Puccini - Tosca (Aix, 2019)

Giacomo Puccini - Tosca

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2019

Daniele Rustioni, Christophe Honoré, Angel Blue, Catherine Malfitano, Joseph Calleja, Alexey Markov, Simon Shibambu, Leonardo Galeazzi, Jean-Gabriel Saint Martin, Michael Smallwood, Virgile Ancely, Jean-Frédéric Lemoues, Frank Daumas

ARTE Concert - 9 July 2019

You can always rely on the Aix Festival to bring something fresh and original to established opera classics, and it looks like that principle is going to continue under the directorship of Pierre Audi. If anything with Audi, you could expect it to be ever more challenging and idiosyncratic. Christophe Honoré has been here in Aix before, with a stunning and wholly original colonial take on Mozart's Così Fan Tutte in 2016, and this year the French filmmaker takes an even more cinematic departure from the standard opera approach to Puccini's Tosca.

There are a number of surprises throughout the Aix production of Tosca, but perhaps the greatest is the presence of the great American soprano Catherine Malfitano in the opera, a famous Tosca in her day, not least for the on-location 1992 film version alongside Plácido Domingo. She seems to have retired from dramatic performance for a while now, working mainly now as an opera director, so it's delightful that Honoré has found a way to bring her back to the stage, but also manage to do so using her aura and personality meaningfully in service of the opera. I imagine that the movie version must have made as much of an impression on Honoré as it did on me back then.

It's a lovely idea as a homage then to have Malfitano take on the role of La Prima Donna who is passing on her experience to an up-and-coming new singer in the role of Tosca (and I'm sure there's some blurring of the lines between reality and drama in Angel Blue being the soprano here), but there's always the risk that while it might sound like a fun idea, it could only detract from the power of the original work. You do get that impression of distancing at the start of Act I, with an additional camera crew on the stage supposedly making a documentary about a great opera diva, who is not in great form for the guests who have been booked in to see her that day.

As it's an opera company putting on a production of Tosca who are hoping to gain a few pointers from one of the greatest singers in the role of Floria Tosca, there's evidently a danger of the opera within an opera distancing the viewer from the true emotion and purpose of the original work - Malfitano even at one stage calling the conductor to halt proceedings while she coaches Angel Blue - but you do start to see some overlap in the emotions of the company, as Angel Blue or 'Angel Blue', starts to get a little jealous of the attentions and adoration that her Cavaradossi (Joseph Calleja) is displaying over the eyes of the madonna/prima donna, or perhaps it's the opera that is freeing those heightened emotions.

With the documentary camera crew capturing all these little undercurrents and correspondences from multiple angles, which are broadcast live over the big screens at the back of Alban Ho Van's impressive cinematic set designs on the stage of the Théâtre de l’Archevêché, this does come across more like a movie than a 'proper' opera. It's interesting that Ivo Van Hove recently used a similar behind-the-scenes on-stage crew technique for his theatre adaptation of 'All About Eve' and it's clear that there is another film reference here, Honoré setting Malfitano's prima donna like the silent movie star Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's 'Sunset Boulevard', past her prime and in the midst of a personal crisis over her absence from the limelight.

That becomes more evident in Act II, but despite initial misgivings I was already sold on the idea by the end of Act I, since it was clear that there's a recognition here that - to state the obvious - Tosca is an 'operatic' opera, larger than life. Fitting the traditional Napoleonic drama of Act II into this stage version is inevitably going to be a challenge however, but Honoré rises to that challenge brilliantly by looking at Act II as essentially Tosca's dilemma. Here, dressed like Norma Desmond, Malfitano's diva suffers a crisis after having been introduced to these young rising stars, as the after rehearsal party turns into something nightmarish.

The horror of the abuse, torture and murder in Act II of Tosca here becomes blurred in the fevered mind of the diva with the reality of her real life past and present and her opera characters. Brilliantly, Honoré identifies her struggles with the characters of Madama Butterfly, Lucia di Lammermoor and Salome - all notable Malfitano roles. In this context Scarpia here becomes an almost Harvey Weinstein figure (appropriate as the Weinsteins of the opera world are also coming to light now), and Honoré even manages to make the diva something of a dark figure in her seduction (or paying for) the attentions of young men. It's as highly charged and sexualised (and scandalous) as Act II of Tosca ought to be. The 'Vissi d'arte' is also a showstopper, delivered by Angel Blue, but back projections of other famous Toscas over the years show that the struggle goes back a long time.

