Tag Archives: glyndebourne

Hytner’s Così

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Nicholas Hytner’s production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, seen at Glyndebourne in 2006, is about as traditional as it gets.  The story is straightforwardly told and the settings and costumes are 18th century Naples, or at least some operatic approximation of it.  That said, it’s immensely enjoyable and, just occasionally, goes beyond the superficial.  The strength lies in the casting and in the director’s decision to allow his young singers to behave like young people.  Miah Persson as Fiordiligi and Anke Vondung as Dorabella are close to perfect in their exuberant girlishness.  Naturally Vondung gets to be a bit ditzier than the angstier Persson because that’s how the thing is written.  Both of them sing extremely well too and there’s nothing lacking in the big solos or duets.

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McVicar’s Entführung

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I think I’ve got used to David McVicar productions or, at least, what he’s produced in the last ten years or so.  The director’s notes will sound erudite and convey the impression that he’s gained some vital new insight into a well known work.  The actual production on stage will be almost entirely conventional with maybe the odd visual flourish but nothing to start the synapses firing.  This is very much the case with his 2015 production of Die Entführung aus dem Serail from Glyndebourne.  The “big idea” is that Bassa Selim is caught between two worlds; the ‘west” and the “east”.  Well duh!  This is as revelatory as pointing out that Mimi has TB.  This “revelation” is the reason/excuse for presenting the work with dialogues unaltered and uncut.  This is very much a mixed blessing.  Yes, it does allow some character development that’s otherwise missing but on the other hand it emphasises the fact that without some interesting new angle Entführing is basically dramatically a bit feeble.  Is she faithful?  How dare he doubt it?  Please forgive me.  Why should I?  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Enter Osmin.  Hang them.  Impale them. Daggers and poison.  Over and over.

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It’s pure madness!

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That’s what Laurent Pelly said about the idea of a Frenchman directing a French opera adaptation of a Shakespeare play for an English audience during Shakespeare 400.  Maybe he has a point but I think his 2016 production of Berlioz’ Béatrice et Bénédict probably gets as much as there is to be got out of a curiously uneven work.

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Classic Lulu

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I’ve been taking another look at the Glyndebourne production of Berg’s Lulu that I first reviewed in April 2011.  I think a reappraisal is in order.  It’s a 1996 production directed by Graham Vick with Andrew Davis conducting and Christine Schäfer in the title role.  When it first appeared it got rave reviews with Gramophone awards and the like.

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Brett Dean’s Hamlet

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A new opera by Australian Brett Dean based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet premiered at Glyndebourne this summer.  A recording of it was broadcast on BBC television on 22nd October.  I’ve now had a chance to watch it in full.  I wasn’t sure what to expect as it get somewhat mixed reviews.  I was impressed.  Very impressed.  First off, Matthew Jocelyn, who wrote the libretto, and Dean know how to turn a play into an opera.  They understand that it’s not just about taking a bunch of dialogue and giving it a soundtrack.  What they do is very clever.  All the text is Shakespeare but it’s split up and moved around.  There’s repetition and sometimes words are reassigned to different characters. Characters sing parallel lines. Then, of course, there’s a chorus.  A good example is when the players appear before performing The Death of Gonzago.  They get lines taken from various of Hamlet’s soliloquies chopped up and rearranged.  It’s effective and allows the main elements of the story to be told in under three hours of opera.  The main bit that’s missing is the whole Fortinbras and the Norwegians thing but that often gets cut anyway.

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Dani’s Rosina

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One rather gets the feeling that the 2016 Glyndebourne production of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia was built around the lady of the house.  It makes a lot of sense.  There may have been better singers in the role of Rosina but I doubt there has ever been a better mover than Danielle de Niese.  She’s matched move for move, eye candy for eye candy by the guys; Björn Burger as Figaro and Taylor Stayton as Almaviva.  There’s more mature comedy from the always fantastic Alessandro Corbelli as Bartolo and the irrepressible Janis Kelly as Berta.

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The Romans, being wanton, worship chastity

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Continuing my struggle with Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia I got hold of the Blu-ray recording of Fiona Shaw’s 2015 Glyndebourne production.  I’m beginning, I think, to see my way to understanding the problems inherent in the libretto and some of the strategies that can be used to overcome them.  The more minor problem is Junius and the odd scene early in Act 2 where he seems to be inciting the Romans to revolt while acting as a general in Tarquinius’ army while, also, apparently, been in some sense complicit in the rape.  So we have a two faced power hungry schemer who is oblivious to the consequences of his mischief making; whether rape or rabble rousing (a sort of Roman Boris Johnson).  Most productions ignore this aspect of things and probably rightly.

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The clutter of bodies

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The latest Handel oratorio to be given the operatic treatment by Glyndebourne is Saul, which played in 2015 in a production by Australian Barrie Kosky.  It’s quite a remarkable work.  The libretto, as so often the work of Charles Jennens, takes considerable liberties with the version in Samuel and incorporates obvious nods to both King Lear and Macbeth as well as more contemporary events.  David’s Act 3 lament on the death of Saul, for instance, clearly invokes the execution of Charles I.  What emerges is a very classic tragedy.  Saul, the Lord’s anointed, is driven by jealousy and insecurity deeper and deeper into madness and degradation and, ultimately, death.  This is the basic narrative arc of the piece.

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The Rake at 35

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David Hockney and John Cox’s production of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress first saw the light of day at Glyndebourne in 1975 and there’s a video of it from back then.  It’s been revived umpteen times since, all with Cox directing rather than an overawed revival director.  It was done again in 2010, with Vladimir Jurowski conducting, recorded and issued on Blu-ray and DVD.  It’s fascinating.

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Vecchio Chris

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Richard Jones chose to set his 2009 production of Verdi’s Falstaff in Windsor in 1946.  I suspect it’s driven by similar reasoning to Robert Carsen’s 1950s production.  Falstaff plays out very nicely as a conflict between an older order of things and a more thrusting kind of bourgeoisie and 1940s/50s England works well for that.  The “just after the war” setting also allows Jones to present Fenton as a G.I. which adds another twist to Ford’s distrust of him.  Although the jumping off point for Jones and Carsen is the same the results are quite different.  Jones seems to be operating in the traditions of English farce, à la Brian Rix, or maybe Carry on films,which works pretty well.  Falstaff is a farce rather than a comedy of manners.  So, besides the obligatory entrances and exits, couples caught in flagrante etc we also get a certain geometric precision in the blocking that borders on choreography.  In Act 1 Scene 2, for instance, the ladies rather military perambulation in a garden of very precisely aligned cabbages is doubled up by Brownies and a rowing four countermarching.

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