Verdi - Macbeth (Buxton, 2017)

Giuseppe Verdi - Macbeth (Buxton, 2017)

Buxton International Festival, 2017

Stephen Barlow, Elijah Moshinsky, Stephen Gadd, Kate Ladner, Oleg Tsibulko, Jung Soo Yun, Luke Sinclair, Ben Thapa, Helen Bailey, Charlie Lambert, Richard Moore, Molly O’Neill, Stuart Orme, Phil Wilcox

Buxton Opera House - 18th July 2017

There have been some fine productions in recent years that have raised Macbeth out of the obscurity of early Verdi operas up to a new level of appreciation. If the composer's early Shakespeare adaptation is still flawed in some respects and certainly not an opera that can ever be considered to be up there with his best work, Macbeth now at least has a deserved place in the Verdi popular repertoire.

Much of course depends on which version of the work is used and how it is presented, but with their latest Verdi venture for the Buxton Festival, Elijah Moshinsky and conductor Stephen Barlow believe that there is a case for viewing the earliest 1847 version without any of the composer's later revisions a little more sympathetically for its own operatic qualities, if not for its adherence to the Shakespearean drama. The Buxton production doesn't set out to make the case for the 1847 version being the definitive Macbeth, but rather just that it works on its own terms. They do that successfully but it seems to me to be a rather minor point to make when the work has the potential to offer so much more.

Other productions, perhaps identifying the weaknesses in the work as it stands in its various versions, can seek to reintroduce more Shakespeare into the opera or play with a hybrid that draws on the best of all versions to try to compensate for what is lacking in the dramatic development of the original opera version. Elijah Moshinsky's production for Buxton however plays it more or less straight. It's an abstraction really of Macbeth with no interpretation applied. There's no Scottish context or imagery, there are no elaborations of character or personality and no attempt to apply a dramatic through-line; one scene follows the next, condensing Shakespeare's play down to its essence.

That is more or less what Verdi and Piave do with Shakespeare in Macbeth anyway, so Moshinsky is really just removing anything that might be considered an interpretation or interpolation and just putting the focus back on Verdi's score and its ability to tell the story musically in its own way. Certainly Stephen Barlow's conducting of the NCO Festival Orchestra carried all the dynamism of the dramatic power and the melody of Verdi's arrangements, which are wonderfully effective no matter that they may not be as accomplished or as sophisticated in their characterisation as later Verdi. On its own terms the music delivers. Point proved.

Other than that however the Buxton Macbeth had little to offer in terms of interpretation to highlight themes or expand on aspects of characterisation. On a minimally dressed set that made use of a few benches against a background of castle walls, it was left mostly to the lighting, colour and shadow to actually visualise the colour of the effects of Verdi's score, principally in red and black. Some projections were also sparingly used to add emphasis to the punchier scenes of witchcraft, magic and murder most foul.

The use of projections in the scene of the visitation of the three apparitions conjured by the witches is the one place where the otherwise literal production goes a little off-script. Rather than a long line of kings descended from Banquo crossing the stage, the projections show a more interiorised whirl of horrors, snakes, skulls and demons within Macbeth's mind. Another slight revision is he timing of the death of the Queen, the production giving Macbeth's aria 'Pietà, rispetto, amore' as a lament to the corpse of Lady Macbeth rather than the customary distracted indifference, with the women rushing on scene to announce her death as if just discovering it.

This kind of emotional investment, sung well in this instance by Stephen Gadd, showed how well the work responds to the application of some tweaks of interpretation. Elsewhere such moments were uneven, the 1847 version of 'Patria opressa' lacks the stirring impact of its revised arrangement, but it wasn't helped with a straight line-up of the chorus across the stage with no dramatic direction. By way of contrast, Macduff's lament 'Ah, la paterna mano' that follows it carries the nature of the personal cost to the people of the land under Macbeth's reign of terror much more effectively, particularly as it was sung with great feeling by Jung Soo Yun.