Where can you take that in Act II, well to be honest you'd go anywhere with the director after that, but Honoré follows through on the premise and still holds a few surprises in reserve. For Act III he puts the orchestra and conductor up on the stage for the concert performance that was being rehearsed in Act I, and this acts as a backdrop for the 'real-life' tragic demise of Malfitano's diva, identifying with Tosca, her illusions shattered. It's a breathtaking conclusion that, by putting the orchestra centre stage, essentially returns the power back over to Puccini's music. Daniele Rustioni, who we've been fortunate to gain as the chief conductor of the Ulster Orchestra in Belfast and have already experienced his passion for Italian composers and opera this summer, shows us that in Act III Puccini's music is everything.

Well, not entirely everything. Considering the difficulties of playing dual-roles in close up to cameras, the performances are also outstanding. Angel Blue is glorious, Joseph Calleja is tragic, Catherine Malfitano incredible just for her presence and acting performance. What is impressive however is that there are no egos involved here, each of them prepared to put in whatever it takes to make this production one of the most moving Toscas I've ever seen. Impressive on any number of levels, it's not about voices, divas and drama, it's not inflated egos and pretentious concepts; Christophe Honoré's production works because it blurs boundaries between life and art, reducing and elevating Puccini's masterpiece to the level of pure emotion, pure opera, pure Tosca. 

Links: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence

Bellini - Norma (Royal Opera House, 2016)

Vincenzo Bellini - Norma

Royal Opera House, 2016

Àlex Ollé, Antonio Pappano, Sonya Yoncheva, Joseph Calleja, Sonia Ganassi, Brindley Sherratt, David Junghoon Kim, Vlada Borovko

Cinema Season Live - 26 September 2016

What is a director to do with Norma? Like many bel canto operas, it would seem to be going a bit overboard to invest too much historical realism into a plot that is more concerned with the romantic complications and emotional states of its main characters, and the dramatic contrivances don't really lend themselves all that well to it being applied to a contemporary updating. Àlex Ollé, of the Catalan theatre group La Fura dels Baus, is not wrong however when he considers that there are deeper considerations at play here in Norma that pit individuals and human nature against social, religious and political forces.

Proving the point, the dramatic force of Bellini's setting of these issues is brought to life and fully felt in the musical and the stage direction of this highly charged Royal Opera House production, even if Ollé's Spanish Civil War-inspired setting doesn't really establish a convincing new context for the issues it raises. A production of Norma neither loses nor gains much from its ancient setting that pits the Gauls and their druids against the Roman occupying forces, but it is important and relevant in our own times to consider how religion can be used as a tool to motivate individuals towards actions that otherwise would be inconceivable.

What Norma should have is impact, and visually at least set designer Alfons Flores's forest of dramatically lit crucifixes matches the intensity of where the opera is pitched. Religious iconography is evident also in the priestly costumes, the children's choir, hooded processions and a huge swinging thurible solemnly wafting incense around during Norma's 'Casta Diva', and it's associated here with a fascist movement, Brindley Sherratt's Oroveso styled to look very like Generalissimo Franco. It's debatable that the analogy works - a suit-wearing Pollione hardly matches the image of the Romans as being Republican opposition - but the stage setting at least keeps the overarching theme very present throughout, suitably overblown to match the nature of the dramatic representation.

Such grand gestures are to be expected in Norma, and they serve their function well right through to the dreadful choices between following her heart or her duty that the priestess must weigh up in the second Act. The confused narrative of the production's analogy doesn't allow her sacrifice to appear as anything more than a grand gesture, but it certainly felt like it was a hard-reached decision of someone who has been pushed to the limits of what their conscience will endure. It takes a lot more than grand gestures to make that work: it takes some great singing.

Evidently much of that rests on your Norma. In the case of this production, the early withdrawal of Anna Netrebko proved to be a great opportunity for Sonya Yoncheva to show that she is ready to be catapulted to the same level of international stardom, and she rose to the occasion. This was an outstanding performance that felt like something very special indeed. Yoncheva might not be as studiously perfect in this role as Netrebko might have been had her voice not developed in other directions, but it contained every ounce of emotion required to grapple with the depths of the role, qualities that are very much there to be found in the music that Bellini wrote for this part.

Joseph Calleja was also outstanding alongside her as Pollione. Calleja has a classic romantic lyrical tenor voice, but he shows that he can also bring that vital edge of steely determination that is needed for this role. Pollione is not a straightforward character and not one that you can easily sympathise with, but he likewise has chosen to follow his own heart and risk betraying his own people, and he is prepared to suffer the consequences for it as long as innocent people do not suffer for his actions. Calleja's singing and acting performance grasped the nature of his character's grappling with this position and his voice rang out the truth of it.

Between Yoncheva and Calleja you have the makings of a great Norma here, and the production doesn't let them down on any other front. Adalgisa is a vital component who inadvertently sows the discord that leads to the tumultuous conclusion, but she is also the bridge that links up the dramatic and emotional undercurrents. Sonia Ganassi take this up well, but is particularly strong when she has to rise to Yoncheva's level in their Act I duet, 'Sola, furtiva al tempio', the two women's voices blending beautifully. Antonio Pappano's conducting emphasised the more dramatic side of the score while retaining its melodic qualities, the work as a consequence bristling with life and charged with emotion. The Royal Opera House production is everything that a good Norma should be.

Links: Royal Opera House

Boito - Mefistofele (Munich, 2015 - Webcast)

Arrigo Boito - Mefistofele

Bayerische Staatsoper, 2015

Omer Meir Wellber, Roland Schwab, René Pape, Joseph Calleja, Kristine Opolais, Heike Grötzinger, Andrea Borghini, Karine Babajanyan, Rachael Wilson, Joshua Owen Mills

Staatsoper.TV - 15 November 2015
There's a problem with Mefistofele, and it's surprising since it is the only complete opera written by Arrigo Boito, the librettist for some of Giuseppe Verdi's greatest works. Boito's librettos for Otello and Falstaff are so filled with poetic insight, depth of characterisation and tense drama that they spurred Verdi on to the late creative peak of his career. While Boito is evidently no match for Verdi as a composer, what is surprising is that it's not the music that is the weak point in Mefistofele, it's the drama. Admirably tackling for the first time a work that nonetheless deserves greater recognition, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich only manage to emphasise those weaknesses in a spectacular but dramatically inert production.

During his introduction, Nickolaus Bachler, the director of the Bayerische Staatsoper, calls Mefistofele "an opera for experts". This means that Boito, choosing to illustrate a number of scenes from 'Faust' in the manner of Berlioz rather than attempt to create a dramatic narrative in the style of Gounod, expects his audience to be familiar with those operatic antecedents, or with Goethe's work itself. Accepting it on those terms, Mefistofele is a powerful work that does have a character of its own, as well as a distinct perspective - the title indicating that the interest lies with Mephistopheles here rather than Faust - that suits Boito's lyrical strengths. That doesn't mean however that it can't be given a greater dramatic presence on the stage.

The problem with Roland Schwab's production for Munich is not that it is short of ideas or spectacle, as much as it lacks any distinctive real-world vision that would give the work a greater coherence and a stronger dramatic line. It's clear that the director makes an effort to flesh out the characterisation, particularly in the central role of Mephistopheles. He also introduces both Faust and Margherita onto the stage a little earlier than they need to be there, and keeps them there even when there's not a great deal for them to do. Sustaining this kind of characterisation however ultimately becomes difficult within the rather abstract conceptual framework that the director has come up with, and the character are often left standing around or singing out to the audience.

There are many ways you can interpret the setting here, but essentially, it seems to me that the purpose is to emphasise the hold that Mefistofele wields over the world. Starting with Mefistofele putting a record onto an old gramophone, it's the devil who is calling the tunes here, settling back in his armchair to watch a plane hurtling towards a city tower, with a somewhat random image of John Lennon also projected over this scene. Freezing the moment, the remainder of the opera seems to take place in what looks like the framework fuselage of this plane that is about to crash into the city, held there only as long as it takes Mefistofele to win his bet against the heaven as to the extent of his power and influence over mankind.

Boito's scoring and writing would certainly indicate that this influence is considerable, and that ultimately all the horror and havoc caused by human agency is scarcely negated by a last-minute death-bed redemption. He may not have ultimate control of Faust's eternal soul, but by heck, he causes a great deal of death and horror in the world while he is alive. Isn't that bad enough? Boito's vision is certainly a dark one that explores this nihilistic element, and his musical interpretation of it can often be overblown, how else are you meant to deal with a war on this scale between heaven and hell?

