Wagner - Siegfried (Brussels, 2024)

Richard Wagner - Siegfried (Brussels, 2024)

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2024

Alain Altinoglu, Pierre Audi, Magnus Vigilius, Peter Hoare, Gábor Bretz, Scott Hendricks, Wilhelm Schwinghammer, Ingela Brimberg, Nora Gubisch, Liv Redpath

RTBF Auvio streaming - 25th September 2024

Well this was unexpected, but in the end perhaps not totally surprising. Ring Cycles are notoriously complicated to stage and require enormous planning and resources. Sometimes they fail, sometimes they are abandoned before they start, sometimes mid-stream (as appears to be the case with the English National Opera production), but this the ambitious new production at La Monnaie in Brussels, the first two parts of which took place in the 2023/24 season with the remaining parts to be fulfilled in 2024/25, is the first I've seen where the director has jumped ship half-way through. La Monnaie issued a press statement advising that the remaining two parts would no longer be directed by Romeo Castellucci and that they had parted ways on this Ring Cycle by mutual agreement, unable to achieve what was planned within the planned timescale and budget.

The reason is probably more complicated than simply creative differences or even just budgetary concerns. It's not as if La Monnaie lack resources or ambition and have staged many extravagant Castellucci productions over the years, so his plans for the remainder of the cycle must have really been really out there. Considering the extraordinary visuals of what was staged the previous season in Das Rheingold and Die Walküre and that there was a proposal for a full length feature film using new untested technology to accompany Siegfried and a "double project" mixing theatre and opera for Götterdämmerung, it is genuinely feasible that the production team were indeed incapable of meeting the technological demands of Castellucci's vision for the remainder of the tetralogy.

The unenviable task of taking over the reins on a Ring Cycle in the middle of the race is handed to Pierre Audi, and it's not as if he even has any clear direction to follow. The horses of the Valkyrie have already bolted from this Ring stable, the previous two parts looking spectacular but having very little in the way of any coherent or even comprehensible intent to latch onto. There may have been ambitions (probably not) for the complete cycle to come together into something more thought-provoking rather than just appear as a series of bizarre visual ideas thrown out for each part by Castellucci, but either way I for one was looking forward to seeing where the director would take it next. It seems however that the next level was just simply unachievable, the artist's ambition greater than anyone's ability to realise its potential. Can Pierre Audi attempt to pull this together what has come before into something just as interesting, while at least remaining achievable?

There are maybe a few minor references to what has come before in the opening filmed footage that plays out before the opera, a group of schoolchildren putting on cardboard masks and wooden swords - a reminder at the surprising use of children to play the gods in one scene of Castellucci's Das Rheingold - and in one of children drawing a large circle - a reference found at the beginning and end of both parts directed by Castellucci. Or perhaps, like the childish drawing of a man with a sword that leads into the overture, it's more a sign that this is a return back to basics which, since that characterises Siegfried in Siegfried to some extent, is a reasonable way to approach it. The children's drawings however only make a reappearance as overlaid projections in the closing moments of the opera, so their inclusion - at this stage anyway - is a mystery.

But it's hard to find anything at all meaningful in Pierre Audi's Siegfried. It's true that he hasn't been given much to work with (apart from Wagner's account of the myth obviously) and it must be difficult to take over any project half-way through, but his style has always been for abstraction and bold grand symbolism. Not the obvious kind though. Here in Act I the scene consists of a wall of tarnished gold blocks (a familiar Audi image) with a huge jagged black ball hovering above it. You could potentially see this as representative of the two figures, one corrupted by desire for gold, the other an unformed ball of potential. You could however find a reason for reading this the other way around, so I may be giving the abstract design more credit for symbolism than it's worth, but it seems to be borne out when a long glowing spear descends and bisects the stage at the arrival of the Wanderer. On its own terms the staging is fine, the effective lighting capturing tone and mood, but it's not really enough to make the playing out of backstory between Mime and Siegfried and Mime and Wanderer any more interesting.

The credibility of Act II unfortunately suffers from poor choices in the combination of costume design and lighting. Alberich and the Wanderer skulk about the darkened stage wearing Judex capes and wide-brim homburg hats, their faces bathed in green light, making it looks like a casting session for Wicked. Perhaps that's not the worst image to hang on Alberich and Wanderer, but it looks silly and rather ruins the tone as they gather outside the formidable grotto of the dragon Fafner. The huge inflatable crumpled ball covered in heavy-duty black plastic sheeting sprouts lights for eyes as the dragon, but the spectacle is brief and the impact of Siegfried slaying the dragon is rather ineffective. There is added gravitas however when Fafner appears carrying the desiccated blackened and rotted remains of Fasolt, underlining the tragic end of the race of giants. That gravity is carried over into the scene between Erda and Wanderer but it has little else to offer, the confrontation and destruction of Wotan’s spear feeling somewhat routine.

It does however lead into a dramatic science-fiction-like Act III, the huge ball splintering or rather replaced with floating shards in a blazing red sky, before giving way to the coolness of the discovery of Brünnhilde in a frozen state in an abstract landscape of a blazing white dawn. That at least gives this scene its own distinct character and tone, although in its abstraction it could equally pass for a scene from Act II or Act III of Tristan und Isolde. It's an effective scene nonetheless on its own terms, held together by the sense of epic revelation and resolution to the tragic consequences of Die Walküre, the performance of the score and the singing all coming together to reveal the full majesty of the moment, which of course is built upon everything that has come before. It's a bit of a chore getting there, but almost worth it in the end.

Audi's taking over of Siegfried was undoubtedly a challenge and it at least looks the part, breaking away from the direction Castellucci was taking the cycle and focussing on just delivering a suitably bold spectacle with good singing. Personally I find that Siegfried needs a little more than that. Although you would be hard pressed to understand the direction Castellucci was taking this Ring des Nibelungen in, Audi's vision has no psychological or philosophical underpinning and doesn't invite one or even have any distinctive directorial stamp. It's just a routine performance, in as much as a challenging work like Siegfried can ever be 'routine'. Peter De Caluwe, the general director of La Monnaie prefers to rebrand this cycle now as two diptychs, the first two "allegorical" about the gods, the second two a "human" story about the love between Siegfried and Brünnhilde. It's a big disappointment however when you think that, however extreme and absurd his ambitions might have been, the reasons given for Castellucci's departure is an acknowledgement that his Siegfried would at least never have been dull.

