text:
The Story Begins...
In a dusty old attic the Narrator describes the adventures of four good friends who live on the upper reaches of the Thames… Toad is creating havoc with his obsession with motor cars. His long-suffering friends Badger, Ratty and Mole try to take things in hand – but can they reclaim Toad Hall when it's overrun by Weasels and Stoats?
A Hat-Trick of Firsts
Award-winning choreographer, dancer and director Will Tuckett is a Guest Principal Character Artist of The Royal Ballet. He created his dance version of The Wind in the Willows in 2002 – his first full-length work, and the Royal Opera House's first Christmas show made specifically for families. Audiences and critics alike immediately took it into their hearts. After many revivals in the Linbury Studio Theatre, it became the Royal Opera House's first ever West End transfer in 2013, and in 2014 won the Olivier Award for Best Family Show.
The Book that Inspired the Dance
Author Kenneth Grahame was born in Edinburgh but went to school in Oxford, where his lifelong love for the River Thames began. Not allowed by his family to go to university, he started work at the Bank of England in 1879. He rose quickly through the ranks but also began to write, and had his first story published in 1888. The Wind in the Willows began as a collection of bedtime stories and letters for his son Alastair (nicknamed Mouse). Published in 1908, it has become one of the most famous books in the English language. For the 2014/15 run, Grahame will be played by broadcaster and author Alan Titchmarsh.
An English Country Gentleman
In creating the music for this stage adaptation of The Wind in the Willows, composer Martin Ward took inspiration from the works of English composer George Butterworth. Butterworth's music evokes the peaceful English countryside perfectly, but Ward wrote entirely new music for the dark, sinister and very un-Butterworth sections of the story. Though only five minutes of music in the whole score is directly attributable to Butterworth, Ward weaves his distinctive sound world throughout.
The Spirit of Collaboration
All the creative aspects of Tuckett's The Wind in the Willows help create its magic. Poet Andrew Motion condensed Grahame's novel into the Narrator's script; as he reads the book in an attic, the characters come alive in front of us. Ingenious set designs by the Brothers Quay turn a roll of silk into a river, and an old chair into a gaol. Nicky Gillibrand's costume designs evoke Grahame's Edwardian world while also giving each character their own distinctive personality. Finally there are some fabulous puppet designs from Toby Olié – look out for the mean old judge!
The Wind in the Willows runs 26 November 2014–17 January 2015 at the Vaudeville Theatre. Tickets are still available.]]>
Early works: Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi
Wagner never heard his first completed opera, Die Feen (The Fairies), and his next, Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), was performed only once in his lifetime, where it was an unmitigated disaster. His first success was Rienzi, first performed in Dresden in 1842 after Wagner returned from a dire interlude in Paris. Six hours long, replete with ballets, grand choruses, processions and marches, and with possibly the most terrifying tenor part in Wagner's canon, Rienzi is Wagner's bid to out-grand opera French grand opera. While for modern audiences that might be something of a Pyrrhic victory, in the 19th century Rienzi was Wagner's most performed opera – somewhat to the composer's embarrassment.
Arriving into maturity: Der fliegende Holländer
Der fliegende Holländer's premiere in Dresden a few months later didn't match Rienzi's success at the time, but musically it marks Wagner's maturity. Wagner had sold his scenario to Léon Pillet, director of Paris Opéra, in 1841, but to the composer's horror Pillet commissioned the score from Pierre-Louis Dietsch instead. The premiere of Dietsch's Le Vaisseau fantôme in Paris, just as rehearsals for Der fliegende Holländer began, prompted Wagner to introduce some late revisions, including a speedy relocation from Scotland to the Norwegian coast. Wagner had conceived the opera as a single-act curtain opener for Paris; though he later expanded it into three scenes he continued to think of it as one continuous whole. He was convinced to insert two intervals for the premiere, but in Cosima Wagner's 1901 Bayreuth production she ran the opera without break – a practice followed by many modern productions, including The Royal Opera's. Throughout his life Wagner returned to Der fliegende Holländer. Today, opera houses tend to use either the earliest version or the most definite revisions of 1860.
Understanding 'melos': Tannhäuser
Tannhäuser has the dubious honour of two failed premieres. It was received with bewilderment on its first showing in Dresden on 19 October 1845 – largely because the singers were not up to the score's singular demands. By now Wagner had refined his ideas of melos (a unique melody essential to each composition) and the result was a particularly challenging role for the titular hero. When in 1861 Napoleon III invited Wagner to stage Tannhäuser in Paris the composer took the opportunity to introduce some significant revisions, including the orgiastic Venusberg ballet that opens the opera. But the riotous Jockey Club de Paris, political opponents of Wagner's patrons and offended at Wagner's relocation of the ballet from its traditional place after the first interval, were rowdily disruptive, and after three mortifying performances Wagner cancelled the run. He made further revisions to the 'Paris' version for an 1875 performance in Vienna, keeping the ballet and dovetailing the overture into the opening of the opera. It's this version that is most often performed today – though to his death Wagner remained dissatisfied with the work.
King Ludwig II and the Swan Knight: Lohengrin
Lohengrin was first performed on 28 August 1850, though Wagner, exiled in Switzerland after backing the losing side in a political coup, didn't hear it performed until 1861. The premiere was conducted instead by Liszt and was received well, despite the perennial problem of singers not up to their parts. Lohengrin, begun in the winter of 1841–2, was the first fruit of Wagner's obsession with the legend of the Holy Grail. The opera was to have a massive influence – including on Bavarian architecture. Wagner's later patron, the beyond-eccentric King Ludwig II, was inspired in part by Lohengrin to term himself the Swan Knight and build the unfinished fantasy palace Neuschwanstein (New Swan Stone), which he dedicated to Wagner.
Epic opera: Der Ring des Nibelungen
A cycle of four operas, clocking in at 15 hours in total, Der Ring des Nibelungen is one of the most challenging works for an opera company to perform. In it Wagner created a new form of music drama, based on the principles he set out in his 1851 book-length essay Oper und Drama. Condemning what he saw as the commercialism of his contemporaries, he proposed a pure art modelled on his understanding of Ancient Greek theatre, through which society would be served and bettered. In the Ring this philosophy becomes a union between music and text now known as the leitmotif structure. Wagner completely eschewed the number-based format of traditional opera, associating short melodies with dramatic icons and emotions, weaving them together in a continuous composition. The plots are based on Icelandic, Scandinavian and German myths, though Wagner significantly reworked numerous legends to create an entirely original story in which the themes of redemption and sacrifice, constants throughout his mature work, loom large. Though he composed the four operas in order, starting with Das Rheingold in 1853 and finishing Götterdämmerung in 1872, Wagner prepared the texts in reverse, beginning Siegfrieds Tod (which eventually became Götterdämmerung) as early as 1848. At the order of Ludwig II and deeply against Wagner's wishes Das Rheingold and Die Walküre were performed in 1869 and 1870 in Munich, in performances that fell far below Wagner's expectations. The complete Ring cycle was first performed at the inaugural Bayreuth Festival in 1876 on four consecutive nights.
Tristan und Isolde
In the middle of composing the Ring Wagner set aside Siegfried to write Tristan und Isolde, which in the 20th century became arguably his best-known and most influential work – Wagner himself quoted it explicitly in later operas Die Meistersinger and Parsifal. His chief inspiration was his love for Mathilde Wesendonck, poet and the wife of Wagner's generous patron Otto, who in 1857 had given Wagner the villa in which he wrote Tristan. The premiere was serially delayed; one performance had to be postponed at a few hours' notice after the twin disasters of Isolde losing her voice and bailiffs arriving to confiscate Wagner's possessions. On its eventual premiere on 10 June 1865 Tristan und Isolde created musical history, from the very start of the Prelude with its famous 'Tristan chord' (in jazz, a half-diminished 7th). It wasn't the chord itself that shocked but Wagner's entirely original manipulation of harmony; responding to Tristan and Isolde's yearning and tragedy he creates an aching score where musical resolution is continually evaded, in a language far removed from the diatonic traditions that had governed Western music for centuries.
A return to comedy: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Wagner had conceived of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, his only comic work beside Das Liebesverbot, in 1845 as a pendant to Tannhäuser, following the Greek model of pairing a tragedy with a satyr play. Recurring musical motifs, as in all Wagner's mature operas, still form the foundation of the melodic material, but quite unlike Tristan and the Ring the opera is structured largely in traditional numbers. The score is coloured with an archaic, modal twist, and for long stretches the vocal lines seem almost improvisatory. In the 1860s Wagner had further developed his ideas of the purity and superiority of German culture, which ultimately would be codified in his 1871 tract Über die Bestimmung der Oper (The purpose of opera). It's partly this that inspired him to meld the innovations of his musical language with more historic forms. Wagner also continued to develop his response to the work of the philosopher Schopenhauer and the renunciation of the will, most fully expressed in Hans Sachs's Act III monologue 'Wahn, Wahn, überall Wahn'.
A final masterpiece: Parsifal
Wagner's final work, Parsifal, was the only of his operas to be written with direct experience of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Its staging demands are extraordinary even for Wagner, calling for tiers of choirs arranged over a high dome. Wagner's source was Wolfram von Eschenbach's setting of the legend of Perceval, knight of the Grail, which he began to adapt into a libretto as early as 1845. The verse is his freest, and in it the scenario's explicitly Christian context merges with Buddhist ideals and Schopenhauerian self-abnegation into a meditation on compassion. Wagner's text allows no simple interpretation, and neither does his score. The vocal lines range from declamatory recitative to expansive melody; the use of motifs is infinitely subtle and yields different interpretations with each listening. As with Meistersinger, the tonality is broadly diatonic and incorporates elements of ancient music: the 'Dresden Amen', a common congregational response, here becomes a transcendent expression of the Grail, and a simple four-note bell motif signaling the Grail chamber provides material for two immense transition scenes. Wagner called the opera a Bühnenweihfestspiel – a stage-consecrating festival play – and intended it only for Bayreuth. Ludwig II was the first to break the 30-year embargo in a private performance in Munich just a few years after the premiere. The next performance outside Bayreuth was by the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in 1903.
It's impossible to overstate the influence of Wagner's mature works on the course of music. But his music never seems to become familiar. His operas – complex, immersive and astonishingly entertaining – continue to entrance.
Tristan und Isolde runs 5–21 December 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production is a co-production with Houston Grand Opera and is given with generous philanthropic support from Peter and Fiona Espenhahn, Malcolm Herring, Bertrand and Elisabeth Meunier and Lindsay and Sarah Tomlinson.
Der fliegende Holländer runs 5–24 February 2015. Tickets are still available.
The production is given with generous philanthropic support from Marina Hobson OBE and the Wagner Production Syndicate.
Quack, charlatan, cheat – fibber, peddler and all-round swindler – meet Dr Dulcamara! Or rather, let him introduce himself.
'Udite, udite, o rustici' (Listen up, you villagers!) is Dulcamara's grand entrance to Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore. He's arrived fashionably late; we've already met the three other main characters and got to grips with their convoluted love triangle (hopeless Nemorino loves confident Adina; she loves him but doesn't realize it and has decided to hitch herself to passing pompous soldier Belcore). But none of that matters to Dulcamara – he's here to put on a show and make a fast buck while he's at it.
He's sent an advance party to rally an audience, armed with a cornet and a fanfare. You might at first be reminded of the bombastic Belcore and his militaristic entrance – but there's something wrong about this three-time fanfare, something... wonky, as it thumps jauntily onto the middle beat before enthusiastically skipping up an arpeggio.
Wonky or not, it does the job, and soon there's a horde of villagers gathered. Their growing excitement is mirrored in throbbing bass, urgent horn calls and breathless vocal lines, plus some fabulously outrageous key changes (fortunately temporary) as they consider who the stranger could be: 'Some GREAT person – maybe a DUKE – or something better!'
Eventually the great man arrives. While his ramshackle appearance might be a bit of a disappointment, Dulcamara makes up for the shortfall with opening music of portentous grandiosity. 'Listen up!', he says – and even the orchestra waits on his every word. In slow parlante he relishes the rapt attention – 'You all know who I am, of course' – his profound vocabulary – 'the great, encyclopedic Dr Dulcamara' – and some off-the-cuff hyperbole – 'known throughout the universe, and – and – beyond!'.
A sighing violin melody takes us into the next section as Dulcamara modestly recommends his medicines, which benefit everyone and cure everything. He warms to his theme in a couplet that turns the melody on its head: Dulcamara charges up the scale in a vehement crescendo to proclaim what will be the key words of the aria: 'Buy it – I'm selling for almost nothing!'.
Finally we get to the patter. By this point in the aria Donizetti's audience would have been champing at the bit for a taste of this buffo baritone trademark, a waterfall of words delivered in next to no time. Donizetti has twisted the genre role slightly for Dulcamara – he's no fussy old man, like the archetypal Bartolo in Le nozze di Figaro and Il barbiere di Siviglia. Instead, the composer and his librettist Felice Romani have ingeniously used the form to characterize a sales spiel of extraordinary vigour.
Accompanied by an insistent flute melody, Dulcamara enumerates the magical abilities of his mysterious tonic at top speed. There's little melodic variation here for the doctor – the focus is on the words, spat out with the elation of the naturally verbose. Romani's patter text moves brilliantly from ridiculous-sounding to more ridiculous-sounding – try the tongue-twisting 'Gli apoplectic, gli asmatici, gli asfitici, gl'isterici, 'i diabetici' (the apoplectic, the asthmatic, the asphyxiated, the hysterical, the diabetic').
Dulcamara reaches his patter apex in a discussion of price, now with the whole woodwind chattering away at him. He should sell his potion for a 100 scudi, but he won't; nor 30, nor 20 – but just for one scudo! The chorus exclaim their delight in a firm cadence. Dulcamara returns to the opening style as he carefully lays out this tremendous deal – before prompting his cornet player to take up that wonky fanfare.
Accompanied by the orchestra in a lilting oompahpah, this three-time melody becomes an infectiously catchy dance theme. The chorus flock around Dulcamara as the orchestra texture thickens. At the end Dulcamara can't help taking the limelight again: he proclaims his happiness at returning to his home country, and how this has prompted his remarkable generosity (believe that if you like). But he soon joins the chorus in a rousing climax, reiterating those magic words – 'Almost nothing! Almost nothing!'.
L'elisir d'amore runs 18 November–13 December 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production will be broadcast live to cinemas around the world on 26 November 2014. Find your nearest cinema here.
The production is a co-production with Opéra National de Paris and is given with generous philanthropic support from Mrs Aline Foriel-Destezet.]]>
Glare marks the Royal Opera debut of Danish-German composer Søren Nils Eichberg. Eichberg first came to prominence in 2001, when his violin concerto Qilaatersorneq won the Queen Elisabeth Competition, and in 2010 he became Danish National Symphony Orchestra's first ever composer-in-residence.
Eichberg has never trained formally as a composer; as a teenager he played both as a church organist and with a punk rock band, and later trained as a pianist and conductor. His diverse musical background is represented in his music, which draws on several idioms – the reckless energy of rock, particularly – told with the craftsmanship of classical composition.
Eichberg has worked twice before in opera: the complete work Grete Minde for the Theater der Altmark in Stendal, based on Theodor Fontane's novel about the Thirty Years' War; and two scenes from the experimental music theatre piece TIMESHIFT… oder die Zeit ist ein Vogel for the Münster Municipal Theatre, written in collaboration with five other composers. But the majority of his work to date has been instrumental, ranging from intimate chamber pieces to massive symphonic works.
As the work that made his name, Qilaatersorneq must always be a key point of reference. This 11-minute violin concerto, written for Boris Brovtsyn and the National Orchestra of Belgium, is inspired by Greenlandic ritual drum dance. Here Baiba Skride plays Qilaatersorneq in her award-winning performance at the Queen Elisabeth Competition.
Another early work is the epic @|/|7|7#35|5| (Antithesis) for solo percussionist and electronics. Here Danish percussionist David Hildebrandt helms an alarming array of percussion instruments in Eichberg's urgent exploration of interplaying textures and sounds.
In many of Eichberg's works there's a clear impulse to look across centuries of Western music and synthesize quite disparate elements into a new whole. Endorphin, the 'concerto grosso for string quartet and orchestra', is a clear manifestation of this drive. Eichberg reimagines the Baroque form of a concerto with a group of soloists emerging from the larger ensemble as a string quartet coming from the orchestra – 'partly leading, partly following, partly against each other, partly together'.
In 2010 Eichberg was one of 27 composers commissioned by violinist Hilary Hahn to write a short piece for violin and piano for her project 'In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores'. Eichberg's Levitation uses a rising ostinato to give the sense of lifting within a dark, thoughtful work.
Eichberg's Second Symphony, 'Before Heaven, Before Earth' was written for Danish National Symphony Orchestra as part of his residency with the orchestra. Buzzing with highly rhythmic energy and spectacular use of the percussion, its four continuous movements rise to a thunderous climax.
And what about Glare? The opera is scored for a chamber orchestra of 11 players, who interact with an extensive electronic score fed through speakers surrounding the audience. As with Eichberg's other work, a pulsating rhythmic drive is a key part of Glare's soundscape – the drum kit and bass instruments (double bass, contrabassoon, bass clarinet) all have forthright roles. But soaring above this are sliding violin harmonics and high flute lines, as Eichberg experiments with acoustical 'interference'. As conductor Geoffrey Paterson says, 'Eichberg's music has a visceral impact, grabbing the audience by the ears in the same way that Thaddeus Strassberger's production captivates the eyes'.