Indeed The production might not have made the case for the 1847 original so well were it not for the singing. Proving again that the real key to the success of any early Verdi opera is often in how well the principal roles are able to meet its singing challenges, Stephen Gadd and Kate Ladner both gave convincing performances as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, although inevitably they were pushed a little uncomfortably to their limits in places. Stephen Gadd's softer intoning carried the gravitas of the role well, fitting with the more sombre tone of the production. Having a strong Banquo in Oleg Tsibulko also helped maintain a good balance in the overall tone. All of which contributed to an authentic early Verdi experience, but really not much more than that. I can't say I'm optimistic that such an approach will do much to improve the reputation of Alzira planned for next year's Festival either.

Links: Buxton International Festival

Humperdinck - Hansel and Gretel (Belfast, 2017)

Engelbert Humperdinck - Hansel and Gretel

Opera North, 2017

Christoph Altstaedt, Edward Dick, Katie Bray, Fflur Wyn, Susan Bullock, Stephen Gadd, Rachel J Mosley, Amy Freston

Grand Opera House, Belfast - 15th March 2017

One of the advantages of a fairy-tale is that it can operate on multiple levels, ideally with some measure of realism or a moral lying behind the magic fantasy of its telling. Opera is an artform that is particularly good at operating on multiple levels and Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel is one of the greatest examples of a fairy tale opera that strikes a near perfect balance in how it touches on all those important levels in its musical, storytelling and - most importantly - its magical qualities. It wasn't dubbed 'Wagner for Children' for nothing, but it would be a shame to over-emphasise either the Wagnerian or the children's magic fairy-tale elements of the work. Opera North's terrific production uses stage-craft to place the right kind of emphasis on the material, and the musical performance is quite impressive too.

It's perhaps more important to get that balance of tone right in Hansel and Gretel than in most other fairy tale operas, as there are some quite dark elements in it that relate to child abuse and child abduction. It's not the kind of fairy-tale however that you would think could bear a brutal reworking of those dark origins in the style of Martin Kušej's interpretation of Dvořák's Ruslaka, but Stefan Herheim's colourful deconstruction of the same work shows that it is possible to make the escapist fantasy work hand in hand with the less than pleasant reality in a way that enhances its meaning and message. Director Edward Dick and set designer Giles Cadle might not have the same kind of budget that Herheim might have at La Monnaie, but what they achieve with this Opera North production of Hansel and Gretel is no less imaginative and just as probing of the story's depths.

There's just a glimmer of suspicion however that two poor children living in a hovel with neglectful alcoholic parents probably wouldn't have a high-definition video camera to capture their play and games, but Hansel and Gretel running around with a hand-held camera is more of a device that allows the audience to see the world through a child's eyes. And my goodness do they ever go for it, the playful footage projected in real time to the back of the stage, a masterstroke that draws you into Hansel and Gretel's games and their imagination. The starving children are not going to be aware of the poverty of their situation or understand that their treatment amounts to abuse and neglect, their minds being more likely to transform it into something more relatable like a game. The brilliance of the stage craft allows us to share this, and that's real magic.

The two worlds, the imaginary play world of the children and the stark reality of the world of the adults, are brilliantly delineated in Humperdinck's score and in the libretto, with the music and the language notably harsher when their parents are speaking. The distinction is brought out to perfection in the translation, choosing the right words to make you wince a little without it being too offensive or brutal. Folk music performs the same function as the fairy tale - and it's no coincidence that Humperdinck's score like many fairy-tale operas (Rusalka, The Cunning Little Vixen) relies on folk music to similarly transform a harsher reality into something more endurable without denying the reality of the circumstances they arise from.

The transformative nature of the fairy tale is brought out superbly in many clever little touches, placing the magic firmly within the minds of the ones most capable of it - the children. Instead of running out into a dark fairy tale wood then, Hansel and Gretel create their own enchanted forest out their home using hairbrushes and twigs enlarged to extraordinary effect by the handheld camera and its harsh lighting. The horror of what lies in store for them isn't necessarily outside, it's there within the walls of their house and it can be confronted only with the power of their own instinct for survival and quick-wittedness.

Perfectly matching the tone of the approach, the most wonderful display of this magic occurs just before the interval in the guise of the dream of the Fourteen Angels. Rather than the traditional fairy tale imagery as the children fall under the spell of the Sandman, the director Edward Dick comes up with a wonderful little movie interlude that is a rather more down-to-earth childhood dream of a perfect day at the seaside. In this little dream-movie the children experience all the joy, protection and happiness that is missing from their lives; candyfloss and ice-cream, sun and sand, love and laughter, a kind grandmother to give them everything that they don't experience with their own parents. It's a joyous little moment that connects the reality with the magic of imagination and the ability of the children to endure and rise above their circumstances.

There is no less careful attention to detail in the second and usually more overtly fairy-tale half of the opera. The edible gingerbread house is again just a clever camera shot - a view of the inside of the fridge packed with cakes and sweets blown up in projection to cover the walls and ceiling. But not everything relies on the cleverness of the production design to make the content of the second half work as well as it does. It's the delightful performances and playful interaction of Katie Bray and Fflur Wyn's Hansel and Gretel with Susan Bullock's swaggering witch that manage to strike that fine balance between the reality of the horror of the abusive captivity and neglect and the means of surviving it. Opera North's production doesn't frighten the children, except maybe in a good way.

It's probably the final scene that takes the most liberty with the libretto and yet at the same time it most perfectly represents the intent or moral of the tale. The fairy-tale has become a story that the older Hansel and Gretel tell to their own children, and it's their own children - the children who come alive when the witch dies - who exist now because Hansel and Gretel have endured, grown and strengthened to overcome the adversity of their experiences. The fairy-tale story is not entirely escapism then, but it is also a means that they can communicate these important values to their own children. It's a terrific way to acknowledge that Wagnerian side of the importance of myth and storytelling as vital to the development of cultural ideals. Even Hansel and Gretel's parents are reformed characters here.

The brilliance of the production - clever and charming, an absolute delight in every way - is matched by the equally warm and sensitive musical account and outstanding singing performances. I was already aware of the beautiful brightness and lyricism of Fflur Wyn's singing and couldn't have been more delighted to see her cast as Gretel. She didn't disappoint giving a heartfelt, engaging and playful performance, as did Katie Bray's boisterous Hansel. Bray's response to the witches's command to 'show me your finger' got perhaps the loudest laugh of the night, but this was also a beautifully sung performance that was perfectly complementary in a way that truly demonstrated the Wagnerian sophistication of Humperdinck's musical composition.

Simply due to the apportioning of the roles and the way the two principal roles were sung, it's fair to say that a large measure of the success of the production rode on the performances of Katie Bray and Fflur Wyn, but there was much to enjoy in Susan Bullock's scene stealing Witch. Her Gertrud sounded a little over-stretched at first, but she really warmed to the Witch role in the second half, and utterly mesmerized/horrified the young children in the row in front of me. You really need a personality like that to carry this off, and Bullock was terrific. To have Stephen Gadd there as well as the Father is another bonus. As good as all these production and singing elements were, it was the musical performance under Christoph Altstaedt's direction that was really outstanding, capturing all the folk swing of the songs, the bright playfulness and the sinister darkness, but more importantly with a contemplative sensitivity that is essential to carry off the ending attempted in this production. Opera North have really outdone themselves here.

Links: Opera North

Verdi - La Traviata (Opera North, 2015 - Belfast)

Giuseppe Verdi - La Traviata

Opera North, 2015

Oliver von Dohnányi, Alessandro Talevi, Anna Jeruc-Kopec, Victoria Sharp, Louise Collett, Ji-Min Park, Stephen Gadd, Daniel Norman, Peter Savidge, Nicholas Butterfield, Dean Robinson

Grand Opera House, Belfast - 18 March 2015

La Traviata might be the most performed opera in the world, but in some ways its popularity just makes it more of a challenge for an opera company to find a way of revitalising and renewing it in a new production. Aside from the musical resources and talent needed to perform it, there are also audience expectations to consider, which in my experience means that good productions of La Traviata are common, but great ones are rarer. Opera North's new production managed to strike a good balance between performance and audience expectations. It wasn't a particularly adventurous La Traviata, but it did eventually overcome the conventional mannerisms to get to the emotional heart of the work.

