Cavalleria Rusticana and Aleko

Two short operas, three dead. Man kills faithless wife’s lover in Cavalleria; man kills faithless wife’s lover and wife in Aleko. The killer and the lover are played by the same singers in both, so there’s the implication that Alfio has moved on, changed his name to Aleko but cannot change his ingrained “code of honour”/“toxic masculinity”. It’s a clever way of staging them: one set in a rigid, traditional community where this is not unexpected, and the other in a freedom-loving commune where this is deplored.

Cavalleria was amazing for the Easter chorus: once again, the volume and emotion knocked you back in your seat, and the crucifixion tableau was striking. The incidental music was delightful and gave me a chance to watch the orchestra rather than the stage. It was updated to pre-1989 Poland, which worked OK. Aleko, by Rachmaninov, sounded quite different, again with plenty of incidental music.

So, in the last few days I’ve seen Past Lives, