A New Experience

One evening a very long time ago, I climbed flight after flight of stairs to the very top of the auditorium, passed the entrance to the amphitheatre and then climbed on up to the balcony also known as ‘The Gods’. I and my two roommates were at the opera to see ‘The Magic Flute’ at Covent Garden. (Yes, you didn’t misread that, it was two roommates, as in those days, 1980, it was two or three to a room and only mature students were allocated a single room in the large, women-only student house where we lived.)

The two memories I have of that evening over 40 years ago were, firstly, the wonderful singing by Kiri Te Kanawa as Pamina and, secondly, the exhaustion of the sit/standing arrangement and straining to see the performers from the very, very back. So, why, oh why did I find myself at the Royal Opera House on Monday morning in ‘The Gods’ again? It was the triumph of considered, thought-out optimism over ever-fading, vague-ish memories.

Programme for The Magic Flute not from ‘The Gods’ visit of April 1980, but from another occasion in July 1989.

In the past, when I lived in London, I used to belong to the Friends of Covent Garden and, interestingly, I notice from a 1989 programme, basic membership back then was £25 a year. Needless to say that has gone up over the intervening decades and it is now £115 for an annual membership, but if you are able to attend the daytime rehearsals I think it’s worth it.

Advertising for new members. 1989

Attending dress rehearsals is one of the benefits of belonging to the Friends along with priority booking. Now I am semi-retired I can finally attend a daytime rehearsal in London. It is something I’ve always wanted to do. However, when I bought my ticket for the dress rehearsal of ‘The Barber of Seville’ only restricted view seats in the upper slips were still available.

And, what of my new experience? I think I’d say it was a mixed bag. The dress rehearsal was musically and theatrically wonderful. The younger vocalists, Aigul Akhmetshina (Rosina) and Andrzej Filończyk (Figaro), gave it their all and sang all the flashy fireworks so beloved by Rossini with no marking to save their voices. The mighty-voiced Bryn Terfel offered the most charming and amusing performance of Don Basilio with the expected superb singing. The other more mature members of the cast gave good performances, but I felt they were perhaps holding back vocally just a little with their eye on this evening’s Opening Night.

Information boards in the foyer provided performance details for the dress rehearsal. 2023

And, the downside? If I found it physically draining as a young student to be up in ‘The Gods’, then as an oldie it was always going to be challenging. My knees, neck and back did not appreciate the two and three quarter hours running time despite stretching my legs with a walk down to the Paul Hamlyn Hall during the 25 minute interval.

Left, the view from The Gods, opera glasses would have been useful. Right, zoomed in on the orchestra pit.

The lessons I’ve learnt from this new experience are, firstly, it is definitely worth being a member of the Friends if you live in the London area or can make a day trip to the capital. Secondly, if you find it difficult sitting at awkward angles to watch productions, then it is essential to note the day and the time booking for rehearsals goes live and login before all the front-facing, comfortable seats are sold out.

Perhaps time for a new production

There is an age-old question how do you present a masterful work of art created in the nineteenth century to a contemporary audience. Grand opera, like much of Shakespeare, is often concerned with universal themes of the human condition. Stories of tragic love, betrayal, and death are presented for our entertainment. Verdi’s famous opera Rigoletto is one such example.

For a Christmas treat my father and I recently went to see Rigoletto at the Royal Opera House. This is the David McVicar production first staged in 2001. The staging admirably sets the mood. It is simple, dark and foreboding with much in gloom. Perhaps it is a bit too dark, as I would like to have had brighter pools of lights for the solos and duets so we could actually see the singers’ faces.

David McVicar’s production is a no holes barred, most deliberately sleazy, with a capital ‘S’, production. Yes, Rigoletto, from the Victor Hugo play, shocked its original nineteenth-century audiences in Italy to the point where it was banned. However, for a twenty-first-century audience we are fine with a probing light illuminating the depravity of absolute power that is displayed by the medieval Duke of Mantua as he exploits his subjects in a virtually lawless manner. We are not, as the nineteenth-century folk were, troubled that their social order would be disturbed by this politically provocative opera.