There are no big gestures in the score, which is given a softer reading from Alain Altinoglu than I expected, making me think that La Monnaie were perhaps not using full scale orchestration. It's more likely however that the choices were made for the sake of dynamism, saving the impact for where it is needed and it fairly scaled up for the final scene. Another reason might be to give the singers room to be heard, but there were few problems on that front, although they were left with fairly standard characterisation with no obvious direction. Peter Hoare's Mime is excellent, but it was a familiar weasely and slimy semi-comic routine. Gabor Breitz is a solid menacing presence but brought little that was distinctive to his continuation of the role of Wotan/Wanderer. Scott Hendricks makes great efforts as Alberich but struggles a little. The Wicked outfits perhaps didn't help either of them. The best performance here comes from Magnus Vigilius as Siegfried, totally in command of the role, his voice approaching Klaus Florian Vogt lightness but with a little more steel and not so much softness, which seems ideal. Ingela Brimberg reprises her Brünnhilde from Die Walküre and sings it well, but just as importantly, captures the complexity of her condition as a formidable but now fearful Valkyrie.

External links: La Monnaie-De Munt, RTBF Auvio

Birtwistle - The Mask of Orpheus (London, 2019)

Harrison Birtwistle - The Mask of Orpheus

English National Opera, 2019

Martyn Brabbins, James Henshaw, Daniel Kramer, Peter Hoare, Marta Fontanais-Simmons, James Cleverton, Claron McFadden, Daniel Norman, Claire Barnett-Jones, Simon Bailey, Matthew Smith, Alfa Marks, Leo Hedman

The Coliseum, London - 18th October 2019

The Greek myth of Orpheus and his journey to the Underworld to rescue his dead wife Eurydice has been recounted in opera in many different ways, but essentially the story is simple in its telling and in its meaning. It's about love, loss, life, bereavement, endurance, coming to terms with death as a part of life, a theme that can give rise to and be expressed in the highest orders of artistic creativity. Did I say simple? There is of course nothing simple about those themes, neither individually not when combined. It's even more complicated when you add in, as Harrison Birtwistle does in this account of the myth in The Mask of Orpheus, the vagaries of time, the repetition of memory and the unreliability of myth distorting the truth.

Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus is anything but simple, but in comparison to other accounts you have to wonder does it really need to be this complex? This version has three Orpheuses, three Euridices and three Aristeuses, representing the man, the myth, the hero. These splits are further fractured and intertwined through the vagaries of memory, dreams, delusions that result eventually (but by no means clearly) in a coming to terms with reality, or at least with the complexities of reality. The reformist Gluck wouldn't have approved such over-elaboration nor presumably would Monteverdi have countenanced the destruction of the illusion of man aspiring to the gods and coming close to attaining it in the expression of his music.

Musically however, Birtwistle score is just that ambitious and a performance of The Mask of Orpheus is still a thing of wonder, unlike anything else in opera. At the current ENO production it requires two conductors to manage the vast and unusual arrangement of brass, woodwind and percussion combined with Barry Anderson's IRCAM-derived experimental electronics. It creates an extraordinary sound that fully explores the complexity of situations and moods, the abstraction and repetition, the echo of time and ritual of myth. Peter Zinovieff's libretto is abstract and fragmented, often obscure and unfathomable in vocalised fragments of words. Stockhausen's Licht has nothing on this except length, and even then The Mask of Orpheus is testing at over three and a half hours long.

Inevitably Orpheus's journey in the opera is extremely hard to follow or grasp onto anything concrete. It does however have a very definite form and structure, tri-partite in acts, in its interweaving of three incarnations of the three principal characters. There are three scenes in the first Act and two sets of three allegorical myths interspersed throughout as dance interludes (three 'passing clouds' and three 'allegorical flowers'), but the opera fractures into other directions, Orpheus passing through 17 arches in Act II, Act III divided into eight episodes and an 'Exodos'. The music is just as complex in its composition and form, fractured, episodic, repetitive, interweaving replaying and transforming.

The Mask of Orpheus is evidently an experimental work, an enormous undertaking in an unconventional musical form (with its use of electronics) that Birtwistle hasn't really attempted on this scale anywhere else. Does the experiment yield any great insights into the myth? Should it be possible to grasp some deeper meaning? With the music giving expression, does it even need a narrative? What then should be the role of a director in all this? Should he attempt to make sense of it, to impose a path at least if not a narrative? Paths are important in The Mask of Orpheus and Daniel Kramer's production at least adheres to the unconventional structural path that the opera explores, but it obscures at least distracts when you hope it might illuminate.

Illuminating The Mask of Orpheus is an unenviable challenge admittedly, but Kramer's idea of illuminating doesn't really extend beyond drenching the work in garish day-glo pinks, greens and blues. There's some attempt to encompass the multiple levels of the work up there on the stage, its repetition, its simultaneous echoing of multiple views of past, present, future, myth and reality, but there's also much that is unnecessary. A crass bombardment of colour, projections and quite absurd cabaret or circus-like costumes do little more than fulfil the function of distinguishing one group from another but there's little that appears to connects to the music, to the narrative or themes.

A director like Achim Freyer can get away with that kind of eccentricity in design, but there at least there is an effort towards logic or symbolism even if it can be abstract it the extreme. Here the approach feels completely inappropriate for the subject and the work, over-complicating, making it almost impossible to follow everything that is going on and who is who at any given time. It's not necessarily a case that simplification is required, as it's hard to imagine how you could do that and be true to the structure of the work and music, but the problem seems to be that there appears to be no real feeling for the work or understanding of it in the direction.