Glare runs 14–22 November 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production is generously supported by the Friends of Covent Garden.]]>
Our 'How to Stage an Opera' series offers different perspectives on the practicalities of staging an opera, from the initial research through to the final performance.
All of a director's work on a production is likely to stem from the same kernel. But one of the easiest sections to separate from the whole is the director's focus on the characters – what's called the Personenregie. The work done with the singer-actors, to look at the motivations of the characters and find ways of intensifying their conflicts, is often interesting in its own right.
Mozart's Idomeneo is constructed around a particularly brilliant character portrait. The title character is a powerful king and mighty war hero. He is compelled by the highest force to commit an atrocity – to kill his son. He does not question or fight this command, but nor can he obey it. We see him terrified, cowardly, impotent. Ultimately, he is unable even to free himself; only further external intervention allows him formally to acknowledge that his power is already gone. Characters such as this invite reinterpretation.
Director Martin Kušej has spoken of how he was drawn to Idomeneo's agony: 'He's a man of war, a man of power, someone quite sure in his conservative, patriarchal habits. And he's falling apart completely. And when I feel something like that, I turn the screw as tight as I can.' In his Royal Opera production, Kušej applies a reading whereby Idomeneo is the complicit tool of an anti-democratic cult. The high force demanding the unnatural murder is not a god but a group of men who seek to maintain the status quo of the tyrannical, xenophobic state Idomeneo originally engendered. While the reading is not without its problems, the recasting of the characters and their conflicts in many ways efficiently turns the screw.
Kušej's Idomeneo is loaded with woe. The imperative to kill Idamante is no longer solely external; he is compelled also by his own brutal instinct for control, and his anger at Idamante's mercy towards the Trojan captives. His impotence is coupled with self-loathing for the weakness of his compassionate heart. He is a fragile man, even more so than the king of Varesco's libretto. As violence breaks out among his people he longs to express his culpability, but cannot let his weakness show. His final aria 'Torna la pace al legge', in which he gives his blessing to the new king, is made no longer a serene retirement but the delusional expression of a figure completely without hope.
The director's focus on character isn't just restricted to exploring the inner workings of Idomeneo's mind, however. Ilia, the rescued Trojan princess, loves Idamante. But Kušej also makes sure that we see her awareness of her own vulnerability. She is a prisoner of war in all but name; her home is destroyed, and she is entirely dependent on the kindness of Idamante and his father. Her Act II aria 'Se il padre perdei' becomes an attempt to ingratiate herself with the tyrannical king while also making her new status in court as Idamante's love clear. Beneath her charm runs fear and disgust; we sense a desperation in the da capo repeat of the aria.
There are more examples: the oddly inflated role of Arbace becomes an intriguing figure – what could justify his extreme devotion to Idomeneo? Elettra – like Ilia a stranger in Crete – senses the danger of her position during this regime change; already delirious from her hideous past, she is pushed to an even more extreme anxiety. Idamante is a boy who longs to please his father but is rewarded only with aggression; who finally sees the reality of the brutal state of which he is a part; and who longs to die but is plucked from danger to be made king of those same people. Kušej makes them all suffer.
The creative work that goes into producing an opera comes in many parts; it's worth considering them individually, as well as in the whole.
Read other posts in our 'How to Stage an Opera' series.
Idomeneo runs until 24 November 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production is a co-production with Opéra de Lyon and Vlaamse Opera, Antwerp, and is generously supported by the Friends of Covent Garden.]]>
One of the most exciting and innovative things about Idomeneo is Mozart's use of ensembles for dramatic impact. Until this opera, ensembles (bar the occasional duet) had featured little in Italian opera seria. Mozart himself stuck to the traditional pattern of arias interspersed with recitative for much of Mitridate, re di Ponto and Lucio Silla. However, for Idomeneo – perhaps in part inspired by Gluck's operatic reforms – he wrote three major ensembles: a trio, a duet and a quartet. The quartet is the greatest, an episode of remarkable pathos.
By Act III, the opera's four main characters are at the limits of their endurance. Idomeneo's attempts to avoid fulfilling his rash vow to sacrifice his son Idamante have failed, and disaster has afflicted his people as a result. Idamante (who knows nothing of his father's vow) believes that both his father and the captive Trojan Princess Ilia, whom he loves, have rejected him. Ilia secretly adores Idamante, but feels that she should not love the son of her family's enemy. And the Greek princess Elettra, also in love with Idamante, is furious that he prefers Ilia. Early in Act III one emotional burden is lifted, when Ilia finally admits her love for Idamante. But their radiant duet of happiness is abruptly cut short.
Idomeneo and Elettra discover the lovers together. In curt recitative Idomeneo (still reluctant to confess the truth) informs Idamante that Neptune has destroyed his fatherly feelings: Idamante must leave Crete at once. Ilia appeals to Elettra, who repels her. Idamante prepares to make his farewells to Ilia and his father. Melancholy flourishes in the woodwind and low rumbles in the strings open the great quartet.
Idamante is the first to sing. His melody is resigned and dignified, but uneasy syncopations in the strings convey his agitation as he declares that he will wander alone until he dies. Ilia's response moves the music to warmer harmonies, as she promises with radiant lyricism that 'where you die I will die too'. A stormy mood returns as Idomeneo and Elettra enter, to similar music but with contrasting emotions: Idomeneo longs to die, Elettra calls for revenge. The lovers attempt to soothe Idomeneo, singing in sweet, consonant thirds, but soon they and he agree, to painful dissonances on the word 'soffrir' (suffer), that to suffer more would be impossible. Elettra joins in as – their voices alternately weaving sinuously around each other and dramatically converging – the four unite in their belief that no one ever endured a harsher fate.
The second part of this binary quartet uses the same text and draws on much of the same musical material. But it is by no means a straightforward recapitulation. Idamante's declaration that he will wander alone is a distorted version of his opening phrase, and Ilia cuts across him with her reassurances, now agitated rather than lyrical. Elettra's cries for vengeance are fiercer, and Idomeneo's demands to die more urgent. Elettra joins Idamante, Idomeneo and Ilia in their declaration that 'to suffer more is impossible' – far more elaborate than in its first statement, and here repeated – while the chromatic dissonances as the four lament their fate are ever more intense. The quartet culminates in a despairing coda, in which the singers imitate each other in rapid, rising phrases before converging on the last two words of the phrase 'Pena maggiore nissun provò' (No one has ever endured such pain). Mozart reserves a last surprise for the final bars, as the singers break off abruptly, and Idamante repeats his very first phrase, closing the quartet in the same mood of sorrowful resignation with which it opened.
The Act III quartet is Mozart's first attempt to portray the profound emotions of several characters simultaneously. Mozart would go on to write many wonderful, complex ensembles (including the end of Act II of Le nozze di Figaro) but this quartet held a special place in his heart. According to his wife, its harrowing emotions affected him so much that he could never hear it without weeping. This is not surprising: it is hard to imagine extreme suffering portrayed more powerfully or sympathetically in opera.
Idomeneo runs 3–24 November 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production is a co-production with Opéra de Lyon and Vlaamse Opera, Antwerp, and is generously supported by The Friends of Covent Garden.
I enjoyed Scènes de Ballet much more tonight than in previous runs. A meticulously rehearsed corps and vibrant 4 solo boys #ROHashton
— Karen McLernon (@BBB_Mrs) October 18, 2014
#RohAshton faves this eve: very chic Scènes de Ballet w/ Sarah Lamb & @_stevenmcrae & disciplined corps de ballet comme il faut + Month <3
— The Ballet Bag (@theballetbag) October 18, 2014
I want to love Scènes de Ballet far more than I do but, shallowly, I can't get beyond the costumes #rohashton
— Nellie (@knit2pointe2) October 18, 2014
Thank you Sarah Lamb & @TheRoyalBallet for tonight's #ROHAshton Performance! It's always a pleasure! pic.twitter.com/MLI5g4CeBe
— Steven McRae (@_stevenmcrae) October 18, 2014
Loved Scenes de ballet not sure about Brahms waltzes although impressive petal control from Helen Crawford #ROHAshton
— Gill Dunn (@gilltweet) October 18, 2014
#rohashton Symphonic Variations just creamy. @MNunezOfficial, @YasmineNaghdi, Choe, Muntagirov all excellent, as was the music.
— Michael Potter (@MichaelPotter) October 18, 2014
#ROHAshton @TheRoyalBallet Superb Ashton bill! Symphonic V. cast SUPERB!!! @MNunezOfficial beautiful @YasmineNaghdi very impressive debut!
— NinaF. (@NinaFinmann) October 18, 2014
.@MNunezOfficial after performing in Frederick #Ashton's 'Symphonic Variations' at @RoyalOperaHouse. #ROHAshton pic.twitter.com/xnOUDKg2LK
— Leena Hassan (@leenahassan) October 18, 2014
Really enjoyed symphonic variations tonight at #ROHAshton - seen it a few times but never loved it that much before. Bravo @TheRoyalBallet !
— Alice Clay (@AliceClay) October 18, 2014
#ROHAshton - Month needs to be preserved on film with the always dramatically wonderful Zanowsky a consummate Ashton dance actress - heaven
— Pat Heath (@TheMemeSays) October 18, 2014
The full breadth of emotion was wrung from A Month in the Country by the whole cast and orchestra. Stunning. Yanowsky, McGuire :) #ROHAshton
— Chris (@ManInSeatD26) October 18, 2014
An amazing #ROHAshton tonight. What more pleasure could you have than dance, watch and be moved by the genius of Sir Fred! @RoyalOperaHouse
— Gary Avis (@balletboy09) October 18, 2014
Press Reviews:
Guardian ★★★★★
Telegraph ★★★★
Financial Times ★★★★
Arts Desk ★★★★
Bachtrack ★★★★
What did you think of The Royal Ballet's Ashton mixed programme?
Scènes de ballet is part of The Royal Ballet's mixed programme of Ashton works, performed until 12 November 2014. Tickets are still available.]]>
'Arabesque, fondu, coupé, petit developpé, pas de bourée, pas de chat'. This sequence is the Fred Step – one of the most famous motifs in ballet. It takes its nickname from The Royal Ballet's Founder Choreographer, Frederick Ashton, who included this enchaînement in almost all his ballets.
Though it is known as his choreographic signature, Ashton himself often referred to the sequence as the 'Pavlova', acknowledging the prima ballerina from whom he borrowed it. Ashton had first seen Anna Pavlova perform in Peru - the land of his birth - when he was just 13, and later described how her performance inspired him: 'She injected me with her poison and from the end of that evening I wanted to dance'. The Fred Step was originally part of a gavotte that Pavlova performed to 'The Glow Worm', part of an operetta by Paul Lincke. After Pavlova's death in 1931, Ashton – who thought of her 'when I'm working all the time' – came to regard it as his talisman.
The Fred Step is clearly recognizable in several of Ashton's most famous ballets. In A Month in the Country, it is danced by Natalia Petrovna and her admirer Rakitin. As he leads her offstage (from 3:36 in the following clip), the enchaînement perfectly illustrates the to and fro of their chattering.
The Fred Step is also clearly presented in Cinderella, given by the Dancing Master as he prepares the Ugly Sisters for the ball, and in Enigma Variations, danced several times by Isabel and Arnold during their pas de deux.
But more often than not it is difficult to spot the Fred Step. This is because Ashton often 'hid' the sequence – giving it to small groups of soloists or to the corps de ballet rather than the principal dancers, burying it amid other action and even adapting its steps for different contexts.
Below (and available at a larger size through the Flickr link) is the Benesh notation for the 'classic' Fred Step from A Month in the Country, followed by sequences from the ballerina's first solo in Scènes de ballet and a group section in Symphonic Variations. These detailed records of movement make it possible to recognize that the Scènes and Symphonic sequences derive from the Fred Step. Both begin with the distinctive arabesque, fondu, developpé and change of direction before diverging from the 'pure' Fred Step – the Scènes version ends with an entrelacé, while the Symphonic concludes with three entirely different steps performed concurrently by the dancers.
It's very easy to overlook the Symphonic version of the Fred Step – the simultaneous and slightly different versions of the Step, along with the completely still solo ballerina downstage, all conspire to distract the eye. But on closer inspection, this is clearly an exquisitely complex and very much deliberate quotation of Ashton's lucky charm in the ballet often regarded as his masterpiece (visible from 5:54 in the following clip).
These are just a handful of the great Ashton works that include the Fred Step. Which ones have you spotted?
The Royal Ballet's Mixed Programme of Scènes de ballet / Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan / Symphonic Variations / A Month in the Country runs 18 October–12 November 2014. Tickets are still available.]]>
In 1848, Giuseppe Verdi remarked: 'In subjects sad by nature, if one is not very careful, one ends up making a funeral as, for example, in [I due] Foscari, which has too uniform a tinta and colour from the beginning to the end.'
To Verdi, the concept of tinta meant a variety of aspects granting coherence and distinctiveness to an opera. Conventional boundaries of Italian opera involved the subdivision of a score into 'numbers'; Verdi and his predecessors often attempted to establish connections between different sections by, for example, thematic recalls.
In I due Foscari we are dealing not with occasional recalls, but with a consistent effort to employ recurring musical materials, encompassing melodic ideas, orchestral effects, harmonic gestures and tonal associations. It is possible that in 1848 Verdi looked back at the use of recurring ideas in I due Foscari and found it to be somewhat mechanical, simplistic and 'too uniform'.
Are we too, then, bound to embrace Verdi's after-the-fact criticism? It would be fairer and more rewarding to look at I due Foscari in its own time and context, and admire the extraordinary emotional insight of this crucial early work.
The treatment of the opera's chorus, for example, is important well beyond its motivic characterization. This was Verdi's first unsympathetic representation of political power. The Council of Ten and the Giunta's relentless praise of the Venetian Republic hardly sounds patriotic, but rather hypocritically self-aggrandizing. Their music ranges from ominous (as in the dark and chromatic opening chorus) to imposing. In the final scene they intervene copiously into the Doge's aria 'Questa dunque è l'iniqua mercede' ('This then is the unjust reward...')– their utterances filled not only with indifference to the suffering of the now-childless Doge, but also with uncanny cynicism.
Each of the three principal characters is annihilated by the Venetian authorities. Musically, however, each of them is delineated with distinctive strokes. Jacopo Foscari, son of the Doge, returns to Venice at great risk, facing torture, trial and another harsh sentence. He is driven by an indomitable, self-destructive love of the homeland. His entrance aria capitalizes on the time-honoured topos of the exile who returns after a long absence; the magnificent cantabile, 'Dal più remoto esilio' ('From the most distant place of exile'), is a love song its own right, oddly addressed not to a human being, but to a city.
Lucrezia's prayer, 'Tu al cui sguardo onnipossente' ('You beneath whose almighty glance all men rejoice or weep'), whose theme was previously heard in the Prelude, is characteristically accompanied by the harp, and might suggest that we are in the presence of a meek Catholic heroine. But any such doubts must soon be set aside. After Jacopo's sentence she is the only one trying (in vain, of course) to counter the actions of the Council, pleading with the Doge, trying to inject some hope into Jacopo, ostentatiously leading their children before the Council at the end of Act II and calling for revenge following the announcement of Jacopo's death.
But the Doge has neither the power nor the strength to fulfil Lucrezia's wish. It is clear from the beginning of the opera that he is both politically and personally isolated, his strength giving way under the weight of old age. Francesco Foscari's fear of the Council, his physical weakness and his loneliness come across in his Act I romanza, where each of these features is countered by a sense of noble dignity. Throughout the remainder of Act I (the duet with Lucrezia) and all of Act II, one wonders whether his compliance with what is expected of his public role stems from an uncritical belief in the laws of the Republic or from his failing strength.
Francesco Foscari is Verdi's first, extraordinarily convincing portrayal of an inexorably ageing man, for whom physical decay comes with personal isolation and political decline. In different ways, this Doge foreshadows the towering father figures in Verdi's later operas, from Rigoletto to Philip II in Don Carlo.
This is an extract from Francesco Izzo's article 'A Uniform Tinta and Colour' in The Royal Opera's programme book, available during performances and from the ROH Shop.
I due Foscari runs 14 October–2 November 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production will be broadcast live in cinemas around the world on 27 October 2014. Find your nearest cinema.
The production is a co-production with Los Angeles Opera, Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, Valencia, and Theater an der Wien and is given with generous philanthropic support from Mrs Aline Foriel-Destezet, Mrs Susan A. Olde OBE, Colm and Ella Kelleher, Costas and Evi Kaplanis, and Mrs Philip Kan.]]>
The two Foscari of the title in Verdi's opera I due Foscari are father and son. Francesco, the father, is Doge of Venice; Jacopo, the son is awaiting trial in prison. As Doge, Francesco must uphold Venetian justice impartially and publically, but in private he is distraught at the fate of his unjustly accused son. This is the basis for the powerful duet that concludes Act I, in which Lucrezia, Jacopo's wife, demands that Francesco help his son, and is unable to understand the father's apparent cruelty and distance.
It is a great scene, with two clear characterizations. Displaying steadfastness under duress is a characteristic of the Doge in this opera, and thus in his music. The Doge's situation require the exercise of restraint, especially when faced with the unrestrained responses of his son and daughter-in-law. In this duet, Lucrezia sings an impassioned section in C minor 'Tu pur lo sai…' ('You know it well…') where her vocal lines grow more accented, dramatic and higher in pitch as she continues, in an unmistakable expression of her fervour. Her unaccompanied concluding cadenza features much repetition of the word 'barbaro' (cruel), making her view of Francesco completely clear.