The opening Act however wasn't particularly auspicious. It did the decadent Belle Époque well, making Violetta's party look like an authentic out-of-control revelry/orgy that might have been more in keeping with the reputation of a courtesan than some stuffy formal dinner party. As the work can be rather circumspect about how Violetta's earns her keep, this is a good way of establishing that. Musically, it felt like we were just running through the numbers, but you can't blame Opera North for that any more than you can blame Verdi for writing such popular and memorable tunes. You have to give the audience what they expect, and Opera North did that at the outset and gave maybe a little more than that later.

At the very least, Act I made it abundantly clear that we had a stunning Violetta in Anna Jeruc-Kopec. She looked the part, sang with accomplishment and conviction, with feeling and personality. Ji-Min Park's Alfredo didn't make quite as much of an impact, but this is not his Act. That comes at both ends of Act II and there he handled all the emotional extremes of Alfredo's rapid fall from rapturous love to bitterness, anger and disappointment with a strong and emotive delivery. In between, we enjoyed Stephen Gadd's Georgio Germont, balanced between stern disapproval and some measure of sympathy for Violetta, with a warm, secure vocal delivery. His duets with Anna Jeruc-Kopec were delightful, Jeruc-Kopec demonstrating how good her performance was in those moments of intense distress.

From there on it there was less of the stop/start number playing broken up by audience applause. In La Traviata, that's usually a good sign, showing that the audience is less focussed on recognition of the arias and evaluation of the performances and has become caught up in the emotion and the drama of it all. You don't feel particularly inclined to applaud someone's life being taken apart on the stage, no matter how technically accomplished the performance and delivery. This is the magic that Verdi and Opera North manage to achieve with La Traviata, drawing the audience in with consummate skill and doing it almost imperceptibly.

While Alessandro Talevi's direction and production design didn't appear to make much of an impact then, it was actually very cleverly and carefully planned to match Verdi's musical construction. There's a musical arc to the work that opens contemplatively with (you can assume) Violetta alone in the overture, breaks into revelry at the Baron's party, builds up to rapturous love that then declines through the second half to a party that follows a similar downward trajectory, ending with Violetta again facing her mortality alone. Aside from the strong dramatic construction, Verdi's music also follows a similar coherent pattern that hits all the key points, with musical melodies/leitmotifs and phrases recurring in different guises that remind one of the earlier occasions they were played. It's masterful and highly effective.
 

Madeleine Boyd's set designs use a very simple means of ensuring that there's a visual symmetry that matches Verdi's musical construction. On the most basic level, there's a large bed in place in Act I that transforms into a jetty for Act II's country house scene and then into a stage and a gambling table for Act III. It's a simple device, but clever, ensuring that you don't view these Acts as random scenes, but can see the continuity between them. One scene reminds you of the other under different circumstances, much the same way that Verdi's score does. What lies behind those scenes is a little more difficult to establish here, but there is some effort to get beyond the traditional imagery and be a little more representative of the underlying emotions and sentiments.

An endoscopic image of, presumably, the tuberculosis bacteria working its way through her lungs, is visible during the overture, Violetta facing it, confronting her fate, the bright circular image transforming into a full moon outside during Act I. The blissful love scene of Act II - where  wedon't actually see Alfredo and Violetta happy together - opens with Violetta contemplating the infinity of water meeting sky. In Act IV, the masked Parisian carnival revellers seated in tiers outside the window applaud Violetta's dramatic death scene.

None of this particularly adds to any great insight or understanding of the work and its message - it certainly doesn't highlight Verdi's scathing critique of social hypocrisy towards women who fall outside accepted boundaries - but it provides a distinct character for the production that doesn't stray too far away from the traditional reading. What's important is that, judging from the response of the audience, it works to draw you into the drama and the experiences of the characters. Rather more depends on how good the singers are in expressing those intentions, and if there was nothing unusual in how they were directed, the fine singing carried the full weight of the sentiments though to the devastating conclusion towards which the performance had been so imperceptibly and effectively building.

