A tremendous Tosca with Terfel in top form

Bryn Terfel as Scarpia

According to operbase.com, Tosca is the fifth most popular opera in the world. Of Puccini’s works, only La bohème ranks higher.

Finally getting to see Tosca, it’s not difficult to see why it rates so highly. The current Royal Opera revival of Jonathon Kent’s production is a traditional take, but certainly doesn’t suffer for that.

At its most simplistic, this is effectively a battle between love and lust. The story is played out against a background of the struggle between the Italian monarchy and the forces of republicanism, led by Napoleon, in 1800.

This is a tale of celebrated singer Floria Tosca and her love for painter Mario Cavaradossi. The latter is on the republican side and, when his old friend Angelotti, a former consul of the Roman Republic, escapes prison, he vows to help.

Unfortunately, Cavaradossi’s lover, Tosca, is a tad jealous – laughs in the first act – and this allows local chief of police Baron Scarpia to go fu-on Iago with her and unleash the green monster, with disastrous effects.

Unusually, this doesn’t just mean that the female lead herself dies – or that takes an entire act to die or, indeed, that Cavaradossi is a stereotypical operatic tenor wimp.

There are some really interesting themes here – not least in Puccini’s treatment of religion. Tosca is pious – to the extent of setting out candles by the body of Scarpia after she kills him. Shortly before taking up the knife, she sings the great aria, Vissi d’arte, which asks: “why, why, Lord, ah, why do you reward me thus?”

Now of course, if we’re to get all theological over this, then Tosca clearly doesn’t understand that the Judea-Christian god can do whatever he damn well pleases and it’s all and always okay. For instance, let us not forget that being ‘tested’ is good.

But there is a sense here that Puccini might be daring to suggest that all her prayers and good acts mean absolutely nothing. And given that she leaps to her death at the end – and therefore ensures that she cannot be buried in consecrated ground – we have all sorts of possible philosophical ideas that we could explore.

Kristine Opolais as Tosca

This is a wonderful production: magnificent sets and a cracking performance from the house orchestra under Puccini expert Alexander Joel (Billy’s half bro).

Before the performance, the audience was informed that both Kristine Opolais as Tosca and Vittorio Grigóla as Cavaradossi were a tad ‘under the weather’, but were hoping to give of their best. 

If Grigóla was ‘under the weather’, I’d worry about seeing him when he was on top form. He’s got one heck of a pair of lungs in him even when not at his best. Of course, he doesn’t always belt everything out at maximum volume, à la Ethel Merman, but it says something that such a comparison occurs at all.

And given that his performance at curtain call was like someone who was celebrating after just setting the 100m record for the universe, it’s tough to comprehend what the capital’s weather had done to him.

Opolais may have lacked some volume, but she more than made up for it in nuance and subtlety.

And here’s the thing: Bryn Terfel is basically global number one Scarpia at present – and it’s really not tough to see why. He’s superb in the role, lifting it far above simple panto villain. His scenes with Opolais crackle, which merely shows how her scenes with Mr I Like Me Who Do You Like lack any real frisson.

The Other Half and I had caught Terfel once before, as Hans Sachs in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, but it had been a lukewarm meeting.

This, however, made it absolutely clear why Terfel is a global opera star. A fantastic performance.

That said, it’s a fabulous production as a whole, with fabulous music and I’d watch it again tomorrow if I had the chance.

       

Nessan dorma hits the heights in this Turandot revival

Bread and circuses for the masses have overlapped with the cruelty of a regime more than once down the centuries, and they meet head on in Puccini’s swansong, Turandot, which is currently on revival at the Royal Opera House, London.

The curtain rises on Peking, where a mandarin is announcing that, as per the law, the Prince of Persia is to be beheaded at moonrise after failing to answer three riddles in an attempt to win the hand of the Princess Turandot.

When excited crowds are repelled by guards, they knock over a blind man in the process. His slave, Luì, calls for help. Seeing the incident, a young man recognises his father, the deposed king of Tartary.

Later, he sets eyes on Turandot and, instantly in love, decides to take the riddle challenge.

He solves all three riddles, but the princess says she will not marry him, saying she must stay pure.

The prince sets her a challenge: if she can guess his name by the next morning, she can have him executed – and thus escape the marriage.

She has attempts made to torture the name from Luì, who is in love with the prince, but the slave girl grabs a knife and kills herself rather than give up his name.

Turandot is astonished by these events, while the bloodthirsty crowd, now shamed, quietly follows Luì’s body out.

The prince reproaches Turandot for her cruelty, then kisses her. The kiss starts to thaw the ice princess and he gives her his name – Calaf – placing his life in her hands.

