An entertainingly stretched Nabucco at Stuttgart Opera

Giuseppe Verdi's tapestry of luscious music portraying the assault, capture and liberation of the Israelites by the Assyrian king, Nebuchadnezzar (Nabucco), is given more a modern 'classroom-conflict' makeover from director Rudolf Frey. Strong performances persist but the direction robbed the work of pathos and compassion. Frey left it to Verdi to drive the drama while he has some cabaret-style fun along the way. It's close to feeling altogether disrespectful but he chooses his moments without exacting too much damage. A modern-day connection with Jewish/Palestian conflicts seems to filter through but, if so, the impact is feeble. As a first-time experience of Nabucco it might leave you unimpressed.

Gergely Németi (Ismaele), Diana Haller (Fenena), Dmitri Platanias (Nabucco), Anna Pirozzi (Abigaille)

What Frey does do successfully is build the picture on the stage with a stealthy eye aided by Ben Baur's set design. The empty stage hull, presumably a synagogue (and the Temple of Solomon in Verdi's version), is dressed with a golden 'Glomesh' curtain (both raised and lowered for effect) for the royal apartments and gardens (Hanging Gardens of Babylon in Verdi's). A light-studded screen drops for Abigaille's showbiz flaunt as she plans to become ruler of Babylon (or at least the stage while accompanied by her guards sporting black feather dance props). After her number ends, the screen is raised to reveal a stepped platform supporting a long dining table where more diplomatic proceedings occur, raised novelly for Nabucco to stand upon and proclaim himself God. Overall, despite being difficult knowing whether Silke Willrett and Mark Weeger's costumes came from the costume department or a department store, the visual effect at least provides legibility for dramatic events.

Fortunately Verdi's expressive music shone under the baton of Australian conductor and Principal Conductor of the Stuttgart Opera, Simon Hewitt. A dynamic harmony existed between the pit and stage, the cast of soloists deliver meaty performances and the Stuttgart Opera Chorus polished every one of Verdi's massed works as they turned the stage into gripping theatre. In the opera's most recognized chorus, when the Israelites long for their homeland singing Va pensiero, sull'ali dorate, a completely moving interpretation concluded with breathtaking, elongated and fading pianissimo.

Liang Li's Zaccaria and Dimitri Platanias' Nabucco stood out with grand performances and both showed sustained strength and sterling vocal shading. Li's respected leadership as the High Priest of the Jews was unshakeable, embodied with both stage presence and a bass that contained a roaring furnace of heat which he vented with finesse. Platanias kept the lid on his staggering instrument, preferring to let the chest and pressure expand while still projecting tyranny.

As Abigaille, Nabucco's supposed daughter, soprano Catherine Foster showed fierceness and conviction in a character matched with vocal stamina and depth. High in her range, however, an abrasiveness tarnished her otherwise fine work in this notoriously difficult role but her vocal cords earned every penny.

After an impressive performance the night before as Steva in Jenůfa,  Gergely Németi returned as the Jewish prince Ismaele and object of Abigaille's attentions, following up with a strong vocal rendition but an uncertainty in action that weakened his character. Other fine performances came from Diana Haller as Ismaele's lover and Nabucco's daughter Fenena (adding to the story's politico-love triangle) and Ashley David Prewett as the hard to forget and colourfully entertaining High Priest of Baal, who both conspired against Nabucco and seemingly against the opera's seriousness. The envelope was really being pushed here, entertaining as it was.

Photo courtesy © A.T. Schaefer

Bieto's industrially fluorescent Jenůfa at Stuttgart Opera

Rebecca von Lipinski as Jenůfa

For three days the sun was reluctant to make an appearance over Stuttgart and it was much the same in Spanish director Calixto Bieito's industrially fluorescent, sunless production of Jenůfa. Realised by set designer Susanne Gschwender and Ingo Krügler's costumes as a modern working class ghetto, its entire cast of seemingly psychologically disturbed characters are immersed in an environment deprived of hope. Coupled with the unrelenting tension of Leoš Janáček's music, the eponymous Jenůfa's struggle is palpable in a soul-consuming theatrical experience.

Rebecca von Lipinski's Jenůfa showed strong behavioural complexity and vocal expression, none more so than when she learns of her child's death though is unaware of the true circumstances. Her character was both full of outward emotion and cold reserve.

From her authoritative entrance Angela Denoke was outstanding as she sinks into a deranged state as Jenůfa's threatening stepmother, shockingly battering Jenůfa's child to death on a kitchen table. It's handled even far more gruesomely than an expected drowning. Denoke's depiction cleverly tangles her murderous reasons. Was it really an attempt to save Jenůfa's future, a selfish attempt to hide shame or an act of unfathomable insanity? It marks the climax at which the complexity of what we see and what we don't understand about every character is magnified.

