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Exit Commendatore

October 16, 2022

As Limelight put it, Lyndon Terracini is leaving Opera Australia “ahead of schedule.” Previously he had been due to leave at the end of 2023.

At the company’s AGM at the end of June, I asked the board the only question:

The upcoming production of Il Trovatore has a strong international roster for the 4 main principals. Could this not have been cast locally? Is the board considering a return to an approach which nurtures a local ensemble?

The then Opera Australia chairman, Glyn Davis, flicked it to Terracini.

Terracini said that Il Trovatore had not been able to be mounted for a long time because it needed the four best singers in the world. (This involves a misinterpretation of a famous remark variously attributed to Caruso or Toscanini that all that is needed for a successful performance of the work is the four greatest singers in the world.) He told a cautionary tale of some tenor in a European house (I can’t recall now which or who – maybe he didn’t say) who couldn’t sing the notes of the big aria and suffered shame and derision. For good measure, Lyndon somehow got on to the Ring Cycle and that only three singers in the world were capable of singing Siegfried.

Really? It was like watching Alan Jones at Q and A with his snippets of factoids which rarely sustain interrogation beyond the moment they are spoken.

Of course my question was really about the direction that the company would take in the future – ie at a time going beyond LT’s tenure, given various statements already by Fiona Allan about a future change in direction including more support for local artists. It was futile to expect an answer about that from Terracini.

Not that there would have been much point in asking Glyn Davis about the board’s plans either, since, although he had just stood for re-election as a director, he had a month ago been appointed as Secretary for the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and could hardly be expected to remain on the OA board for long.

OA announced its 2023 season in August, disappointing enough for Sydney but scandalously minimal for Melbourne.

Fast forward to Rod Sim’s appointment as director and election as chairman of the board in the last week of September. Amongst the flurry of stories based on either press releases or interviews (eg (1) (2)), I noticed the following:

  1. Sims would have a great team to work with. Fiona Allan was name-checked and the board mentioned, but not Lyndon T.
  2. There needed to be a ‘shifting of the dial” to more collaboration, support for local artists, for OA to be a leader in the sector and not be arrogant. (Has a government lost its way?)
  3. Sims was more keen on opera than musicals (though he didn’t expect the company to take artistic direction from him [laughing]); and
  4. While musicals bring in a lot of money at the box office, “that is just revenue….Box office is to do with revenue, but I’ve been in the business long enough to know that it’s profit that matters. So, before I form a view [about musicals], I want to know how much money they make.”

It was hard to see what Terracini could really be doing in 2023 (even allowing for the vague HANDA emeritus role) other than kicking his heels at Milthorpe and drawing his salary. Surely he wouldn’t be planning the 2024 season?

So it’s not such a surprise that Lyndon is leaving.

It would be more of a relief he was still in a position to do very much more.

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Anna Dowsley wears the pants

June 7, 2022

Last Tuesday, on an afternoon impulse (and on the strength of a matter settled Monday and payment anticipated) to the City Recital Hall for Pinchgut Opera’s production of Orcades Oronsay Orsova Oriana Orontea.

This was first performed in Innsbruck in 1656 and put on about 17 more times before the end of the century.  It is said this makes it a highly popular work for the era.  A main source for modern editions is a score that was owned by Samuel Pepys.  Two or three arias survive in the repertory.

Anna Dowsley (top left in a particularly unflattering shot) was Orontea, a queen of Egypt otherwise unknown to history or literature.  I’ve mostly seen Anna Dowsley in various trouser roles for Opera Australia (Cherubino, Siebel, etc).  That’s a bit of a pattern for early-career mezzos.  Though in a female role, she still wore a pants suit this time.  I know jokes are no good if you have to explain them, but the title of this post is a nod to Kanen Breen who has had a bit of a mirror career in the opposite direction [tautology alert!].

Whatever it popularity in its time, Orontea counts as a bit of an obscurity.  The house wasn’t particularly full.  I don’t think it was a piece that carried the same “buzz” as some other Pinchgut shows.

The production made inventive use of the Angel Place space.  I particularly liked the fake proscenium and curtains which yielded two striking reveals, including one with Anna Dowsley lounging on what, if the auditorium were in its native garb, would be a decidedly precarious spot on the railing of the gallery behind the stage (it could be an organ gallery if they had an organ). I guess there was a bench up against the railing for AD to recline on.

Towards the end of the first half, Andrew O’Connor, (pictured top centre above together with the big red bed, see further below; photo by Brett Boardman) in the ur-buffo role of Gelone, took an incredibly expert fall down some steps leading up to the proscenium.  Or was it?  At interval I noticed a bit of stage-carpentry being done to the steps in question.

The orchestra was a small one – percussion, a recorder (the sole wind instrument other than the organ), Erin Helyard conducting from the keyboard and smallish string and plucked string ensemble – 8 or 9 all up.

The music was very agreeable without to my ears being very striking. That could be a bit of an injustice to Cesti (the composer) if it takes for granted aspects of the style to which he contributed.  I did like how Cesti slipped into a kind of easy triple time whenever he had a good tune coming on. 

Towards the end of the first half I found myself dosing off a bit, in a not disagreeable way. 

After interval things livened up again, and then disaster struck: the surtitles stopped working.  This was a shame, as a whole series of erotic reconfigurations and revelations played out on an enormous Bob-Carol-Ted-and-Alice bed but we were little the wiser as to the detail before the expected final double nuptials where everyone’s (well, almost everyone’s) wishes came true in a delightful tableau.

So even in a very slight and in truth inconsequential plot, I want the text. If anything, a comic plot made up of many twists and turns makes that even more important. Prima la musica can only take you so far.  I contemplated giving Pinchgut a call to ask if I could come to the second half the next night for free.