The same accusation fortunately can't be levelled at the musical direction. Martyn Brabbins, assisted by James Henshaw, more than met the considerable challenges of this unconventional score and the very high expectations I personally had to hear it performed live. The sound within the Coliseum was incredible, the orchestration opening out the score, creating an enveloping mood that is there within the dynamic of the score and its collision of acoustic and electronic elements. It's been over thirty years since it was performed in full during its original run in 1986 so it's certainly worth taking the opportunity to hear it, and it sounds tremendous in the auditorium of the Coliseum.

While it was hard to follow who was singing what at any stage due to the cut-up and blend nature of the work - not helped at all by the obscure costumes and busy stage - it was clear there were no areas of weakness in the singing either. Peter Hoare as the principal, older Odysseus (The Man) and Claron McFadden as The Oracle of the Dead were identifiable and certainly notable for meeting the singing and performing challenges of the work. For the musical performance alone this was an extraordinary evening at the opera of a rare and exceptional work, but one unfortunately let down by an ill-considered production design and direction of no discernible artistic merit. 

Links: English National Opera

Benjamin - Lessons in Love and Violence (London, 2018)

George Benjamin - Lessons in Love and Violence

Royal Opera House, 2018

George Benjamin, Katie Mitchell, Stéphane Degout, Barbara Hannigan, Gyula Orendt, Peter Hoare, Samuel Boden, Jennifer France, Krisztina Szabó, Andri Björn Róbertsson

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

It's rare for a contemporary opera to quickly become a critical and popular success, although undoubtedly the legacy of Written on Skin will be determined over a longer period, but even as the earlier opera still runs and is given new productions worldwide, the pressure on George Benjamin and Martin Crimp to follow it up must have been considerable. I think it's fair to say that the response towards Lessons in Love and Violence has been cautiously positive, but I suspect its qualities will be more fully recognised in the longer term and it may even stand the test of time as another deeply thoughtful work from what is looking to be a formidable creative team.

Deeply thoughtful and considered however can work both ways, and there remains a slight coldness and calculation about the work in its Royal Opera House world premiere. Whether that's down to overworking the finer details of the structure and composition of the work on the part of Benjamin and Crimp, or whether Katie Mitchell's production doesn't do enough to breathe life into the work is a matter of interpretation, but what comes across with repeated viewing (as it did with Written on Skin) is that what initially might have felt like clinical academic coldness is actually a careful refinement of all the elements that are necessary to strip the work down to its bare essentials.

There's life to be put on old bones (which was also essentially the underlying theme of Written on Skin, opera capable of breathing life into an old historical tale like an illuminated manuscript), and in the case of Lessons in Love and Violence, it's Marlowe's Edward II that serves as the source for Martin Crimp. Lessons in Love and Violence is based on the situation (and violence) that ensues when the king's military advisor Mortimer takes offense at the favour and influence that Edward II's lover Gaveston has over the king, causing a scandal that leaves the queen Isabel in an awkward position and the nation's affairs being neglected as it slips into instability and war.

With numerous interviews in the official programme (reproduced in the DVD booklet) and YouTube videos explaining and detailing the process, there may have been too much talk done around the work, too much attention given to the back and forth labouring over structure and presentation and not enough opportunity to let the work itself breathe. Ultimately however, it's in performance that the quality of the work comes alive, although even there the intense 80 minutes without an interval really didn't give you time to breathe or take in much beyond the opera's considerable impact. The opportunity to view Lessons in Love and Violence again on its Blu-ray and DVD release shows however that its qualities are still very much in evidence and the work can certainly speak for itself on its own musical and dramatic terms.

Whether you are aware of the working methods behind the scenes or not, the resultant compactness and concision of Marlowe's drama (even though the opera uses almost nothing of the actual text of Edward II) is plainly evident in the fact that it demands the utmost attention from beginning to end for how the music and the drama operate, intersect and interact. If it reminds you at times of Pelléas et Mélisande, Wozzeck or The Turn of the Screw, it's because Lessons in Love and Violence has the same close connection between its charged drama and the psychological complexity underpinning it that is heightened by the musical and dramatic presentation.

George Benjamin's musical language might be initially difficult - there's no easy melodic line to follow, but rather fragmentary jabs, feints and punches - but the undeniable power and dramatic rightness of the music should be plainly evident. It's not just descriptive underscoring, but music that seeks to get inside the characters and the drama, filling it out, going beyond mere representation to a fuller expression of all the sentiments of love, conflict and violence on display. Whether you are able to keep up with it or not, by the time you arrive at the final sudden fall of the curtain, you will certainly feel emotionally drained from the charged and exhilarating situations that have just taken place. It needs to be followed through in that way, an intense run through of emotions in juxtaposition with one another, without an interval or pause for breath.

Lessons in Love and Violence is cinematic in that respect, achieving its impact more through the language of montage and editing than the typical stop-start operatic structures of arias, duets and choral arrangements (and accordingly, it's given a cinematic widescreen presentation here on its video recording). The work follows its own narrative drive and Katie Mitchell's production reflects that, ensuring that every single scene is pushed to its limits of expression, but even employing slow-motion effects (as with Written on Skin) when deemed necessary. Everything takes place in a single bedroom - modern opulence rather than medieval royal - that is presented from various angles, as is the drama in its reflection of perspective from each of its characters.

The performances of the cast are exceptional. French baritone Stéphane Degout sounds better than ever as the King (he's never mentioned by title as Edward II), bringing a wonderful soaring lyricism to the complexity of his relationships with Queen, lover, court and country. Barbara Hannigan brings a steely edge to Isabel, delivering barbed inflections to the text that rise to shrill heights of imperiousness and ruthlessness. Peter Hoare is terrific as Mortimer and Samuel Boden impressively assertive as he takes command later in the opera. Mitchell's production also takes account of the fact that there are other undercurrents implied and perpetuated by the 'Lessons' in the title with the presence of the king's young son and daughter visible throughout, even in the short filmed instrumental interludes between scenes.

All of this comes together in a way that is rare in opera outside of Pelléas et Mélisande, Wozzeck and The Turn of the Screw, and Lessons in Love and Violence stands up to being measured alongside those masterpieces. It's impossible not to feel the emotional depth and intensity of the work, how it deals with those traditionally operatic big themes, but in a new and vital way. While the sheer impact is undeniable, the richness of the work's construction and musical features are also likely to become more evident with repeated views and listening. As an extension and development upon their collaboration on Written on Skin, Lessons in Love and Violence will surely endure as another important work of modern opera from this creative team.

Released on Blu-ray, Lessons in Love and Violence comes across just as powerfully on screen as it did in live performance. The High Resolution LPCM and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 tracks permit the detail and rich textures of the music, conducted by George Benjamin himself, to be fully experienced. The video transfer and editing is superb, presenting the 'film' in 'Cinemascope' widescreen, harnessing all the power of the direction and the effectiveness of Vicki Mortimer's production design, the camerawork also revealing the quality of the dramatic performances of the impressive exceptional cast. There's a short 5-minute 'Introduction' to the opera and a Cast Gallery in the extras, and Oliver Mears interviews Benjamin and Crimp in the enclosed booklet.

Links: Royal Opera House

Benjamin - Lessons in Love and Violence (London, 2018)

George Benjamin - Lessons in Love and Violence 

Royal Opera House - London, 2018

George Benjamin, Katie Mitchell, Stéphane Degout, Barbara Hannigan, Gyula Orendt, Peter Hoare, Samuel Boden, Jennifer France, Krisztina Szabó, Andri Björn Róbertsson

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden - 26 May 2018 

I think it's fair to say that George Benjamin and Martin Crimp have paid more attention to the structure than the plot of their latest opera, and judging by the interviews with both of them in the Royal Opera House programme for its world premiere they'd probably be the first to admit it. That's not to say that there is anything wrong with that in an opera where the abstraction of music and its construction have an important part to play in addition to the dramatic narrative. As it happens however, Lessons in Love and Violence is not only brilliantly structured, it also seem to achieve exactly what it sets out to achieve, and perhaps more than you might expect from the title.

Maybe that kind of tight focus without any unnecessary over-elaboration is all we need in a situation, and certainly Benjamin's previous collaboration with playwright Martin Crimp, Written on Skin, is just as tightly and effectively delineated. But there might also be something more that we can derive from the artistry of the composer's musical interpretation of the text, from Katie Mitchell's direction and from the singing performances themselves. Certainly every element of the work has had the utmost attention, thought, precision and talent applied to its component parts, and in the combination of them raise the work to much more than the sum of them.

The lesson in love and violence that Benjamin and Crimp (and Mitchell and Degout and Hannigan et al) give us - or rather the lesson that they show us being passed on from one generation to the next - is thematically similar to Written on Skin and likewise based on a historical event and an old text, but reflected to some extent through a modern-day perspective. Drawn from, or perhaps more inspired by Marlowe's play 'Edward II', Lessons in Love and Violence is based on the situation (and violence) that ensues when the king's military advisor Mortimer takes offense at the favour and influence that Edward II's lover Gaveston has over the king, over the position it leaves the queen Isabel in, for the scandal it is causing and the harm that is doing to a nation slipping into instability and civil war.

Divided into seven scenes, running to only 90 minutes without an interval, the drama and phrasing of the dialogue is certainly mannered and not particularly naturalistic, but the focus is more on mood than exposition, on the accumulation of slights and conflicts, on personality and behaviour, all of it leading from love to acts of cruelty and barbarism. Watching its delivery and trajectory, it's easy to think that the work is rather laboured in terms of being meticulously thought out and almost, some might say, too academic an exercise in putting a situational drama to music. That might be the case but for the fact that in performance it really doesn't show.

All you see is a drama of remarkable concision in its concentration of musical and dramatic forces towards those essential themes, the work breathing sensual fire and menace. Crimp's phrasing is intense, direct and unadorned, repeating phrases, overlapping dialogues. Benjamin's score matches the fluctuations of mood and dynamic, dreamily sensual one moment, slow and sinister the next, harsh and dissonant the next. Combined they provide not so much a history lesson as a lesson in how love is viewed as weakness and how violence permits one to achieve personal and political ends. The lesson is well learned by the young king who observes the machinations of Mortimer and Isabel, and the result is that the violence is turned back on them. At the same time however, the underlying story, character and personalities revealed by the music, the direction and the singing ensure that this is never purely considered in an abstract or academic manner but closely related to human emotions and behaviours which can then be applied in a wider context.

Which is what Katie Mitchell's contribution brings to the work in collaboration with set and costume designer Vicki Mortimer, using some of their familiar traits. The setting is relatively modern-day, removing the subject from being tied to a historical period drama. The characters sometimes move in slow motion to enhance action or freeze the surrounding drama to bring focus to the singer, but the mood and rhythms are always fully attuned to the score and the text. There is also not unexpectedly a strong feminist vision the Mitchell brings to the work that is not necessarily explicit in the drama. Although it's the king's young son who brings to an end (or perpetuates) the cycle of violence at the conclusion of the opera with the execution of Mortimer, it's his young sister (a non-singing role) who wields the gun here - a turn of events that puts you in mind of Mitchell's work on the Purcell derived opera Miranda.

Hand-picked for the roles, the cast is simply superb and it's really hard to imagine any better singers fulfilling the roles, complementing each other and striking exciting contrasts. Singing impeccably in English, the French baritone Stéphane Degout sounds better than ever as the King (he's never mentioned by title as Edward II), striking out away from being the go-to Pelléas, but still bringing a wonderful soaring lyricism to another role that flirts with the danger in his relationship with Gyula Orendt's Gaveston. Barbara Hannigan has also recently sang in Pelléas et Mélisande, but there's a rather more steely edge to her character as the queen Isabel, delivering barbed inflections to the text that rise of course to shrill heights of imperiousness and ruthlessness. Peter Hoare is terrific as Mortimer, and Samuel Boden impressively assertive as he takes command later in the opera.

I mention Pelléas et Mélisande because it did come to mind now and again watching Lessons in Love and Violence. Not that it sounds at all like Debussy's masterpiece, but it is similarly structured into distinct intense dream-like scenes with quite beautiful instrumental passages between them. There's a darker outlook here however that is also reminiscent of Berg's Wozzeck, another precisely controlled and intense work. Benjamin however very much has his own voice, and it's one that clearly works tremendously well in collaboration with Martin Crimp. Their previous work Written in Skin was deservedly hailed as a modern masterpiece soon after its initial run and Lessons in Love and Violence is every bit its equal, on an initial viewing perhaps an even more brilliant a work in its concept and execution.

Links: Royal Opera House

Ligeti - Le Grand Macabre (LSO, 2017)

György Ligeti - Le Grand Macabre

London Symphony Orchestra, 2017

Sir Simon Rattle, Peter Sellars, Peter Hoare, Ronnita Miller, Elizabeth Watts, Pavlo Hunka, Frode Olsen, Heidi Melton, Audrey Luna, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Peter Tantsits, Joshua Bloom, Christian Valle, Fabian Langguth, Benson Wilson

Barbican Hall, London - 14th January 2017

Maybe it's just a reflection of the strange times we are living in, but György Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre actually seemed to make a lot of sense in this timely semi-staged version of the composer's difficult and absurd anti-anti-opera. If anything the world has become even more absurd than Ligeti could ever have imagined in these post-truth, hard Brexit leaning times, a week away from Donald Trump becoming the President of the USA. Honestly, the goings-on on the stage at the Barbican made more sense and were more credible than last night's news. Truly, it seems that we are now living in Breughelland.

That's a tribute really to Peter Sellars, a director who has worked with Ligeti and who was instrumental in convincing the composer to work on the revised 1997 version of Le Grand Macabre, but it's also to the credit of Simon Rattle and the LSO, who unexpectedly turned a concert performance of this work into a revelatory experience. A semi-staged performance barely seems adequate for this work, nor does a serious treatment of it seem appropriate, but remarkably the comic absurdity and difficult music produced what turned out to be a meaningful, invigorating and thought-provoking experience at the first of its brief run of two performances at the Barbican.

The challenges of performing Le Grand Macabre, not to mention the relatively small specialised audience that it would appeal to, mean that we don't often get a chance to see this opera staged. If you were to rely solely on the most recent UK production of the work directed by La Fura dels Baus at the Coliseum, you would likely then only have a view of one side of the work where the emphasis is on the irreverence, the surreal, the vulgarity and the spectacle and it's unlikely that you would really have connected with any of the deeper content or message in the work. Sellars and Rattle show however that there is another side to Le Grand Macabre, many sides even, and in the process they show why consideration of a variety of interpretations of any work of art is important.

If there was one essential element or key theme in Le Grand Macabre that the La Fura dels Baus production and Peter Sellars share, it's the idea of the opera taking place in an apocalyptic end-of-times moment. Hence its absurdity. It's no surprise either that for Peter Sellars - who has collaborated with John Adams as the librettist for Doctor Atomic - the expression of that apocalyptic theme takes the form of us being on the brink of nuclear Armageddon. As Ligeti and his family experienced some of the worst horrors of the Holocaust and the Cold War, this is certainly a theme that is present as a dark undercurrent to the work.

There's not a lot of stage dressing needed to make this theme apparent in a semi-staged version. There are a couple of barrels of glowing toxic nuclear waste to both sides of the stage, but most of the context is relayed through screen projections at the back of the stage. Nick Hillel's video footage and projections are not just the familiar imagery you might expect, although mushroom clouds are certainly shown and there is footage of the meltdown of the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, but there is also a certain amount of humour at the irony and the horror of the nuclear arms race, a tone that is entirely appropriate within the context of Ligeti's work.

The realisation that it's all madness and that death is just around the corner seems to come to nuclear corporate executive Piet the Pot while doing a presentation for 'Clean Futures' at a Nuclear Energy Summit (London - Berlin 2017). He's taken a few drinks to steady himself for presenting something he presumably no longer believes in, so the combination of stage nerves and the alcohol seems to play havoc with the reality that he sees around him. The words of his colleagues in white lab coats, Armando and Armanda, seems suddenly suggestive and erotically inclined towards death, while his boss seems to materialise before his eyes in the form of Nekrotzar, Le Grand Macabre.

There are limits to how far you can take that kind of absurdity with all Ligeti's accompanying unconventional and often atonal music, and it's particularly difficult to sustain such a relatively thin premise across four scenes. The message, you would think, has been made abundantly clear very quickly indeed and the second scene between the astrologer Astradamors and his wife Mescalina seems to have little to add to the absurd situation. Nekrotzar's assumption of Astradamors' marital duties - carried out via the emotional distancing of an on-line chatroom here - is hammered home at the end of Act II with a map of the world being blasted with an infographics display of all the nuclear bombs that have been detonated since 1945. It's horrifying to imagine the damage that must have been inflicted not only on the the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in those first bombs, but also the scale of the cumulative environmental impact of such tests.

It's the quality of the work itself and its deeper meaning that reasserts itself in the second half, or rather it is assertively deployed by Sellars, Rattle, the LSO and an exceptional cast of singers. Geoffrey Skelton's English translation also makes a stronger impression when it has been placed in this context, the libretto's nonsense verse, wordplay, alliteration and invention revealed to be very clever and witty, revelling in the absurdity of all the madness and death of Nekrotzar's war machine. Witty and inclined to make you laugh, but not in itself laughable. This is a deadly serious business and seen in the light of where we stand now - god help us - Ligeti's stance seems to be the only irrational response towards it.