With stentorian magnitude, a chilling mental instability characterised Pavel Černoch's dangerously good Laca, who is in love with Jenůfa but ridiculed by her teasing. The jealous, ticking time-bomb he is, slashes her face in a grotesquely fine piece of theatre to mar her beauty in order to ruin her hope of being with Steva. Loving Jenůfa only for her beauty then abandoning her and his child, Steva was performed solidly by Gergely Németi with an attractive and seductive vocal warmth which counterbalances his aloofness and rebelliousness.

As Act 2 segues into Act 3 and Jenůfa's silent grief is mulled, visual intensity escalates as a machinists' factory floor is created with choreographic smoothness. Heralding the last act, a baby's prolonged, agonising cries are heard over the set-build as the banality of repetitious work forms the setting for which the story's shocking discovery is exposed.

Conductor Sylvain Cambreling infused the work with a roller-coaster ride of grim horror, especially so at each enhanced dramatic apex. Precision playing emanated from the pit but the underlying angst which the strings thread the work with felt disappointingly underplayed.

Bieito begins and ends the opera with the sound of an uncomfortable laughter. In the finale, even when Jenůfa and Laca exchange a laugh, it seems to suggest things will be better, perhaps short-lived, but never permanent. It's some of the darkest theatre you'll likely experience and, paradoxically, bright fluorescent light feeds it.

Photo courtesy © A.T. Schaefer

A triple-century treat at Stuttgart Opera

Visiting Stuttgart to sample the city's innovative approach to opera over three consecutive nights coincided with what could be, for a first-timer, an explorative crash course in the history of the art form. Night one (17th February) started with Czech composer Leoš Janáček's dawn of the 20th century, unsettling, psycho-dramatic opera, Jenůfa. On night two (18th february) it was Nabucco, Giuseppe Verdi's mid-19th century work which firmly established him as a composer. Finally, on the third night (19th February), Niccolò Jommelli's Il Vologeso completed this trio, a work not seen for almost 250 years by a now almost forgotten composer of more than 80 operas and whose works chronologically bridge Handel and Mozart. Reviews for the three operas appear in the following three posts.

Opera repertoire aside, a common thread in this triple-century feast, at the very least, is that Stuttgart Opera's innovative credentials were starkly evident and all three works, updated with everyday contemporary costumes (almost a one batch fits all approach), made laudable attempts at modern day relevance.

Stuttgart Opera House

Interior ceiling detail

The experience was enhanced by the warm, opulent surrounds and appealing intimacy of the 1400-seat neoclassical-styled opera theatre, the unique silver glint which looms over in its detail and the ceiling's stunning azure zodiacal circular inset around which 14 chandeliers arc. Designed by the architect Max Littmann and opened in 1912, it is one of Germany's few remaining opera houses not destroyed in World War II. A love of architecture and opera was here on offer.



Photos: @OperaChaser

Gertrude Opera's effervescent production of The Magic Flute

Athenaeum Theatre

Thursday 6th November, 2014

When the performing arm of The Melbourne Opera Studio, Gertrude Opera, presented their fully staged half-length version of The Magic Flute, I was surprisingly taken aback. Here I was in the intimate clutches of the historic Athenaeum Theatre, gobsmacked by the journey in time it swept me into. The choice of venue and the brooding, carnival-like period atmosphere tricked me into imagining I was plonked into Mozart’s midst as he himself conducted his last opera, a fairy-tale of sorts championing the forces of good over evil, reason over revenge and the just rewards of perseverance, at the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden, a suburban Viennese theatre where the work premiered in 1791.

Belinda Prakhoff, Damien Noyce, Rada Tochalna and Karen Van Spall

Artistic director Linda Thompson achieved much with her creative team and effervescent group of predominantly young performers and guest professional artists, putting a smile of disbelief on my face as The Magic Flute entertained. Running just under 90 minutes without interval with swathes of recitative omitted, many arias reduced in length, emphasising the magical and fantastical minus the Masonic symbolism and its ceremonial choruses, the troupe performed and sang admirably and clearly to a delightful English libretto.

Even the musicians felt directed into the production. As patrons took their seats, the performance almost unknowingly got underway with a sense of invitation and informality as the seven musicians of the Magic Chamber Orchestra played a charming orchestral piece on the stage, appropriately a light and airy take on the opera's glorious overture. When they were done they positioned themselves in the pit and remained there for the performance, making Mozart's music emanate warmly under conductor Warwick Stengards' stewardship. Tempi wobbled from time to time with attempts to reign in vocal activity on the stage but clean, skilled playing was evident, especially from the honey-toned flute of Derek Jones and Pamela Christie's stealth at the piano.