Nevertheless, this 2001 production is problematic today as far as contemporary gender politics is concerned. As Verdi scored, there are no ‘singing’ parts for the female members of the chorus. In opera terms that means all the women of the chorus are simply littering the stage as objects. In this case to be used and abused, they have no voice, therefore no agency. Despite no collective female singing, there are four solo female parts. These characters appear to stand for the virginal (Rigoletto’s daughter Gilda), the whore (Maddalena), the old nurse/matron (Gilda’s nurse) and the aristocratic lady (Countess Ceprano). I suppose standard females rolls reflecting the nineteenth-century commonly held view of the place of women in society. This is despite the fact the record shows many women worked in factories as well as working as servants, or on the land or in trade. And, working women were also evident during the medieval period in which Rigoletto and indeed this production has been set.

So what can Rigoletto offer its 21st audiences? Verdi wrote it in the music, it is the psychology of humankind; those flesh and blood traits that cross the centuries and with which a modern audience can identify.

Attempting any tweaking sanitization of Verdi’s Rigoletto would be utterly pointless and the wonderful music has so much to convey not least the loving relationship between a father and his cherished daughter as well as all that bravura, dramatic evil. However, in this particular production subtlety is absent. Of course, nobody would want to dismiss a work of art because it reflects the mores of a different time, but I think this nineteenth-century piece could have been given a more reflective interpretation.  Surely, it is time the ROH invited a new director to tackle this magnificent tragic opera with a fresh, more nuanced production.

One very positive aside, was the discovery (well, for me) of a new voice, the young bass Andrea Mastroni, most certainly one to follow in the future.

 

Werther – a heart-wrenching encounter

Last week I accompanied my father to see ‘Werther’ at Covent Garden. There’s nothing quite like an evening of intense operatic drama with a suitably tragic ending to provide catharsis during unsettled times.

Programme illustration ‘Werther and Lotte’ an anonymous woodcut based on an illustration to Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774) by Hermann Kaulbach (1846-1909)

Massenet’s ‘Werther’ is based on the 18th-century classic of German literature ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’ by Goethe. The tale was published in 1774 and rapidly became popular across Europe as a book of cultural significance.  It is the story of a young man who lives by his ideals and kills himself for love.

Massenet’s operatic version, sung in French, first premiered over 100 years later in 1892. Notably, in the production I saw last week in London, Werther was the Italian tenor Vittorio Grigòlo, Charlotte was the American mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato, Albert was the Serbian baritone David Bižić and Sophie the American soprano Heather Engebretson. The performance was conducted by the Royal Opera’s Music Director the British-Italian Antonio Pappano. Other members of the cast were from Holland, Switzerland, Ukraine and Australia. The international buzz continued across the audience. I heard Spanish, Italian and American voices and I was sat next to a German couple who spoke brilliant English. It was a positive microcosm – no pathetic threats here of sending people back!

An international cast takes a bow.

The music was superb and the orchestra was in fine, truly dynamic form as it played to the masterly conducting and interpretation of Antonio Pappano. I’m no expert on French late-nineteenth-century opera, but I found this production riveting, gleefully wallowing in the emotional agitation with the musical tension escalating as the drama intensified. The acting of both DiDonato and Grigòlo was engrossing as they sang with fire and passion. It is a while since I’ve seen a live performance with the tingle factor, but the desperate, hopeless pain of Act 3 sent shivers down my spine more than once. Their singing was not perfection, but who’s complaining when it was so expressive and heart-wrenching. Frequently there’s something lacking in ‘perfect/multiple take’ studio recordings compared to experiencing the vibrancy of live performances.

Backstage at the ROH – the Act 4 attic room photographed by David Bizic who played Albert in the production.

And, as for the production, quite brilliant. The staging and lighting matched the progressively darkening mood of the opera moving from a brilliant blue summer, to a gloomy interior to a black winter night with falling snow. Act 4 was visually thrilling too as the distant attic room (shown above) slowly moved from the depths of the stage to the very front, mystically gliding towards us within a night of falling snow as the orchestra played ‘The Night before Christmas’.

At the end of this harrowing tragedy the two stars looked emotionally drained, but fortunately were revived by the rapturous applause they received.

Werther and Charlotte receive their rapturous applause.

And, finally the conductor left the orchestra pit and came on stage. Bravo, bravo.

Antonio Pappano joins his singers.

Did I mention I loved this?
I wish I could go again.