Plain English

Fairy Tales of Birmingham

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:42:25 +0000

It's not every day that I'll take the trouble to go to Birmingham to hear a piece of contemporary music - or to do anything else, as the train fare is 20 per cent more than the fare from Oxford to London (though the distance is smaller), and as my wife refuses to drive in Birmingham because of its diabolical navigation difficulties. Despite having to share our carriage on the return leg with a gang of totally hammered public school boys with cut-glass accents pretending to be proletarian lager louts - a charming, if baffling aspiration - it was worth the journey. For we were at the world première performance of "Rumpelstiltskin: A grotesque fable for our times" by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the score composed by David Sawer and directed by Richard Jones.

Incest without the Morris Dancing

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:50:22 +0000

photo credit: Johan Persson / ENO

I've recently been to a performance in London where I imagine the audience reaction resembled that of the audience at the Paris première of The Rite of Spring on 29 May 1913. Indeed, the second half of the evening was a performance of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring; but this was a double-bill, and it was the conclusion of the first half at which the audience sat for 30-45 seconds, too shocked (or embarrassed, claimed its detractors) to applaud. There was not a sound in the vast auditorium of the Coliseum at the end of Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle until the stage lights went off altogether, and the house lights came up. Then there was a great deal of clapping and shouting - with the voice of a solitary booer carrying over the crowd. I, for one, was too stunned to make very much noise.

That Bloomsbury Voice

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:46:13 +0000

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could hear the voice of Boswell, or of Mme de Lieven. Or if we had recordings of the voices of Hume, Gibbon and Macaulay? Or, to enter the realm of the possible, of Lytton Strachey, who wrote about the others in Portraits in Miniature. Indeed, Strachey's recording might be the most interesting of the bunch, because all who knew him have remarked on his remarkable speaking voice, which rose from a deep bass to a tinkling soprano, only to swoop again to the lower timbre. I think I understand what is meant by this, because I had an Uncle Louis whose voice played this trick. It was completely undependable in its pitch, and not in his control; even in his old age, it sounded like an adolescent boy's voice that had not quite broken or changed. But in addition to this, Strachey had a family vocal tic of accenting the unexpected syllable, and of strange inflection.

That boy's magic horn

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:57:55 +0000

Tired of commuting to London for my daily culture-fix, it was wonderful to drive only as far as Oxford last week for the opening of the 2008 Oxford Lieder Festival, www.oxfordlieder.co.uk. This is the brainchild and labour of love of Sholto Kynoch, a charismatic song accompanist and chamber musician (the pianist of the new Phoenix Piano Trio, who will be performing the Beethoven trios in 2010). Interestingly, for me at any rate, the opening recital of songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn was given at the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building of the formerly all-female St Hilda's College.

Brecht's problem play

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:58:53 +0000

Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children is a problem play, and the National Theatre's new production has had more than its share of troubles, with a press night postponed because the actor playing the second lead, the chaplain, either quit or was sacked, and replaced by an excellent Stephen Kennedy. This diverted critical attention, for a few moments, from the fact that this production, in a whizz-bang translation by Tony Kushner, is directed by Deborah Warner and stars her constant collaborator, Fiona Shaw.

Dies illa

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:54:21 +0000

I love going to what a former-debutante girlfriend used to call (generically) "the play" at the Almeida Theatre in Islington. The small, 325-seat auditorium is a warm, intimate space, the foyer and bars are welcoming, and it's located just off Upper Street, which has gone from slummy to chic in the past 20 years, and teems with interesting restaurants, making it an adventure to eat after the show. In addition the theatre's adventurous programming policy makes almost everything the company presents very well worth the schlepp to this part of North London.

Joseph Millson in Judgment Day at the Almeida Theatre. Photo Keith Patterson

A high time in Auld Reekie

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:43:43 +0000

Edinburgh 2009 (2)

Apologies are owed to Edinburgh International Festival director, Jonathan Mills, as this is his third, not second, EIF, which I jolly well ought to know, as I was here for his inaugural festival, and very fine it was, too. My Edinburgh host and I were both convinced it was number two; my host and I are the same age, verb sap.

Very often in the past I have found the musical events of the Edinburgh Festival the most memorable, such as the occasion in the 1960s when at a Richter/Rostropovich complete Beethoven piano-cello sonatas cycle, I sat opposite a young Daniel and Jacqueline du Pres, mesmerised, sadly, not by the Beethoven but by du Pres nibbling the ends of her golden tresses. And they left at the interval.

The curse of the Counter-Enlightenment

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:54:46 +0000

Edinburgh Festival 2009 (1)

Edinburgh, the capital of the devolved nation of Scotland, is the place to be this summer, partly owing to the fuss about the compassionate freeing of the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Mr Al-Magrahi. I've yet to talk to a Scot who thinks the Libyan actually did it; so much dinner-table conversation here consists of conspiracy theories, and the wilder they are, the more people seem to enjoy propounding and rebutting them.

Last year was the first time I missed the Edinburgh Festival in many years, and it was also the first festival for its new director, the Australian composer, Jonathan Mills. Mills is a friend of mine (that's the interest declared); so I'm very pleased that I've been able to come this year. I arrived at the beginning of the second week and, my god, it started with a bang.