No need, because next day an email arrived, apologising for the surtitle malfunction and offering two free tickets to Wednesday night, the final performance.  My friend Cx, who had been there on Tuesday and received his email before I received mine, got two and offered one to me.  I had not thought to ask for two (silly; why look a gift horse in the mouth?) but had already asked for one.  So it was that with Cx and D I went again on Wednesday.  I didn’t sense that many people took up the offer, which probably goes to show that most Pinchgut-goers are more busy and important than I am.  (If you have a last-minute free ticket, I’m your man.  I’ve just checked my mobile phone call log.  On 4 May I went to an SSO concert starting at 8pm after my friend and onetime teacher Lx called me at 5.29pm after his intended guest had to bow out on account of Covid.)

I enjoyed Wednesday night just as much as the first time round, and and of course even more once we got to the bit where the surtitles had conked out.  There was a gratifying chaconne which I had previously not detected.  And I’m now reasonably sure that Andrew O’Connor’s tumble on Tuesday was a mishap rather than a pratfall.  Either way he earns my respect because he recovered from it so well.  He is a trouper.

D was unimpressed by the final half hour or so spent on and about the big bed.  It did feel a bit as though the director had run out of ideas even though I can see why at the outset it would have seemed like a good idea.

I have referred on this blog before to a kind of tradition of people acclaiming Pinchgut productions as their best production yet.  That can hardly go on forever and to an extent I suspect it is a bit of a trick of perspective.  I am not a critic, but I doubt if people will say that about Orontea. On the other hand, if that had been on the cards, Pinchgut would hardly have been in a position to make the noble gesture from which D and I benefited, so who am I to complain?

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La Juive

March 11, 2022

On Wednesday to the opening night of Opera Australia’s La Juive, which has finally come to berth after previously being scheduled and postponed in 2020 and 2021 (my mistake).

This is a co-production with Opéra National de Lyon.  When I first saw that I was a bit cynical.  “Co-production?”  More like an outside production bought off the shelf, surely.  But no. When I delved, I discovered that this was billed as a co-production with Opera Australia by the Lyon company way back in 2016 when it premiered.  This gives you an idea of the long lead-time for opera planning.  It still seems likely that OA jumped on board after the Lyon company had embarked on its own long-lead plans.  Some aspects of the updating of this production to a 1930s France seemed more tailored to the production’s Lyon 2016 origin than a revival in Oz.

Just briefly, to outline the “well made play” of Scribe’s libretto: The Jewess of the title, Rachel, turns out not to be a Jew at all, having been taken in as an infant by the Jew Eléazar when her mother was killed and she disappeared during an invasion of Rome.  This only comes to light at the very end of the opera after she has been put to death for a forbidden relationship with a Christian.  This is Eléazar’s revenge against her father, Cardinal de Brogni who in an earlier life as a magistrate before he took to the cloth in grief for his wife’s and daughter’s death and disappearance was responsible for putting Eléazar’s sons to death as heretics.

OA publicity billed this as an opportunity to experience French grand opera.  This was half-true.  A big part of the “Grand” experience offered by the original was the spectacle occasioned by the strategic timing of the historical-fictional at the 1414 Council of Constance.  At its premiere in Paris in 1835 the public was wowed by horses on stage and so it was said, actual (ie, metal, not merely paste) armour.  We had none of that.  The climactic arrival of the emperor was signified by a muscle-Mary carrying a cross – possibly the executioner from Turandot on his night off.  We still had a big chorus, but they were costumed relatively drably for circa 1930 rather than 1414, and far from milling round in any lively crowd-like way, generally lined up on a set of stairs which OA could probably have economised further on scene shifting by leaving on stage from Otello, which is running at the same time.

Loyal first-nighters were in attendance, but the house was patchy towards the back of the stalls and in the circle.  These are difficult times for the company.  Notoriously, they have also been difficult times for the orchestra.  According to OA’s website, the orchestra’s permanent establishment is down to 40 and doesn’t include any flautist.  Under the heading “Freelance auditions,” “Musicians seeking casual work with the Opera Australia Orchestra are invited to apply by filling out an online application form.” Casual brass players on this occasion included former SSO principals Robert Johnson (horn) and (even more a blast from the past) Daniel Mendelow (trumpet).

OA’s publicity also referred to elements of the opera which were later taken up by Wagner.  One of these is in Die Meistersinger where the overture (Vorspiel) segues to a church service where a chorale is being sung.  In La Juive the overture leads to an organ and an offstage hymn.  We missed out on that particular effect in La Juive because OA dispensed with an overture.

I’m still trying to work out why the set (almost certainly too big for this stage) was constantly moving.  The stairs seemed to create more difficulties than possibilities.  It is hard for cast members to look dignified or imposing when they are busy concentrating on not falling down or tripping over their costumes.  

Musical ensemble was scrappy, especially in the first half, and there were moments when I thought singers could have been given a bit more time. 

Things looked up in the second half.  The libretto’s “well-made play” screws itself up by an accumulation of coincidences and revelations to some memorable final scenes.  Possibly Diego Torre’s rendition of Eleazar’s big number, Rachel, Quand du Seigneur (allusive origin of a running joke in Proust about a sometime prostitute, Rachel) made it all worthwhile. 

Some randomish observations:

  1. “Samuel” (Prince Leopold in disguise as a Jewish painter of that name) sings a serenade outside Rachel’s house.  He posts charcoal and wash female nudes (all his own work) on the wall.  Yes, he is a rotter, but what is he hoping to achieve? 
  2. Leopold is played by Argentinian Francisco Brito, a Rossinian high-tenor specialist.  He was terrific with some thrilling high notes and a dashing presence, but there was something odd about his diction.  I yearned for more consonants.  Maybe it’s a Spanish-speaker singing French thing.  Not that I’m at all a Francophone myself.
  3. Towards the end of the opera, Eléazar is in prison reading what I suppose is meant to be a Jewish sacred book.  It seemed odd (as I glimpsed when it was knocked from his hands) that such a book should have colour illustrations.

    Afternote: It could have been inspired (as pointed out by Thomasina in her comment below) by something like this:
  1. [should be 4: the Afternote picture has thrown the numbering out] I was impressed by the progress made by Esther Song (Eudoxie, wife of Leopold), last seen by me in student productions of Don Giovanni and The Breasts of Tiresias at the Con as recently as 2018.

Since I started writing this post, a few reviews have appeared online.

At Artshub, Gina Fairley, their national visual arts editor, obviously feels that more cheerful and accessible works are called for in the present times.  She concludes:

While La Juive might have been Halévy’s most successful opera, it is not Opera Australia’s. While the poor timing could not be avoided or predicted, this is not an easy opera regardless and demands a lot of its audiences. 

There are very few entry points for audiences new to the opera medium. And while I want to credit the presentation of different operas in the repertoire, this choice seems to underline a polarising effect of the elite and the popular. I think it does more in dividing opera audiences, than growing them.

What an odd conclusion.  Was she really the right reviewer?  Whilst I found the first half a bit underwhelming, and admitting that it is probably a work for connoisseurs, I don’t think it was particularly demanding, and despite the foreboding as to length that a 7pm start entails, the time for me rushed by – especially the second half.

At Limelight Jansson J. Antmann starts:

“Last night’s long-awaited return to the Australian stage of Fromental Halévy’s opera La Juive couldn’t have been grander.”

Well, actually, it could have been grander, as Antmann surely knows, given that he refers to an exhibition of the original costumes set designs at the National Gallery in Canberra in 1991. Still, I admire his long perspective re the “long awaited return”. As far as I can see (at least from Ausstage) the last performances of La Juive in Australia were in Melbourne and Adelaide in 1874.

Antmann goes into a lot of detail about the production which suggests that he had access to a lot more background briefing than I had.

There is another review to which I shall not refer further because the reviewer explains something which should come (at least the first time) as a surprise. (And no, I don’t mean that Rachel is Cardinal Brioche’s daughter. You are obviously meant to know this because it is dramatically-ironically inherent in the pathos of a scene between them.) The reviewer should have known better.

I’m going again in a bit under a week.  With any luck things will have settled down musically by then and I will be able to make better sense of the production.  I hope to get closer to Antmann’s view than Fairley’s.

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Platée

December 13, 2021
KB as P, from Pinchgut twitter

On Wednesday last week with D to Angel Place for Pinchgut’s production of Rameau’s Platée.

Were I flusher with funds or Pinchgut able/willing to offer cheaper tickets I would have gone more than once.  At the last minute Pinchgut released cheapish tickets for a filming session on Tuesday but by then I was already committed to Midsummer Night’s Dream at NIDA with the Con.  And then they released cheap seats for the last night – but that’s when I was going anyway.  The main loss to me was that the exuberant score whizzed past me without the opportunity of familiarity to savour more particularly its many delights.  Oh well, them’s the breaks.

It’s twenty years since I went to Pinchgut’s first production – not strictly an opera but a staged performance of Handel’s oratorio Semele.  It has become customary almost every year since for loyal Pinchgut followers to announce that “this is Pinchgut’s best yet.”  In line with that tradition, Pinchgut itself allowed themselves on facebook the following:

“Did you hear? Platée is being hailed as Pinchgut’s best opera yet!”

If they had in mind Peter McCallum’s review in the SMH, what he actually wrote was:

“Theatrically, Armfield’s unflagging production is, for me, the best in Pinchgut’s 20-year history.”

That’s a slightly different claim. 

For me, the notable thing about this production is how covid-inflicted autarky, throwing the company back on its Australian resources, may have yielded some opportunities (who knows if Neil Armfield would otherwise have been available?  or Cathy di Zhang, driven back here from Europe in 2020?) and has confirmed the company’s strengths (especially the orchestra, the availability and return of Cantillation, and a special nod to David Greco, practically brought up by Pinchgut as he himself acknowledges).

And, of course, Kanen Breen in the title role.  The (wafer-thin) plot entails a cruel trick played on Platée, a marsh-swamp naiad led to believe that Jupiter will marry her, when the whole point is that Juno will realise that Platée is so ugly that Jupiter could not possibly be intending to do so.  As Peter McC also wrote:

“the evening belongs to Kanen Breen as the swamp queen Platée, for whose vocal and burlesque talents the role could well have been written 276 years ago. … Breen’s Platée is a towering performance, not just for the high-heeled, thigh-length pink boots from which he dispenses this cavalcade of queenly kitsch, but for his indefatigable vocal and physical litheness, stamina and wit. Right at the end, just as one imagines la commedia e finita, Breen introduces a disturbing new tone, throwing body, soul and voice into a remarkable epilogue of scorned intensity.”

I can definitely endorse that.  But there is more.  Passed over by PMcC in this account, the heart of the opera was as Platée entertained dreams of impending connubial bliss.  That hinged on directorial touches by Armfield, but also on Breen’s characterisation of Platée’s vulnerable delusion.  Not really self-delusion because all were conspiring against her.  This was deeply poignant.

D and I are fans of KB. We treasure the memory of a post-performance encounter some time in the noughties (actually 2012; he was the Prince of Persia in Turandot) when KB energetically cycled by bound for Elizabeth Bay or wherever as we ambled at a more leisurely pace up Macquarie Street to our then Phillip-Street-south favourite parking spot. 

Awards schmawards. Surely this must snare Kanen a fourth Helpmann award.

Finally, what a treat to see an actual musette! I missed it on its first outing last year for the Charpentier Messe de Minuit. This is an instrument you learn of as a pianist because of various keyboard pastiches (starting with JSB in the Anna Magdalena Notebook and an English suite). You are told that it is like a bagpipe, which it is, but sweeter and quieter.