Francesco's reply, in the key of C major, contrasts with Lucrezia's C minor. His phrases are more evenly pitched at the start, and the decorations of line more lyrical than explosive. He is trying to calm and placate her, while at the same time revealing his own suffering as a father. Rather than insult him, he argues, she should weep with him. This is the personal Francesco, not the public politician. Both voices sing together at the end, still in C major – Francesco has had some musical effect on Lucrezia at least. In the final shared cadenza she sings again 'cruel father', while he declares his wish that his son may once more be free.
On its own this is great stuff. But 'Tu pur lo sai' is just the second part of the whole concluding duet – an entire scene with several sections. It is a good example of a recurring idea in 19th-century Italian opera sometimes referred to as 'la solita forma' – the usual form (a phrase first used by Abramo Basevi, a 19th-century writer on Verdi's music). But the point of it is not some formula, not least as there are so many more variants to be found than model ones, this example included. Rather, it is a way of seeing how a scene can be made more intense through the use of the music.
The first section (Basevi's 'tempo di attacca') launches the action boldly. Often someone arrives or a dramatic announcement is made: in this example, Lucrezia enters, determined and angry, ready to confront the Doge. The music combines recitative with agitated, explosive orchestral interjections that convey Lucrezia's passion.
The second section, 'Tu pur lo sai', is the 'adagio', a slow reflection on the feelings of the two characters, giving the audience time to consider the implications of what is happening. The third, short section is a slightly faster but still measured, and marks another interjection of news or a different point of view – here, where Lucrezia admits she believes Francesco is not a heartless father.
The final section is the 'Cabaletta', fast and energetic, usually with a call to action or a sense of determination: here Verdi uses several short sections run together. Lucrezia plays hard on Francesco's emotions – to act as a father, not a doge – and he with equal firmness declares he is deeply moved but powerless to act. With each challenge and counter-challenge the music adapts rhythm and key to build dramatic tension.
In Verdi's hands, this type of construction of a whole scene is brilliantly compelling, as the audience are introduced to the characters, presented with their opposition and drawn in as the situation gets more fraught and the music faster and bolder. It is hardly a surprise that such scenes invariably end with the same result: resounding and emotion-filled applause!
I due Foscari runs 14 October–2 November 2014. Tickets are still available.
The performance on 27 October will be live in cinemas around the world. Find your nearest cinema.
The production is a co-production with Los Angeles Opera, Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, Valencia, and Theater an der Wien, and is given at the Royal Opera House with generous philanthropic support from Mrs Aline Foriel-Destezet, Mrs Susan A. Olde OBE, Colm and Ella Kelleher and Mrs Philip Kan.]]>
Founder Choreographer of The Royal Ballet
Frederick Ashton was born in Ecuador in 1904 and trained with Léonide Massine and Marie Rambert. He created his first ballet aged just 21 and became chief choreographer at the Vic-Wells Ballet (now The Royal Ballet) in 1935. Over the next 50 years he produced some eighty works that came to define the 'English style'. Many of these remain key pieces in the Company's repertory.
Refreshing Tradition – Scènes de ballet
Ashton created Scènes de ballet in 1948, to a score by Stravinsky. The score is Stravinsky's homage to Tchaikovsky – and so accordingly Ashton makes his ballet a celebration of Marius Petipa, Tchaikovsky's choreographic counterpart. The ballet follows the structure of a typical classical finale, and even references the famous Rose Adage from The Sleeping Beauty. However, Ashton gave Scènes a chic modern twist by giving the corps de ballet brilliantly striking patterns inspired by Euclidean geometry.
Ashton's Muses – Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan
Ashton had several muses throughout his career – most famously Margot Fonteyn. Another figure who had an enormous impact upon his work was the American dancer Isadora Duncan. Ashton first saw Duncan dance when he was just 17, and was immediately transfixed. In Five Brahms Waltzes (1976), created several years after her death, he aimed to recapture Duncan's unique, carefree style of dancing, while at the same time drawing on the particular talents of Lynn Seymour, who created the role.
The English Tradition – Symphonic Variations
Symphonic Variations is widely regarded as one of Ashton's masterpieces. It was the choreographer's first ballet created for the enormous Royal Opera House main stage; and rather than a grand narrative ballet, he went against the trend by opting for pure, abstract ballet that celebrates dance itself. The result is a work that perfectly encapsulates the English tradition, integrating fleet footwork and expressive épaulement with lyrical, musically sensitive choreography to César Franck's score.
Poetry in Movement – A Month in the Country
Ashton was inspired to create A Month in the Country when he saw a production of Ivan Turgenev's five-act play of the same name at the National Theatre. The resulting ballet – one of Ashton's last works for The Royal Ballet – won immediate acclaim for its skilful distillation of the play into just 40 minutes of choreography. The ballet, set to music by Chopin, is most celebrated for its four pas de deux, which portray the conflicting and tangled emotions aroused by a young tutor's arrival in a Russian household.
The Royal Ballet's Ashton mixed programme runs 18 October–12 November 2014. Tickets are still available.]]>
The Story Begins…
Jacopo Foscari, son of the Doge of Venice, has been accused of murder and treason. If the Council of Ten finds him guilty, he could be sent back into exile or sentenced to death. Francesco Foscari has the power to free his son – Jacopo's wife Lucrezia is convinced of this – but will he act as a father and help save Jacopo, or act as Doge to uphold, through example, the Venetian law?
Byron's Play
I due Foscari draws on Lord Byron's historical drama The Two Foscari, written in 1821 while Byron was living in Italy. Verdi recognized the play's dramatic power – particularly Byron's depiction of troubled family relationships. The composer played a major role in shaping the libretto of the opera, his second collaboration with librettist Francesco Maria Piave (who would go on to work with Verdi on operas including La traviata and Rigoletto).
Intimacy and Intensity
In this his sixth opera Verdi concentrates on the intense relationships between his leading characters, rather than grand dramatic effects. Highlights of the score include one of Verdi's earliest great duets for soprano and baritone, where Lucrezia pleads with the Doge for her husband's life in Act I, and the passionate finale that closes Act II. Verdi employs striking orchestral effects, including the chromatic Act II prelude with solo viola and cello that depicts Jacopo brooding in prison, and the accompaniment of tremolo high strings, harp and pizzicato cello for Lucrezia and Jacopo's cabaletta in Act II.
Portraying History
Director Thaddeus Strassberger pays tribute to the historical figures and places that inspired Byron and Verdi, using costume designs by Mattie Ulrich and set designs by Kevin Knight that evoke 15th-century Venice. The chiaroscuro lighting (by Bruno Poet) reflects the predominantly melancholy tinta (colour) of the music, while the sets suggest decay and corruption at the heart of the Venetian state.
Lesser-Known Verdi
The first performance of I due Foscari was at the Teatro Argentina, Rome on 3 November 1844. Although it has not become one of Verdi's most regularly presented works, the role of the Doge in particular has attracted several noted baritones. The Royal Opera last staged the work in 1995. The current production opened at Los Angeles Opera in September 2012, starring Plácido Domingo as the Doge.
I due Foscari runs 14 October–2 November 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production will be broadcast live in cinemas around the world on 27 October 2014. Find your nearest cinema.
The production is a co-production with Los Angeles Opera, Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, Valencia, and Theater an der Wien and is given with generous philanthropic support from Mrs Aline Foriel-Destezet, Mrs Susan A. Olde OBE, Colm and Ella Kelleher, Costas and Evi Kaplanis, and Mrs Philip Kan.]]>
Our 'How to Stage an Opera' series offers different perspectives on the practicalities of staging an opera, from the initial research through to the final performance.
What makes a stage? It can be behind a proscenium arch, in the round, at the base of an amphitheatre, a clearing in a crowd, almost anywhere – but it must, for a time at least, provide a clear definition between the area for performance and the area for the audience. The expectations engendered by such a set-up and how they can be usurped – most obviously the breaking of the fourth wall – has long been a source of delight for playwrights and directors. In their production of Il babiere di Siviglia, directors Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier go to town with the idea – but always take their inspiration first from the masterful comedy contained within Rossini's score.
Christian Fenouillat's set design gives us a large box that fills almost the entire width of the proscenium arch. Its smooth, doorless sloping walls are somehow reminiscent of a cathode-ray tube television, while the oversized footlights perched at the front of the box further assert that this is to be our performing space – a big 'look here', expressed in both 20th- and 19th-century terms. But wait! With no doors, how are our performers to reach the stage? The answer depends on two specific responses to the score put forward by Leiser and Caurier: the first about Figaro, and the second about Rosina.
The first idea jumps on the bandwagon of a reading of the opera that has been popular almost since the opera's premiere. Here the, impulsive, energetic, near-omniscient, near-omnipotent and fundamentally jolly barber Figaro is a simple cipher for Rossini himself. Figaro is at the very least clearly on a different plane from the other characters – not actually really involved in or motivated by the events (apart from for cash reward), but an orchestrator who is crucial in driving the action. He is a creator, not a pawn in the composer's game.
It only makes sense, then, that he should be unbound by that theatrical box. For his first entrance, Rossini gives Figaro arguably the best tune in the opera, 'Largo al factotum'. Accordingly, Leiser and Caurier have Figaro enter from the auditorium, dashing down the orchestra stalls to leap triumphantly onto the stage. Not so for characters further down the pecking order. Take the hapless servant Fiorello, who has had to hustle an entire orchestra (complete with double bass) over the high back of the box to land in a muddle at the bottom. Even the aristocratic Almaviva has had to clamber on from the side. The directors make clear the hierarchy implicit in Rossini's score, while also heightening the absurdity of this archetypal opera buffa – Fiorello's desperate attempts to hush the orchestra, unfeasible in any setting, become especially futile here.
The second of Leiser and Caurier's responses looks at Rosina's sad situation. She is being kept incarcerated by her guardian Don Bartolo, who plans to marry her and keep her for himself. Thus she sings her first aria 'Una voce poco fa' within the box, now closed at the back as well to really emphasize the point. No windows, no doors, no nothing, apart from a chair and some darts that Rosina can hurl against those smooth walls. It's an absurd exaggeration, again in keeping with the farcical nature of the work – but one that does also reflect the pathos of Rosina's imprisonment.
So how do the other characters get on stage? Magically doors slide up, a staircase appears from nowhere, and all snap down again the moment their function is fulfilled – delightfully surprising and hilariously mean. We stay within this magic box for the rest of the opera – for the Act I finale, where the box is raised and tipped about in direct expression of the rank confusion; for Rosina's seething temper storm; and for the happy ending. Even this affords the characters no escape – but then, this is the only place they come to life.
Read other posts in our 'How to Stage an Opera' series.
Il barbiere di Siviglia runs until 5 October. Tickets are still available.]]>
'Can any of us imagine a musical world without Philip Glass?' asked Tom Service in The Guardian. Glass's music – love it or hate it – has had a profound effect not just on the world of classical music but also on pop music, film music and the broader cultural landscape.
Glass studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, but perhaps his biggest influence was the sitar player Ravi Shankar. Glass became Shankar's assistant on the soundtrack for the 1966 film Chappaqua. Glass later described how, 'I saw the possibility of using some of the technical procedures of classical Indian music with Western instruments and making a very different language. It was a way out of the cul-de-sac that Stockhausen and the Serialist composers had created.'
In the 1960s Glass studied Buddhism and it was also around this time that the movement we now know as minimalism was born. After making contact again with Steve Reich – the pair had studied together at the Juilliard School – Glass began to strip his music back to create what he called 'music with repetitive structures', such as Strung Out (1967) or Music in 12 Parts (1971–4).
'We all ended up in New York at the same time… Reich was there with his group, plus Jon Gibson, Terry Jennings, Meredith Monk and Charlemagne Palestine,' said Glass. 'Very quickly there was a group of people who were producing a radical type of music that became known as Minimalism.'
Glass's film music has earned him a clutch of awards, so it's no surprise that he's had a huge influence on other film composers, including Hans Zimmer.
David Bowie is another figure who's absorbed Glass's music – and this influence has worked both ways. Glass based two of his symphonies (no.1 and no.4) on albums by Bowie (Low and Heroes respectively), whose music in turn has been hugely influenced by Glass's minimalism.
Nico Muhly, one of today's most successful contemporary composers, studied with Glass. Muhly has said: '[Glass] is someone who knows how to control an emotional situation calmly without being hysterical. His score for The Hours is a perfect example of that, where it sets a mood for this very complicated story without insisting on anything. It's just the right amount of melancholic without being over the top.'
Einstein on the Beach (1976)
This five-hour opera is scored for synthesizers, woodwinds and voices. The four acts are divided by short scenes called 'knee plays' which include the sound of a chorus of voices counting.
The Hours (2002)
Glass's music for the 2002 film directed by Stephen Daldry won the BAFTA for Best Film Music. The film stars Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore and focuses on three women from different periods, whose lives are connected by Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway.
Music in 12 Parts
Written for voices, electric organs, flutes and saxophones, this four-hour piece was one of Glass's first and most important works. The experience of listening to the piece has been described as 'the aural equivalent of standing at the top of a giant waterfall, mesmerized by the illusion that such a rushing body of water could also appear so stable, so even.'
Symphony No. 9
While writers have been debating whether the symphony is still relevant for contemporary music, Glass has just got on with writing them – he's now written ten. His ninth was completed in 2011, and was commissioned by the Bruckner Orchester Linz.
String Quartets
The composer's five string quartets span nearly three decades, from 1966 to 1991. Glass has said: 'In an odd way, string quartets have always functioned as moments of profound introspection about both self and music, for composers. I don't really know why, but it's almost impossible to get away from it. It's the way composers of the past have thought and that's no less true of me.'
Music Theatre Wales gives the world premiere of Glass's The Trial in the Linbury Studio Theatre, running 10–18 October 2014. Tickets are sold out but returns may become available.
Music Theatre Wales takes its production of The Trial on tour around England and Wales throughout October and November. Find a performance near you.
The production is a co-commission and co-production between Music Theatre Wales, The Royal Opera, Theater Magdeburg and Scottish Opera.]]>
Despite that fact that you can wear what you want to the opera, few people sit in their seats with raincoats and umbrellas. From what happens on stage this is surprising: opera is full of bad weather.
Since classical times, storms have been used as a narrative device to push characters into situations of conflict. In Virgil's Aeneid, a storm at sea shipwrecks Aeneas on the shores of Carthage, where he begins his doomed affair with Carthage's queen, Dido (portrayed in both Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and Berlioz's Les Troyens). The Act I chorus of Mozart's classically inspired drama Idomeneo, 'Pietà, numi, pietà', portrays sailors desperately praying to the gods as wind and waves threaten to overwhelm them. Mozart's music is in a minor key and with repeated cries from the sailors for mercy ('Pietà'), while the violent elements are represented with woodwind in whirling, continuous scales and strings playing tremolando. The music moves to the major key with a lighter texture, then a pause – and salvation. But the abatement of the storm came at a price – Idomeneo's vow to sacrifice the first person he meets on shore, who turns out to be his own son. As in the Aeneid, the storm drives the story.
Rossini liked to score a good storm and there are several in his operas. In Act II of Il barbiere di Siviglia, Rosina has been driven to despair because it looks as though her lover 'Lindoro' (Count Almaviva in disguise) has deserted her. As so often in dramas, her bad mood invokes bad weather. It is a purely orchestral piece, and Rossini represents the gradual change, beginning with clouds and the first spots of rain through initial low rumblings interspersed with short flute flourishes. The rain starts lightly but builds in intensity: brittle string notes to which flute is added for the effect of increasingly dense drops of rain. The thunder and wind arrive: full orchestra chords, rushing scales. But the storm quickly blows over, as does Rosina's temper.
Storms can be more than a reflection of one character's bad day. In Act III of Verdi's Rigoletto the storm becomes a manifestation of Fate: a higher power that mortals can influence no more than they can control the weather. There are hints of the impending storm at the start of the scene in which Rigoletto pays Sparafucile to kill the Duke of Mantua. The cheerfulness of the Duke, heard singing out of sight, and the rumblings of the incipient storm become subsumed into the increasingly menacing tone of the following events. The rising and falling chromatic chords (heard with an offstage chorus imitating the wind) is one of the most instantly recognizable recurring meteorological features.
Sudden, loud chords and a cymbal crash reflect the thunder and lightning as well as the dramatic tension of the events. The peak comes as Gilda's first knocks at the door are matched by chords representing lightning and thunder: she knows and we know that knocking for entrance to the inn signals her doom. The prolonged rumble of the timpani is both thunder and impending death. The weather is not an imposition from outside, but a psychological expression of what is inside.
The rise of the storm at the start of the scene is mirrored in its dispersal at the end as the musical motifs gradually unravel and reduce: the murder has been committed. Distant sounds of the retreating storm are heard fleetingly as Rigoletto arrives to gloat over his revenge on the Duke – distant thunder from the timpani and high woodwind flurries of dispersing rain. But the storm is no longer the focus, for the final few bars reveal the awful truth that Rigoletto has brought about the murder of his own daughter.
This is the first of two articles looking at the stormy weather in The Royal Opera's 2014/15 Season. Look out for the next article in January, when we explore the tempests of Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer, Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and Rossini's Guillaume Tell.
Rigoletto runs until 6 October 2014. Tickets are still available.
Il barbiere di Siviglia runs until 5 October 2014. Tickets are still available.
Idomeneo runs from 2 to 24 November 2014. Tickets are still available.
Rossini was a genius at usurping the conventions of his day for his own dramatic ends. He managed this with such aplomb that his operas won fantastic popularity – in fact with such success that his operas are now considered archetypes of their genres. Perhaps most acclaimed of all is Il barbiere di Siviglia, a key example of opera buffa (Italian comic opera).