It would be very easy to apply this despairing nihilism to the situation in the world today, but the Munich production squanders the opportunity. Mefistofele still surely reigns in the world today. The fact that this performance took place just two days after the Paris attacks just emphasised how abstract and vacant the production was, totally incapable of making any meaningful connection to the very subject that Boito is writing about. Boito's imagery is strong - "Let us dance! For the world is now lost. On the countless dead shards of the fatal globe, our steps blaze and mingle in a wild dance of Hell" - but all Schwab has to offer are empty theatrical cliché's, S&M costumes, zombie demons, stock dance gestures, operatic overacting and empty spectacle. We even get the obligatory asylum scene at the conclusion.

Detached as it might be from the real world, conceptually, Schwab's production holds together well. Mefistofele's influence - particularly as it is so well-played and sung by René Pape - is shown to hold sway. The bet here is not so much that Mefistofele can corrupt Faust, as reduce him to despair at the realisation of his own nature and the extent of his corruption. Strapped to one of the chairs on the plane, Faust is raised up to see the consequences of his actions and the true nature of man - "Who pushed her into the abyss?" Mefistofele asks Faust of Margherita, "You or I?". The realisation of what he has done inevitably drives Faust mad. The final scene, albeit that it takes place in an asylum, is also simultaneously in the crashed plane, where a forensic team picks through the wreckage for clues.

Boito's Mefistofele has its flaws then, but its philosophy is not one of them. With a strong production willing to delve into the depths it explores and a musical accompaniment that supports it, Mefistofele is capable of being turned into something more meaningful and become more of a fixture in the repertoire. Munich's production feels strangely detached and absent, failing to ignite even the coup de théâtre of the opening scene by having the huge choirs of heaven sound like they were singing from an adjacent building. Perhaps the sound mixing just wasn't the best for the internet streamed production, but there was a similar disengagement throughout between the stage and the pit. The Bayerische Staatsoper's failure to do justice to this work is very disappointing.

So too is the singing. René Pape at least gives an impressive performance that is full of character. Mephisopheles is a role that he is is familiar with in Gounod's Faust, but he is able to take advantage of the more detailed characterisation and prominence that Bioto gives to the role in Mefistofele, and is wonderfully menacing in his singing and delivery. Joseph Calleja is a terrific singer with a great voice that just oozes classic Italianate lyricism, but even though you couldn't fault his singing or his performance here, he just feels wrong casting him as Faust. This is surely more of a role for Jonas Kaufmann, were he not already overworked in Munich and on the world stage. Kristine Opolais is another Munich regular who is miscast in roles that are out of her depth. She's good when called upon to project high emotion, but thin and nearly inaudible in middle range and insecure in pitch at the lower register. Good singers all, but Pape aside, not the kind of performers who are capable of rescuing this dramatically inert production in Munich.

Links: Bayerische Staatsoper, Staatsoper.TV

Verdi - Macbeth (Metropolitan Opera, 2014 - HD-Live)

Giuseppe Verdi - Macbeth

Metropolitan Opera, New York - 2014

Fabio Luisi, Adrian Noble, Željko Lučić, René Pape, Anna Netrebko, Claudia Waite, Christopher Job, Raymond Renault, Noah Baetge, Joseph Calleja, Moritz Linn, Richard Bernstein, Seth Malkin

The Met Live in HD - 11 October 2014

There's at least one good reason for selecting Macbeth as the opening broadcast in the Met's 2014-15 Live in HD season, as opposed to the actual season opener Le Nozze di Figaro (which will be broadcast later this month). It's become a recent tradition to open the HD broadcasts with the popular attraction of Anna Netrebko, and opera's brightest star - possibly now at the peak of her career - has a new role in her repertoire - Lady Macbeth. That's something worth reviving a readily available production of Macbeth for, and Adrian Noble's 2007 production fits the bill.

Considering the liberties that Verdi and his librettist Piave take with Shakespeare's drama, it probably helps that there's a former RSC director behind the production to anchor it back in Shakespeare's themes. The strength of Noble's Macbeth consequently is its adherence to mood and character, and even if it gives the appearance of modernisation, it remains fairly traditional in its presentation. It's a good half-way house that is typical of the Met, where modernisation is acceptable if it is visually impressive and doesn't go as far as reworking the concept or more deeply exploring the themes of the work in a challenging or revisionist way.

Noble's production seems to borrow something of its mood from Alfred Hitchcock, with Lady Macbeth even transformed here into a Hitchock blonde. There's a sinister quality to Mark Thompson's set and costume designs that makes it a bit 'Dial M for Macbeth', the setting dark, misty and moonlit, the costumes vaguely 1940s. The witches wear granny-coats with handbags (think Monty Python's 'pepperpot' old ladies) and there's a more elegant formal dress of the royal court, most notably in the banquet scene. The military scenes however reflect a more modern image of war, but not too high-tech - the jeeps, combat gear and automatic guns having something of the appearance of the Bosnian war.