In its plump simplicity, set design (simply attributed to Gertrude Opera), incorporated symmetry, height, side-stage steps and a central, hinged platform supporting four "tree" posts slung with fairy lights which illuminated when help seemed at hand or at moments of celebration. Jason Bovaird's delicious lighting design, though executed with occasional opening night mishap, cast a vivid palette of colour on the performance, drenching Amelia Carroll's costumes of period-inspired quirkiness, Gothic-darkness and showbiz glitter. The entire concoction presented Mozart's singspiel in a most pantomime-like manner.

The young, well-rehearsed cast, at times overcoming some stiffness in delivery, engaged with positive energy, keeping the momentum alive and earning the experience to forge stage-building dreams.

Juan Enrique Guzman and Alexandra Ioan

Juan Enrique Guzman displayed praiseworthy stamina as his expansive, warm-voiced Tamino undertook his quest with seriousness as he "played" the magic flute with impressive believability. Alexandra Ioan, pure and rich-toned as Tamino’s promised wife Pamina, gilded the stage with strong emotive phrasing. As the evil Queen of the Night, Joelene Griffith channelled her vocal strength, as if through a pipette, to slither the air with cold rage. Playing the knock-about, happy-go-lucky bird catcher Papageno, Eugene Raggio, with an at-ease comfort, was happily awarded his prize-catch lovebird, Papagena, cheerily and squeakily brought to life by Alissa Andraski. The pair’s final duet especially tickled the funny bone as they dreamed of a life together with many "Papageni" while unfolding a concertina-cut-out of kids.

Projecting with a solid appealing voice, Damien Noyce menaced with risk-taking, hyperactive acrobatics as a harlequin-like and low-life Monostatos. Guest professional artist David Gould added thunderous vocal bass and wisdom as he starred from an offstage balconette, commanding in the role of Sarastro, preacher of the way to enlightenment.

Eugene Raggio and Alissa Andraski

Rada Tochalna, Karen Van Spall and Belinda Prakhoff swooned and paraded as the three Ladies to the Queen of the Night and invigorating the evening with multiple synchronised scooter appearances the three Spirits, Tamzyn Alexander, Alexandra Lidgerwood and Rhiannon Stevens, amused as a trio of scraggy blonde-wigged golden girls, clearly having fun while singing with heavenly-voiced lightness.

Presented here was a refreshingly entertaining kind of opera that reflects the energy and aspirations of our young crusaders on an operatic platform at a grassroots level in a production that impressively packages Mozart’s work for a place and time to suit many an occasion.

Production photographs courtesy of Gertrude Opera

Sondheim's Passion rewards and frazzles

Life Like Company

Playhouse Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne
5th November 2014

Given the fact that a string of Stephen Sondheim’s musicals have hit Melbourne’s stages of late, theatre-goers are getting to know that nothing is ever quite what it seems in a Sondheim world. With a penchant for topsy-turvy storytelling and persistently prodding his audience with many an uncomfortable truth, a Sondheim musical rarely feels like a light affair. Passion dangles disconcertingly at this extreme, presented here in Life Like Company’s fine inaugural production.

 

Kane Alexander and Theresa Borg

A safe but deft hand in direction by Neil Gooding, musical director Guy Simpson's sensitive interpretation of the score and energetic embrace of the 15 musicians, together with a well-seasoned cast, all combine in a production that both rewards and frazzles.

From Iginio Ugo Tarchetti's 19th Century novel Fosca, to the 1981 Italian film Passione d'armore, the story of a bewilderingly obsessive love of a sick woman for a remotely posted army captain, who in turn is in love with and having an affair with a married woman in Milan, was adapted for the stage with Sondheim's signature biting lyrics (from James Lapine’s book) and melodious though oddly restrained music.

Passion’s stage drama contains forces aplenty that lap the audience unrelentingly.  Shifting scenes regimentally choreographed, intertwined vocal lines originating from different premises of time and place, storytelling within storytelling, repetition of vocal lines and a fluid music intercepted by military reminders of the snare drum and trumpet, march the story along with rhythmic ease.

The multi-tasking creative designer, Rob Sowinski, keeps the lighting subdued but varied while scant furnishings define space and costumes define the period on a raw black-curtained working stage. It's neither elaborate nor overly ambitious but it does work to sharpen the focus on the characters from whom Gooding extracts every ounce he can. The cast of 12, a broad mix of musical theatre talent, is balanced and strong.