She calls everyone together – including her father the emperor – and says she has his name: “it’s love!”

Left unfinished at the time of the composer’s death in 1924 – the first two acts were complete, together with substantial amounts of the third – it was finished by Franco Alfano and first performed in 1926 at La Scala.

Like more than one of Puccini’s previous works, it has been viewed negatively ever since.

In his 1956 book, Opera as Drama, critic and musicologist Joseph Kerman wrote that “dramatically it is a good deal more depraved” [then Tosca], although Sir Thomas Beecham (who had met the composer and conducted his works) once observed that anything Kerman said about Puccini could “safely be ignored”.

Almost 90 years later, in 2013, Michael Tanner in the Spectator called it “an irredeemable work, a terrible end to a career”.

Many complaints revolve around the rush from Luì’s sacrifice to Calaf’s rough kissing to Turandot’s thawing, but since this part of the work was Alfano’s, it’s easier to see why problems might occur.

The Royal Opera House’s current production – first seen in 1984 – helps to deal with this by having Luì’s cortege return to the stage to dampen the celebratory mood at the end.

When discussing La traviata a couple of weeks ago, I suggested that, while honour as a concept might be considered less of an issue in Western society than it once was, as long as ‘honour’ crimes exist (and they do so across a variety of cultural and religious traditions), then the core themes of Verdi’s work remain salient.

I’d add that if ‘honour’ is not a major theme in UK culture today, we still have serious class and other divides that carry with them similar attitudes.

The overarching point is that these operas remain so alive and so popular because, like Shakespeare, they deal with universal themes of the human condition.

Over on Twitter a year or so ago, it was suggested to me that, however thin or preposterous the plots may seem, opera can convey an underlying truth.

It’s a complex truth – and partly emotional, since we respond to music in a particular way. Here, when Calaf sings that iconic aria, Nessun dorma, the eyes are pricked, the spine tingled and the skin goosebumped.

In this revival, Roberto Alagna gave it everything required to produce just such a response, in a performance that also managed to find some sense of real emotion in a difficult character.

As a slight aside, how I wish audiences would not burst into applause so quickly after a big aria like Nessun dorma: leave it a moment to bask in the magic. And magic it is – one of those moments that really screams out how great opera can be.

Lisa Lindstrom has returned to Covent Garden to play Turandot, her mannered, choreographed movements and the purity of her voice perfect for the ice princess so determined to remain aloof.

Yet both these stars are usurped by Aleksandra Kurzak as Luì, whose soprano soars in her arias and who acts with a poignant mix of fragility and sacrificial strength.

Brindley Sherratt as Timur (Calaf’s blind and aged father), Leon Košavić, Samuel Sakker and David Junghoon Kim as ministers Ping, Pang and Pong respectively, and the Royal Opera Chorus all deserve special mention, while the use of dance certainly adds to the production.

Dan Ettinger conducts the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, which does sometimes seem to be competing with the singers.

Having originally seen this production on television a couple of years ago, I knew I liked Andrei Serban’s staging, but seeing it live really opens everything up and I appreciated it even more. It manages to be both claustrophobic and yet epic, which suits the tensions inherent in the piece perfectly. Sally Jacobs’s costumes are equally spectacular.

Puccini’s music is fascinating – not least as this is his most tonally-adventurous score, peppered with Chinese music to give it an element of authenticity.

The whole is thoroughly marvelous – and whatever you think about the plot, Nessun dorma live, sung as well as here, will live with you for a very, very long time.

And there are free YouTube and outdoor BP screenings this Friday night. So to find out more, visit the Royal Opera House site here. Make sure you have hankies.

A Butterfly that takes flight for the heights

Over the years, Puccini might have been scorned by some as penning scandalous operas, but his works hold four spots in the top 25 operas performed globally. Only Verdi has more entries.

Scoff at the plots if you want, but these works are much loved.

At number six is Madama Butterfly, currently enjoying a run at the Royal Opera House and the latest stop on my own operatic journey.

The plot is wafer thin: US naval officer marries teenage Japanese woman, gets her pregnant, leaves, returns three years later with American wife and demands they take the child, leaving her to kill herself.

Based on real events, part of its power is that however easily and quickly you can outline that story, there is far more to it than simple melodrama.

At the core of events is the callous nature of US imperialism (and imperialism and colonialism in general) and its inherent racism.

Even before we see Butterfly herself, Pinkerton has made it clear that theirs will be a marriage of convenience until he finds a ‘proper’ American wife, and that he regards Japanese customs around contracts and divorce as being amusingly easy to subvert to his whims.