Schreker - Die Gezeichneten

Franz Schreker - Die Gezeichneten

Salzburger Festspiele, 2005

Kent Nagano, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Robert Brubaker, Anne Schwanewilms, Michael Volle, Robert Hale, Wolfgang Schöne, Bernard Richter, Markus Petsch, Mel Ulrich, Thomas Oliemans, Guillaume Antoine, Stephen Gadd

EuroArts - DVD

There's a gorgeous and somewhat disturbing sense of decadence about this Salzburg Festival production of Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten that nonetheless feels wholly appropriate for the work. Schreker is a neglected and now unfashionable early twentieth century German composer who saw his influence and popularity fall into decline with the arrival of the Nazis. The lush orchestration of his extravagant romanticism likewise felt out of place in a harsh new world that had been rocked by two brutal world wars in the first half of the century. His work however - tentatively finding its way back into the repertoire - retains a certain fascination precisely for this unique character of that path of post-Wagnerian German Romanticism that was forever lost in the new reality of the world.

That character - and that extraordinary musical style - is very much in evidence in Die Gezeichneten, a title that is difficult to translate, since it means 'the drawn man' (i.e. the object of an artist's work), but it also implies 'a marked man'. Written on the request of fellow "degenerate composer" Alexander Zemlinsky, the story is about the tragedy of an ugly man, a hunchback, who is unable to find love. It's a subject that seems to close to the heart of Zemlinsky, who himself a short opera adapted from an Oscar Wilde story based on this theme (Der Zwerg - The Birthday of the Infanta), the composer having been famously rejected by Alma Mahler, who described him as "a hideous dwarf". Zemlinsky was supposed to have scored Schreker's libretto, but in the end it was Schreker who completed the entire work himself.

Revived for the Salzburg Festival in 2005, performed in the outdoor setting of the Felsenreitschule, it's an extraordinary experience to hear the wonderful lush Romanticism of Schreker's flowing orchestration with all its Tristan und Isolde-like unresolved and dissonant chords creating a sustained tension, given full expression under the musical direction of Kent Nagano, but it's one that also works well with Nicholas Lehnhoff's stage direction. Set in 16th century Genoa, the work opens with a group of rich decadent nobles, dressed here in extravagant exaggerated costumes, bemoaning the possibility that they might lose access to the wonderful island paradise of Elysium that has been created by Alviano Salvago for their pleasure. Salvago is a hunchback who believes he is too ugly to set foot on the island himself and, abandoning any hope of ever being loved or accepted, he is about to give the island back to the common people, leaving the nobles without any place to practice their secret vices against the daughters of Genoa.

Lehnoff's set captures the essence of this situation, matching the musical description with a stage that consists of one huge toppled statue, one hand clawing at the air with the head detached, and having the performers clamber over the pitted and broken surface that hints at and eventually reveals the dark concealed depths of the grotto within it. More than just accompanying the musical content however, the elaborate set also mirrors to some extent the nature of Salvago himself. Salvago starts to nurse hopeful expectations when he meets Carlotta Nardi, the daughter of the Podestà who describes herself as a painter of souls, who is intrigued by the hunchback and wants to paint him. Salvago starts to believe that she is someone who can recognise his inner beauty - revealing himself to be the same as everyone else - and Carlotta consequently loses her fascination for him the moment she finishes the painting.

Musically and lyrically, Die Gezeichneten is a fascinating and beautiful work that could only have been written at this time - in 1918 - the fin de siècle decadence of the nobles coming crashing down with the harsh realities that are revealed about the workings of the world. That's apparent very clearly and evocatively in the musical construction, the early part of the opera awash with Strauss-like extravagance in the tones and textures - reminiscent of how Strauss would approach the later Die Liebe der Danae (1940) - but also with that Wagnerian Tristan und Isolde-like sensibility of suspending dissonant chords to float around and intermingle to create an unsettling yet compelling soundscape. Schreker's libretto is equally lyrical and extravagant in its pronouncements and in its dramatic tensions, particularly in the eloquent descriptions of the arrogance of the nobility and in the wounded pride of Graf Vitelozzo at being rejected by Carlotta in favour of Salvago.