The key factor in carrying the work through to its dark meditations is unquestionably the performance of Audrey Luna in Scene III as Gepopo the Chief of the Secret Police. In semi-staged concert performance, there wasn't perhaps the ability to present Gepopo in his three disguises as bird of prey, a spider and an octopus, but all the colour and drama in this character were brilliantly expressed and conveyed by Luna, strapped down into a bed on the stage, singing directly into a camera that projected her performance at the back of the stage. In combination with Anthony Roth Costanzo's beautiful countertenor Prince Go-Go it created an extraordinary impression, Luna's stratospheric babblings more intelligible and coherent than the average Donald Trump speech.

The same level of commitment was evident throughout a work that is filled with singing and dramatic challenges. The LSO assembled an impressive cast here for these performances at the Barbican, with Heidi Melton deserving mention for the particularly difficult Mescalina, Frode Olsen fearlessly pushing the depths of the bass role as Astradamors and Pavlo Hunka an imposing presence as Nekrotzar. There were some gorgeous lyrical moments from the combined singing of Ronnita Miller and Elizabeth Watts as Armando and Amando, contrasting terrifically with Peter Hoare's gradual derangement and disintegration as Piet the Pot. Sellars also made great use of the whole Barbican Hall for the chorus, with individual musicians and singers popping up on all of the levels, ensuring a surround sound experience that included the audience as citizens of Brueghelland.

What the semi-staged concert performance permitted above all else however was that it literally places Ligeti's music centre stage, and that was nothing less than revelatory. It's very easy for the true nature of Ligeti's music for Le Grand Macabre to get lost in all the absurdity so that it sound like nothing but wildly diverse and fractured accompanying noise, with atonal parodies of Beethoven and other forms of music, but Simon Rattle and the LSO showed how consistent and of-a-piece the music is. Its little miniatures are expressive of the moment, alternately skittish and playful, darkly reflective or shrilly terrifying, but they all contribute to the greater impact and rich tone of the work in its totality.

It's hard to say that it's Ligeti's greatest work, but Le Grand Macabre is certainly his most sustained and demanding piece; richly dynamic, a compendium of all the extravagance, experimentation, absurdity and inventiveness that are characteristic of the composer. In the form of this opera and in the light of where we are today, the dark undercurrents from Ligeti's personal experiences that inspire the themes of Le Grand Macabre now suddenly seem all too apparent and relevant.

Links: LSO, Peter Sellars talks Le Grand Macabre

Donizetti - Lucia di Lammermoor (Royal Opera House, 2016)

Gaetano Donizetti - Lucia di Lammermoor

Royal Opera House, 2016

Daniel Oren, Katie Mitchell, Diana Damrau, Charles Castronovo, Ludovic Tézier, Peter Hoare, Rachel Lloyd, Kwangchul Youn, Taylor Stayton

Royal Opera House Cinema Season Live - 25 April 2016

Katie Mitchell's intentions for the new Royal Opera House production of Lucia di Lammermoor and their potential for controversy had been well publicised beforehand. This was going to be a feminist reworking, one that put Lucia at the centre of the drama as a woman taking control over her own destiny, neither a victim nor someone acting at the behest of others, where even the heroine's famous descent into madness would be her own decision.

It's a fine idea and one that you might hope would bring a little more depth to the characterisation mostly abandoned by the librettist Salvadore Cammarano in this adaptation of Walter Scott's novel 'The Bride of Lammermoor'. Unfortunately, while there is some notional resistance in Lucia refusing to marry the wealthy Arturo at the demand of her brother Enrico for the sake of the Ashton family fortune, choosing instead to love Ernesto, the son of an old rival family, this revisionist view runs contrary to what actually happens. Katie Mitchell's version of the work might not entirely succeed in its intentions then, but it does nonetheless have some impact.

It's hard to give any real depth to the opening scenes of Act I however, and the director's "updating" the work from the 18th century to the mid-19th century of Donizetti's time hardly makes a significant difference. Vicki Mortimer's set designs make use of a split-screen technique, meaning that Lucia remains on the stage even during the scenes when there is all-male plotting going on, but this comes into play to more effect later in the opera. Spicing things up with a sex scene between Lucia and Edgardo might not seem like much either, but there are consequences here also that have more of an impact later. The fact that the following Act II fairly simmers with tension means that the production team and the singers have put the necessary work in. And it shows.

It's not the only thing that shows. Lucia, in this version, is pregnant and is seen suffering from morning sickness at the start of Act II. This is undoubtedly the most important detail that Mitchell includes to 'fill out' the characterisation, establishing a greater bond between her and Edgardo and providing a more convincing reason - since she miscarries after her murder of Arturo and loses a lot of blood - for her becoming somewhat unhinged at the turn of events and for her dying so dramatically at the conclusion.

Whether that carries though as convincingly in practice is debatable, but it certainly makes Lucia's Act II scene with Enrico much more intense when there something more real at stake and not just something that could be dismissed as a romantic illusion. The fact that it is sung with tremendous passion by Diana Damrau and Ludovic Tézier in a way that belies any belief that Donizetti's music is repetitive and unsophisticated. Daniel Oren's conducting of the work here, when it's combined with dramatic realism and expert singing, shows just how intensely dramatic it can be.

The rest of this highly-charged Act then falls neatly into place. If Enrico seems to let his enemy get away with rather a lot by gatecrashing Lucia's wedding to Arturo, it's only because it suits his purpose to see Edgardo further destroy the bond between him and Lucia. Mitchell also makes sure that the ghosts have a large part to play in determining the nature of this relationship, and it always helps when they are made physical. Here they are often seen coming between Lucia and Edgardo, the ghosts of the past as terrible family histories that present an insurmountable obstacle to their union. The final touch of the ghost of Lucia's mother pressing the kiss of madness into her forehead works wonderfully.

