Tag Archives: jones

La belle Hélène from the GGS

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Christina Campsall

Christina Campsall

The Glenn Gould School’s production of Offenbach’s 1864 operetta La belle Hélène opened at Koerner Hall last night.  Overall, it’s an enjoyable show with some strong performances though there are aspects of it that, in my view, rather missed the mark.  Certainly it made me realise just what a difficult piece to really bring off really well La belle Hélène is.  There are some very difficult singing roles and yet they need to sound effortless.  It needs the exquisite comic timing of a bedroom farce.  There’s also a difficult to define quality; very French and with a sexiness of the “I know it when I see it” variety.  I think it was a shortage of this last that was largely the problem last night.

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First we take Manhattan

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Irving-BerlinYesterday the Talisker Players ventured into new territory for them with a program of Irving Berlin songs entitled Puttin’ on the Ritz.  I’m no expert on Broadway in general or Tin Pan Alley in particular but, I suppose like most people, I’ve been exposed to a lot of this music through TV and films.  The Talisker presentation was interesting and unusual in that they employed a string quartet and two classically trained singers rather than a dance band or a pianist and voices from a different tradition.

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Chéreau Ring – Götterdämmerung

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And so, at last to Götterdämmerung.  The scene with the Norns is dark, very dark.  There’s a rope and not much goes on (at least that is visible) but the singing is good.  The “dawn” scene comes off more effectively here than the final scene of Siegfried but it’s still not great.  I think the problem is a combination of Manfred Jung’s dry, rather nasal tone and Boulez rather fast tempu.  It seems rushed rather than ecstatic and the Rhine Journey doesn’t thrill.  I was concerned at this point that I was being unfair to a renowned production so I put on the same scene from Kupfer/Barenboim.  It’s much better.  Siegfried Jerusalem sounds truly heroic, Anne Evans richer tone blends better than Gwyneth Jones’ (though this could be an artefact of the recording) and, crucially, Barenboim gives the singers room to sing before markedly speeding up for the orchestral music.  At least there is no naff attempt to depict a literal Grane in Chéreau’s version.  At the conclusion of this scene Brian Large pulls off the first of his artsy effects.  During the Rhine music he holds a close up of Brünnhilde for a rather long time before pulling out to a full stage shot which he then shrinks until there is just a tiny square of picture  in the middle of a black screen which, when he slowly expands it, has transformed to the Gibichung hall.  He does the same thing a couple more times.  It seems odd to introduce that kind of thing at such a late stage in the cycle.

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Chéreau Ring – Siegfried

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Chéreau’s Siegfried is even less obviously “industrial” than his Die Walküre.  There’s a forge of course but there rather has to be.  Other than that we get workshop, forest and lair pretty much as one might imagine until, of course, we end up back at the ruin where Brünnhilde waits.  Brian Large injects lots of smoke at every opportunity.

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Chéreau Ring – Die Walküre

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The second instalment of Patrice Chéreau’s 1980 Bayreuth Ring cycle is set, like Das Rheingold, in a sort of industrial bourgeois late 19th century.  One would almost say steampunk if that were not an anachronism.  Actually the “industrial” side is much less evident than in the earlier work.  There’s a sort of astrolabe/pendulum thing in Valhalla but that’s about it.  Setting aside, the story telling is very straightforward; so much so that it takes a real effort of the imagination to get into a mindset where this production could ever have been considered controversial.  It’s quite literal; Brünnhilde has a helmet and breast and back plates (worn over a rather severe grey dress), Wotan has a spear, Siegmund has a sword.  There’s not an assault rifle or light sabre to be seen.  It is though dramatically effective.

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Charming Vixen from the Glenn Gould School

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ggsopera3_365sq_0This year’s opera offering from the Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory is Janáček’s Cunning Little Vixen.  It’s a pretty good choice for a student production with a wide variety of roles and it’s a great vehicle for showing off  the excellent Royal Conservatory Orchestra.  The school has chosen to present the work in English translation which probably makes sense given the difficulties of training a whole new cast in Czech even though it somewhat undermines the composer’s extremely tight linkage of text and music.