By Rossini's time it was a long-established convention that the first-act finale of an opera buffa should be come at a height of imbroglio (part of the genre's debt to French farce). This finale was the composer's opportunity – indeed, obligation – to take the various plot lines and tangle them all up, leaving characters and audience hopelessly confused. The Act I finale of Il barbiere is actually not one of Rossini's most complicated – try Il turco in Italia if you really want to twist your brain in knots – but it doesn't do a bad job.
The lovelorn Count Almaviva is attempting to woo Rosina, ward of the jealous geriatric Doctor Bartolo (who intends Rosina for himself and keeps her locked away). On the advice of Figaro the barber, Almaviva has inveigled his way into Bartolo's house disguised as a drunken soldier in search of lodgings. The aim (admittedly slightly contrived) is for Almaviva to give Rosina a letter, while using his pretended drunkenness to bewilder Bartolo.
From the immediately preceding scene we have an idea that Bartolo might not be so easily foxed: his furious aria 'A un dottor della mia sorte' ('To a doctor of my standing') – in which he rails against Rosina's disrespect – is a masterful depiction of a self-important, pernickety bully. So when Almaviva staggers onto the stage to an orchestral melody of barefaced impudence, we have an unmistakable signal that the flood of imbroglio is on its way.
Bartolo does not respond well either to Almaviva's impertinent melody, or to his imposition, or to his insouciance: ('What was the name? Balordo (stupid)? Bertoldo (blockhead)?'). Bartolo's agitated outbursts do nothing to deter Almaviva's confident melody. Rosina's arrival makes it worse, as Bartolo (rightly) suspects the two to be secretly communicating. Confusion deepens when the servant Berta and the music teacher Basilio enter – and finally Figaro too, with a warning to Almaviva that he may have been over-zealous in his performance.
It turns out the police have been called, and soon enough there's an entire brigade on the doorstep. The officer's enquiry launches the patter song 'Questa bestia di soldato' (This beast of a soldier). The patter song is a recurring type in opera buffa: very rapid, text-heavy music, usually sung by a baritone. Bartolo, the opera's buffo baritone, accordingly sets this one of; but then he's joined by another baritone, Figaro; and then by all the others – so we have a patter song, usually difficult enough to understand when sung by one person, sung in imitation by all six principals. That the officer can reply to all this with a simple 'Ho inteso' ('I understand') is almost more ridiculous than the song itself.
In a daring key change, Almaviva evades arrest by showing his aristocratic insignia to the officer, who deferentially steps back. There follows another ensemble, of a form often referred to as the 'largo concertato'. Rossini was an expert in using these a slow ensemble section with minimal accompaniment, to ratchet up the tension. Rosina begins this section, marked 'quadro di stupore' (as in a stupr), frozen and breathless, describing how she's so shocked she can't move. She is joined one by one (in very elegant imitation) by the other characters, as we build towards the stretta.
The stretta, a common feature of finales of this period (defined loosely as a fast closing section), is here made by Rossini into a huge continuous crescendo – a form he was so fond of it's even earned the generic term 'Rossini crescendo'. Starting the final vivace section sotto voce (in a quiet voice) and in unusual unison, the cast agree how terribly confused they are – matched brilliantly in The Royal Opera's production by the entire set seeming to take leave of its tethers and rock dementedly about. It's a thrilling, bewildering, ridiculous ending, and one that shows Rossini at the height of his comedic powers.
Il barbiere di Siviglia runs 19 September–5 October 2014. Tickets are still available.]]>
During the last night of The Royal Ballet's 1973 summer Season, Antoinette Sibley discovered that a book had been left in her dressing room. A note from Kenneth MacMillan informed her: 'Some holiday reading for you – which will come in handy for March 7, '74.'
The idea of a three-act ballet telling the story of Manon Lescaut had been germinating in MacMillan's mind for some time. Nicholas Georgiadis, MacMillan's frequent collaborator, had suggested Prévost's 18th-century novel would make a good 'operatic' ballet scenario, with pas de deux taking the place of lyrical duets. Georgiadis, who had been re-reading the book, envisaged a decadent milieu for the ballet's designs.
MacMillan drew up his own scenario from the novel. For him, the reason for Manon's capricious behaviour was her dread of poverty: like her brother, Lescaut, she would do anything to escape the humiliation of being poor. Above all, she needed a protector, a man rich enough to keep her in luxury: love in a garret was not for her. The 18th-century Parisian society in which she had to make her way was morally and financially volatile; great wealth and corruption flourished alongside absolute degradation.
Although there had been an early Manon ballet in 1830 (well before the Massenet and Puccini operas), MacMillan was challenging conventions by making the 'heroine with all the vices' the leading role in his new work. Heroines in full-length ballets, even 20th-century ones, were usually good girls. Manon has few redeeming qualities other than her charm: she is ruthless about every choice she makes and Lescaut's courtesan mistress is more honest than she is.
MacMillan would take depravity far further with the role of Mary Vetsera in Mayerling, his next three-act ballet. Because ballerinas nowadays relish these immoral roles, it can be hard to appreciate how outrageous Manon seemed in the 1970s. To compound the shock value, Sibley, purest of classical dancers, had been cast against type: 'An appalling waste of lovely Antoinette Sibley, who, as Manon, is reduced to a nasty little diamond digger, ' complained the Morning Star after the premiere.
Sibley, however, relished the chance to develop her acting ability in the first full-length dramatic role to be created on her. She had read Prévost's novel during the 1973 summer break, ready for MacMillan to start work, as was his custom, with the pas de deux. The first encounter between Manon and Des Grieux, and their two bedroom scenes, were swiftly completed, MacMillan's invention flowing freely. Then Sibley and her dance partner Anthony Dowell left for the other side of the world to perform as guest artists with The Australian Ballet. A recurring knee injury meant that, on Sibley's return, she was unable to continue to participate in the ballet's creation. MacMillan had promised that she should reclaim her role as Manon as soon as she was fit enough. In the meantime, he turned to Jennifer Penney to replace her in the months leading up to the premiere.
Manon's solo after her Act II entry into the hôtel particulier ballroom had been choreographed before Sibley was injured. Penney took over for the rest of the scene in the high-class brothel, entrancing the male clients and making her choice between Monsieur G.M. and Des Grieux. Manon's first appearance in Act I, arriving at the inn on her way to a convent, was created on Penney; so was Act III, with its scenes in New Orleans and the swamps of Louisiana. MacMillan worked out the death-defying lifts in the swamp pas de deux with Penney and Dowell, coming up with moves no one had tried before. Sibley then had to learn how to accomplish them when she returned to the ballet in time for the premiere. She danced the opening night with Dowell; Penney was the next Manon, with Wayne Eagling as Des Grieux.
Both ballerinas contributed elements of themselves to the choreography. In the 40 years since the ballet's creation, other dancers have developed their own interpretations, discovering different ways of understanding the characters, making their own Manons.
This is an extract from Jann Parry's article 'The Creation of a Classic' from the programme book that accompanies Manon, available during performances and from the ROH Shop.
Manon runs from 26 September to 1 November 2014. Tickets are still available. The production is given with generous philanthropic support from Celia Blakey, Peter Lloyd and The Royal Opera House Endowment Fund. Original Production (1974) made possible by The Linbury Trust.]]>
When it comes to partying, Anna Nicole's party scene leaves the likes of La traviata and La bohème looking like a teddy bears' picnic. Not for nothing does the libretto capitalize the jamboree as the 'PARTAY! scene'.
Composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Richard Thomas dish up the goods with lavish hedonism, but also ensure – almost as inevitably as the party itself – that the scene is laced with a healthy dose of despair.
The PARTAY! comes a short way into Act II. Anna has married her new husband, the octogenarian billionaire J. Howard Marshall II. Her reward is a ranch for her little son Daniel and enough painkillers, vodka and Jimmy Choo shoes to distract her from the crippling back pain, the consequence of her extensive breast augmentation.
The scene is nearly palindromic in structure. Turnage carefully delineates each section, and with each shift provides us a new glimpse of Anna's fate. It's all framed by a huge chorus – pretty much the entire cast, who pack the stage, crowding around the onstage three-piece band. Anna leads them all in a delirious back-and-forth exchange, sometimes naive, sometimes almost solemnly religious – but with the strongest sense that her audience has arrived.
Turnage kicks off with a bold syncopated theme in the trumpets. It's impressively simple, constructed as a four-bar question and answer, where the question and answer are almost mirror versions of each other. After we hear it the first time through, Anna and the chorus rapidly gabble at each other: 'Party till ya get laid, party till the drug raid, party till your brain fries, party till your youth dies.'
The chorus recedes into the background for the next section, a flirtatious duo between Anna and the lawyer Stern. Turnage builds an intimate, seedy feel through a scoring for sustained woodwind chords underpinned by an agitated bass guitar line, performed in the premiere run by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. This is our first prolonged exposure to Stern; he made occasional appearances throughout Act I, but was always chased away by a furious chorus and affectionately dismissed by Anna as being too early – 'Get outta here, You're not on yet'. Now he is in his element for the first time, loving Anna, goading himself and her.
In the following central section Anna's mother Virgie enters, grasping little Daniel. She blazes recrimination and disgust, her fury tracked by a steadily ticking cymbal in the drum kit of the stage band. Anna is silent here, but the chorus now act on her behalf – whether as a mouthpiece or putting words in her mouth, we can't tell. They give Virgie the cold shoulder, bullying her off the stage as they blankly intone 'blah blah yadda yadda'.
As Virgie is shooed away, Anna's back and forth with the chorus returns, now up tempo, racing towards a heady proclamation of Anna as 'the patron saint of parties'. She finally adopts the simple tune we first heard on the trumpets as her own, in a fundamental declaration of her mantra: 'Live before you die, laugh before you weep, drink before you're sober, pass out before you sleep.' Stern interrupts her to urge 'to the camera!', underpinned by a new motif of a rapid trumpet ornament – another taste of the plague that will ruin Anna's life.
What happens next? J. Howard Marshall II has a heart attack, and Anna's lifelong battle for his inheritance begins. We'll hear an elongation of the simple trumpet melody in Anna's fury at the Marshall family's response, as she commands Stern to 'Crush them like a bug, Turn them inside out, Beat them like a pinata And watch my money fall out'. It's no longer PARTAY! – only a sour remnant of the party that always ends.
Anna Nicole runs 11–24 September 2014. Tickets are still available.
The first performance is a student-only production with tickets priced £1–£25. Find out more about ROH Students. ROH Students is generously made possible by the Bunting Family and Simon Robey.
Rigoletto's Gilda is one of Verdi's youngest heroines, and his most innocent. He wrote the part for a lighter, higher voice than many of his soprano roles. Gilda is a 16-year-old ingénue, who until the start of the opera has spent most of her life secluded in a convent. She knows hardly anything about the world or her family – not even her father's real name. So when Gilda falls in love, she expresses her feelings not with the passion of Leonora from Il trovatore or Violetta from La traviata, but in a gentle, dreamy aria that Verdi instructed to be sung at a moderate pace and sotto voce (very quietly).
By the time Gilda sings her first and only aria we have already learnt a lot about her from her Act I duets with Rigoletto and the Duke of Mantua (disguised as 'poor student' Gualtier Maldé). We have witnessed her childlike excitement at Rigoletto's arrival, her tender response to his grief at the memory of her mother, and her mixture of restlessness (she longs to go out into the city) and docility (when Rigoletto forbids it, she does not protest). We have realized her extreme innocence, almost naivety, in her dialogue with the conniving Giovanna, when she expresses her hope that the handsome stranger she's seen at church is poor like her, as it will make their love more romantic. And we have seen her shyly mesmerized by the Duke's eloquent declarations of love, to the point where her vocal line can only imitate his. Indeed, much of Gilda's music in both Act I duets is imitative or acts as a descant to Rigoletto or the Duke's vocal line.
'Caro nome' is Gilda's first extended expression of independent emotions, and shows both her tenderness and her simplicity. The aria is preceded by a shimmering figuration described by Verdi scholar Julian Budden as an example of Verdi's finest woodwind writing. Over it, Gilda slowly and rapturously pronounces the name of her lover, 'Gualtier Maldé'. 'Caro nome' then opens with a gentle flute melody, as simple as a folksong. Gilda takes up the melody, echoed by a cicada-like buzzing on solo violin, as she meditates on the 'beloved name' that has taught her to love. The gentle pace, falling phrases and the stresses on words such as 'desir' (desire) and 'sospir' (sigh) suggest Gilda sighing with pleasure at her new emotions, while the solo violin conveys Gilda's excitedly beating heart.
The aria develops in a way that is both novel and very simple. After bar 24 there is essentially no new musical material. Instead, the aria becomes a series of continuous variations on the opening melody, as though Gilda is weaving ever more elaborate romantic fantasies around the name of her lover. Nor is there any new text – instead, Gilda repeats her earlier words, in fragments. The increasingly elaborate melody and passages of ecstatic coloratura suggest her growing excitement at the discovery of love. Towards the end, the slowing pace and tender, expansive phrases show her delight – she doesn't want to stop thinking about 'Gualtier'. Throughout, the orchestral textures remain delicate, reflecting Gilda's gentleness. The aria culminates in a rapturous, wordless cadenza, and then blends seamlessly into the following scene, as Gilda continues to repeat rapturously the name of her lover as courtiers approach.
'Caro nome' is a breathtaking portrayal of young love in all its innocence and idealism. It marks the first step in Gilda's transformation from ingénue to self-sacrificing heroine. The Gilda we encounter in Act II, with her long solo 'Tutte le feste al tempio', is a very different woman, both in terms of her emotions and her music. The fact that in 'Caro nome' we already know her love for the Duke is doomed makes its tenderness and sincerity all the more poignant.
Rigoletto runs from 12 September to 6 October 2014. Tickets are still available.]]>
The Story Begins…
A womanizing Duke's court jester mocks the father of one of the Duke's victims, who curses him. Soon the jester's own daughter falls in love with the Duke and is abducted – it seems that the curse is taking effect...
Political Dystopia
David McVicar's production of Rigoletto reveals unflinchingly the corruption at the heart of the court of Mantua. Rigoletto's appearance is inspired by a grotesque insect, and the lavishly-clothed courtiers and Duke happily engage in brutal orgies and later cruelly taunt both Rigoletto and his daughter. The court life of indulgence is in strong contrast to Rigoletto's shabby home and Sparafucile's squalid inn.
Separate Musical Worlds
Verdi illustrates the very different worlds of Duke and jester in the characters' musical styles. The Duke's music is lyrical, based largely around arias and duets that alter in style depending on whom he is seducing, from the elegant 'Questa o quella' in Act I to the catchy 'La donna è mobile' in Act III. Rigoletto sings largely in duet, arioso and recitative, shifting styles from stormy to tender. Meanwhile Gilda, Rigoletto's daughter, sings high-lying, delicate lines that poignantly depict her innocence and corruption.
A Provocative Subject
Rigoletto is based on the controversial play Le Roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. The play describes the amorous intrigues of François I of France, and the thwarted attempt by his jester Triboulet to destroy him. The premiere of Le Roi s'amuse caused such a scandal that the play was withdrawn from the Parisian stage for 50 years. Although Verdi toned down Hugo's plot, his opera was still deemed scandalous by the Italian censors.
Genesis and Premiere
Verdi began work on his 17th opera Rigoletto in 1850. Francesco Maria Piave, his regular collaborator, was his librettist. Felice Varesi, the baritone who had created the title role in Verdi's Macbeth, was chosen as Rigoletto. After considerable battles between Verdi and the censors, the opera had its premiere at La Fenice on 11 March 1851. Rigoletto became hugely popular, and in 1855 Verdi described it as his best opera. He was of course to write some ten after it!
Rigoletto runs 12 September–6 October 2014. Tickets are still available.
The performance on 17 September 2014 will be streamed live to free, outdoor venues around the UK as part of BP Big Screens. Find a screening near you.
The Story Begins…
Former waitress Anna Nicole leaves her home town of Mexia, Texas, determined to become famous and adored. Breast enlargements and a meeting with an admirer help her to achieve her dream, but she soon discovers that success comes at a terrible price.
Who Was Anna Nicole?
Anna Nicole the opera was inspired by the life of Anna Nicole Smith, a former Playboy and glamour model and actress. At the age of 26 she married 89-year-old billionaire J. Howard Marshall. He died a year later, and Smith entered into a lengthy battle over her husband's will with his family. She continued to work as an actress, model and TV personality, but suffered from weight gain and became addicted to prescription drugs. Anna Nicole Smith died of the cumulative effect of prescription drugs on 8 February 2007.
An American Dream
Mark-Anthony Turnage's music brilliantly depicts the different stages of Anna Nicole's life through a wide range of musical styles. These include jazz, blues and music theatre. The score also contains flamboyant coloratura for Anna, dramatic operatic expressionism (including the Act II interlude depicting Anna's changes of fortune) and passages of heartfelt lyricism, particularly Anna's aria mourning the death of her son.
Trapped by the Media
Richard Jones's production highlights the dark humour in Anna Nicole's story and illustrates the intrusive nature of the media in today's society. Anna Nicole may think she wants to become famous, but the strange camera monsters and sinister attendants that stalk her as she strives to achieve the 'American dream' invade and finally destroy her life.
A Royal Opera Commission
Anna Nicole was commissioned by The Royal Opera, and had its premiere at the Royal Opera House on 17 February 2011. Many of the original cast return for this 2014 revival, including Eva-Maria Westbroek as Anna Nicole. The production was televised, and released as a DVD in August 2011. Anna Nicole has also been performed in Dortmund, and was the last opera to be performed (in Jones's production) by New York City Opera in 2014.