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Let’s go to an opera

December 13, 2021

Last Tues to the NIDA Playhouse for a performance of Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.

This was a joint production between the Conservatorium and NIDA.  Performers (onstage and orchestra) were from the Con; NIDA provided the venue and everything else.

In my opera-going life, Opera Australia has had two excellent productions of MSND.  First, the Moshinsky production first seen in 1978 with James Bowman as Oberon soaring in from the wings on a trapeze, and then the Baz Luhrmann “British India” production with the orchestra on a bandstand and the fairies creeping out from beneath it.  I see I was a bit underwhelmed on its last return in 2010, but that did not diminish my love of the work.

Opera is a difficult art.  With a student production you have to adjust your expectations and there will often be some necessary compromises.

The biggest compromise in this production was that instead of a chorus of children for the fairies (Britten wrote for boy trebles but it could well now be done with a “co-ed” group so long as there is an upper age/vocal maturity cutoff for the girls) this time we had five adult women as Mustardseed, Peaseblossom, Cobweb and Moth (as per the book) and a fifth, “Ariel” (on loan I suppose).  They seem to have been re-thought as dryads and glided around the stage in a stately tree-like way.

Practically speaking the reasons for this are obvious.  The Con opera and vocal tertiary program is in the business of providing parts for its (adult) students.  But it did have musical and dramatic consequences. 

Musically, an axis of comparison to the ethereal, other-worldly world of the chorus of fairies was weakened.  (There was also a cut of the “tongs and bones” number where the children play recorders and percussion while Bottom demonstrates his reasonable good ear in music.)  With five adult produced voices taking the chorus vocal lines it was also very difficult to make out the words for most of the songs.  I also felt the tempo of the final chorus, maybe tempered to the different nature of the ensemble because of the fairy rethink, was too fast with a big loss of lilt.

Dramatically, there was also a mismatch: it was difficult to make sense of Titania’s directions to her fairies to “skip away.” Bottom summons the named fairies to various errands and tasks to which they each in turn respond “Ready!”  (There is a running gag with Moth constantly being cut off.) You could imagine them waiting attentively and springing forth as bidden, but here they glided in at their own pace, more “When I’m ready.”  When Titania sends the fairies away, they sing “One of us stand sentinel” but nobody did.

Basically the whole scherzando aspect of the fairies was lost.

The other compromise of a sort is that the NIDA theatre is fundamentally unsuited to classical music because it is CARPETED.  This is hard on the singers and was especially hard on the counter-tenor singing Oberon. 

I didn’t mind other compromises such as the substitution of an electric keyboard for the harpsichord and celeste – there probably wasn’t room in the pit for them.  Sometimes the “harpsichord” was a bit implausibly loud but not overwhelmingly so.

Maddeningly, on Tuesday, after a delay of about 20 minutes (“unforeseen circumstances” we were told – putting me in mind of “accidental circumstances”), we were subjected to a school-concertish speech from Neal Peres da Costa before the beginning of the performance.  He even duplicated the welcome to country and acknowledgement which we had already received over the PA.  I said to my neighbour “Will there be a quiz on this?”  I wish I’d had the nerve to call out more loudly “Is this going to be in the exam?”

The upshot of all of this is that although I was glad to have gone, I didn’t come away with the glow that I might have expected to take away from the first live performance I had been able to see since June.

All the same, when on Thursday my friend U offered me a spare and free ticket for the final performance on Saturday afternoon, I accepted.

A friend I ran into on Saturday expressed some incredulity that I would want to go twice. I am glad I did, though I doubt if I would have paid to go a second time.  I enjoyed it more second time around.  I expect the performance had improved over the run, but mainly I had adjusted my expectations.  In the second half I also found a spot (in one of the boxes on the side) which gave Oberon more of an acoustical fighting chance.  And, small mercy, we were not subjected to a speech at the start.

It looks as though the Con (they like to call themselves SCM) and NIDA are planning on continuing this collaboration.  There are a lot of pluses for this theatrically.  The carpet will continue to be a very big negative.  I would prefer that NIDA in future conformed to operatic conventions in limiting admissions of latecomers to appropriate breaks in the performance.

In a program note by Kate Gaul and Stephen Mould (stage and musical director respectively) referring to musical treatments of MSND, Purcell’s Fairy Queen did not rate a mention even though Britten was described as “the first great composer for the opera stage [in England] since the age of Purcell (roughly contemporaneous with Shakespeare).”  OK:  1659-1695 (Purcell) and 1564-1616 (Shakespeare).  You could equally say Purcell is roughly contemporaneous with Mozart (1756-1792).

All of this seems a bit negative.  Actually, and especially in the very trying circumstances of this year, it was a terrific achievement to have mounted this production, whatever its imperfections.  There were some promising performances by the singers (the better ones were those with better diction) and the orchestra competently realised what must be a tricky score.

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International Women’s Day at the Opera

March 20, 2021

I went to Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle.

I almost didn’t make it because despite my careful checking of the Sydney Transport trip planner, the trains on the Bankstown line were in total disarray. The woman at the station told me that this had been going on for an hour and that the “app” had not been updated. In this brave new age of smartphones and social media it seems you can’t trust the “app” ever and need to precautionarily scour Twitter for any information as to how trains are running – not that there was all that much even there. Fortunately I was able to drive into town. A plus of the present covid world was that there was plenty of street parking available.

The opera begins with a spoken prologue. Peter McCallum in his review in the Nine/former Fairfax press paraphrases/interprets this reasonably accurately as follows:

The spoken prologue by librettist Bela Balazs that precedes Bartok’s one-act opera, Bluebeard’s Castle, invites the audience to interpret the tale as much as an inner drama as an outer one. The castle is the one we build in the mind, its darkness self-imposed, its seven locked doors, repressed secrets, and the interaction of its two protagonists, Bluebeard and Judith, an unresolvable struggle between the animus and the anima, the masculine and the feminine sides of our own psyche.