It's all very much iconic imagery that has resonance and meaning to a modern audience, without introducing high-technology 'magic' that could distract from the very necessary hands-on nature of mad ambition and the bloody business of murder. Is this a dagger which I see before me? It certainly is. It's not a drone or anything else that is designed to make some modern political point about the morality of killing and war in the present day. That's not what Macbeth is about. Nor is it specifically about national identity. Verdi certainly made something more of the Italian Risorgimento struggle in his opera ('Patria opressa') but there are no such references in this production, and little even that relates it to its Scottish setting. There are no saltires, no tartan or flags, and no attempt to update it to make reference to the recent independence vote in Scotland either.

The generic setting and non-specific period allow the focus to fall back onto the human question of our relationship to power, ambition and murder. Fortunately, although it diverts in some plot developments from Shakespeare's vision, Verdi's writing for Macbeth sees the composer at his most inspired. Macbeth is still a relatively early work in the composer's 'galley years', but the quality of the source material (even in translation) clearly spoke to the composer who would much later revisit his beloved Shakespeare in Otello and Falstaff. The selection of scenes and numbers for Macbeth allow him to align power and melody to new levels of intensity, and to stronger characterisation than is found in those other early Verdi pot-boilers.

Melodically and in the setting of the scenes to standard numbers and arias, the composition of Macbeth is wonderful, but the real quality of the work - particularly in the revised version used here - is in Verdi's writing for the voice. Get a couple of great singers into those roles with a strong chorus and Macbeth can be a thrilling and visceral experience. Željko Lučić and René Pape have a track record with this production at the Met in the roles of Macbeth and Banquo. It's perhaps unfair to merely pass over their performances here as "solid" - Lučić in particular is shaping up to be a great Verdi baritone and doesn't put a foot wrong, hampered only by not very special direction - but when you have the right person in the role this is Lady Macbeth's opera, which that means it's Anna Netrebko's.

Quite simply, Netrebko is phenomenal, singing a challenging role with apparent ease, delivering the signature 'La luce langue' aria with remarkable control and tightly focussed precision. She almost makes it look too easy, and that might be a problem. She has clearly waited for the right time to tackle Macbeth, and has prepared for it well (trying out some arias on CD and a couple of live performances of the role at the Munich festival this summer), but at the same time the performance is almost too cool and studious, and it could do with a little loosening up.

That is perhaps just being too picky about what is by any reasonable consideration an outstanding performance, but there are occasionally flashes that show that Netrebko is capable of bringing much more to the role than the direction really allows. Her Act II banquet brindisi ('Si colmi il calice'), for example, isn't quite so joyful, but shows her growing anger with Macbeth succumbing to his terrifying visions of Banquo's ghost, flashing him furious glances and singing the second verse almost between gritted teeth.  There's a taste of the fire that could underlie the cold, calculated behaviour here, and it's evident in 'La luce langue', but too little of it is seen elsewhere.

The same however could be said of the production as a whole. Some scenes are handled well, while others are rather static, the cast left to stand and sing out to the audience. In addition to the aforementioned banquet scene, where the bloody ghost of René Pape's Banquo makes a great impression, the scene of the King's burial is well staged, the tensions spilling over in such a way that the suspicions of Banquo and Macduff (sung well by Joseph Calleja) can clearly be seen to set them up in opposition to Macbeth.  Fabio Luisi had the measure of the work, finding wonderful character as well as force in the score, and the Met chorus impressed, but in a way that confirmed that the quality of the production lay more in the delivery of the musical performance than in the largely static stage direction.

Verdi - Rigoletto

Giuseppe Verdi - Rigoletto

Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, 2012

Marco Armiliato, Árpád Schilling, Joseph Calleja, Franco Vassallo, Patricia Petibon, Dimitry Ivashchenko, Nadia Krasteva, Tim Kuypers, Dean Power, Christian Rieger

Live Internet Streaming, 30 December 2012

Despite appearances, with a production that made use of some eccentric touches in each of the scenes, the Bayerische Staatsoper production of Verdi's Rigoletto didn't really seem to have anything new or even meaningful to add to a popular and brilliant work from the composer that will surely have more memorable outings in the year of his bicentenary.  Better sung ones too, undoubtedly, but that might have been a problem with the failure of director Árpád Schilling to give the fine singers here any meaningful characterisation and direction to work with.