Despite this, Act III still doesn't seem able to overcome some of the inherent dramatic weaknesses of the bel canto opera, nor really live up to the intentions of Mitchell's revisions. The split-screen might provide greater rationale for the usually off-stage action - allowing the murder of Arturo to be acted out in its full gory detail - but it divides attention and takes away from where the focus of the Wolf's Crag scene (and the music for it) is intended. It doesn't make things easy for the video director capturing this for the cinema screening either, the camera never seeming to know which scene to settle on, but appearing to spare the viewer from some of the more gruesome images of this controversial scene, which kind of works against the intentions of the production.

If the overall impact is nonetheless impressive, it's not because of any "feminist" agenda, but because the characterisation is stronger and fuller than you usually find it in this opera. It's also unquestionably because Diana Damrau brings a lot to the role with an outstanding singing and dramatic performance. It becomes a bit too much to try to make every note of the mad scene coloratura mean something and relate to a recognisable reaction - it still feels like so much yodelling - but it's still a committed performance that has real depth and intensity. By way of contrast, Charles Castronovo avoids the kind of mannerisms that can sometimes sound like an effort to emulate Jonas Kaufmann, and he gives a more grounded lyrical performance. Ludovic Tézier's luxurious rounded tone for Enrico contributes to a well-integrated cast of singing and performance that delivers as much as could be expected from this bel canto work, and even perhaps a little bit more.

Links: Royal Opera House

Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Lyon, 2016 - Webcast)

Dmitri Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

Opéra de Lyon, 2016

Kazushi Ono, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Ausrine Stundyte, Vladimir Ognovenko, Peter Hoare, John Daszak, Gennady Bezzubenkov, Almas Svilpa, Jeff Martin, Michaela Selinger, Clare Presland, Jeff Martin, Kwang Soun Kim

Culturebox - 4 February 2016

He remains a controversial and divisive figure in the opera world, but Dmitri Tcherniakov is nonetheless always an interesting director. In particular his work is often inspired when he is working in the Russian repertoire; opening up a whole new way of looking on works that are rarely performed and insufficiently explored. His production of Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, recently seen at the English National Opera but now transferred to Lyon and sung in its native language with Russian leads, is a typically strong reading of the work that has many of the director's familiar techniques. In fact, it would at first appear that there's not much the director has to offer a work that is surrounded in enough controversy of its own. The touches Tcherniakov introduces here however are subtle and achieve maximum impact.

For a while at least, it seems like business as usual. There are no unexpected twists that subvert the material, nothing too challenging or unexpected. It's updated evidently, but not in an extravagant way to make any obvious contemporary reference. Instead of being a wealthy flour merchant, Boris Timofeyevich Izmailov here runs a more modern warehouse, with workers in hi-vis jackets operating forklift trucks, with a row of secretaries in the office and employees all wearing security passes around their necks. Even from the point of view of merely indicating the banality of business interests and the uniformity of the modern workplace, and in how it pertains to the relative positions of men and women within it, Tcherniakov has it down to a tee.

The background setting is an important matter in the opera, but still, it's not anything that you wouldn't see in any other Tcherniakov production. This one doesn't look that much different from his productions of The Tsar's Bride or Verdi's Macbeth, and if that means that it's not quite as radical as the updating of those works were, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk already has all the sex and violence it needs. What becomes apparent then is not that Tcherniakov's approach is in any way 'tamer' here, or that he has run out of original ideas, as much as Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk may be the definitive Tcherniakov opera. It's as if the director has taken all the boldness, the shock and the impact of this opera and used it as a model that all other operas ought to aspire to match. Tcherniakov seems to want to bring the inner Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk out of every opera he works on.

In as far as dealing with the subjects that Shostakovich depicted in his version of Nikolai Leskov's work, there are certainly other levels that could be emphasised in the opera - and it seems amazing that the composer himself seemed to be unaware of how that might would play out to the Soviet censor - but Tcherniakov is not particularly concerned with those. The wider view of the Russian character, the implications of corruption within the system and the impact that has on a woman living within a male-dominated society are all still there as part of the wider canvas that Shostakovich paints so vividly in his score, but Tcherniakov recognises that there is also an attention in the music to the individual, and in this case that's evidently the 'Lady Macbeth' of the work, Katerina Lvovna Izmailova.

Having established the context only as far as it necessary, without any unnecessary emphasis or distortion, Tcherniakov's focus is almost wholly on Katia. The director often reduces the scene down to the small room where the wife of the boss's son is mostly confined. It's a warmly-lit room decorated with rugs covering the walls, Katia moreover dressed in a more 'traditional' way that emphasises the extent to which she is cut off and set apart from the rest of the world. She daren't venture too far out of that room, and when she does - in the only way that would be possible for a woman in her position - she's soon put back in her place. Her form of liberty eventually leads Katerina and her lover Sergei being arrested and sent to Siberia. As this just closes down her world further, Tcherniakov chooses to depict all the horror that follows within the confines of a small cell rather than on a forced march in the open outdoors.

Closing down the stage in this way, reducing it to a small block, allows Tcherniakov to work in closer detail, more like a film director than a stage director. There is even a fixed camera placed high within Katia's bedroom for the sake of the video recording of the performance in Lyon that allows the level of detail, nuance and intimacy created to be seen, but clearly the impact is felt even at the back of the theatre. Tcherniakov knows he doesn't have to make grand gestures because they are already there in the music and in the subject, and he focuses instead on the performers, on what their characters feel and endure. Even on that level, there's a huge range to cover in the vivid personalities of Katia, Boris, Sergei and Zynovny, to say nothing of the colourful secondary characters. Tcherniakov's direction of the performers is superb, making them and their actions feel utterly real, and it makes all the difference in this work.

The simmering passions and explosions of violence and aggressive sexual behaviour are all fully scored by Shostakovich and brought out in all their wonderful, lurid glory by Kazushi Ono and the orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon. It really is a wonderful account that makes no attempt to play down those verismo characteristics that are what gives the work such an impact. A few of the English cast remain here - John Daszak and Peter Hoare superbly reprising the roles of Sergei and Zynovny - but the Russian production of the opera undoubtedly benefits from having singers like Ausrine Stundyte and Vladimir Ognovenko play Katarina and Boris. Stundyte is exceptionally good in an understated but compelling performance that simmers with the underlying strength of Katia's passions and her capacity to love as violently as she kills.