After the prologue, Judith, Bluebeard’s fourth wife (the choice of name must be a nod to Judith and Holofernes) arrives at Bluebeard’s castle. She has heard all the rumours, but she has still left her fiancé and her family because she loves Bluebeard. The castle is a dark and foreboding place, the very walls seem to weep – with sighs and whispers and (as it transpires) blood. Judith wants to let the light in. Maybe she wants to find out the truth, though what she says to Bluebeard is:

I have come here, for I love you.
I am here and only for you.
Let me see your castle, Bluebeard,
Let each door be open for me.”

Bluebeard keeps asking Judith “are you sure?” and reminds her that she doesn’t know what lies behind the doors, but she persists. At Judith’s insistence he gives her the keys to a series of locked doors which she opens. First, the torture chamber, then the armoury, the treasury (filled with gold). Of course! Every castle should have one of each of these, and it seems almost incidental that they are covered in blood and speak of cruelty. The blood is signified by a sinister minor-second discord which has been in the music from the start.

The fourth door reveals a garden of beautiful flowers. These too are covered in blood. Judith asks: “Who has given blood to feed them?” (Opera Australia surtitles say: “Who waters them?”) In the libretto, Bluebeard turns that question aside (“do not ask me”) and urges her to open the fifth door.

The fifth door reveals (we have to take it on trust in this production for which the Limelight critic estimated a production budget other than for the lighting of “about $500”) “a high balcony and a far landscape.” Libretto stage directions are that “Light pours in in a brilliant flood.”

Musically, the opera is a great arc, beginning and ending low and quiet. This is the musical climax. Having started in something like F# (mixed major-minor) the tonality bursts into a modalish C major with massive orchestral chords. Above them, Judith cries “Ah!” on a high C.

In the libretto, this is where Bluebeard wants the door-opening to stop. You could see it as being the point where he feels he makes the most favourable outward impression. He declares:

Here the lands of my dominion,
In this land I am the master.
Is it not a mighty kingdom?

In this production, it is at this moment that Bluebeard, having changed from his dinner jacket into underwear and a dressing gown, strikes Judith and sexually assaults her. Judith’s high C is not a cry of amazement but the shriek of a rape victim. She kicks him away.

Obviously, as re-imagined in this production, this is a deeply ironic moment: Bluebeard’s demonstration of his potency to Judith is his rape (or as good-as) of her.

In the libretto it is also a turning point. As Bluebeard repeats his question “Is this not a mighty kingdom?” Judith “is looking out stiffly and absent-mindedly” and answers (twice) “Yes, it is a mighty kingdom.” When Bluebeard goes on to declare “All of this is yours, my Judith” she replies “But the clouds cast bloody shadows.” When Bluebeard declares to Judith that she has delivered him from darkness, that her fair hand has done this and asks “Come now, let me hold you,” Judith responds “But two doors remain unopened.”

At about this point in this production, Judith draws a dagger – it looks a bit like a letter-opener/paper knife. She conceals it from Bluebeard as she dodges his continued advances. Eventually she (somewhat ineffectually) stabs Bluebeard in the shoulder. I didn’t notice where the letter opener came from. Did she have it all along? Could it be that (as in last year’s Munich production) she was a kind of Agent Starling all along? If so, (unlike in the Munich production) no foundation was really laid for this. It’s probably enough motivation that she’d heard the stories.

Back to the doors.

When the sixth is opened, Judith sees a mysterious lake of silent tranquil waters. Bluebeard tells her that these are tears. This is depicted by a wonderful orchestral sigh which is possibly (apart from the C major climax) the most memorable gesture in the score. (Molino, OA’s conductor, gave it a less measured interpretation than that I have linked to – almost a despairing shrug of grief – possibly an outcome of the cut-down wind forces, but I’m fine with that.)

Bluebeard insists that the last door will remain unopened. By this point the penny seems to have dropped for Judith (more obviously so in this production given the assault and the knife-drawing.) The blood and the weeping must be of his previous wives, who must lie behind the seventh door. Bluebeard gives her the key. Behind the door are the previous wives, still living. In this production, they are revealed hooded in a kind of S&M cabinet. Bluebeard is clearly planning to put Judith in there with them.

According to the libretto, Bluebeard shuts the seventh door on them all and remains alone and back in F#. With his final words “Now all shall be darkness” the music completes its arc to its starting point.

In this production, as Bluebeard prepares to bind Judith (the wound from the letter opener must have been just a flesh wound) the wives manage between them to strangle him with the cord he has chosen. They head off towards the light at the back of the stage leaving Bluebeard (vocal capacity apparently unimpaired) to utter what we take to be his dying words.

In his review in the Australian Book Review, Malcolm Gillies offers the mildest of remonstrances to all this (snippets only here):

Does this transformation from implicit to explicit, from mystery to thriller, have a price to pay? Well, yes, if you follow the precise yet subtle expression of the libretto, and the matching supple orchestral symphony, into which the two vocal parts fit like fingers in a glove….

The risk, evident on Monday night, is that this #MeToo thriller of 2021 removes the orchestra from its central musical role in progressing the drama. …

And the masked audience’s reception of this première? Applause all round, but we older men looked worried.

I’m not so inclined (I’m a few years younger than Gillies) to take my medicine with such a wan smile. This post has been delayed as I have tried to come to terms with it. I must be one of those fuddy-duddies. Maybe there is scope for a #metoo reframing but, to be honest, it was all terribly obvious.

Peter McCallum in the Nine/former Fairfax press eschewed the crucial plot-spoiler and jumped on a cheer-leading bandwagon (along with Limelight’s reviewer).

