plot.  Mozart's later works are indeed much more complex than this, but they have more nuanced characterisation and music that makes them easier to follow.  La Finta Giardiniera needs a little more help and it had that at every stage here.  The handling of Sandrina's abduction by Arminda, where she is locked in a dark cellar and searched for in the dark by all the characters, isn't quite as brilliant as a similar situation in Le Nozze di Figaro for example, but the way the farcical misunderstandings are staged here is just hilarious.  Even the bizarre mad scene of Sandrina and Belfiore works well here, but it helps that the personalities of the characters have been so well and consistently established in the earlier scenes.

That's as much to do with the first-rate cast assembled here as it is to do with Harry Fehr's brilliant stage direction and Yannis Thavoris' clever set designs.  The singers were able to just throw themselves fully into their characters and the situations and, without exception, sang marvellously. Matthew Hargreaves was an engaging Nardo and Anna Patalong as a deliciously spiteful Serpetta.  Stephanie Corley however provided the most entertainment as a particularly feisty Arminda and was a clear audience favourite.  Even if things didn't quite go her way, she clearly relish every moment of the whole affair, and still somehow managed to seem to come out on top.  The slightly more sensible characters (it's all relative) - Christopher Lemmings' Don Anchise, Catherine Carby's Ramiro, Andrew Kennedy's Belfiore and Ellie Laughame's Violante/Sandrina provided excellent counterbalance to all this frivolity with great singing, but were also allowed to let themselves go as the occasion demanded.

Nicholas Kraemer conducted the Buxton Festival orchestra with attention to this kind of detail, finding that there is more than adequate verve and brilliance in this early Mozart score to allow such expression.  La Finta Giardiniera will never be regarded as one of Mozart's great works, but Buxton's production demonstrated that there is considerable merit in the work nonetheless.  In the process - alongside their charming Double Bill of Saint Saëns' La Princesse Jaune and Gounod's La Colombe - it wholly justifies why their approach to the revival of such lesser known opera works is invariably successful.

Verdi - Macbeth

Giuseppe Verdi - Macbeth

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 2011

Antonio Pappano, Phyllida Lloyd, Harry Fehr, Simon Keenlyside, Raymond Aceto, Liudmyla Monastyrska, Elisabeth Meister, Nigel Cliffe, Ian Lindsay, Steven Ebel, Dimitri Pittas, Will Richardson

Opus Arte

If the concept behind Phyllida Lloyd’s direction at the Royal Opera House production of Verdi’s Macbeth (the 2002 production revived here under director Harry Fehr) isn’t immediately obvious and doesn’t seem totally coherent, it’s perhaps because the marriage of Verdi and Shakespeare itself in this earlier opera of the composer (unlike the magnificent later adaptations Otello and Falstaff) isn’t the most consistent or coherent either. Rather than attempt to impose a personal reading into some kind of structure or workable concept onto the work, or bring it closer into line with the dramatic intentions of Shakespearean original, Lloyd’s production rather impressively remains faithful to Verdi’s imperfect interpretation of the work, working closely to mirror the tone of the production with what Simon Keenlyside, in an accompanying interview on the DVD and Blu-ray, vividly describes as the “black tides” of Verdi’s score.

There are a couple of strong themes within the work that the director successfully latches onto in order to put that wonderful score right up there on the stage in visual terms. The most evident is the colour scheme (reflected in the poster designs and the packaging of the DVD) of black, white and red. That’s an obvious means to reflect the moral absolutes that are raised in the work, as well as the bloody violence that ensues from their transgressions, but it also effectively matches the colour of Verdi’s musical dynamic. Gold also features, as the prize of the crown, but also the “gilded cage” that entraps Macbeth. The other theme, one that is perhaps reflects the Shakespearean themes as much as Verdi’s treatment of them, is in how the production strives to make the horror itself and the full consequences of it visible. Here the violence is not something that takes place off-stage, but rather its true nature is made ever present, and its consequences must be lived with. The reign of blood that is embarked upon is visible throughout here and no amount of hand-washing will completely erase it.