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Il Trittico

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Puccini’s Il Trittico is a collection of three one act operas designed to be performed on a single evening.  They rarely are.  Perhaps this is because performing all three makes for a rather long evening (and for a huge cast) or maybe it’s because two of the three aren’t all that great.  In any event, while most opera goers will likely have seen the comedy Gianni Schicchi, most will likely not have seen the two tragedies that precede it; Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica.  However, all three works were performed as a triple bill at the Royal Opera House in 2011.  The show was broadcast by the BBC and is available on Blu-ray and DVD.  All three pieces were directed by Richard Jones and Anthony Pappano conducted.

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Let trumpets blow

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A new recording of Britten’s Gloriana is to be welcomed, even when it’s less than perfect.  It’s an unusual work for Britten.  It’s very grand.  The orchestra is large and the music doesn’t seem to be as transparent and detailed as much of his work.  This is especially true in Act 1 where I almost wondered whether Britten was sending up “grand opera”.  It’s also a grand opera sort of plot.  The libretto is based on Lytton Strachey’s Elizabeth and Essex and deals with the late life romance between the queen and the young Robert Devereux, earl of Essex and deputy in Ireland.  It has some fine moments; notably the lute songs in Act 2 and the choral dances in Act 2.  Act 3 is also dramatically quite effective; dealing with Essex’ abortive rebellion and execution.  Curiously, in the final scene, Britten resorts to a lot of spoken dialogue, as he does briefly with Balstrode’s admonition in Peter Grimes.  It’s almost as if he has no musical vocabulary for the highest emotional states; a sort of anti-Puccini.

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Grimes on Blu-ray

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There is, finally, a recording of Britten’s Peter Grimes on Blu-ray.  It’s a Richard Jones production with a largely British cast, recorded at La Scala in 2012.  The sound and picture quality are first rate.  Unfortunately the production and performances aren’t so much.

1.moothallRichard Jones has chosen to set the piece in the 1980s and to portray the inhabitants of the Borough as a sort of inbred hive mind fuelled by prejudice, alcohol and drugs.  Actually it’s not a bad concept but it comes off as exaggerated with cast and chorus repeatedly making more or less coordinated middle aged disco moves.  He also portrays the nieces as the sort of permanently stoned bubble heads one wants to avoid on the last train home. There are some neat touches.  The Moot Hall, The Boar and Grimes’ hut are all formed by box like spaces that are tilted and rotated to good effect.  The lighting is effective too.  Unusually for a modern production Jones doesn’t provide any staging for the interludes, leaving the theatre dark with the curtain down.  Overall, it’s a production I’d want to take a second look at but I suspect it’s just painted too broadly to be really effective.

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Smart and sexy Don Giovanni

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Last night saw the first of two performances of Don Giovanni by the students of the Glenn Gould School at Koerner Hall.  Koerner Hall isn’t the easiest venue to do fully staged opera since it is basically a concert hall with very limited lighting and stage facilities.  Ashlie Corcoran and Camellia Coo pulled off perhaps the most inventive staging I have seen there by using a giant staircase to link the part of the gallery that wraps around the stage to the stage itself.  Within this basic configuration they deployed a few bits and pieces of furniture, mostly couches. It made a very serviceable unit set for the various scenes.  The production was set in the 1960s and seemed to revolve around the basic idea of Don Giovanni as a “chick magnet”.  All the usual suspects are clearly attracted to him.  There’s no hint of coercion in the opening scene with Donna Anna and Zerlina is a very willing seductee.  The idea is reinforced in “Deh vieni” when, as Don Giovanni is serenading Donna Elvira’s maid, five or six women make their way to the staircase and down to the man himself.

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