Anna Nicole runs 11-24 September 2014. Tickets are still available.
The first performance is a student-only production with tickets priced £1–£25. Find out more about ROH Students. ROH Students is generously made possible by the Bunting Family and Simon Robey.]]>
The Story Begins…
The Voice of God commands Moses to lead the people of Israel out of their slavery in Egypt. Moses, reluctant, argues that he is old and inarticulate. He is assured that his brother Aron will speak on his behalf. But as Aron speaks to the Israelites, he distorts Moses's message of an imperceptible, inconceivable God, using spectacular miracles that win the people round but in fact distance them from God. How can they be made to understand God when He cannot be described?
A Work of Great Faith
Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) was born to a Viennese Jewish family. He converted to Protestantism in 1898, but rising anti-Semitism led him back to Judaism. A crucial moment came in 1921, when he and his family were denied access to an Austrian resort because of his Jewish background. Schoenberg wrote to his friend Wassily Kandinsky 'I have learnt… that I am not a German, not a European, perhaps scarcely even a human being… but I am a Jew.' From then until the end of his life Jewish philosophy and history became increasing forces in his music. Moses und Aron, completed (as much as it would be – see below) in 1932, was Schoenberg's last significant work before he converted to Judaism and fled Germany and the Nazis for the USA.
A Logical Heart
One of Schoenberg's many musical innovations was serialism, which he first used in 1922. In the 12-tone serialism favoured by Schoenberg and his pupil Anton Webern, the 12 notes of the chromatic scale are arranged into a specific order, called the 'tone row'. The row provides a framework for the music – an equivalent to the more traditional 'diatonic' (e.g. major or minor) scale but allowing the regular use of more of the notes, which Schoenberg termed 'the emancipation of the dissonance'. All of the music of Moses und Aron is related to a single row, either in straightforward use or through a set of specific permutations. Through his mastery of the technique Schoenberg produces an astonishingly rich and diverse sound world, but one that is entirely holistic.
Incomplete or Impossible to Complete?
Schoenberg completed the three-act libretto for Moses und Aron (based on the biblical book Exodus) in 1930, and completed the music for Acts I and II on 10 March 1932. Throughout the rest of his career he spoke often of composing Act III, but he never started it. Only towards the end of his life did he accept he would never finish the opera. An extract from Act II, Der Tanz des goldene Kalb (The dance of the golden calf) was performed in Darmstadt on 2 July 1951; Schoenberg, living in the USA, was informed of its success by telegram. He died 11 days later, never hearing a note of what many regard as his greatest work. The first staged performance of Moses und Aron in 1957 had the text of Act III spoken over an extract from Act I, but now Act III is commonly omitted. Though Schoenberg would not have agreed, the incomplete nature of Act III is widely considered the perfect conclusion for a work of art on the impossibility of fully expressing God.
A Modern Tale
This staging of Moses und Aron by Welsh National Opera is the first in the UK for nearly forty years. Directors Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito first created their production for Stuttgart Opera in 2003. Anna Viebrock's single set design recalls an assembly room of a contemporary parliament – perhaps the Egyptian parliament during the Arab Spring – filled with people desperate for liberation, but with no direction on how that liberation can be achieved. The unseen film that Aron screens in Act II highlights the troubling use of the media in our times.
Welsh National Opera performs Moses und Aron on the Royal Opera House's main stage 25–26 July 2014. Tickets are still available.]]>
Our 'How to Stage an Opera' series offers different perspectives on the practicalities of staging an opera, from the initial research through to the final performance. Here we see how the director and designer of La bohème intensify the reality of the story on stage.
John Copley's production of La bohème is the longest-established production in The Royal Opera's repertory. It had its premiere on 6 February 1974, and right from the start audiences and critics noted the detail used to create the stage image. And a very particular image it is too.
Julia Trevelyan Oman designed the sets and costumes with her usual forensic approach for accuracy; the opera is set in Paris in 1830, and so that is exactly what we see. As the curtain rises for each of the four acts we see a tableau of lifelike clarity. The attic of the students in Acts I and IV has bare floors, a stove, basic wooden furniture; and the bohemians huddle against the cold that you can almost feel whistle through the pokey windows. Act II splendidly uses three levels and a split across the stage to give a panoramic sense of a Parisian bustling street outside and the inside of the Café Momus – complete with waiters, food and billiard table. Act III outside the Barriere d'Enfer (a gateway into Paris) has the railings, a parked cart with its load – and snow for a cold morning at dawn.
All through the opera props are needed – a manuscript for burning, food to eat, a shoe to scream about, toys for children. The list is seemingly endless and gives stage management much to prepare. Each prop relates directly to the libretto, which includes so many specific points of movement and use of objects – although, that said, Act IV's memorable cricket match using bread and a coal shovel is Copley's own invention.
Why make everything so busy, so complicated? The first reason is simple. It is the same approach as a television period drama – think the BBC and Jane Austen! The creation of the whole picture draws us into a very specific world so that it becomes believable. Even in the theatre, that underlying sense of naturalism in appearance can support the sense of 'realness' of the characters and the story. Puccini and his librettists worked hard to bring the characters alive in consistent and believable ways, so a detailed approach to production matches their intentions well.
As with a period drama in film or on television, the completeness of the period imagery helps an audience concentrate on the characters and the emotions within the stage landscape. From this there can be a sense of time travel through the comparisons it invites with our own times. What of the people we are watching and their society is different from us and ours? And what is still the same? In particular the emotions of the human condition – love, anger, grief, joy – become clear as common to every age.
There are also practical aspects with such a set-and-prop-heavy production. Copley consciously uses the different levels of the set of Acts I and II in particular to create movement. With the need for props to handle, the performers are obliged to pick them up, use them, even throw them. They have to climb up and down stairs, sit on chairs or move them aside, carry baskets, eat food. But you'll notice too that in the strong emotional moments between the principal characters, such as the seductive conclusion to Act I and the traumatic quartet in Act III, nothing in the staging distracts. Action and stillness play off each other, like the wide shot and the close-up in film. Physical motion propels us through the plot, while a slowing or suspension of physical action becomes intense and emotional through the contrast.
Not all opera librettos and scores provide as many naturalistic cues as you can find in La bohème. But when they do, the observing of such minutiae can create an engrossing and believable world. It is artificial to re-create so precisely a time and place that no longer exists, yet paradoxically the result feels so lifelike. At the heart of all great theatre is the creative use of the boundary between the unreal that we know is really artificial, the unbelievable that we choose to believe. When done with the level of care as in this classic production of La bohème, a naturalistic style of production can draw the audience into the completeness of a convincing, onstage world: you feel that you are really there.
Read other posts in our 'How to Stage an Opera' series.
La bohème runs until 19 July 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production returns for the last time in the 2014/15 Season, running 23 May–16 July 2015. Tickets go on general sale on 31 March 2015.
The production is staged with generous philanthropic support from The Royal Opera House Endowment Fund. Original Production (1974) supported by The Linbury Trust.]]>
As Puccini completed the final scene of La bohème, he was so moved that, as he later wrote, 'I had to get up and, standing in the middle of the study, alone in the silence of the night, I began to weep like a child. It was as though I had seen my own child die.' Many opera lovers consider the death of Mimì to be one of the most poignant scenes in opera. What makes it so moving?
One factor is Puccini's realistic depiction of death by consumption. Mimì's joy at being reunited with Rodolfo and her brief sense of recovery (spes phthisica, a well documented experience of dying consumptives) contrast poignantly with her failing strength. Her death is both understated (her final words are marked pppp) and quietly impressive; the simplicity of her end is more effective than a big farewell aria.
Puccini was also a master of timing. The scene's moments of lyricism are all the more moving for being so brief, as Mimì struggles to express her love for Rodolfo in the short time she has left. The bohemians' rapid parlando (speech-like) passages highlight the urgency of the situation; but there are also moments of tenderness – listen to the slowing pace and warm string accompaniment as Musetta gives Mimì the muff she has longed for. And the low-key nature of Mimì's death makes Rodolfo's ensuing anguish all the more heartrending.
Perhaps most effective of all is Puccini's use of 'reminiscence motifs', recalling earlier music (mostly from the lovers' first meeting in Act I) and combining it with new material. As the other bohemians leave Rodolfo and Mimì alone together at the start of the finale, we hear in the orchestra a delicate version of their Act I duet 'O soave fanciulla' (Oh sweet girl). This becomes significant in Mimì's following 'mini-aria' 'Sono andati?' (Have they gone?): the ecstatic Act I music contrasts poignantly with the solemnity of Mimì's final avowal of her love. 'Sono andati?' begins in a minor key, with falling phrases in the voice, but grows increasingly intense and shifts to warmer major harmonies as Mimì declares in a soaring phrase 'You are my love and my whole life!'. Puccini conveys her frailty, dignity and passion in less than three minutes of music.
A montage of motifs from Act I follows as the lovers seek comfort in their memories. Tiny fragments from Mimì's Act I aria 'Mi chiamano Mimì' (I'm called Mimì) resolve into music associated with the search for Mimì's lost key in their first meeting. As Mimì recalls Rodolfo taking her hand, she sings a simple, lyrical recollection of the first phrase of his aria 'Che gelida manina' (This cold little hand), to an accompaniment of clarinets and shimmering strings. But the past cannot provide a lasting refuge, and we are forced brutally back into the present by an outburst from the orchestra as Mimì collapses.
Mimì's love for Rodolfo and memories of their first meeting sustain her up to her death. When Musetta hands Mimì her muff we hear fragments of 'Che gelida manina' reiterated quietly in the orchestra as, in broken phrases, Mimì thanks Rodolfo (believing the muff is from him) and reassures him again of her love. 'Che gelida manina' continues to accompany her weakening voice as she drifts into unconsciousness. The motif evaporates with her death, marked by an icy horn chord – but the bohemians, unaware of what has happened, continue to confer agitatedly.
Schaunard and Marcello realize that Mimì is dead. Rodolfo suspects from his friends' behaviour that something is wrong, and, moving from song to stark, unaccompanied speech, demands, 'Why are you looking at me like that?' As he realizes the truth, the orchestra bursts in fortissimo with the melody of 'Sono andati' – Puccini shows us Rodolfo remembering Mimì's love as, overcome with grief, he is only able to cry out her name. The funereal cadence of Colline's aria 'Vecchia zimarra', his shy tribute to the old coat he pawned in one of the bohemians' futile attempts to help Mimì, closes one of the most tender and dramatically effective of operatic death scenes.
La bohème runs 9–19 July 2014. Tickets are still available.
The performance on 15 July 2014 will be streamed live to free, outdoor venues around the UK as part of BP Big Screens. Find a screening near you.
The production is given with generous philanthropic support from The Royal Opera House Endowment Fund. Original Production (1974) supported by The Linbury Trust.
'The soil of England, vile bastard, is defiled by the touch of your foot!' That's a line to get you noticed, especially when hurled between royalty, in this case by Mary Queen of Scots at her Tudor cousin Elizabeth I. In Donizetti's Italy it was also a line to get you banned, and Maria Malibran's refusal to sacrifice it at the opera's eventual 1835 premiere at La Scala led to Maria Stuarda being dropped from the repertory, barely to resurface for 120 years.
You can see why Malibran wouldn't compromise. The Confrontation Scene that brings Act I thundering to a close is the only time in the opera the two rival queens share the stage – though 'share' might not be the right word. Donizetti expertly turns the bel canto idiom – as we understand it now, that of placing vocal beauty above all else – to his dramatic purpose, constructing a scene of breathtaking intensity.
The meeting (entirely fictional) has been engineered against the queens' wishes by Leicester, the tenor love interest (his romantic feelings also fictional). It's a classic love triangle: Elisabetta loves Leicester, Leicester loves Maria and Maria loves him. Maria's kindly gaoler Talbot has let her roam the forest around Fotheringhay, where she is incarcerated. Meanwhile, Leicester has steered Elisabetta's hunting party the 100 miles from Windsor to Northamptonshire (made possible through a somewhat fanciful approach to English geography) for this 'chance' meeting.
In the opening recitative section, Elisabetta's nobility, pride and quick jealousy that we saw at the opera's opening is obvious again. Buoyant phrases in the flute give a pastoral sense, but it's undercut by the urgent pulsing in the strings. Elisabetta is caught between Leicester's ardent tenor, urging her meeting with Maria, and her dour baritone adviser Cecil, insidiously pushing Elisabetta towards removing through violence this threat to the English throne. Maria and Talbot arrive and a roll on the timpani pulls us into majestic dotted rhythms from the whole orchestra, leading us chromatically down to an anticipatory dominant 7th chord. From this Maria murmurs a fragile 'O Dio!'. There follows a killer of a dramatic pause.
But rather than an action-packed dialogue, Donizetti has Elisabetta haughtily turn aside and lead the canonic 'È sempre la stessa' ('She's still the same'), where to imitative music all the characters individually reflect on the situation. In short, nothing happens. The delayed action not only builds tension for the onslaught but hints that neither queen is really interested in the reconciliation Leicester so craves.
But now Leicester encourages Maria to start a humble prayer for forgiveness, 'Morta al mondo' ('Dead to the world'), a simple song that recalls her peaceful earlier aria 'O nube! che lieve' ('O clouds that lightly drift'). Elisabetta usurps Maria's lovely melody and takes it for her own, corrupting it with references to Maria's 'betrayed bed' and 'unavenged husband', her 'crimes and betrayal'. Leicester's attempt to comfort Maria only stokes Elisabetta's anger.
Finally Maria snaps. Unaccompanied except for the occasional shocked interjection from the orchestra, she launches a tirade against the queen. Undeterred by Talbot's breathless 'O Dio!', she delivers a series of determined insults, relishing each one, her voice rising higher and ever more exultingly to the final smack in the face.
Then all hell breaks loose, the strings hurrying beneath Elisabetta as she summons her guards, rushing us into the final stretta (the fast closing section for a finale). Here, for the first time in the scene, Donizetti colours the vocal lines with the rapid, decorative notes of coloratura, in a brilliant expression of Elisabetta's uncontrollable anger, Leicester's anguish and Maria's triumphant satisfaction. We hurtle to the close, where a series of decisive chords from the brass bring the curtain down on what is undoubtedly one of Donizetti's finest and fiercest finales.
Maria Stuarda runs 5–18 July 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 on 14 July from 7.15pm.
Maria Stuarda is a co-production with Polish National Opera, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris, and Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, and is given with generous philanthropic support from Lord and Lady Laidlaw, Susan and John Singer and Michael Hartnall.
The Story Begins…
Maria Stuarda has been imprisoned by her cousin, Elisabetta I of England. Roberto, Conte di Leicester, urges Elisabetta to meet with Maria, but Elisabetta becomes jealous of Leicester's admiration for her cousin. Will Elisabetta succumb to temptation and use the meeting as a chance to destroy Maria?
Contemporary Resonances
Gaetano Donizetti's opera – as with Friedrich von Schiller's source play – was not a historical record, but a constructed drama. Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier's production mixes the iconic historical figures of the two queens with contemporary characters in order to stress that the violence linked to power and desire remains constant in any period. Elisabetta and Maria are enclosed within the shell of their political function, but they are also real characters in a world that could be familiar to us. Now, as then, the horror of capital punishment remains the same.
A Scandalous Premiere
Donizetti wrote Maria Stuarda in 1834 for the Naples Teatro San Carlo, intending it as a vehicle for the soprano Giuseppina Ronzi de Begnis. But due to its subject, the opera was banned in Naples before it even made it to the stage – the opera was only performed because the great Maria Malibran insisted on performing it, and sang the title role in the work's premiere at La Scala, Milan, on 30 December 1835. The local authorities there also moved to ban the opera, and it gradually disappeared from the repertory, until a revival of interest in 1958. It has become increasingly popular ever since.
A Tribute to Schiller
The libretto of Maria Stuarda is based on Schiller's 1800 play Maria Stuart, which depicted the final days of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her fateful meeting with Elizabeth I (an event that was entirely invented by Schiller; the two queens never met in reality). The intensity of the subject appealed to the composer, who added a romantic dimension by having Leicester fall in love with Maria. As Donizetti's librettist for the opera, Giuseppe Bardari, was very young and inexperienced, Donizetti may well have had a hand in the libretto himself.
Powerful Intricacy and Vocal Showcases
The score for Maria Stuarda contains some of Donizetti's most moving music, particularly Mary's confession duet with Talbot and her aria in the finale as she calmly goes to her death. The opera also provides a magnificent showcase for the two singers playing Maria and Elisabetta in their extended duet at the end of Act I. Famous pairings for the roles of Maria and Elisabetta have included Joan Sutherland and Huguette Tourangeau, Janet Baker and Rosalind Plowright, and Edita Gruberová and Agnes Baltsa.
Maria Stuarda runs from 5–18 July 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production is a co-production with Polish National Opera, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris, and Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, and is given with generous philanthropic support from Lord and Lady Laidlaw, Susan and John Singer and Michael Hartnall.
The Story Begins…
A wealthy patron of the arts has commissioned an evening's entertainment: an opera inspired by the story of Ariadne, followed by a comedy. When it becomes clear that the performance will be too long, he decides to have the pieces performed together. Will the result be a failure or an astonishing triumph?
Sparkling Wit
Christof Loy's production opens with a brilliant scenic trick; right before our eyes, the set transforms from the hall of the house of 'the richest man in Vienna' to the grubby basement where the artists in his pay are rehearsing. Loy wittily highlights the differences between the 'serious' singers and the comedy troupe – in their gestures, their costumes and their general behaviour – while providing a radiant finale to the opera.