All the decadent poetic musing however ("Life seemed to me a source of constant joy... When I stretched out my hand, I held a rose, drew in its fragrance and pulled the petals off"), comes crashing down when an actual name - Ginevra Scotti - is attached to the vices, revealing their nature as being rather more sinister, involving child abduction and abuse. The exquisite floating dreamlike reverie of the musical arrangements similarly coalesces into something much more concrete at this point, revealing the nature of the dissonance that has been hovering at the edges of the work. Evoking Stanley Kubrick's 'Eyes Wide Shut' orgy scene in Act III with the assembled guests hiding behind masks, Lehnhoff's stage direction is completely on the same page as the score, and the statue of grand nobility that has retained some dignity and grandeur even in its toppled form up to this stage, is split open to reveal its corrupt inner nature.

The complex nature of the various characters is perhaps most powerfully described - or at least is more obviously evident - in the nature of the writing for the singing voices.  Fortunately, the cast are all extraordinarily good here. Anne Schwanewilms in particular is just outstanding as Carlotta - I've never heard her sing better, even in some of the more challenging Strauss roles. There's a lushness to her tone here, the vocal writing and her character giving her the opportunity to demonstrate an impressive range, rising to soaring heights in a flowing legato, particularly in Carlotta's Act II scenes with Alviano Salvago. The writing for Salvago is also very interesting, the character written for a Heldentenor voice (or at least performed here as such), even though he is an outwardly weak and physically deformed. The contradiction between his inner and outward nature is expressed very well in this manner by Robert Brubaker. Michael Volle's lush Straussian baritone rounds out this impressively cast production as the decadent Count Vitelozzo.

Only available on DVD, the performance does seem to have been at least shot in HD, and even in the Standard Definition format, the 16:9 widescreen image looks beautiful, with good detail, clarity and colour saturation. The audio tracks, LPCM Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1, are also fine, capturing all the warmth and colour of the orchestration that Nagano reveals so well. There are no extra features here, and no full synopsis in the booklet, although there's a good essay that covers the main points in outline, along with some background information on the composer and the work. The DVD is NTSC, Region-free, with subtitles in German, English, French and Spanish.

Strauss - Intermezzo

Richard Strauss - Intermezzo

Buxton Festival, 2012

Stephen Barlow, Stephen Unwin, Janis Kelly, Stephen Gadd, Andrew Kennedy, Jonathan Best, Njabulo Madlala, Robert Poulton, Richard Roberts, Colin Brockie, Susanne Holmes, Martha McLorinan

Buxton Opera House - 13 July 2012

Intermezzo is, of course, an opera notoriously based on the real-life domestic circumstances of its composer Richard Strauss and his wife Pauline de Anha, a turbulent but happy marriage between two quite different personalities. The reason we know so much about the nature of their marriage is that Strauss depicted it in frank and some would say vulgar detail in his symphonies and in aspects of his operas. There’s no disguising the fact however that Intermezzo is unprecedented for the level of detail in which the composer’s domestic affairs, specifically two notable incidents, are exposed to the full view of the public. Whether the opera is vulgar or not is open to question and undoubtedly interpretation, but if there’s a case to be made for it, it was made here with the wonderful production at the 2012 Buxton Festival.

Coming after such important works as Salome, Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier and Die Frau ohne Schatten, Intermezzo can’t help but appear to be a minor work with a rather trivial subject unworthy of a composer of Strauss’s stature. A light comedy, a farce, a domestic drama of minor disputes and marriage difficulties, played out in short chapters like edited scenes from a movie (cinema an influence to some extent on the work, and reflected in the staging here), played out in music that accompanies and supports conversational arrangements rather than imposes its own expressive presence, Intermezzo hardly seems like a subject that would appeal to the lofty ambitions of Strauss’s regular librettist at this time Hugo von Hofmannstahl. Yet, in taking this unexpected direction with a new librettist, Strauss himself shows himself to be just as ambitious and willing to experiment with a subject and a style that is far from what is traditionally expected of an opera work.