Accordingly, right from the opening of Act 1, the witches - red turbaned and mono-browed – make their prophesies to Macbeth and Banquo, but instead of vanishing into the mist, they remain on the stage and appear throughout the opera at key moments – a witch can for example be seen delivering Macbeth’s letter directly to his wife, and one places the crown into Macbeth’s hands, another hands him the knife that takes the lives of the children of his rivals – a constant visual reminder to the audience of their prophesy being fulfilled, just as it the score and libretto also make direct reference to it. The stage is often littered with the bodies of Macbeth’s crimes that usually take place off-stage, the consequences of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s actions here made plainly visible in all their horror. The announced execution of the former Thane of Cawdor, leading to the fulfilment of the first of the prophesies, is shown here and made real – Banquo’s ghost is not just the figure of a fevered imagination, his dead body serves as a physical reminder and his apparition is up there on the stage. There’s no holding back either on the “original sin” of Duncan’s death, his bloody and mutilated body displayed for all to see. Nor is there any sparing from showing the killing of children or the masses of victims among his own people that number among the king’s crimes. And since all this is so vividly described in Verdi’s score, why should it not be?

Verdi’s Macbeth is an opera nonetheless that needs a little bit of personality injected into it. It’s not entirely successful on its own terms, and playing as such, it can never entirely convince. Directing the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Antonio Pappano seems determined to tease out some greater subtleties in the score that aren’t really there. It’s consequently a little bit too delicate, when a bit of a heavier punch would be more appropriate, but it does manage to tease that gloomy darkness out of the work. This Macbeth isn’t Shakespeare, it’s early Verdi, and yes, there are signs of the composer’s later greatness here, modernising and moving away from the Italian opera conventions for a purer dramatic tone (the bel canto coloratura of Lady Macbeth’s arias 'Si colmi il calice di vino eletto' and Macbeth’s mad scene notwithstanding) that is in keeping with the darker tone of the work, but with its Verdian patriotic laments and choruses ('Patria oppressa!') it’s still not the most sophisticated or faithful treatment of Shakespeare.

Or perhaps I’m underestimating Verdi’s work here, because there are interesting elements that can be drawn out of the opera’s score and its treatment of the subject. The rather more daring 2010 production at the Paris Opéra under the direction of Dmitri Tcherniakov with Teodor Currentzis conducting makes a strong case for it, but if there’s any attempt to bring those elements out here, there’s a sense that the performances, the orchestration and the staging of the Royal Opera House production aren’t always working in common accord. For all its efforts to put the horror up on the stage and the close attention paid to the score, there’s initially a detachment between the orchestration and the performances in Act I at least, which seems to be down to there not being enough attention paid to the acting. Things warm up a little by the end of Act II, Act III’s potions, prophesies and apparitions are delightfully staged, and thereafter the deepening horror of the drama and the score starts to make the full extent of its presence felt.

At the very least, the listener will be beaten into submission – as they should be – by the singing and presence of Lady Macbeth. The formidable ringing tone and sheer power of Ukranian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska’s voice certainly achieves that, even if there isn’t always an emotional depth behind her pronouncements and her acting ability is practically non-existent. With that voice, and Verdi behind it, that’s not something to worry about in this particular opera however. On the lighter end of the register Simon Keenlyside is a true Verdi baritone.  His consideration of his lines and delivery of them makes real the forced bravado and the underlying horror of his fate that lies in his character. That’s quite impressive, particularly in his death scene aria 'Mal per me' (the opera working from Verdi’s 1865 revision of the opera, but successfully reinstating some of the 1847 cuts). Banquo is also well served by American bass, Raymond Aceto, and his Gran Scena 'Studia il passo, o mio figlio' is sung very well.

The Blu-ray release of Macbeth is up to the expected high standards, the strong high contrast lighting showing good detail, while the mixing on both the PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 tracks give a fine account of the score, the mixing (along with Pappano’s conducting), achieving a good balance between the orchestration and the singing voices. Extras on the BD include a Cast Gallery. Behind the Scenes Rehearsals and Interviews with Simon Keenlyside, Raymond Aceto and Liudmyla Monastyrska. I enjoyed listening to their views here on their characters and the challenges of the opera. The booklet contains an essay by Mike Ashman which considers the nature of the opera as it is presented in this production, and revival director Harry Fehr provides a detailed walk-through synopsis that is related to what is sung.