(This is the visual emblem of the 2009 festival, toile de Jouy, with urban activities and scenes substituting for pre-Enlightenment bucolic ones,)

Tristan's triste tryst in Sussex

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 14:40:10 +0000

Nikolaus Lehnhoff's minimalist production of Tristan und Isolde at Glyndebourne depends for its effect largely on Roland Aeschlimann's curving abstract sets and Robin Carter's amazing lighting effects. Andrea Schmidt-Futterer's mediaeval/Japanese warrior/Ku Klux Klan (in the case of the demented-looking Act III shepherd) costumes are the least successful element; though they do have the merit, when combined with Carter's shadow-casting lighting, of concealing the fuller Wagnerian figure. This is the third outing for this production, which everyone says reflects Lehnhoff's early association with Wieland Wagner, whose 1964 Bayreuth Tristan provided the template for all future abstract-ish stagings. Though I've seen Tristan done in 1920s/30s costume, aboard a cruise ship (or ocean liner) and in a casualty department of a hospital, there's a great deal to be said in favour of a production where the setting is not determinate. Thought it's always risky, as a permanent abstract set courts boredom, it does allow us to think Wagnerian deep thoughts (or feel alarming feelings) about annihilation and the just-conceivable pleasures of the extinction of desire.

(Photograph: Alastair Muir)

The Four Day Ring

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:49:39 +0000

Not all that long ago I was going to attempt to go to all the many performances of Wagner's Ring taking place all over the planet, and write a book about the experience. My publishers decided it was uncommercial (I still think they were wrong), but not before I had been to complete cycles at Adelaide, for the first Australian Ring and to a wonderful and wacky Ring in the famous opera house at Manaus, near the Amazonian jungles of Brazil.

Snake oil and sick sopranos

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:22:52 +0000

It was one of those cinematic nights at the opera. The soprano is ill; her understudy gets, and makes the most of, her chance of a lifetime - and a star is born. In this case she wasn't the cover; in fact she was on holiday in Leipzig (Leipzig?) when the call came that Ekaterina Siurina had a throat infection, and would she come to Glyndebourne and sing the lead role of Adina in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore that very evening? She was good - very good. How did she do it?

(photo of Peter Auty by Simon Annand)

Second city's cultural feast

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:28:10 +0000

I confess I've only paid flying visits to Manchester - though I think of it as England's second city - and both of those were for purposes of plugging a book. Indeed, prior to last week I had seen nothing of Manchester save the large office building housing the TV and radio studios of BBC Manchester. Though I saw these again, making fleeting appearances on both media, I also managed to see something of this half-dilapidated, half-modernised city, its centre full of pompous Victorian municipal buildings, of which most seemed to have been converted into night-clubs, though the famous Free Trade Hall is now a Radisson luxury hotel.

A fishy tale?

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:13:32 +0000

Bill Cooper

The opera at Glyndebourne on a warm summer evening is one life's big and unfailing pleasures. The air-conditioned auditorium with its good acoustic and excellent sightlines is always comfortable; and you can reduce the considerable cost of the evening by bringing your own picnic and drink. All this means that the general director, David Pritchard and his team can take a box office risk or two each season. This year's gamble is Rusalka, the tale of the water nymph who wants to be human, the first opera they've staged by Dvořák, and director Melly Still's opera début. Also making her house début is Rae Smith, who designed the great production of Warhorse now playing in London. So we knew we were in for something good.

In fact, it's as good a production as I can imagine (having seen this strange fairy-tale piece once before at the Edinburgh Festival in a slightly cheesy Russian production). As in Warhorse Ms Rae has roles for dancers/acrobat/handlers/stagehands. Dressed in very dark colours, with only their hands showing, they tumble and cartwheel around a sunken pit in the centre of the stage, acting as waves that lift and transport the singers in the underwater scenes. Rusalka's sister nymphs are flown in from the tower, scary, white 20-foot-long tails dangling and coiling. Ana María Martínez, the Puerto Rican soprano, whom we've seen at Covent Garden as Donna Elvira and Violetta, makes her house début in the title role, lustrous and convincing- despite having to shed the lengthy mermaid tail in order to develop legs. It's to her and Ms Still's credit that though this metamorphosis is obviously a metaphor for developing female genitalia, it's done with delicacy and aplomb.

Diva details

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:19:47 +0000

The current revival of La traviata at the Royal Opera House could easily have been one of the great performances ever staged there. Richard Eyre has returned to direct his 1994 production, with its staggeringly wonderful, lavish sets by Bob Crowley (the sight of the elaborately grotesque yet beautiful décor of Flora's Act II scene 2 salon alone is worth the price of a ticket) and magical lighting by Jean Kalman. Moreover, Alfredo is sung by the Maltese tenor, Joseph Calleja, who makes the transition from chest to head voice and back again so smoothly that there is not even a hint of gear-changing. Thomas Hampson sings Germont père at Covent Garden for the first time, and is a total wow, handsome both to look at and to hear. Violetta is a genuine diva, Renée Fleming.

Flora's salon in Act II, Scene 2

Shakespeare Propelled?

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:34:45 +0000

(photo Nobby Clark)

Chip off the (solid oak - he's Peter Hall's son) old block Edward Hall leads Propeller, an all-male company dedicated to performing the works of Shakespeare. I try to see all their productions; they're usually superb, and never less than exciting - every one I've seen makes you think again about a text you know well, and the revelations generally come thick and furious.

Hall and his troupe approach Shakespeare with fundamental honesty; they do not try to sugar-coat the bitter pill. So their 2006 The Taming of the Shrew was tremendously funny, but there was the strong black espresso of brutal misogyny under the froth of comedy. Now they've returned to A Midsummer Night's Dream (their first production of it was in 2003) and have paired it with The Merchant of Venice.