There's little doubt about where the focus of interest in the opera is from Verdi's perspective.  It's not about the King's or, in this case, the Duke's amusements (the work derived from Victor Hugo's 'Le Roi s'amuse'), as much as the dilemma of the little man, Rigoletto, his court jester, who is caught up in the intrigues and less capable of dealing with the fall-out that results from the Duke of Mantua's wilder and more licentious activities.  What's intriguing about the work is how Rigoletto is not entirely a sympathetic figure (and the Duke is not entirely without some redeemable features either), and that he is in many ways the agent of his own downfall - even though he can't see that as being anything more than the curse of one courtier, Count Monterone, whose daughter has been seduced by the Duke.

That much is retained in Schilling's version for Munich, and it would be hard to present Rigoletto in any other way, such is the precision of Verdi's structuring of the work and his purposeful musical arrangements, the opera driven by a series of duets that establish the characterisation and the relationships between each of the figures.  Rigoletto is indeed shown - perhaps through no fault of his own having been born a hunchback and otherwise unable to attain love and acceptance through ordinary means - to be a lapdog to the Duke of Mantua, complicit in his schemes, believing himself secure in his favoured position.  He's not completely naive however.  He knows the true nature of the Duke and looks to protect his own little idealised existence - his daughter - from the kind of corruption that he himself is party to.  Rigoletto is "an amoral petty bourgeois man" according to Schilling, "who dreams of innocence", and who in the end is destroyed by his own attempts to defend this untenable position.

That's fine as far as it goes, and if it doesn't present any new ideas on the nature of Rigoletto, it at least adheres to Verdi's dramatic and musically astute depiction of this intriguing figure.  There's no necessity either for Rigoletto to be dressed as a court jester or bear his deformity in order to draw his character - Verdi has it so well written in his musical arrangements.  If the costume designer chooses to dress him in a shirt, chinos and a neckscarf, changing to a white bow-tie, top-hat and tails for the final scene, that's just as fine a way of distinguishing his social aspirations.  And if the Duke slums around in slacks, a chunky cardigan and vest shirt, and Gilda wears a jumper and jeans or a bathrobe, well, it doesn't look like much, but Rigoletto need not be as much about class and clothes as personality and love.  And since Gilda loves Gualtier Malde whether he is a poor student or a nobleman, there's no need here for lavish period costumes.

It still doesn't look like much.  What passes for distinctiveness in the production in the absence of any social or period context however is unfortunately rather odd.  In Act 1, the court of the Duke is represented by a stepped platform, a viewing gallery from which the courtiers watch the proceedings.  In the second scene, the assassin Sparafucile's weapon isn't a sword, but a wheelchair with oversize wheels - or more precisely, a flick-knife and a tin of black paint that he uses on his victims having lured them to sit in the strange wheeled apparatus.  A huge statue of a rearing horse is wheeled out briefly as the climax to Act 2 for no apparent reason or significance, and Act 3 brings back the steps for the inn scene.  It's all very representational - if the meaning isn't entirely clear - but it doesn't unfortunately create the necessary impression.

In such a context, neither unfortunately does the singing.  Joseph Calleja sings well enough, but his Duke lacks regal arrogance and boyish charm and there's a curious lack of feeling in his delivery.  There's a little more urgency to Franco Vassallo's Rigoletto and Patricia Petibon's rather more sympathetic Gilda, but the direction never allows them to express the roles with any sense of feeling for the drama.  One other curious touch in the casting that might have significance is the duality or contrast made by casting Dimitry Ivashchenko as both Monterone and Sparafucile and having Nadia Krasteva play Maddalena and Gilda's maidservant Giovanna - but again, what this adds exactly to the work remains elusive.  Still, despite the best efforts of the production design and direction to undermine it, the Bavarian State Opera production of Rigoletto benefitted from reasonably good singing performances, and ultimately won through by virtue alone of the wonder of Verdi's score and its performance by the Munich orchestra under Marco Armiliato.

Rigoletto was viewed via live Internet Streaming from the Bayerische Staatsoper.TV website.  The next free live broadcast will be Janáček's Jenufa starring Karita Mattila on 9th March 2012.