Butterfly has converted to Christianity secretly before the wedding, taking her impending marriage incredibly seriously and determined to fully become American. Yet not only has Pinkerton no intention of taking her to the US, her own family, on discovering her conversion, disown her.

Here then are ideas to contemplate about the interaction of cultures.

Ermonela Jaho – described by The Economist as one of the world’s most acclaimed soporanos – is simply wonderful as the eponymous Butterfly, conveying the necessary vulnerability of the character, but without overdoing the sense of victimhood or making her naïve faith in Pinkerton seem unbelievable.

Her singing is simply gorgeous – and Un be di vedremo, when she explains how she believes that, one fine day, Pinkerton will return to her, is one of those moments when the goosebumps rush across the skin and the eyes prick.

Marcelo Puente as Pinkerton is a fine tenor and does well to bring some multi-dimensionality to this deeply unsympathetic character (there were one or two boos when he took his bow at the end).

And Elizabeth DeShong is also excellent as Butterfly’s loyal servant Suzuki.

Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier’s 2003 production is excellent, as is Christian Fenouillat’s deceptively simple and beautiful set.

Antonio Papano and the house orchestra are bang on form in a production that is simply a joy.

You have a few chances left to see this revival (albeit without Jaho). My goodness – it’s a powerful experience that promises to stay with one for some time.

Sex, materialism, a fab soprano and wonderful food

Manon and her brother

“Why shouldn’t there be two operas about Manon? A woman like Manon can have more than one lover,” said Puccini, when challenged over his choice of the same source material as that used by Massenet just nine years earlier.

And he went on: “Massenet feels it as a Frenchman, with powder and minuets. I shall feel it as an Italian, with a desperate passion.”

The story of Manon Lescaut is based own a 1731 novel, L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost (all “powder and minuets” – or the literary equivalent of the latter, presumably).

That the libretto was put together by five writers chosen by Puccini, plus his publisher and himself, suggests an early version of US sit-coms by committee, but like some of those, somehow it works. Though it is advisable, as always with Puccini, not to look for any great profundity in the text.

This Royal Opera House production by Jonathan Kent debuted in 2014 and this first revival is directed by Paul Higgins.

Controversial for its suggestions of sex trafficking and prostitution, it’s an entirely modern setting of a work that has been considered troublesome to update.

So does it work? Well, to answer this, we need to take a closer look at Puccini’s version.

The story revolves around Manon Lescaut, a young woman whose father has decreed that she enter a convent and has entrusted her brother with ensuring it happens.

However, on the eve of her entry into the convent, she meets Des Grieux, a student who falls head over heels in love with her and urges her to run away with him.

In the meantime, Geronte di Revoir, an elderly treasurer general, tells her brother, who is escorting her to the convent, that Manon would be wasted in a convent – and her brother starts to have second thoughts about his task.

As her sibling is caught up in gambling, Geronte plots to take her to Paris with him instead – but Manon has already fled with Des Grieux.

Fast forward to Act II, where we find a pampered Manon living in opulence paid for by Geronte, who had hunted her down with the aid of her brother.

And after an initial period of love with Des Grieux, it seems that Manon had realised that love was not enough for her and that she required the material comforts that a poor student could not hope to afford.

Now, she’s putting on sex shows for Geronte’s friends, but when Des Grieux turns up, she has the chance to flee once more for love.

However, Manon’s material instincts come to the fore again and, so determined is she to pack as many jewels as possible, she’s unable to make her escape in time.

Geronte, feeling betrayed and being – here’s a guess – impotent in more ways than one, has shopped her to the authorities as a prostitute, and she’s taken by those authorities to be sent into exile in the New World with other sex workers.

But as the women (they’re all women, of course) brave a jeering crowd, Des Grieux steps forward once more and begs to be allowed to go into exile with her.

Finally, she dies in his arms in the middle of an American plain, realising the error of her materialistic ways and the value of true love – his for her and her’s for him.

It’s not hard to see that, texturally, there are things that modern sensibilities might find difficult. It’s also perhaps predictable that sex is the biggest problem for some – although in the case of both Des Grieux and later, Geronte, Manon makes her own choice to go with them.

Although the libretto uses the word ‘abduction’, she makes her own decisions.

Indeed, if we were going to talk of ‘trafficking’ in terms of Manon herself, then in modern terms, that would most appropriately apply to the initial decision of her father to force her in a convent – without any consideration for his daughter’s own choice.