Such a psychological approach implies a range of possible meanings, few of them untroubling from the point of view of gender equality. This striking production by director Andy Morton and associate director Priscilla Jackman is having none of that. The rumours of Bluebeard’s cruelty to his former wives are given a #MeToo calling-out that will not be appeased with evasive symbolism

How exactly is the symbolism evasive? It’s symbolism. The whole thing is a myth and it is a given of the myth that Bluebeard is a monster. We all know that. Judith knows that. Obviously his monstrosity is not an isolated case since otherwise no myth.

I guess the putative evasion is that the myth is gendered and you shouldn’t be ducking that the monster is male.

A program note about Bluebeard’s Castle from the NY Philharmonic offers the view (not uniquely) that Bluebeard’s Castle and Bartok’s other stage works “document the composer’s exploration of an underlying theme: how human interactions play out in the darkest recesses of intimacy.” Whilst intimacy is the context here, I’d be inclined to cast the net wider than that: we all harbour dark secrets of some sort – if only because “dark secrets” is practically a pleonasm. Absent intimacy we can probably keep them locked up out of sight. But as you get close to someone the question will become “What’s behind the doors?” See also here. Do you really want to know? As the same NY Phil program note comments: “Bartok was a humanist but not an optimist.”

To repeat myself, that Bluebeard is a monster can only superficially be what the opera is about because we all knew that from the start: the opera must be saying something else.

All [re-]interpretations involve some violence to the original text and music. In this case, I don’t think the approach was worth it. On the opening of the fifth door with the blazing C-major Judith is at least momentarily taken in, as we too can be, by the vision (and music) splendid. It’s just for a moment despite what we already know, and misgivings soon return, but to turn the high-C into a rape-scream is jumping the gun.

After that there was a lot of dodging around the stage and paper-knife hiding and wielding – it was far from clear where the lake of tears fitted in, if anywhere. We were just filling in time until the great turning-the-tables liberation. OK, problem solved then. “See, I fixed it for you” (to coin a phrase).

There’s a lot more in the libretto which apparently didn’t require any attention or command any respect from the production team, including the synaesthesic-ish lighting colours for the various doors,

As to the music, I can’t say I’m in much of a position to judge the singers. They were fine and we’re told they are difficult roles.

The orchestra (quadruple woodwind trimmed down in a reorchestration; 9:7:5:5:4 strings, from memory) was too small, really. In the Opera Theatre (nowadays: “Joan Sutherland”) pit it would always be too small because this is very much a big-orchestra work. The massive orchestra represents the massive castle.

From my spot at the end of the front row there were some weird sonic effects which I put down to amplification – the oboes seemed to come from nowhere specifically at all and certainly not where the oboists were sitting. I was conscious of a few scrappy violin moments.

I’m ready to accept some of this exigency as a price of the work being staged at the SOH and for all I know Covid is a reason for some further reduction of orchestral forces – though that remains very definitely not my feeling about the orchestral bloodbath last year and its ongoing consequences. (I am not at all tempted by the now-announced Phantom of the Opera.) Maybe an eighth door could open onto the orchestra pit, or another big box on the stage stuffed with the ghosts of musicians-redundant.

The house was far from full, even allowing for the capacity constraints. It’s a rarity I would usually want to see again but ticket prices (I’d picked mine in a momentary slump) had rebounded above a level where I could justify returning for the final performance.

Still, despite all and especially despite that terrible re-contexted scream (vandalism really) and all that came with it, I enjoyed it.

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Ernani – night at the museum

February 5, 2021

Last night to Opera Australia’s “co-production” with La Scala of Ernani.

It was good to be back in the SOH and I received a friendly welcome back from ushers known to me. However hard the shut-down has been for me it must have been at least as difficult for them.

Pre-show front-of-house was an oddly-subdued experience. Numbers are necessarily down and we all must mask-up and keep our distance. Foregatherers took to the limited outside area to which we are permitted access for a last minute respite from mask-wearing and easier social distancing.

The bar closes at the beginning of the performance. Drinks may be taken into the auditorium. I only discovered this when I rushed out for an interval drink. That’s probably a good thing for me given Opera House drinks prices but it did make for a very quiet interval.

There was a conspicuous cheer and dare I say gratitude at the resumption of almost normal services. The performance was punctuated by smatterings of applause rather more frequently than (imho) it would usually merit, though they mostly tended to the mild-mannered. I would have preferred more discriminate outbursts at real emotional highlights.

Real emotional highlights, for me at least, were scarce because the production itself has given up on the opera according to its own terms. We are told this is on account of the ludicrousness of the plot. Audience resistance to this is meant to be forestalled by an “opera” encased with play-within-a-play inverted commas. The cast wander in during the overture as if they are a travelling company; there is lots of stage-hand-and-scenery business. Don Carlos’s costume and makeup were being touched up by pretend stagehands during the mood-setting prelude to his big scene.

I spotted Arky Michael amongst the “Opera Australia Actors” responsible for this and other business. It’s not a big role. These are tough times. A guy’s gotta work.

However the p-within-a-p think may work at La Scala where they have (if not now) oodles of productions (and it was pretty strongly criticised there) I don’t think this is the way to go here where we are down to just a few examples a year of what management itself has decided is a dying form. Mostly what this Verfremdung did for me was to break up the opera into a series of set-piece excursions into various operatic genres: an anthology of quaint, if intriguing (largely because of the prefiguration of later Verdi) museum pieces.

The low point was the comic business during the scene-change between Acts III and IV where a “stage-hand” held up a placard about the length of the intermission – three minutes – then “amended” by a “scene-painter.” Not that he could be a “scene painter” because the “curtain” he was “painting,” in terms of the play-within-a-play was a [no “””] curtain. I hope I am making myself clear. Oh no: a Joke at the Opera! According to the usual rule and factoring in the returning cheer, many in the audience obediently tittered. I just cringed.