Fosca, as fragile as she is, is the story's vortex, and because of whom outcomes spiral. Theresa Borg's Fosca is harrowing as she summons power and gravitas in her voice from a mind and body sucked of life. Stiff in action and gaunt in expression, Borg's disturbing melodies, depth of voice and unswerving performance of an obsessed love press down with a frightening emotional burden.

The man of her obsession, Captain Giorgio Bachetti, is handsomely portrayed by Kane Alexander. After an uneasy, under bedcover and unclothed start, Alexander developed charismatically with a warm and resonant voice, his sensitive obliging nature seemingly at odds with military isolation. You wait for that cordial spirit to break and it finally does in a burst of harsh and confronting words as Fosca follows him on his train to Milan. It is at this point that you come to see and feel Alexander’s full range.

Borg and Alexander build up Fosca and Giorgio's complex chemistry in an aching, frustrating display. The less we understand something, the more disturbing we find it. Love is not what it seems and viewing their relationship makes challenging and effecting theatre.

Polar opposite to Fosca's pitiable, deep melancholy, Silvie Paladino as Giorgio's lover Clara, glides with lithely beauty and stretches the voice high and bright with measured control. It is easy to imagine Paladino as the consummate entertainer but despite a polished performance, the role seems to demand a greater sense of lusty vigour. 

Silvie Paladino and Kane Alexander

The trio is complimented by fine performances from Mark Dickenson as Fosca's cousin and protector, Colonel Ricci, whose robust voice can fire like a cannon, and John O'May as the officious Doctor Tambourri, your somewhat dubious master-of-ceremonies-like-glue guiding proceedings in hardly a singer's role but endearing nonetheless.

Completing the cast is a uniformed regiment of colourful characters whose chorus work coolly take the drama off the boil. Sadly, their choreographed drills stumble, dragging down "military madness" with twee, juvenile marching.

It seems impossible to walk away from this staging of Passion without being completely drained by the drama. That can hardly be poor theatre. It may just require some distance in time from reaching Sondheim saturation. 

Production photographs by Ben Fon

Opera Hong Kong's eerily contemporary Salome

Grand Theatre, Hong Kong Cultural Centre
Friday 10th October 2014

Warren Mok, Artistic Director of Opera Hong Kong and producer of Richard Strauss’ Salome, has once again succeeded in staging opera with a discerning eye to an increasingly enthusiastic and opera-informed local audience. In a co-production with the Slovenian National Theatre Opera and Ballet, director Andrejs Zagars paints Salome as a modern, crazed and tragic figure in a cool, barren world that epitomises her disconnection from human warmth. Visually distant from its biblical origins this Salome feels eerily contemporary.

Kirsten Chambers as Salome and Daniel Sumegi as Jocahanaan

Set designer Reinis Suhanovs' stage depicted a minimalistic prismatic room, its rear wall featuring a large rectangular opening (set back to allow stage entry) with a view towards a shifting night sky and a full moon. The spatial grandeur yet soulless quality to the space perfectly characterised Salome herself. As the momentum built, so too did the complexity of the visual drama, the hard walls enhanced by Kevin Wyn-Jones' lighting design and Ineta Sipunova's video projections which combined to create a world of sumptuous ever-changing geometric-floral patterns evoking a softened Middle-Eastern feel. The only disappointment was the flat, direct access from forward stage right to the cell from which Jochanaan was thrusted undramatically. It's a small quibble.

The openness of the set on the Grand Theatre's expansive stage provided ample opportunity for movement and Zagars provided dramatic flair with skilful blocking for the central characters but some clumsy moments on peripheral action slipped into the mix, namely at the scene of Narraboth's suicide where the guards reacted with an odd unknowing what to do, for far too long. 

The German libretto by Strauss is based on Hedwig Lachmann’s translation of Oscar Wilde's play, written in French, telling a story incorporating the murderous and erotic within a biblical context. In Zagars’ interpretation there's an initial feeling of awkwardness in trying to reconcile the biblical characters and narrative with the modern, presumably Middle-Eastern transposition, but before long names felt unimportant and it less and less resembled biblical story telling. That said, it did present its problems. While not trying to present a history lesson, it does raise the issue of the relevance of a updating a story to a libretto that clearly is mismatched to the period. 

Salome shocked audiences at the opera's 1905 Dresden premiere and was initially ignored and banned by many opera houses, and although the opera has settled into the repertoire, it is often still the subject of seismic shifts. In a 2002 Canadian Opera Company production, Salome was raped by the five Jews in an updated production (which of course incensed some) and she has also been raped by the soldiers in others. This production does not shock aimlessly. Salome's famous “Dance of the Seven Veils” (it wasn't clear, however, what the seven veils referred to) was danced dutifully erotically to give the feeling Salome was pre-punishing Herod via her mocking flirtatiousness. With the exception of a token blink-and-you'll-miss-it revealing of a single breast, just as Salome leaves the stage, nudity was passed up. Herodes followed Salome off-stage then adjusted his zipper on his return, suggesting he got what he'd wanted, presumably allowing Salome to get what she wanted too.