Verdi - La Traviata

Giuseppe Verdi - La Traviata

The Royal Opera - Covent Garden, 2010

Antonio Pappano, Richard Eyre, Renée Fleming, Joseph Calleja, Thomas Hampson, Monika-Evelin Liiv, Sarah Pring, Haoyin Xue, Eddie Wade

Opus Arte

Renée Fleming has matured into one of the finest sopranos around at the moment, a true star with a sparkling personality and a velvet-toned voice that is capable of wringing the finest emotions out of works by Strauss and Tchaikovsky that from a lesser singer could sound rather cold and clinical. I wouldn’t have thought her voice would be so well suited to Violetta Valéry in La Traviata, and it does take some getting used to, but I think she at least brings a distinct quality to the role with an emotional heart that isn’t always necessarily there when a leading diva uses it primarily as a display for her vocal talents. It’s served well also by Antonio Pappano’s conducting of the Royal Opera House Orchestra in a traditional but effective production by Richard Eyre.

There’s only one way to really measure the true performance of La Traviata however, and that is by the qualities of the soprano. Renée Fleming does seem a little faltering in the first act, the warm enveloping richness of her tone perhaps not quite bringing out the clarity of the Italian diction. The production also seems a little disjointed in Act 1, setting up the great arias well (and is there any opera that has quite so many memorable, technically and dramatically impressive arias?), but not really sure what to do with the performers in between. Fleming’s ‘È strano …ah forsè’lui‘ however is excellent, the soprano most definitely singing it her own way, putting a different complexion and personal interpretation on the opera.

If Act I doesn’t flow as well as one might hope, Act II however is superb in every respect – singing, dramatic representation, the precision and timing of the orchestration all played to perfection in both scenes. Fleming’s duet with Hampson’s Germont Sr., ‘Ah! Dite alla giovine‘, is technically stunning, but at the same time full of heartfelt emotion. I’ve rarely seen it done so well and it’s capable of leaving you dead in your tracks. Much as I sometimes find Act III a little gruelling in this opera, here it also comes across with great emotional force, again primarily down to Fleming’s superb acting talent, but also to how well she blends with Joseph Calleja. Calleja is a tenor very much in the classic mould of a Pavarotti or Domingo, and as such is perfectly suited to a role such as Alfredo. There is some maturing to be done in his voice, and he certainly doesn’t have the personality or range of the greats, but his voice has a beautiful tone and blends well with Fleming here.

It’s hard then to find fault with the production or the performances, but there are so many versions of La Traviata out there that a new version really needs something special to entice you into reconsidering it anew (such as in the fascinating Willy Decker production with Anna Netrebko). This is a straightforward, traditional, period staging – it doesn’t add anything new, it doesn’t make the viewer reconsider the whole tone of the piece or allow them to plunge into its emotional heart – but it has Renée Fleming, and it’s worthwhile for that alone. Other than for Fleming however, one can’t help but feel that this would indeed be just another La Traviata.

The quality of the Blu-ray release is good, but not great. The lighting is rather soft, so it doesn’t have the clarity you might expect, but it does seem to capture a sense of the ambience of Covent Garden. The audio likewise doesn’t really have a full depth of tone. The violins dominate, but feel slightly detached from the rest of the orchestration in the 5.1 mix, only occasionally achieving the thunderous tone that is often demanded. The PCM stereo mix however is excellent and may be the better option. The extras on the disc consists of a worthwhile 21-minute interview of Fleming by Pappano, where the soprano acknowledges the personal challenges the role represents, and describes her technical approach.

Donizetti – Lucia di Lammermoor

Gaetano Donizetti – Lucia di Lammermoor

The Metropolitan Opera, New York

Patrick Summers, Mary Zimmerman, Natalie Dessay, Joseph Calleja, Ludovic Tézier, Kwangchul Youn

The Met: Live in HD - March 19, 2011

Donizetti’s bel canto operas, with their emphasis on elaborate ornamentation of extremely challenging vocal parts that would give their lead players an opportunity to demonstrate the virtuosity of their singing, were considered somewhat old-fashioned even by the end of the nineteenth century when the huge influence of Richard Wagner put dramatic content back at the heart of the music-drama. Of all Donizetti’s operas, it’s the dramatic tragedy of Lucia de Lammermoor (1835) that is considered to be the opera that gives its prima donna the opportunity to demonstrate her vocal prowess.