Links: Culturebox, Opéra de Lyon

Weill - Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Royal Opera House 2015 - Cinema Live)

Kurt Weill - Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

Royal Opera House, 2015

Mark Wigglesworth, John Fulljames, Anne Sofie von Otter, Peter Hoare, Willard W. White, Christine Rice, Kurt Streit, Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts, Darren Jeffery, Neal Davies, Hubert Francis

Royal Opera House, Cinema Live - 1 April 2015
 
What is both clever and great about Weill and Brecht's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is that as long as we live in a society that is centred around capitalism and commerce, its message is always going to be pertinent and relevant. Inevitably there's much made of how the message of the work reflects our own current economic downturn, but even if we lived in boom times, the opera would still show fairly accurately the kind of 'Wolf of Wall Street' excess and vulgarity, the moral and social breakdown that inevitably follows when the acquisition of obscene amounts of money it seen as an end in itself. There's not much to be said for capitalism, is there?

As well as being clever (and true), this is however part of the problem with the work as it stands as an opera. It's rather preachy. Its parable of the building of a city by three criminals whose founding principles are based on nothing more than exploiting its transient citizens for every penny they can get out of them (no money left, you'll feel the full weight of the law - immigrants welcome, as long as you have something (money, cheap labour) to contribute) is more of a concept than a plot, and it lacks genuine engagement. It's true that Bertolt Brecht was more interested in gaining the intellectual participation of the audience than their emotional engagement or identification with the characters, but for the work to succeed on the opera stage today, it needs a little more of a bite to shake a modern audience out of its complacency.

Perhaps Brecht didn't anticipate, considering its evident failings as a model for social well-being and despite its superficial allure, that Capitalism could possibly turn out to be so pervasive as to be endorsed as a sine qua non, but then, it's clear from this work that he doesn't have too much faith in human nature being motivated by anything other than naked greed and self-interest. Nonetheless, the Royal Opera House production of Mahagonny does feel complacent. Not in terms of professionalism or performance - everything is well considered here - but it is a production that is designed for the opera stage for a Covent Garden audience, and it consequently fails to invite anything but a complacent shrug of recognition. 'That's so true', you think, 'but not much you can do to change it'.

For a regular opera, you don't really expect much more of a response than that, but Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is not a regular opera and, consequently that's really not good enough. It's not entirely the fault of John Fulljames's direction for the Royal Opera House, but inherently a problem with the work itself. It's not the anti-opera that it sets out to be, but rather does end up preaching to a well-heeled audience that is not really going to consider its wealth vulgar, or have to worry that it will all disappear on binges of whoring and drinking. Weill might be partly to blame for how the musical language speaks and soothes away any unwelcome recognition, its jazz-influenced rhythms no longer as daring as they might once have been, but Brecht's heavy-handed mocking of capitalist society doesn't invite any real engagement or suggest alternatives either.

A stage director, set designer and a musical director willing to really engage with the message could however make more of a difference here. The problem with John Fulljames, Es Devlin and Mark Wigglesworth's interpretation is that it is resolutely opera house. They do justice to the letter of the work as it was written, and give every indication of the relevance of its intentions, but they don't find a way to update the nihilistic 1930's spirit of the opera in a way that would invite a modern audience to put aside their opera preconceptions. The La Fura dels Baus production at the Teatro Real, by way of comparison, managed to be a little more adventurous and inventive with the work, and conductor there, Pablo Heras Casado, managed to get more of the genuine swagger and swing of the orchestration. The production team at the Royal Opera House, on the other hand, don't really treat Weill and Brecht's work differently from the way they would approach any other opera commission.

Es Devlin's set designs are, it has to be said, inventive and very much find a modern way to envision the themes of the work - even if it tripped up the performers on one or two occasions. The city of Mahagonny comes literally from the back of a lorry, neatly compartmentalising the scenes in the first act, while the second and third acts add shipping containers to the construction. There are no niceties here, it's a city that has evolved out of the practicalities of delivering commercial products and services. That's as much a reflection of the abstraction of Brecht's alienation devices, inviting audiences to consider the "idea" of a city rather the concrete reality of a realistic set. We're now familiar with this kind of set design now however, and just as much depends on what you do within in. Unfortunately, John Fulljames doesn't find any original way of making consumption in this permissive society anything more than it is on the page. When you have actually seen worse in reality on the streets of modern metropolises, it's fairly tame stuff indeed.

So, instead of engaging with the ideas, there's not much else for the critic to review here other than the old fall-back of how good the singing performances are - as if Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is just another work to be assessed in that peculiar view of opera as little more than a perpetual singing contest. Christine Rice was the probably the strongest voice here as Jenny, giving a great rendition of the famous Alabama Song, but for me she was much too plummy and operatic for the down-and-dirty role. Kurt Streit was best with character, but his singing was also strong, bright and lyrical, capturing the wild abandon of Jimmy McIntyre. If character realism is important here, and it's debatable, it would then colour your view of Anne Sofie von Otter's over-acted Widow Begbick, but it was an enjoyable characterisation, even if it apparent that her voice is no longer strong enough to carry the sung-recitative sections. Willard White's voice isn't as strong as it once was either but Trinity Jones is a familiar role for him, and he can still do it well.

This was a good performance then and highly entertaining, as professional as you would expect from the Royal Opera House, but something was still missing. Being aware of the content from a synopsis isn't usually an issue with opera - you can usually expect an infinite amount of variety in interpretation - but here, having laid it out beforehand in the pre-screening and interval features, it all played out a little too routinely and complacently. One thing Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny should never be is routine and complacent, but whether that's a problem with the Royal Opera House's production or the world itself worryingly becoming a parody of capitalism that outstrips anything in Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's opera, one would like to think you'd get more out of this work than just a nice evening at the opera.

Links: The Royal Opera House