Peter Bronders as Herodes and Kirsten Chambers as Salome

Similarly, when  Salome danced about with Jochanaan's head, we simply saw what could have been a melon covered in a clump of bedraggled hair. But the shock was delivered when (not so much by the kiss) the plainly mad Salome placed the head between her knees as she writhed on the floor. It was certainly enough for me to understand (not endorse) Herodes' reaction when he ordered his guards to kill his step-daughter and perhaps find some peace in his superstitious thoughts.

Kristine Pasternaka's costume designs gave clarity and punchy character to her cast. On a stage protected by black-uniformed guards, Salome made her entrance in a purely pink glittering pantsuit and thigh-length 'poodle' jacket, wearing the colour pink with power. Salome underwent two other changes, both in revealing black chiffon. Herodes was portrayed in a dinner suit and satin gown. Herodias towered over and dominated her husband on bold heels and two changes of costumes of quirkily grotesque elegance and Jochanaan made his appearance in a straight-jacket, later in prison attire, to reveal the man he was forced to become.

The principal soloists indeed added ample life to their costumes to deliver convincingly powerful performances. Kirsten Chambers seemed to give everything she lived for to Salome. Her debut in the role was praiseworthy. In this hugely demanding role Chambers never appeared to tire. On the contrary, the depth of her performance grew wildly as she exhibited the fitness of an athlete. In her voice’s lowest range, however, her struggle to shape volume and beauty was apparent but the dramatic colour exhibited throughout her middle range and the defined delicacy of her high notes easily won the audience over to Chambers' Goliath effort.

Entering in sunglasses and seemingly forever holding a wineglass, Jacqueline Dark as Herodias wasn't going to spill a drop and she mimicked much the same agility in her fiercely solid vocal confidence and dramatic portrayal of the ruthless and manipulative woman behind her lecherous husband, Herodes. Peter Bronders’ Herodes was also both pitiful and pathetic. With a strangely endearing whining-like vocal quality and characterful performance, Bronders' added much to the drama, drawn from his wealth of experience in Wagnerian roles.

Jacqueline Dark as Herodias and Peter Bronders as Herodes

Daniel Sumegi pounded the stage with a performance that shook with thunderous impact. Much of Jochanaan's boisterous prophesizing happened from off-stage but sadly the sound distortion created by electronic intervention gave his voice an uneasy, thin, metallic sound. Sumegi's power to project and largesse of vocal expression would seem more than enough to have warranted a more natural rendering.

For the short period before his on-stage almost unnoticed suicide, Jason Wickson gave a merited performance as Narraboth. In the smaller roles I also especially liked the almost comedic-acted discourse and vocal harmony enacted by the five Jews, Alex Tam, Frankie Liu, Christopher Leung, Chen Yong and Apollo Wong.

Musically, conductor John Neschling let the breadth of Strauss' score shine with the brilliance it was notated as, the tempi always feeling conducive to the action. Perhaps the pit was responsible for swallowing some of the character in the music but Neschling may have, however, been able to do even more to extract larger volumes from the sizeable Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra when it was needed and to develop greater contouring of the sound.

The balance between administering shock and presenting powerful drama enticingly with an indefatigably talented cast has gifted audiences in Hong Kong with another operatic highlight. However, it also raises prickly issues and opens that can of worms when working with historical updates/original libretti. 


Photographs courtesy of Opera Hong Kong

A Link to Published Works

My journey to reviewing opera started in May this year when Opera Australia posted an article on their Twitter feed, "Do you have what it takes to be a critic?". Although I had never written a review, it seemed a prefect opportunity to start expressing myself in a way I haven't before and sharing my thoughts about and experiences with opera. After submitting two reviews (Don Carlos and Wozzeck, blogged here) I became the successful candidate for Opera Australia's Melbourne season and the start was immediate. In the 6 months since, I have published 20 reviews and 2 previews across 4 websites and several reviews have been written here in my blog. It's a most enjoyable and rewarding outcome doing something I least expected but related to a part of my life where passion exists. Here are the links to my work to date:

http://www.theoperablog.com/?s=paul+selar

http://bachtrack.com/22/270/list-published/16321

http://aussietheatre.com.au/author/paul-selar

http://www.stageandcinema.com/author/paul-selar/