Two Worlds
In Ariadne auf Naxos, composer Richard Strauss and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal explore two worlds: the heroic world of myth in the story of Ariadne, in which she moves from grief to rapturous love for the god Bacchus; and the cheerful, insouciant world of the commedia dell'arte in the story of Zerbinetta and her lovers. This daring combination of styles was Strauss's challenge to the aesthetic of Richard Wagner, who both admired and had misgivings about juxtaposing tragedy and comedy.
From Enlarged Play to Double Opera
Ariadne auf Naxos began life as part of an arrangement by Hofmannsthal of Molière's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, the 'Ariadne' opera forming the second part of the evening. The premiere in 1912 was not a success – largely as the audience were uncertain whether they were watching a play or an opera. Strauss rewrote the work during World War I, creating for a 1916 premiere the Prologue we know today (replacing the Molière material), and developing the character of the passionate young Composer.
A Love of the Soprano Voice
Throughout his career Strauss revelled in the soprano voice. Ariadne auf Naxos includes three of his great soprano roles: the passionate and lyrical Ariadne, the flamboyant Zerbinetta (one of the hardest roles in the coloratura repertory) and the intense and enthusiastic Composer, a role written for the great German soprano Lotte Lehmann.
Ariadne auf Naxos runs from 25 June–13 July 2014. Tickets are still available. The production is given with generous philanthropic support from Hélène and Jean Peters, Hamish and Sophie Forsyth and The Maestro's Circle.
Antonio Pappano conducts the cast and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House in concert at the Symphony Hall, Birmingham, on 6 July 2014. Tickets are still available.]]>
Our 'How to Stage an Opera' series offers different perspectives on the practicalities of staging an opera, from the initial research through to the final performance. Here we see how Poulenc's compassionate depiction of a tragic true event inspires a production that places people at its heart.
Dialogues des Carmélites poses a number of challenges to a director. It is composed in short scenes – 'dialogues' – separated by brief orchestral interludes, requiring speedy set changes. Its dramatic events are strongly tied to the specific historical setting of the French Revolution. And its finale calls for the onstage execution of 17 cast members.
Robert Carsen's production, first seen at Dutch National Opera in 1997 but first performed by The Royal Opera in 2014, sidesteps these potential problems. It has an unchanging set (designed by Michael Levine), an empty space bounded on three sides by smooth grey walls that stretch the entire height of the proscenium arch. On the large main stage of the Royal Opera House the space left seems huge, the people that move within it vulnerable, tiny figures.
This set is in part a literal response to a phrase in Act II, where Madame Lidoine attempts to comfort her sisters after their first night in prison with a reassurance that, after all, it's not so very different from their convent home. But throughout the opera the set provides a canvas for Jean Kalman's lighting design, which has a vocabulary wide enough to reflect onstage each change in colour in Poulenc's score. Without sets the upper part of the stage is left clear for Kalman's explicit and determined use of shadows, which loom monstrously above the people below.
For in place of sets Carsen has filled his stage with people. He places significance repeatedly on the physical realities of both the chorus of nuns and the wider society in which they live. By giving the French populace a presence they largely lack in the score for the opera he paints a balanced, compassionate and thus credible backdrop to the story. And by repeatedly drawing attention to the corporeality of the nuns, shedding brief light on what the realities of such a contemplative life might have been, he adds yet more horror to Poulenc's unbearable ending.
The curtain is raised as the audience enters the auditorium, revealing 17 neatly folded habits in the huge space of the stage. It is almost a memorial gesture, seeming to invite us to remember the real Compiègne martyrs. As the opera goes on Carsen time and time again calls our attention to the community of nuns that is the backdrop to Poulenc's drama. We see them kneel for what seems like forever throughout Blanche's interview with the Old Prioress; they prostrate themselves throughout the entire scene of the Old Prioress's anguished death; they sit quietly working through the scene where Blanche and Constance first talk together, and Constance foresees their deaths. Carsen so emphasizes not only the physical realness of the nuns but this idea of an ever-present community, preparing Blanche's final decision to rejoin her sisters at the scaffold. The representation of the nuns' deaths, as they enact gestures representing the words of their final prayer, is powerfully humble.
If Carsen has inflated the role of the nuns from Poulenc's score, he has done the same to a much greater extent to the French populace. In Poulenc's score the revolutionaries only shout from offstage, or murmur unintelligibly as troubled spectators of the final guillotining. But in Carsen's production they are an undeniable, ever-present force (with expert movement direction from Philippe Giraudeau) – even more so in The Royal Opera's production, where a new Community Ensemble has joined forces with the Royal Opera Chorus to create the largest acting troupe seen on the Royal Opera House stage. Carsen makes his point clear right at the start of the opera: the huge crowd makes a begrudging clearing for the opening scene in the aristocratic De La Force household, the effect heightened through Falk Bauer's costume designs where the bright colours of the coats of the Chevalier and his father create a glaring contrast against the drab greys worn by the chorus. From that moment on you feel the presence of the chorus even when they are offstage, an eloquent and pointed statement of the isolation of convent life. The chorus are a frustrated and silent force – one that, finally, won't be ignored any longer.
Carsen's production makes literal deviations from Poulenc's score. But Carsen and his creative team seem to remain true to its spirit, curating an environment that allows the realism and compassion in Poulenc's music to flare even more brightly.
Read other posts in our 'How to Stage an Opera' series.
Dialogues des Carmélites runs until 11 June 2014. Tickets are still available for the final performance.
The production, originally from De Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam, is given with generous philanthropic support from Mrs Aline Foriel-Destezet, The Taylor Family Foundation and The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
Fairy and Mortal Worlds Collide
Frederick Ashton's The Dream received its premiere in April 1964, as part of The Royal Ballet's celebrations for the 400th anniversary of the birth of Shakespeare. Based on A Midsummer Night's Dream, the ballet captures the comic confusion that arises in the play as mortal and fairy worlds collide. However, it is more than a straightforward narrative. By drawing on the unique personalities and talents of his dancers – most notably Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell as Titania and Oberon – Ashton created complex characters whose inner thoughts and feelings are brought to life through virtuoso choreography.
Mendelssohn's Dream
The score for The Dream is the incidental music Felix Mendelssohn wrote for an 1842 production of the play, compiled and arranged by John Lanchbery to suit Ashton's simplified version of the story. It demonstrates the composer's unique gift for orchestration – from the lively Scherzo with its chattering woodwind and strings to the majestic brass in the famous Wedding March – and transports the audience to the ballet's magical fairy realm.
Decoding 'Connectome'
For his new ballet, choreographer Alastair Marriott was in part inspired by Dr Sebastian Seung's theories about 'connectomes'. A connectome is a comprehensive map of the connections in the brain. Re-creating and decoding this complex network can, Seung argues, unlock the workings of the mind, and help us examine the extent to which neural wiring shapes our very identity.
Science and Emotion
Marriott was inspired by the idea that a person's memories, personality and intellect may all be determined by the make-up of their connectome. His choreography maps out four particular emotional aspects of life, which he derived from his interpretations of the four pieces by Arvo Pärt he selected for the ballet's score. Similarly, designs by Es Devlin, Bruno Poet and Luke Halls were influenced by both instinctive, personal experiences and the imagery and scientific theories linked to the connectome.
Master of both Ballet and Broadway
Choreographer Jerome Robbins's numerous ballets for American companies – including his 1956 The Concert for New York City Ballet – won him renown in the world of classical dance. But he was also equally talented and recognized as a choreographer and director for film, television and on Broadway, with some of his most popular works including the stage version and 1961 film of West Side Story and the musicals On the Town, Gypsy: A Musical Fable and Fiddler on the Roof.
A Comic Masterpiece
The Concert (or The Perils of Everybody) entered the repertory of The Royal Ballet in 1975. Set to a series of nine pieces by Fryderyk Chopin, the work depicts the quirks and reveries of a concert audience at a recital. Robbins allowed the music to define the personality and disposition of the ballet's characters and took inspiration from programmatic names given to the pieces, such as the lovely 'Butterfly' Etude, to create a ballet full of wit, slapstick and genuinely laugh-out-loud moments, in what is generally agreed to be the funniest ballet ever created.
The Royal Ballet's triple programme of The Dream, Connectome and The Concert runs 31 May–13 June 2014. Tickets are still available.]]>
Our 'How to Stage an Opera' series offers different perspectives on the practicalities of staging an opera, from the initial research through to the final performance. Here we see how Puccini's attention to detail influences the director and designer's approach.
Jonathan Kent's 2004 production of Tosca is set precisely on 17–18 June 1800. The date is determined by Kent's decision to conform to the specific historical context dictated by Puccini's libretto, which itself follows the play by Victorien Sardou. The events of Tosca take place in the wake of the historical Battle of Marengo of 14 June 1800, an external event to the Rome-set drama but one that propels its atmosphere of danger and desperation. Kent's production makes literal sense of the references to the battle in the libretto. But he and his designer Paul Brown do more than use historical details to give their production dramatic coherence. They ensure that detail always enhances the drama.
They're following Puccini's lead. With all his mature operas the composer permeated his scores with a strong sense of place – but in Tosca, his only full-length opera set in Italy, Puccini went to extra lengths. He researched the specific plainsong Te Deum melody sung in Rome; he learnt the exact pitch of the bell of St Peter's; he commissioned a Roman poet to compose the shepherd boy's song in the local vernacular; and he camped out on the ramparts of the Castel Sant'Angelo to discover how it felt to hear the matins bells as dawn broke over the city. Kent and Brown match Puccini's scrupulous hunt for detail – while also, like Puccini, deploying a degree of artistic licence and remaining sensitive to the practicalities of theatre.
A case in point is the church of Act I, allegedly Sant'Andrea della Valle. Probably no church has ever looked like this, with the apse, the sacred space behind the altar, eliminated and replaced with a lowered platform. But, foreshortened and topsy-turvy though it may be, Brown's set provides a large and practical acting space that also establishes the society and time in which the drama unfolds. The dominant feature of the design is Cavaradossi's incomplete fresco. It tells us Cavaradossi was probably influenced by another revolutionary painter, Jacques-Louis David – who, given the dates, could well have been Cavaradossi's teacher. Its sheer tasteless massiveness not only allows us some sympathy with Tosca's otherwise absurd jealousy, but also suggests a society in which female beauty is up for grabs, in a disturbing foretelling of Tosca's vile treatment in the following acts.
Meticulous set dressing in Act II colours Scarpia's character, and also suggests the precarious instability of a society that might place such as ruthless man in power. His study, a magnificent office in the Palazzo Farnese, is filthy, a long table displaying a desultory mess of papers and half-finished foo, confirming that Scarpia has no need to impress anyone. The huge bookcase is completely bare, apart from the fake books on the back of the hidden door leading to Scarpia's torture chamber. Candles are strewn around the room, glittering visual representations of the time that is running out for Tosca and Cavaradossi, and a gesture towards the final sacramental rite Tosca extends to Scarpia's murdered body.
Act III takes place on the bare roof of the Castel Sant'Agelo, the stars above fading as dawn breaks. Scything from above is the giant wing of Peter Anton von Verschaffelt's statue of the Archangel Michael, given almost surrealistic enormity in Brown's design. It's the culmination of a motif Kent and Brown have built throughout their production. First in Act I, a Bernini-esque decoration of a dove surrounded by golden rays is made disproportionately huge, hovering at a distorted angle close above the heads of the worshippers. In Act II another giant statue of the Archangel Michael decorates Scarpia's study, his sword pointing not at the devil beneath his feet but directly at Tosca as she sings 'Vissi d'arte'. As the wing seems to unfurl through Act III, pressing in on an already raised stage that suggests the vertiginous height of the Castel Sant'Angelo, we understand what Puccini, with Kent and Brown, have built in from the very beginning – that Tosca's tragedy is inevitable.
Read other posts in our 'How to Stage an Opera' series.
Tosca runs until 26 June 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production is generously supported by RLM Finsbury.
Jonathan Kent's new production of Manon Lescaut is at the Royal Opera House 17 June–7 July 2014. Limited tickets are available.]]>
In 2012 Dr Sebastian Seung, Professor of Computational Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published a book called Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are. In it he argues 'Our identity does not lie in our genes, but in the connections between our brain cells – our own particular wiring, or "connectome".'
The notion that a person's memories, personality and intellect may all be encoded in their connectome greatly intrigued Alastair Marriott and he used it to crystallize ideas that had already been emerging for his newest ballet:
'It gave me a framework and starting position to base the whole work around. I mapped out certain emotional aspects of a life – interactions with other people such as infatuation, spirituality, loss and finally chaos and order – which I derived from my interpretations of the music. You start and finish life alone but you change over time so you have a very complex connectome by the end.'
For the music, Marriott selected four separate pieces by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.
'I felt like they belonged to some kind of a cycle. One of the things about Pärt's music is that, whether you're religious or not, I think we all have a sense of spirituality and that's what his music speaks to. Before composers like Pärt, John Tavener and Henryk Górecki, contemporary music had become very disjointed but they made it okay to feel emotionally involved again. I found it interesting to juxtapose that against a cold scientific explanation of why we experience all our very deep feelings.'
Profound emotions were something that Marriott had to go through when he first began planning Connectome, and the choice of music turned out to have a far bigger impact on him personally than he could possibly have envisaged.
'My father died just as I was starting the ballet and at first I wasn't really sure if I could concentrate on making it. He'd always been interested in what I was creating and, because he loved singing, I'd taken him recordings of the four choirboys who auditioned for the ballet's second movement to see which one he liked. He actually chose the same one that conductor Barry Wordsworth eventually decided on and I'd hoped that he'd be able to see the finished result. It definitely affected my choreography, and if it made the outcome sadder than I'd initially planned then that's part of my own personal connectome.'
Marriott deliberately chose a small cast in order to keep things intimate. The one female dancer in the piece is central, but alongside her character and the two other Principals, he's used four dancers who aren't yet such familiar names on the cast sheets.
'Although you can see all three of the main characters' connectomes growing I think people will identify most with the woman. I've worked with Sarah Lamb many times before – she's a fantastic dancer and knows what sort of movement appeals to me – and I really wanted to work with Natalia Osipova for the first time. She has this thoroughly modern ballerina body, capable of huge extensions and massive jumps, but her incredible technique is not the foremost thing in her mind, it's the artistic element that she's aiming for; she's an exhilarating combination of classical ballet and free movement. We've had a very positive experience with all the dancers in the studio. The four boys I chose as soloists are actually from the corps but I made ballets on them when they were still at school. I think it'll be exciting to see some of the most famous dancers in the world next to these very young men who haven't really had the chance to show off their talents on the main stage yet.'
This is an extract from Gerard Davis's interview with Alastair Marriott and designer Es Devlin, which you can find in full in the programme book. This is available in the theatre at performance times and from the ROH Shop.
The Royal Ballet's Mixed Programme of The Dream, Connectome and The Concert runs 31 May–13 June 2014. Tickets are still available. Connectome is dedicated to Walter Marriott, 1941–2014.
Connectome is given with generous philanthropic support from Sarah and Lloyd Dorfman and Marina Hobson OBE.]]>
The Story Begins…
The young Chevalier des Grieux and the beautiful Manon Lescaut elope to Paris. There, Manon soon abandons Des Grieux for a rich elderly protector. It's not long before she feels nostalgic for her former lover; but could she give up her life of luxury for him?
A Story for Our Times
Jonathan Kent's production draws parallels between Manon's story and aspects of our own age, including voyeurism and the commercialization of sex. Paul Brown's designs set Manon's story in a modern world, but with references to the often misleading glamour of the 18th century.
Puccini's First Big Success
Manon Lescaut had a tortuous genesis, from its beginnings (when Puccini's publisher Ricordi tried to persuade him not to write an opera on the same subject as Massenet's Manon) through countless arguments between Puccini and his librettists, one of whom quit the project. However, the premiere on 1 February 1893 at the Teatro Regio, Turin, was a triumph, and the opera's subsequent success at theatres round Europe made Puccini a rich man.
Desperate Passion
Puccini's Manon Lescaut, like Massenet's Manon, was inspired by the Abbé Prévost's L'Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut. Puccini structured his opera very differently from Massenet's, omitting the lovers' initial happy idyll in Paris, and concentrating in Acts III and IV on Manon's deportation to America and her agonizing death in the Louisiana desert. Generally the mood is darker in Puccini's opera; Puccini wrote that he would treat the story 'like an Italian, with desperate passion'.
Puccini's Most Wagnerian Opera
Puccini much admired Wagner, whose influence is clear in Manon Lescaut in the melodies that weave between the voices and orchestra, the rich orchestral textures, chromatic harmony and use of recurrent motifs. However, Puccini always maintained his originality. Many of the opera's arias, including Des Grieux's 'Donna non vidi mai' and Manon's 'In quelle trine morbide', contain a lyricism distinctive from Wagner.
Manon Lescaut runs 17 June–7 July 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production is generously supported by Rolex, with generous philanthropic support from Mrs Susan A. Olde OBE, Lord and Lady Laidlaw, Mrs Philip Kan, Marina Kulishova, Mrs Trevor Swete, Quentin Holland, Mercedes T. Bass, Bruce Kovner, the American Friends of Covent Garden and The Manon Lescaut Production Syndicate.
The Story Begins…
Frightened by life and by growing rumours of revolution, the aristocratic Blanche de la Force takes refuge in a convent and becomes a Carmelite nun. But, as the French Revolution grows more savage, it seems that the convent will provide no refuge for Blanche – or her fellow nuns.