Of course, hypocrisy about female sexuality is highlighted, but it’s also difficult not to see that, in terms of cause and effect, it’s not sex that gets Manon in trouble, but her devoted insistence upon trying to grab all the jewels possible rather than flee from the authorities after the lovers have been warned that they are coming for her.

It seems reasonable to suggest that what has upset some in terms of this production is that it makes these issues clear – perhaps, to some minds, such uncomfortable questions sully the lovely music?

And oh, the music is lovely.

It never ceases to amaze me how modern Puccini sounds – and while there are moments here that reflect the influence of Wagner (the later stages of Act II specifically), there are also sounds that seem to predict Ravel.

Of the cast in this revival, we were unfortunate that Aleksandrs Antonenko as Des Grieux was struggling with a sore throat (his apologies and plea for understanding conveyed to the audience during the evening, and totally understood), but it certainly didn't ruin the evening.

Sondra Radvanovsky was simply radiant as Manon: what a wonderful, soaring soprano – she hits the heights with apparent ease and is convincing in all other ways that the role demands too.

She creates for us a tragic heroine who is at once earthy yet saint; gritty, yet vulnerable. A wonderful performance – and honestly, I was aware of wearing an expression of delight during some of her singing. 

Ricotta underneath – delicate ribbons of butternut atop 

Levente Molnár’s Lescaut and Eric Halfvarson’s Geronte are both more than up the the task.

In the pit, the orchestra were excellent, with Antonio Pappano demonstrating once more his superb command of Puccini.

But before we got to the auditorium, we also dined in the Amphitheatre Restaurant for the first time, since it was the start of my birthday weekend.

I enjoyed a starter of truffled Westcombe ricotta, with ribbons and roasted cubes of butternut, and toasted pine nuts, micro herbs and a very subtle dressing.

The cheese was utterly delightful and the truffling serious.

The Other Half enjoyed a service of sea bass with fennel and orange – a perfect winter salad.

For a main, both of us opted for guinea fowl.

Now, I love game, but am not really familiar with this bird.

It was advertised as a ballotine, but was not. That was no problem. As a game bird, it was dryish, but the accompaniments of a frankly sensational jus, beautiful creamed parsnip, turned and cooked dessert apple and a bed of baby spinach more than assured that it was not a dry dish.

We had a single side portion of boulangerie potatoes between us.

For dessert, The Other Half went for 'winter fruits' (pineapple, pomegranate, papaya, melon and clementine), while I picked a poached Comice pear with quenelles of what turned out to be an insanely smooth Poire Williams cream.

We haven’t eaten at a theatre restaurant for a good 15 years: that was the Barbican and it was a bad experience – not helped by being far in advance of what we were used to at that stage.

This was not cheap (as we knew when we booked) but it was very, very good food and was also a very pleasant dining experience that made for a perfectly relaxed way to start the evening.

And as for being able to leave your dessert until the interval – well, that’s simply inspired.

I spent several years imagining that the Royal Opera House would be, per se, VERY expensive and also rather intimidating.

In terms of seats, prices are essentially better than those in the West End – and generally speaking, far more so.

In terms of atmosphere, I continue to be delighted and surprised by a friendliness that I have never experienced in any other live performance setting. Covent Garden is the only place where I've found myself engaged in conversation with complete strangers about what we’re going to see – and not in a negative way.

Alongside the Vue cinema in Islington, where we have thoroughly enjoyed deeply intellectual Marvel  and movies this year, the Royal Opera House has become somewhere I feel wonderfully at home.

All in all, this was a close-to-perfect evening.

And if memory serves me correctly, there’s more Puccini coming in the summer season …

Raging against the machines

Maria Callas as Madama Butterfly

For all that technology can bring us some really wonderful things, and enable us to do so many things we couldn’t do previously, it can also be tremendously frustrating.

As I’ve noted previously, tech isn’t always a greatfriend to the classical music listener. 

And since penning a frustrated piece about iTunes almost two years ago, things have not actually become much easier.

To begin with, it was disappointing to learn, earlier this year, that Apple has discontinued the classic iPod, which could carry a vast amount of music around – perfect if your collection (which is still growing) includes full operas.

Discovering this, I decided to get one of the most recent iPods, with the largest amount of memory possible, and mothball my old classic for a while, since they’re now selling for a lot of money.

While the new one is smaller and less weighty, it also has nowhere near the memory of its predecessor.

This is partly to do with the cloud. The trouble is, I don’t like the cloud. I don’t buy digital music these days for a reason: it’s my collection, which I have paid for, and I do not want the risk of any hacker or even a company deciding, via technology, that they can control my music (or any other data – and we know what’s happened to some very personal photographs out there).

I do not wish to have to ‘stream’ my music when I want to listen to it.