Only at the end, when the play-within-a-play backdrop was lowered and Ernani bid bade his sad lonely (until he hooked up with Elvira) life adieu was I emotionally moved. Surely that desolation – ie, orphaned bandit and therefore but for his band an outcast – was where things should have started? On the train on the way home I watched a bit of the Met production with Pavarotti, Leontyne Price et al. It’s not as if Pavarotti was ever the world’s greatest actor, but you can sense his desolation from the start.

I don’t make the mistake of judging OA principals by historical Met standards. The principals were strong. Maybe Natalie Aroyan lacks a bit of coloratura refinement but she can rise above the storm impressively when required. The male chorus were a bit scrappy in faster bits. I put this down to coming back together after so long away. Something similar is almost always noticeable when an orchestra resumes after a break and I think a long break could be even harder for a chorus.

At least one now-redundant orchestra member was playing in the banda – perched up high on one side of the auditorium in the second level above the loge (which was musically quite effective).

From where I was sitting I became aware of a tiny buzz echoing back from the upper circle – a bit like what was once called a jew’s harp – whenever the baritone (Don Carlos) was singing. I don’t know whether this was an artifice of the amplification/enhancement system though I suspect so. There was another moment when the violins were really digging into the accompaniment to “Lo vedremo, veglio audace” where I wondered if the electricity was lending a bit much of a helping hand.

In the surtitles in Act II an “it’s” which should have been “its” has eluded any proof-readers. (“The castle is loyal, like it’s master.”) Just saying.

These are obviously difficult times for the opera. When tickets first went on sale, the prices were high and the cheapest categories of tickets were no longer being sold. Later the prices came down a bit and I took the plunge. If you were to pick your own seats online you couldn’t help OA out by buying adjacent seats for members of the same household. I’m not sure what box-office staff remain to accommodate such a possibility or if the actual box-office has by now reopened.

Now the capacity limit has been lifted to 75% which would be a relief for the company save that it is saddled with houses full of scattered single seats [Afternote 7/2: perhaps this was a consequence of how available seats were being displayed because that seems to have now resolved on the website into a more conventional array of available seats. Prices are still up though. Further afternote: Friends have received upgrades, presumably then reducing the number of single seats. Right now for tonight (8/2) there are about 530/1440 seats available, ie, on a 75% capacity about 180 seats which could still be sold. For the remaining performances, it’s about 440, so about 90 for each.] Counter-intuitively, the prices have zoomed back up in all reserves. I doubt if they will shift many in this production. The hated $9.80 booking fee is a further disincentive against casual purchases. The very cheapest seats on the side upstairs are still not on sale.

I’m not personally worried about going to the theatre under present conditions but older people could well be and of course conditions can change suddenly.

These days AO is issuing little program booklets gratis.

This is the artists page:

This is the opening spread:

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Last nights at the opera?

January 31, 2021

The above diagram was published by members/former members of the Opera Australia orchestra in response to last year’s round of redundancies implemented by that company’s management.

It is based on the pit layout for Turandot, traditionally reckoned the noisiest opera in the company’s regular repertoire. Noise mostly comes from the orchestra so this is a convenient way of representing the orchestra at its fullest regular complement.

The black dots represent redundancies. There are 21 black dots. News/publicity of the redundancies has only mentioned 16 players being made redundant, so I’m guessing the other 5 dots represent unfilled positions which have also been made redundant.

A number of the players (“at least 10” on one report) took Fair Work proceedings against the company. All but long-term oboist (and union rep) Mark Bruwel have accepted confidential settlements. Bruwel’s claim is currently headed for mediation.

As public money is involved, you have to wonder at the requirement for confidentiality, which experience tells will have been imposed by the company rather than at the request of the players. What are the odds that a non-disparagement clause has also been snuck in? It’s hardly an equal bargaining ground and some of the players may have little choice but to accept engagements as casuals to fill the gaps when any work requiring a real orchestra (as opposed to the mooted future of musicals) is programmed.

We never hear much from Rory (prefect) Jeffes, Opera Australia’s Chief Executive Officer. If public announcements (by him, it must be said) are a guide, it seems Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini calls the shots. If Terracini himself has taken a pay cut from his very substantial salary during the company’s present hard times, I haven’t heard about it. I don’t mind Rory so much – whatever his real role is it seems as though being good cop to Terracini’s bad cop is part of it – but skiter and fighter Terracini is very hard to bear. He has such form for talking himself up and others down. Historic example written by his sometime publicist (not that this is mentioned in the article) here; latest outing here.

So what can you do when an opera company is being trashed? Not that it hasn’t been going on for a few years now.

In a moment of weakness and opera deprivation I booked tickets to Ernani and Bluebeard’s Castle, both rarities (once I have seen Ernani I will have seen all of the Verdi works in my old edition of Kobbe’s Opera Guide other than Sicilian Vespers).

These could well be my last nights at Opera Australia. I have very mixed feelings about having a good night out in the face of such an industrial and cultural bloodbath.

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Opera Notes

November 8, 2019

1. Viaggio

I went to Il viaggio a Reims again.

My friend Ub also came.  She had a lot on and told me she would be leaving at interval because of an early start the next morning. I was shocked.

I toyed with asking Ub if, supposing  she really was going to leave after the first half (I urged her not to),  I could arrange for a frugal friend to take her place.  It is just as well I didn’t because at interval, enthused, she announced her intention to stay.  At the end, exhilarated,  she declared: “I feel like I’ve just been at a coronation!”  She also said she would always follow my advice in the future, but she was only joking about that.

I still can’t say I found Viaggio as funny as many of the audience seemed to – especially so far as much of the laughter seemed to be in response to the characters from the surrealist pictures. To me, laughing at an extra in a costume is a bit like clapping the scenery.  But apart from the odd moment where I felt embarrassed by others’ mirth, I did really enjoy it.