Adapting to this new form, Strauss’s glorious compositions prove to be surprisingly musical and dramatic. It’s a typically detailed score from this composer, attuned to the smallest emotional gestures as well as to the broader ones called for by the farcical situations that ensue when Christine, the temperamental wife of a famous composer, Robert Storch (not much disguising of identities going on there), reads a love letter sent mistakenly to her husband and promptly, to the complete bewilderment and distress of Storch, sues for divorce. Working in another incident drawn from real-life where the lonely Christine - her husband frequently away working and conducting - is deceived about the nature of a friendship she strikes up with a young man who claims he is a baron, but is really looking for someone to pay his bills for him, Strauss balances our sympathies in his depiction of the complex and difficult personality of Christine with flashes of humour and compassion.

Despite the apparent triviality of the subject and autobiographical content that seems a little self-aggrandising - particularly in the manner in which it is richly scored here by Strauss - Intermezzo is by no means vulgar entertainment. It’s thanks to this work that we have real insight into the Strauss household, the personality, temperaments and the passions that fuel the composer’s work, but it’s not entirely self-regarding and self-important. These are fully-fleshed out characters, their personalities, whims, mannerisms and deeper natures expressed with tremendous skill by Strauss. The extraordinarily detailed score may be aligned with a very different kind of dramatic content to the classical subjects of earlier works - to humour, to flashes of wit, jealousy, rage, love and passion rather than the death lust of Salome or the revenge fantasies of Elektra, but really, the scoring is no less precisely nuanced. These are much more human emotions, glorified (perhaps more a little over-glorified) by Strauss’s perceptive, impressionistic swells and rhythms, but it’s honest, it’s witty, it’s human and it’s real.

It’s surprising then that Intermezzo is not more frequently performed on the stage, as it is undoubted much more of a theatrical work than is it musical. The fact that this theatrical conversational drama can come across with such musicality and works so well on the stage however depends entirely on the nature of the production, and in just about every respect, this Buxton Festival production was simply outstanding - fully aware of the potential of the piece and capable of putting it across. The stage design, the costumes and the direction were an absolute joy. Every single scene struck the exact right note, with simple sets that were nonetheless pinpointed with delightful period detail. There was also remarkable precision in the setting of tone and circumstance through the use of lighting, the drama able to slip between a drawing room and a brief encounter on a ski slope with barely a pause for the cinematic intertitles to indicate the scene change. Everything about Stephen Unwin’s direction was perfectly in line with Strauss’s score and the dramatic tone and intent of the work.

Even so, Intermezzo is a work that would still be rather difficult to pull off effectively were it not able to make the characters seem human and sympathetic. In this respect Janis Kelly was simply outstanding as Christine, a tremendously challenging role that despite the surface impression given is actually much warmer and human than just about any other character to be found in Strauss’s work. Utterly mesmerising, her attention to detail was evident not just in the terrific singing, but in her bearing and in the manner and timing of her delivery, which was that of a consummate actress. This was a delightful performance that drew all the potential out of the role, as well as giving something personal to it as well. Stephen Gadd was also exceptionally good as Robert Storch, similarly finding warmth and humour in the personality of the composer, singing the role well and in perfect accord with the performance of Janis Kelly. The two roles are the obviously the most vital, supported well by the reminder of the cast, all of them achieving a wonderful rapport with the fluid performance of the orchestra conducted by Stephen Barlow. Intermezzo was undoubtedly, the most accomplished achievement of this year’s Buxton Festival.