A True Story
Dialogues des Carmélites is based on a true story, recorded by Sister Marie of the Incarnation (Mother Marie in the opera), who survived the French Revolution. Sister Marie's account was used as the basis for a 1931 novel by the German writer Gertrud von Le Fort. Le Fort invented the character of Blanche de la Force, with whom she identified. In the 1940s Le Fort's novel was made into a stage play (originally a filmscript) by the French writer Georges Bernanos, who was particularly fascinated by the death of the old Prioress. Poulenc based his libretto closely on Bernanos' text.
A Rich Pool of Influences
Poulenc wrote in the dedication of Dialogues des Carmélites that many great past opera composers had influenced the opera, including Monteverdi, Mussorgsky, Verdi and Debussy. He modelled all-five principal characters on past operatic heroines, including Thaïs (Blanche), Zerlina (Constance) and Desdemona (Madame Lidoine). Poulenc's devout religious faith is shown in the beautifully simple music of the Carmelites' prayers, including the devastating 'Salve regina', sung by the nuns as they are martyred.
The Carmelites at Covent Garden
Dialogues des Carmélites had its UK premiere at Covent Garden in 1958, with a cast including Joan Sutherland (Madame Lidoine). The opera was revived here in 1959 and 1963 and was last seen at Covent Garden in 1983, when the cast included Felicity Lott (Blanche).
Powerful Simplicity
Robert Carsen's simply staged production allows the humanity of Poulenc's characters to speak. Subtle contrasts in lighting reflect the characters' emotions and the progress of the drama, while the costumes suggest the troubled period in which the opera is set. Carsen avoids melodrama at all times, particularly in the opera's climactic final scene.
Dialogues des Carmélites runs from 29 May–11 June 2014. Tickets are still available. The production, originally from De Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam, is given with generous philanthropic support from Mrs Aline Foriel-Destezet, The Taylor Family Foundation and The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.]]>
Our 'How to Stage an Opera' series offers different perspectives on the practicalities of staging an opera, from the initial research through to the final performance. Here we look at how Richard Eyre's traditional production of an operatic favourite finds new ways to intensify the story.
La traviata is the most frequently performed opera of today, and arguably the most widely known (a propagation aided by its appearance in films such as Moulin Rouge and Pretty Woman). For many it is a gateway into enjoying and understanding opera. Is a director's responsibility, then, to new audiences or to old? Should the priority be to tell Verdi's story plainly, or should it be to suggest new interpretations? Is it possible to do both?
Richard Eyre's 1994 production for The Royal Opera is a literal staging. He locates the action contemporary with the opera's 1853 premiere – as Verdi would have done himself, had he not been forced by censors to locate the story a century earlier. Eyre and his designer Bob Crowley follow Verdi's stage directions closely, and ensure that every item referred to in the libretto – a table, a window, a letter, a camellia – is physically present onstage.
A literal staging, but not quite a realistic one. Eyre and Crowley present Verdi's naturalistic drama through a pane of enhanced theatricality. Everything is exaggerated: the gold-plated luxury of Violetta's party in Act I, the bourgeois respectability of Act II scene, the menacing hedonism of the following scene and the desolate poverty of Act III. The operatic intensity of Verdi's writing finds its partner in Crowley's sets, in a heightened presentation that not only clearly signposts the progressions of Verdi's drama, but suggests an individualistic response.
Crowley's four sets are pointedly distinct – a direct response to the structure of the opera, where Verdi depicts Violetta's decline through strikingly different vocal styles for the heroine, itself a device that places poignant emphasis on Violetta's decline. The only explicit continuity occurs in Act III, where the looming, peeling shutters that dominate Violetta's sparse sickroom are familiar from Act I, where they lurked behind the gleaming golden edifice of her party. Eyre thus states that Violetta's life in Act I was artificial, based on the allure of gold; he also emphasizes the reality of what we learnt in Act II, that Violetta has sacrificed everything to be with Alfredo; and most of all he heightens the truth that Verdi has woven in from the very beginning of the opera – that Violetta's death is inevitable.
Eyre takes advantage of practical considerations to further his interpretation. In Act I the chorus are crowded into the small, coin-shaped space, bustling around poufs and divans – so intensifying Violetta and Alfredo's brief time alone – while the steep rake of the stage creates a sense of hedonism, abandon and drunkenness. The dramatic events of the party scene in Act II scene 2 preclude the use of a rake, and so instead the disorientation is created by foreshortened scenery above, which also suggests opulent seediness, an underground den of vice in which Alfredo is horrified to find his Violetta. The Spanish theme that Verdi introduced to the scene, rather than seeming disjointed as it so often can, here inspires a bull ring set that intensifies the macho stand-off between Alfredo and his rival Baron Douphol.
The sweeping curves and distorted perspectives of both party scenes are in strong contrast to the scene they frame, Act II scene 1, which takes place in Violetta and Alfredo's country home. The simple furnishing and pastel colours, and the sunlight streaming through the tall windows, make clear this is an idyll far from the frantic city. The back wall placed far downstage makes a shallow, wide acting area, focusing our attention on the brilliant dramatic duet Verdi creates for Violetta and Germont. This enclosed space also allows Eyre to create a further contrast with the set for Act III, where the large empty stage is yet another reminder of the ultimate isolation of death – and adds further poignancy to Violetta's final pleas to God, and her feeble anger at the injustice of her fate.
In Eyre's production Verdi's story always takes precedence. But as Eyre and Crowley tell the story they find sophisticated devices that advance Verdi's music and suggest new subtleties in the drama. Follow the next in our series, where we see how Robert Carsen's production tells the powerful story of Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites with almost no sets at all.
Read other posts in our 'How to Stage an Opera' series.
La traviata runs until 20 May 2014. Tickets are sold out but returns may become available and 67 day tickets are available on the day of the performance.
The performance on 20 May 2014 will be streamed live around the world on our website and relayed to outdoor screens around the UK: find a BP Big Screen showing near you.
The production is generously supported by Rolex, with generous philanthropic support from Quentin Holland.
The finale of Francis Poulenc's only full-length opera, Dialogues des Carmélites, is tremendously powerful – whether you share Poulenc's devoted Catholic faith or not. His original inspiration (interpreted through several versions by different authors) was the execution of 16 Carmelite nuns and lay sisters from the Compiègne convent. Their beheading, on 17 July 1794, was one of the last and most brutal events of the 'Reign of Terror', and is popularly regarded as a crucial moment in turning public opinion against the Terror's ringleader Maximilien de Robespierre.
Poulenc uses every tool at his disposal to make the nuns' march to the guillotine viscerally terrifying. Both in the preceding orchestral interlude (one of the many in this reflective opera) and the finale itself Poulenc makes rare use of the full force of his huge orchestra. Beneath it all marches a relentless ostinato in the lower strings, an inescapable and unstoppable pulsing minor 3rd. Over this the nuns sing the 'Salve Regina' prayer in a simple, chant-like rhythm, recalling the opera's other prayers and in contrast to the speech-led rhythms that dominate otherwise.
The nuns sing steadily, matching the tread of the ostinato. But Poulenc creates a hideous sense of anguish, hiking up the pitch with each iteration of the couplets of the prayer, and introducing a sharp increase in volume after the first execution. For worst of all is the unpredictable swish-rattle-thud of the guillotine (an actual replica at the La Scala premiere in 1957, but now most often a sound effect), marked by Poulenc as 'sourd et lourd' (dull and heavy). It falls at irregular intervals in terrifying contrast to the steadiness of the nuns' prayer, snatching away individual singers mid-word in Poulenc's carefully stipulated score, heightening the aural and visual impact of this nightmarish addition to the orchestra. The remaining four nuns move more quickly through the second verse, aware of their declining numbers, and eventually only one, Constance, the youngest, is left to finish the final line: 'O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria' – o clement, loving, sweet Virgin Mary.
It is at the end that Poulenc drives home the theology that guides the opera, strongly influenced by the script (for an abandoned film) by Georges de Bernanos that was the composer's principal source material. Bernanos himself had worked from the novel by Gertrud von Le Fort, which was inspired by the memoirs of a Carmelite who survived the slaughter. Le Fort introduced the character Blanche de la Force, an avatar through which Le Fort analysed her own doubts about faith. Bernanos and Poulenc kept Blanche's fearfulness, her horror at the joyful Constance's prophetic prediction that they will both die on the same day, that she was the sole dissenter on the nuns' vote to accept their fate and go to the scaffold, that she was the only one who ran away, and that she returned.
But in place of the anguished death for Blanche we would expect, Poulenc and Bernanos instead grant her grace and transcendence, sparing her the violent mauling at the hands of the frenzied crowd around the guillotine that Le Fort had written. In the opera, Constance breaks off from the prayer as she sees Blanche in the crowd. She smiles and climbs the scaffold, and her light voice is cut off mid word. Blanche, 'incredibly calm, emerges from the stupefied crowd'. She sings a final Gloria based on alternating major and minor 3rds, softly, over spare orchestral accompaniment and held chords in the crowd. As she sings 'in saeculorum saecula' (for ever and ever) she is cut off by the guillotine's last fall.
There is horror in Poulenc's ending, in the needlessness and cruelty of the nuns' deaths – but this is not a bitter work. Rather, Poulenc celebrates the Carmelites' courage, and finds transcendent grace in their terrible deaths.
Listen in full to Dialogues des Carmélites via Spotify:
Dialogues des Carmélites runs 29 May–11 June 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production, originally from De Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam, is given with generous philanthropic support from Mrs Aline Foriel-Destezet, The Taylor Family Foundation and The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
The aria 'Vissi d'arte' from Puccini's Tosca is one of the most famous moments in operatic history. But it almost didn't make it into the final version of the opera, as the composer was worried by its ability to bring the evening to a halt: it is a show-stopper in the most literal sense.
Of course, Puccini's concerns were well-founded. 'Vissi d'arte' always brings a performance of Tosca to a stand-still, not least because of audiences' enthusiastic applause. But opera fans have never seemed to mind. In fact, it has become one of the composer's most popular arias.
It comes mid-way through Act II. Tosca, a famous singer, has been summoned to the apartment of Baron Scarpia, the chief of police, where her lover, the republican Cavaradossi, is being held prisoner. Scarpia tells Tosca that Cavaradossi's life will be spared if she sleeps with him. At which point, Tosca begins to sing her despairing prayer.
'Vissi d'arte' is a heartfelt plea to God, one of a number of operatic prayers: 'I lived for my art, I lived for love, I never harmed a living soul… why, why, o Lord, why do you reward me thus?' For a moment the opera's otherwise relentless forward momentum is paused as we – and Scarpia – are held spellbound by her prayer.
The aria's show-stopping effect is in part due to how Puccini has structured the act. The key, tempo, dynamics and orchestration all change for the opening bar of the aria. After the heated exchange between Scarpia and Tosca immediately before – complete with martial snare drums – there's a huge rallentando and diminuendo, musically signposting the aria as a stand-alone moment. The tempo changes from a nippy allegro to the relative stillness of andante lento appassionato (a slower 'walking' pace).
While the aria has been a hit with audiences from the beginning – it was encored at the premiere performance – critics since have been more undecided. The Italian critic Luigi Torchi called it 'a curious dramatic improbability of no musical significance', but more recently the writer Julian Budden argued that 'at this supreme crisis it is plausible that the singer's past should unroll before her in an expanded moment: a life devoted to art, love and religious observance.'
The fact that the aria stands alone, almost as a performance within a performance, allows star sopranos the chance to experiment – and not just vocally. One of the most acclaimed Toscas was Moravian soprano Maria Jeritza (1887–1982) who, when performing the second act of the opera in the early 1900s, fell during the scuffle with Scarpia and found herself singing 'Vissi d'arte' from the floor. And – with Puccini's approval – that's how she performed it for the rest of her life.
Maria Callas shared Puccini's concerns about the aria's power to bring the opera to a halt and even argued that it should be cut. But thankfully for opera fans past and present, 'Vissi d'arte' remains at the heart of Puccini's Tosca as a show-stopping, heart-stopping paean to the power of art.
Tosca runs from 10 May–26 June 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production is generously sponsored by RLM Finsbury.
Our 'How to Stage an Opera' series offers different perspectives on the practicalities of staging an opera, from the initial research through to the final performance. Here we look at how the reception of Gounod's opera has influenced the director's approach.
Charles-François Gounod's Faust is a masterclass in operatic dramatic structure. It was collectively the greatest work of Gounod and his librettists Michel Carré and Jules Barbier – the duo that made a name for themselves adapting literary masterpieces for opera in Roméo et Juliette, Hamlet and Les Contes d'Hoffmann. But Faust was the first and the greatest. From Goethe's epic Enlightenment verse-drama they and Gounod sculpted a work that complies with the conventions of French grand opera but has a dramatic immediacy the three would never better. The opera was embraced by the public from its premiere in 1859, and by the start of the 20th century had become the most internationally popular opera that had ever been.
But hand in hand with the opera's popularity there grew an increasing disparagement of Gounod's version of the Faust myth, specifically the alleged trivialization of Goethe's play. Richard Wagner was among the first to deride what he termed 'a repellent, sugary-vulgar patchwork… wedded to the music of a second-rate talent'. By the early 20th century Faust, a victim of its own ubiquity, had become the prime operatic cliché. It was used by authors such as Edith Wharton and Hergé to encapsulate the perceived peculiarities not only of the operatic idiom itself but also the supposed social milieu of its audience. In the second half of the 20th century the opera disappeared from the repertory, dismissed as kitsch. As late as the 1992 edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Opera it was described as a work 'too much of its time to transcend the age in which it was written'.
This heritage of scorn provides modern directors with both a challenge and an opportunity. Gounod's score, with its catchy tunes and show-stopping arias, and the proficiency of the libretto's structure, ensure that audiences will have a good time almost regardless of the production. But opera is at its greatest when staging and music exalt the senses together. Modern directors have an opportunity to present the work in a way that forces audiences to re-evaluate it, a chance to guide them away from the kneejerk historical response and to discover latent qualities that may never have been seen before.
David McVicar's 2004 production for The Royal Opera latches onto the opera's period sense that so offends some of its critics. He discards Gounod and Goethe's medieval setting (based on the supposed real Dr Faustus) and instead sets the opera in the latter half of the 19th century, the time of the opera's ascent to fame and infamy. He finds a new story to tell, where Faust becomes a stand-in for Gounod, tormented by the conflicting desires for earthly pleasures and the simplicity of holy life that rent the composer's life. The music, governed by the dance forms of Gounod's era, becomes McVicar's accomplice.
The set is dominated by a theatre box on one side and an organ loft on the other – ever-present visual icons that loom over the action. The rustic village dance becomes a seedy show in the Cabaret d'Enfer; the team of doughty soldiers are pawns in the brutal Franco-Prussian War; the peasant maiden Marguerite is now Manet's barmaid, pure but jaded; Méphistophélès is a figure of theatricality, preening himself in plush red velvet, inducting Faust first into the childish fun of dressing up, then seduction, and eventually guiding him into the abuse of absinthe and morphine.
McVicar's production retains the sense of spectacle that was a part of the opera's initial success, employing specific references to the forms and technologies of the time – the flashing lights of the Cabaret d'Enfer, the grotesque Giselle-like Walpurgisnacht ballet. But more importantly, he introduces a troubling undercurrent that compels us to question the moral assumptions of Gounod's time – for example, that the abhorrent abuse Marguerite suffers could be considered straightfoward entertainment.
McVicar's production of Faust is an example of how a director's vision can diverge from the composer's intentions while remaining true to the spirit of the work. Follow the next in our series to explore why Jonathan Kent's production of Tosca follows Verdi's original setting in Rome, 1800.
Read other posts in our 'How to Stage an Opera' series.
Faust runs until 25 April 2014. Tickets are still available.
Faust is a co-production with Opéra de Monte Carlo, Opéra de Lille and Fondazione Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi, Trieste, and is given with generous philanthropic support from David Hancock, Spindrift Al Swaidi, Martin and Jane Houston, Mr and Mrs Christopher W.T. Johnston, The Tsukanov Family Foundation, The Connoisseurs' Series and The Friends of Covent Garden.]]>
In La traviata Verdi created one of his greatest characters. Violetta Valéry – the fallen woman of the title – has won the hearts of audiences throughout the opera's history. It is thanks to Violetta's goodness, charm and most of all her likeableness that La traviata is one of Verdi's most treasured operas – and one of his most heartbreaking.
Violetta's Act III duet 'Parigi, o cara' ('Away from Paris, my dear') with her love Alfredo encapsulates her tragedy. In it they sing of their hope for the future and their adoration for each other, in music that recalls their joyful courtship in Act I. But Verdi makes sure we know how futile their hope is, and how powerless their love against Violetta's illness.
From the very opening of the opera we realize Violetta is sick. The party she throws in Act I is in part a celebration of her return to society after illness forced her away. Her first intimate encounter with Alfredo occurs when a sudden faint leaves her too weak to dance with her guests. But we, like Alfredo, are intoxicated by the brilliance of her singing, her witty rebuffs to his entreaties and her virtuoso aria 'Sempre libera' ('Always free').
Throughout Act III Verdi emphatically makes clear that exuberance is extinguished – even before the curtain rises, by returning for the first time to the mournful motif that opened the opera. Violetta's first aria in the act, 'Addio, del passato' ('Farewell, dreams of the past') has limpid ornamentation a pathetic echo of her Act I fireworks, and pitiably spare accompaniment from pizzicato strings and a melancholy oboe. Verdi mercilessly drives home Violetta's isolation by appending the aria to a raucous offstage Baccanale, heard from the street below, where the chorus sing with pagan abandon in weird minor-major music. It is carnival time in Paris, and all Violetta's friends have abandoned her, caught up in their own hunt for pleasure.