It’s a role therefore that Natalie Dessay, along with perhaps La Fille du Regiment, is most associated with, and it’s clearly a role that the French soprano relishes. Dessay starred in the first run of the oft-criticised Mary Zimmerman’s much-maligned 2007 production, and, indulged by the current conductor Patrick Summers, she clearly delights in adding a capella embellishments to the coloratura – particularly in Lucia’s “Mad Scene” at her wedding. There were some worrying signs at the start of the performance that her voice might no longer be quite up to it or that it was showing signs of tiredness perhaps from rather overdoing things in the current run of performances (this Live in HD broadcast was the last Lucia of the season), but Dessay in her interval interview put it down to a dry throat, and certainly didn’t let it affect her extraordinary performance elsewhere.

What is even more wonderful about her performance is that, while fully rising to the challenges of Lucia’s vocal parts, she also managed to remain focussed on her character’s dramatic journey of gradual disintegration. Lucia is torn between she man she loves, Edgardo di Ravenswood, and the duty towards her family, the Ashtons, and comes to feel that she is being used in the great feud that has existed between the two families. Those concerns are heightened by her own fragile state of mind, one perhaps made fragile because of the long-running rivalry that has seen other tragic events take place, events in the past that leave ghosts in the grounds of Lammermoor castle that still haunt Lucia.

Based on a novel by Sir Walter Scott, this is the stuff of pure melodrama however, and it can’t honestly be said that Donizetti seeks to give it any greater psychological depth or dramatic credibility, either through the playing out of the intense scenes or through any subtlety in the musical composition of the piece. It’s straightforward blood-and-thunder melodrama fuelled by jealousy and political rivalry (one can see the huge influence the piece has on the works of Verdi in this respect, as well as in some of the musical arrangements), with expressions of deeply romantic and forbidden love, swooning heroines, challenges to duels – the restored Wolf’s Crag scene, often cut, is intact here at the beginning of Act 3, only adding to an already over-heated situation – and of course a descent into pure madness and death with thunderstorms raging outside.



All of which would seem to give credence to the rather old-fashioned nature of the opera as little more than a dramatic piece for the leading diva to show off her credentials, and in some cases even make a name for herself. To mess about with any of these elements or to try to downplay those excesses could prove fatal to the sheer crowd-pleasing enjoyment that the opera, with its beautiful melodies and dramatic sense of purpose nevertheless contains. This production somehow manages to successfully retain all these elements, while also managing to give a little more depth to the piece, or at least, by even including the presence of real ghosts, throw up other elements for consideration.

Partly, that’s down to the fine production that stirs up echoes of the best cinematic equivalents – the likes of Hitchcock’s Rebecca, the 1943 Jane Eyre starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine and even Dreyer’s silent film Michael – films likewise of a bygone age, made during the silent period or shortly afterwards, made to a style that is somewhat old-fashioned now, but still retaining an enormous power of the “they don’t make them like that anymore” kind. They don’t make operas like Lucia di Lammermoor anymore either, but they should be cherished and lavished with a sympathetic presentation and that is fully achieved in the elaborate sets that reach upwards, like an old film in academy ratio rather than in widescreen. If filmed, and shown in black-and-white, this Lucia di Lammermoor could convincingly pass for a film from the late 1930s or early 1940s, in its style, in its content and in its production values.

Given that kind of stage to work with, each of the singers fully enter into the spirit of the drama, but some try to bring a little more shading to the characters. Vocally, all fully meet the demands – Dessay, evidently, but Joseph Callejo is a bit of a revelation, with a classic tenor voice that, with a bit more robustness and fitting of it into a more solid dramatic context, will be a fine singer of bel canto and Verdi dramas. In his interval interview, Ludovic Tézier made some interesting observations about his Enrico, seeing him not just as a stereotypical baritone baddie, but as a character who is as cracked and has been pushed as close to madness as Lucia, adding a further dimension to the tragedy.

On the actual Met Live in HD production itself, Lucia di Lammermoor was one of the more fascinating broadcasts of the season from a backstage point of view, Renée Fleming presenting and managing to get a wealth of behind-the-scenes information from the performers, from the Irish Wolfhound handlers and from backstage crew managers. The two intervals drew out a relatively swift moving opera to excessive lengths (there have been some criticisms of this in the press), but the sheer scale of the elaborate production was revealed in such fascinating detail that the audience at the cinema I attended sat glued to the screen watching the stage-hands manoeuvre it all into place. Along with the success of this particular performance, the clever promotion for the next production, Le Comte Ory, another star-studded bel canto opera, will ensure that the growing attendance at these broadcasts will all be back for more of the same in two weeks time.