Vivaldi - L'Olimpiade

Antonio Vivaldi - L’Olimpiade

La Serenissima, 2012

Adrian Chandler & James Johnstone, Richard Williams, Stephen Gadd, Rachael Lloyd, Sally Bruce-Payne, Louise Poole, Marie Elliott, Mhairi Lawson, Jonathan Gunthorpe

Buxton Opera House - 11 July 2012

You might think that the Olympic games would be a perfect subject for a Vivaldi sprint, but the composer’s approach to this frequently covered libretto by Metastasio actually adopts a pace more akin to a marathon - which I suppose is an appropriate description for a lengthy opera seria. Thankfully, the directors for this Buxton Opera Festival production were better able to resist the predictable sporting cliches than myself with L’Olimpiade, all the more impressive since everyone else is tying cultural events with considerably less relevance into the London 2012 celebrations.

L’Olimpiade features the usual Metastasian setting of star-crossed lovers, unable to be with the one they love - usually on the dictate of a cruel and selfish king - their lives made even more unbearable by twists of chance, circumstance and no small amount of coincidence in work that has a convoluted backstory you need to be aware of before the opera even starts. Eventually however the king is persuaded to come to his senses and in his wisdom put everything back into the natural order, joining or reuniting the distressed lovers into the arms of their loved ones. It’s the setting of the Olympic games however that puts an interesting if somewhat notional spin on proceedings in L’Olimpiade, one of the most covered Metastasio librettos.

In the Buxton production, the set is staged as if for a wedding, but it looks like a gloomy affair that no amount of coloured balloons is going to enliven. The reluctant bride-to-be is Aristea, and the reason for her despair (despair is not too strong a word to describe the fevered outpourings expressed in typically overwrought da capo arias) is that her father, Clistene, the King of Sicione, has promised her to the winner of the Olympic games. She however is in love with the super athlete Megacle, but her father has a dislike for Atheneans, and has banished him from the kingdom. In the substantial backstory prior to the opera, Megacle has however been rescued during his exile from bandits by Licida, the son of the King of Crete. Owing his life to his new friend, Megacle agrees to enter the Olympic games under Licida’s name, unaware that the prize he is competing for on behalf of his friend is his lost love.

That’s just the simple outline, but being a Pietro Metastasio libretto, there are evidently other complications, not least of which is Argene’s despair (yes, yet more despair) that the man she loves, Licida, has abandoned her (again by regal decree, since she is not of noble birth) and now has his desires set on marrying Aristea. There’s also a situation in the past where Clistene had ordered the death of his own son - Aristea’s twin brother - after a fortune-teller warned that his son would one day attempt to kill him, but, as you can imagine, the only reason for introducing this element is to ensure a nice twist at the end when the son is revealed to be alive and actually turns out to be… well, you get the picture. Nothing remotely naturalistic, just a wonderful opera seria situation for opportunities to decry one’s woes at the cruel whims of fate in long elaborate repetitive arias.

Vivaldi’s approach to this once very popular libretto is not the typical energetic Vivaldian style, although those familiar fast-paced rhythms evidently have their place here, but the work - one of the composer’s later works from 1734 in the then fashionable Neapolitan style - is rather more varied in its efforts to suit the finer sentiments and the sorrow expressed throughout. The majority of those sentiments are delivered in solo arias or ariosos, with only a little chorus work, the variety being in the tempos and the fine melodies Vivaldi creates for them. There is one beautiful duet that stands out from this however, Act I’s ‘Ne’ giorni tuoi felice‘, between Megacle and Aristea, sung wonderfully here by Louise Poole in the castrato role of Megacle, and Rachel Lloyd as Aristea.

L’Olimpiade is a work that relies on the quality of the singers to give its improbable story some character and the singers here helped make that possible, Sally Bruce-Payne’s Argene and Stephen Gadd’s Clistene in particular standing out, but really, this was a concerted effort with the right range of voices to fit the roles. Richard Williams’ stage dressing was basic, but the choice of setting, notionally present-day, was perfect, the whole event looking like one of those wedding parties where everything kicks-off as old grievances are brought to light. Rare though they are, Vivaldi operas are notoriously difficult to stage and this set the tone perfectly and in a much more appropriate location than some sports stadium. With La Serenissima’s Adrian Chandler on violin and James Johnstone on harpsichord driving those Vivaldi rhythms on period instruments, the whole thing came together wonderfully, showing that there’s life in these old works yet.