If people do, then fair enough. But I do not – and I should be able to have that option. I should have the option of not having my device (in this case, my new iPod) showing every piece of music that I have purchased digitally in the past – and then insisting that, if I want to listen to them, I stream them, even though I downloaded copies originally and, in an odd case, have backed them up on disc.

So they exist, in effect, in my computer, but I can no longer decided whether or not they appear on my iPod and, if they do, it seems that they are not the copy I downloaded, but one that I can stream, because the iCloud says: ‘Oh look – you downloaded this freebie six years ago, so that means you want access to it at all times, even if you have not checked it when trying to organise your portable music. In which case, I, the all-seeing, all-knowing iCloud, will put a picture of the relevant cover art onto your iPod for you, so that you can stream it whenever you wish’.

Except, of course, I don’t wish. It clutters up what I want.

And what I want to carry with me to listen to is currently undergoing an extremely rewarding expansion phase.

Opera has been a very gradual learning curve for me. Even after visiting the English National Opera a few times, the damn has only been truly broken this year with our going to the Royal Opera House.

While the ultimate operatic experience is always going to be seeing a production live, listening is a wonderful way of learning.

And with such a wealth of historic recordings to choose from, you can listen to more than one and, therefore, learn to compare productions, the speed of playing a score, which parts of the orchestra are emphasised and which are the truly great voices.

Herbert von Karajan

When you can get hold of a copy of, say, Madama Butterfly, with Maria Callas and Herbert von Karajan, for just £3.97, then this isn’t an expensive exercise either. You wouldn’t get a pint of beer in London for that these days.

Actually, I’ve had a marked reluctance to do the comparison thing: I try to look at authoritative sources such as Gramophone to discover what is the ‘best’ recording ever – hence my having invested in Solti’s Ring over von Karajan’s – but that doesn’t necessarily teach you much when you don’t compare it to anything else.

It’s a slightly odd approach, since I have several cases of musicals where I have more than one recording – and also of orchestral music: there is more than one Rites of Spring on the shelf and more than a single copy of Mozart’s Requiem, while I did a little experiment a year or so ago, using digital downloads of the final movement of Beethoven’s ninth symphony by various conductors in an attempt to compare – and it is amazing what differences there can be.

But I shall strive to overcome this reluctance.

Television can also offer some opportunities to explore more.

Just recently, for instance, The Other Half spotted that Sky Arts 2 was screening the Royal Opera House’s 2013 production of Puccini’s Turandot.

I was utterly absorbed for the duration: Lise Lindstrom is wonderful as the eponymous ice queen and young singer Eri Nakamura excels as the tragic Luì.

Marco Berti in Turandot

Marco Berti is a bit sort of … well, wooden …  as Calaf, but comes good in the end when he gets to sing that iconic aria, Nessun Dorma. And then there’s Andrei Serban’s staging – a visual treat. The plot may be flimsy, but the music is more than adequate compensation.

It’s worth pointing this out, because this film is available on disc and is also bound to crop up on TV again at some future date.

Enamoured with the music, I decided to get a copy (and upload it onto my iPod). It was easy to find a recording to pick: Zubin Mehta conducting Joan Sutherland. Luciano Pavarotti, Montserrat Caballé and Peter Pears (along with other names I am not familiar with).

And it is sumptuous to listen to.

We’re on a roll with Puccini: I’ve managed to get tickets for a run of La bohème at the Royal Opera House in July. It’s the final night, with Plácido Domingo guest conducting, which itself is a thrilling thought – I have vinyl recordings of Domingo from several decades ago: my love of music is far from new; just the broadening of my experience and horizons.

And here’s a thing: the ROH website is brilliant for booking, as it has a picture for each seat and for the view from that seat.

I had long fallen into the trap of assuming that the ROH is always very expensive, but have been thankfully disabused of that – together with a fear that it might feel rather intimidating.

Our seats for July rolled in at £40 each, which is cheaper than most of the theatre tickets we’ve had in recent years and easily comparable to sporting events these days. And the view look excellent.

In the meantime, I have a Pavarotti recording to prepare myself for that night – so I’ll know the story better and won’t find myself concentrating too much on the surtitles.

The only problem I can see is running out of space on the iPod and then having to fart around within the classical genre rather than simply uploading all my classical music.

Bloody machines.

I’d have to resort to reading while commuting – mind, Michael Tanner’s Wagner, which challenges a number of attitudes toward that musical giant (including some utter daftness from people who should know much better), has been a fascinating and highly informative read.

Old and new – there are plenty of options in this musical voyage of discovery.