Violetta has desperately awaited Alfredo's arrival. When he finally arrives they are both overcome with excitement, gabbling short phrases almost on top of each other, urgently reaffirming their love. A brief, tender pianissimo section for the woodwind effects a key change from frenetic E major into mellow A flat major, referencing Verdi's use throughout the opera of flat keys to depict Violetta and her love for Alfredo. There's another pause before the soft pizzicato accompaniment of 'Parigi, o cara' begins.
The duet has a waltz-like rhythm, a lilting 3/8 signature that immediately signals its kinship with Violetta and Alfredo's Act I duets, the Brindisi (drinking song) and 'Un dì felice' ('One happy day'). But this duet is softer, more tender. The short sighing phrases seem more like a lullaby than a dance, as Alfredo builds their dreams: 'We'll leave Paris… your health will come back, you will be the light of my life and the future will smile on us.'
As with their Act I duets, Violetta echoes Alfredo, but Verdi now marks her to sing 'a mezza voce' (with half voice) and 'come in un sogno' (as if in a dream). There are none of the giddy flourishes that characterized her singing in 'Un dì felice'. Only a parody of that ornamentation comes in the duet's second section, where Violetta introduces a theme of breathless staccato, anxious and painfully weak. Alfredo sings in yearning lyrical counterpoint until finally they come together for the closing phrases of the duet, singing closely together until the music fades away to nothing.
Through imitation and the singers' melodic unity Verdi expresses Violetta and Alfredo's love. But he also embeds in the music two terrible truths: that Violetta is near death, and that Alfredo is too late. It's done with genius, and tremendous sympathy – and makes the end, when it inevitably comes, all the more tragic.
La traviata runs 19 April–20 May 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production is generously supported by Rolex, with generous philanthropic support from Quentin Holland.
The Story Begins…
When Alfredo Germont tells the beautiful courtesan Violetta he loves her, she feels that a new and happy life is beginning. But can their relationship survive the disapproval of Alfredo's father, and the relentless progress of Violetta's tuberculosis?
Public and Private
Richard Eyre's production, a favourite in the Royal Opera repertory, brings the lavish world of the 19th-century Parisian demi-monde to life in two spectacular party scenes, but also provides a sensitive portrayal of Violetta's personal tragedy. There are scenes of powerful intimacy, particularly Violetta's Act II dialogue with Germont, and her reunion with Alfredo in Act III.
A Legendary Courtesan
Verdi's inspiration for La traviata was the play La Dame aux camélias, by Alexandre Dumas fils, adapted by Dumas from his novel of the same name. In turn, Dumas fils used a real life courtesan, Marie Duplessis, as the model for his heroine. Duplessis was a striking, gentle and cultivated woman, the mistress and friend of several important men, including the composer Franz Liszt. Like Violetta, she died very young of tuberculosis.
An Opera of Contrasts
In La traviata, large-scale, brilliant choruses and ensembles (such as the Act I Brindisi and the gypsy and matador choruses in Act II scene 2) contrast with introspective arias and intimate duets for the principal characters. Violetta's vocal style reflects her deepening experiences of both love and suffering, her flamboyant aria 'Sempre libera' in Act I contrasting with the gentle, melancholy 'Addio, del passato' in Act III.
Growing Enthusiasm
La traviata received a mixed reception at its premiere – largely due to the half-hearted singing of the original Alfredo and Germont, as well as audience criticism of the original Violetta's appearance. However, the opera's second production in 1854 was a success, and since then La traviata has enjoyed a triumphant career. It is currently the most-performed opera in the international repertory, and is performed by The Royal Opera at least every other Season.
La traviata runs 19 April–20 May 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production is generously supported by Rolex, with generous philanthropic support from Quentin Holland.
Two kings separated as children are reunited in adulthood. One king, Leontes of Sicilia, marries Hermione, giving her a beautiful emerald. They have a son, Mamilllius, and are blissfully happy. The other king, Polixenes of Bohemia, visits the court of Leontes. He is delighted to be reunited with his old friend and stays for nine months. By the time of his departure, Hermione is about to give birth to her second child.
Act I
The court of Sicilia
It is the day of Polixenes' departure. The Bohemian court say goodbye to their Sicilian friends. At Hermione's request, Polixenes agrees to stay on another week. In a flash of jealousy, Leontes becomes convinced that his wife has been unfaithful and is carrying Polixenes' child. Jealousy turns to rage and he attacks Polixenes, who flees back to Bohemia. Leontes publicly accuses Hermione of adultery and treason, then has her arrested. This so distresses Mamillius that he falls seriously ill. In prison, Hermione has given birth to a daughter. The head of her household, Paulina, brings the newborn to Leontes, hoping to convince him that the baby is his daughter. Instead, Leontes violently rejects the child, then orders Paulina's husband Antigonus to abandon the baby in a remote place. Antigonus sets sail into a brewing storm with the baby and some treasure, including the emerald once given to Hermione by Leontes. Hermione is brought to trial and pleads her innocence. Leontes, now quite mad, refuses to believe her. Dazed and feverish, Mamillius enters the courtroom and, upon witnessing the unfolding tragedy, he collapses and dies from distress. Seeing the death of her child, Hermione too collapses dead and is taken away. Only now does Leontes realize the disastrous consequences of his terrible mistake.
The shores of Bohemia
Battling the storm, Antigonus struggles ashore to abandon the baby princess. As he leaves, he is pursued and killed by a wild bear. His ship, waiting at sea, is smashed to pieces on the rocks. As day breaks, a shepherd and his son Clown discover the baby girl and the treasure.
Act II
A hillside in Bohemia. Sixteen years later.
Perdita, the abandoned daughter of King Leontes and Queen Hermione, has been raised by the shepherd who found her. She dances beneath the great tree with her love, Prince Florizel, the son of Polixenes, whom the other villagers know only as a shepherd boy. The villagers arrive for the annual springtime festival. King Polixenes, who has heard that his son has been cavorting with a shepherdess, sends his steward to spy on the young prince. When the steward confirms his suspicions, Polixenes is enraged, and demands to see for himself. At the festival, Perdita is to be crowned May Queen. In honour of the occasion, Father Shepherd presents her with the emerald necklace he found with her on the beach. Polixenes and his steward arrive in disguise, keen to see what Florizel is up to. On witnessing Florizel's engagement to a mere shepherdess, Polixenes reveals himself. He is furious with Florizel, and condemns Perdita and her family to death. They all flee by boat to Sicilia, pursued by Polixenes.
Act III
A clifftop in Sicilia
King Leontes mourns by the clifftop graves of his wife and son, watched over by Paulina. Perdita and Florizel's ship approaches Sicilia.
The palace in Sicilia
Perdita and Florizel appeal to Leontes to allow their union, and to intercede with the enraged Polixenes on their behalf. Leontes is taken with the likeness of Florizel to Polixenes. He agrees to help the young couple, who remind him of his lost children. Polixenes arrives and Leontes tries to reason with him, but he violently handles Perdita, revealing the emerald. The long lost Princess of Sicilia is miraculously alive and the two kings are reunited. The Palace celebrates the wedding of Florizel and Perdita. As the festivities die down, Leontes is led by Paulina to see a new statue of Hermione. Deeply remorseful, he kneels at its base. Suddenly, the statue comes to life – it is Hermione, who is alive and has been kept in hiding by Paulina for 16 years. She embraces Leontes, and the family is reunited.
The Winter's Tale runs 10 April–8 May 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production is a co-production with The National Ballet of Canada and is generously supported by The Monument Trust with additional philanthropic support from Mrs Susan A. Olde OBE, Celia Blakey, Sarah and Lloyd Dorfman, Simon & Virginia Robertson, The Taylor Family Foundation, Lady Ashcroft, Mr and Mrs Edward Atkin CBE, the Metherell Family, Richard and Delia Baker, Kenneth and Susan Green, D W Hancock, Randa Khoury, Lindsay and Sarah Tomlinson, Doug and Ceri King, Gail and Gerald Ronson through The Gerald Ronson Foundation, Victoria Sharp, John and Susan Burns, The Winter's Tale Production Syndicate and an anonymous donor.]]>
The invention and beauty of Richard Strauss's score for Die Frau ohne Schatten is staggering. Strauss marshals his massive orchestra to create a breathtaking array of musical effects, his orchestral language so rich and varied that almost every one of his motifs (musical 'tags' associated with ideas or characters) occupies its own distinct, instantly recognizable soundworld. It's the perfect counterpart for Hugo von Hofmannsthal's fairytale libretto, in which symbols loom large, their shadows spreading far.
Die Frau is a fable of human relationships, told through two couples: one, the Emperor and the Empress, so lofty and removed from reality that the relationship is sterile and the Emperor's heart hardened in jealousy; and the other, Barak and his Wife, so caught up in the drudgery of everyday existence that they cannot recognize their love for each other. In this parable symbols of hunting, of marriage, of children unborn, of shadows and mortality and a heart of stone have crucial importance. Their potency is captured and concentrated in Strauss's ingenious motivic writing.
For the most part the motifs are tiny musical fragments no more than a few notes long. They're astonishing both for their simplicity and the immediacy with which they characterize the symbol they represent. Take the motif for the Empress's father, Keikobad, that opens the opera. It's chilling and ominous, a heavy three-note pattern played on tuba, trombones and timpani (only slightly less terrifying than Strauss's other absent father figure in Elektra). Then there's the pervasive 'shadow' motif, symbolic of the Empress's unrealness and the sterility of her marriage. The motif, essentially just two ascending 4ths on top of each other, becomes magically ethereal and elusive with harp harmonics and rippling violins that play in surprising septuplet rhythms.
But perhaps most spectacular of all is the haunting 'Falcon' motif, which with only three notes evokes the creature's slow lonely circling, its constant hunt and plangent cry of anguish. The Falcon is a symbol related to the Emperor and the Empress. The Emperor used his beloved red Falcon to hunt down a white gazelle. Once he stabbed the gazelle with his spear it shape-shifted into the form of a woman. He made her his Empress and cast off the Falcon; but though he and the Empress love each other his passion for hunting is still all-consuming, and he leaves his wife alone for long hours, unfulfilled, still made of air and without a shadow.
The Falcon makes its return to the Empress near the beginning of the opera. The Empress's own music is trilling coloratura birdsong, joyous, melodic and full of light. She greets the Falcon merrily, thrilled to see the return of her husband's dear possession. But the Falcon's mournful cry, while still birdlike, is a world apart from the Empress's buoyant singing. Piccolo, oboes and clarinets sound in unison, crushing an appoggiatura D down into a C#. They have an insistent, nagging rhythm that is played over and over. The voice of the Falcon cries out on the same pitches, clashing brutally on its long held D over the predominant C#s in the accompaniment, as it delivers its message: 'Why should I not cry? The Empress has no shadow and the Emperor must turn to stone.'
The Falcon's cry recurs again and again throughout the opera, always at the same pitch and the same tempo – unique among the motifs, which otherwise are all transformed as they return. The 'Falcon' motif implacably needles the Emperor into jealousy in Act II, and in Act III taunting the Empress as she struggles to resist temptation, always piercing through the musical fabric around it. It's a breathtakingly rich, simple and effective idea – just one of the hundreds in Strauss's supreme masterpiece.
Die Frau ohne Schatten runs from 14 March–2 April 2014. Tickets are still available.
The production is staged with generous philanthropic support from Sir Simon and Lady Robertson, Hamish and Sophie Forsyth, The Friends of Covent Garden and an anonymous donor.]]>
I was 11. The opera was Elektra. It was an evening that completely changed my life. We all have stories about the first time we went to the opera or the ballet, but few people start their journey with something as ferocious as Elektra. The opening D minor chords pinned me to my seat, blood was spattered all over the walls, and five maids scrubbed furiously to remove the evidence. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, what I was seeing. I remember some happier music too, sung by Elektra's sister, and a searing moment when their brother reappeared, long into the nightmare. It made me think: if someone had killed my father, would I be driven to these dark ends? I was gripped.
Elektra is a lot to take, even for the most seasoned operagoer. But, for me, it was the ideal introduction to opera, unleashing the full force of the art form with 100 minutes of pure music and drama. But could I honestly encourage others to launch into opera with this staggering piece? Wouldn't Carmen or La bohème – both masterpieces, both performed this Season at the Royal Opera House – be a better first port of call?
The packaging for Carmen and La bohème is instantly more appealing: sun-baked Seville and Paris at Christmastime. And Bizet and Puccini, popping out great tunes at a terrific rate, are decidedly less dissonant than Strauss. Certainly, watching the elated crowd at a schools matinee performance of La bohème in 2012, as part of a project I undertook with conductor Semyon Bychkov, I could grasp the evergreen appeal of Puccini's 1896 opera.
Look beyond the surface, however, and you quickly find that neither Carmen nor La bohème is particularly youth-friendly. One is a tale of revenge, ending with murder. The other is a depiction of the impossible cruelties of love, concluding with the sad demise of its heroine. Ballet has more immediately amenable stories, with The Nutcracker and The Sleeping Beauty chief among them (putting their darker elements aside). But I wonder if we've got it wrong when it comes to introducing newcomers to what takes place on stage at the Royal Opera House.
What do we hope they will get out of their first experience? Are the goals musical, dramatic or educational? Of course the aim is to enchant and find new enthusiasts, but we should want them to learn lessons from what they see on stage. Maybe, surprisingly, Wozzeck is a more direct way to go.
Certainly for Alban Berg, the point of Wozzeck was an 'appeal to humanity', as he described the great interlude before the chilling final scene. After the Captain's baiting, the Doctor's experiments and all the horrors of Wozzeck's world, Berg reaches out to the audience with a music passage of indescribable heart. That can speak to younger audiences too. Some might be concerned about exposing young people to violence and the dark world of Berg's tragedy. But unlike in the television and cinema that is part of their everyday lives, violence is rarely (if ever) glamorized in opera. The kaleidoscopic score of Wozzeck leaves us in no doubt about that.
Shedding the pomp and pageantry of opera from previous centuries, Berg's 20th-century masterpiece really grabs its audience by the scruff of the neck. It doesn't let go for its short but intense 90 minutes. And with bold characterizations, its mixture of everyday sounds and rich underscore and totally lucid storytelling, Wozzeck really is, alongside my first-time experience of Elektra, one of the most vivid introductions anyone could have, regardless of their age. It might shock, but it's a risk worth taking for the interest it could easily inspire.
Escapism is wonderful: we all need it. But I think you truly open eyes and ears and create enduring fans when they are realize that what is presented on stage is happening in the world around them. With time and experience it's easier to see through the analogies and parallels of historical settings and traditions. But the earlier that youngsters particularly realize that opera is not about the there and then, it is the here and now, the better.
What was your first operatic experience, and what did you think? Do you wish your introduction had been through another piece instead?
Wozzeck runs from 31 October–15 November 2013. Tickets are still available.]]>
The Story Begins…
Young Nemorino is passionately in love with the beautiful Adina, but she seems more interested in the boastful Sergeant Belcore. Can Doctor Dulcamara's dubious 'love potion' help Nemorino to win Adina's heart?
Quacks and Potions
L'elisir d'amore was inspired by a French comic opera, Le Philtre (1831) by Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, with a libretto by Eugène Scribe. Gaetano Donizetti and Felice Romani transformed Scribe's light drama into something far more moving, particularly in their treatment of Nemorino and of Adina – the flirt who gradually learns what love means. The character of Dulcamara may have been partly inspired by real quack doctors, of whom there were many in 19th-century Europe.
An Opera in 14 Days?
Donizetti's early biographers Federico Alborghetti and Michelangelo Galli claimed that the composer and his librettist Romani wrote L'elisir d'amore in 14 days. Actually, it seems that the opera was created in a period of about six weeks (even so, pretty impressive!) The opera's premiere was a triumph and secured Donizetti's position as one of the leading Italian opera composers of his day.
Deft Musical Characterizations
Donizetti deftly brings each of the principal characters to life through his music. Nemorino's tenderness is shown in his arias 'Quanto è bella' and 'Una furtiva lagrima'. Belcore's arrogance is illustrated in the pompous little march that accompanies him, and in his swaggering aria 'Come Paride vezzoso'. Adina begins as a light-hearted coquette, her vocal line laced with brilliant coloratura, but her style becomes increasingly infected with Nemorino's lyricism in Act II. Dulcamara's delight in the sound of his own voice is shown in his rapid and constant patter-singing.
Eye-Catching Antics
The Royal Opera's production of L'elisir d'amore shows that Donizetti's opera can be modernized while keeping the story intact. Inspired by his childhood, director Laurent Pelly sets the drama in a 20th-century village, to hilarious effect: Dulcamara drives about in a lumbering van, the village youths ride Vespas and everyone congregates at the shabby local bar. Oh, and watch out for the dog!
L'elisir d'amore runs 18 November–13 December 2014. Tickets are still available.]]>
With this year's X Factor over, it's time for an altogether more serious singing competition. At a recent Insights event at the Royal Opera House Antonio Pappano described the confrontation of the traditional and the revolutionary in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
You can watch Pappano's introduction to the Die Meistersinger overture and the music of one of the main characters – Walther - in this video.The piece includes a performance from Simon O'Neill and accompaniment from pianist Geoffrey Paterson, a current Jette Parker Young Artist.
Simon O'Neill talks of the demands placed on a singer taking on the role of Walther. He has to perform his "Prize Song" (one of the most memorable Wagnerian tunes ever written), a total of nine times throughout the opera. It's the biggest vocal challenge he's ever faced: "I know Wagner called this a comedy, well it's no comedy for poor old Walther. I'm not laughing!". Listen to a clip or download the full interview from iTunesU.