Just a note about standards: notwithstanding a “courageous” High D on the first night (better if a little more cautious on the second), Shanul Sharma is a rising star.  I still cannot imagine he is on the same level as Juan Francisco Gatell, who took the same role in this production at the Netherlands Opera (and who so impressed me as Don Ottavio recently in Rome).  That’s no skin off SS’s nose – it’s Europe vs the Antipodes.

2 The Marriage of Figaro.

To a revival of the David MacVicar production from 2015.  The conductor and many of the cast also returned.

I used to think this my favourite opera. On the strength of this performance I am no longer sure.

I have thought about this since and I think it really comes down to: too fast (other than Barbarina’s little aria and the passage in Act II which I complained about in 2015) and too slapstick.  The set for the last act does not help – acres of open space and recitative owing to the excision of the generally-excised arias.

I missed Taryn Fiebig, who has been a bit of an institution for OA as Susanna.  Justine Nguyen wrote in Limelight  of Stacey Alleume as Susanna that “A magnetic stage presence, the soprano gave a dramatically nuanced portrayal of a character that’s often played as just perky or sassy” but to me perky and sassy are pretty much the first words that come to mind about SA’s performance, though I wouldn’t say just so.

With the slapstick (Paulo Bordogna’s characterization notably broader) everyone was in such a hurry to have a good time that there was an premature outburst of applause in Susanna’s “Deh vieni, non-tardar” (corresponding to 4:52 here) – why wait, indeed?  I know that can just mean a few ignorant people but mostly this sort of thing doesn’t come from nowhere.

To me there should be an almost Shakespearian Rom-Com (but more than those two hence the invocation of the bard) emotional turning in a sixpence in this opera.   I didn’t feel it – for me the Com drove out the Rom and the extra Bardish bit – maybe you could call it heart.

3.  Lyndon Terracini

has had his term as artistic director of Opera Australia extended again, to the end of 2023.  Celebratory interviews have been given.   This interview with him published in 1998 in The Australian set the tone for Terracini’s public outings long ago: talking himself up by talking others down. I can only guess that the movers and shakers on the OA board don’t notice it because that’s the way movers and shakers are.  (This went nowhere, obviously.)

Terracini told Limelight Magazine  “I’ll always argue that pieces like West Side Story are much better pieces than something like L’Elisir d’amore.”    There is something pathological about his combativeness, even if by “always argue” in this case he means advance a proposition rather than pick a fight.   Terracini has also said that in future all new OA productions will be “digital,” which is dispiriting.

 

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Room at the Inn

October 25, 2019

Coronation_of_Charles_X_of_France_by_François_Gérard,_circa_1827

Last night to the first night of Opera Australia’s production of Il Viaggio a Reims.

This is a party-piece put together by Rossini for the celebrations associated with the coronation of Charles X in 1825. It was very much an occasional work and not revived in Rossini’s lifetime. It was probably probably never intended to have a lasting existence because of its extravagant requirements for an enormous cast of stars. Rossini did recycle quite a lot of the music in his opera Le Comte Ory. Il Viaggio was reconstituted/reconstructed in the 1970s from various fugitive sources and first performed in 1984. I suspect the modern recording industry has something to do with its revival.

The opera’s plot is the flimsiest of pretexts: a disparate group of travellers from all over Europe bound for the coronation at Reims is stuck at an inn. They have a bit of drama between each other and once it becomes clear that they are never going to make it to Reims in time because no stage horses are to be had they put on a kind of concert before their planned return to Paris for the remainder of the celebrations. This concert forms the bulk of the the last act, where various characters sing numbers representative of their respective nations.

From this comes the one extract which often features in operatic trivia quizzes. The English milord, Lord Sidney, declares that he is no musician and only knows one song, which he then proceeds to sing, namely “God Save the King.” (This is a variant of the other joke about non-musical Britons, who know only two tunes – one being GSTK and the other not.)

Is it just because of its early imprinting on me that this seemed particularly stirring, or does the cultural prestige of the English at the time also have something to do with it? Obviously, that is not a question I am able to answer.

Inspired by the painting above, this production discarded even that flimsy pretext for a flimsier one involving an art gallery. For me this didn’t really work because it was hard to work out who was who – if anyone was really anyone. It didn’t help that sometimes the surtitles were faithful to the libretto and other times they were tailored to the amended scenario.

This didn’t matter to the first-night crowd who shrieked with laughter at everything. I didn’t personally find it so funny, but the singing was great as was much of the orchestral music. Things were best when the scenario reverted more closely to the original scenario with the concert in the final act. This merged with the art gallery theme by a tableau vivant based on the painting which was what the production had been aiming at all along.

As a bit of an in-joke, on a par with Kanen Breen wearing a dress, Teddy Tahu-Rhodes took off his shirt again. This cannot go on forever.

Cunning old Rossini really has something up his sleeve with the final aria of the (originally) poetess to harp accompaniment after so much more busy musical material for most of the opera. (Her first appearance – in fact a non-appearance as she sang offstage, also accompanied by harp, was rather robbed of such impact because of the adjusted scenario.) For us now there is also a kind of dramatic irony given the pious hopes expressed of Charles X’s reign – which in fact turned out to be such a fizzer.

I just made it by the skin of my teeth having only noticed at about 6.10pm that the performance started at 7 pm rather than the customary 7.30. Foolishly but in a panic I drove in and was only able to secure a spot at the deepest point of the SOH double helix carpark. In hindsight I could probably have made it in 10 minutes from Circular Quay if the train I could have caught ran on time. There was also a Schools Spectacular in the Concert Hall starting at the same time which, even worse, finished at the same time. It took more than 40 minutes to escape afterwards.

I’m going again on Saturday (which was in part the source of my confusion for the start time as Saturday is at the usual 7.30) and am looking forward to it.

The short run of only 5 performances is a great box-office success for Opera Australia as it appears to be close to booked-out.

 

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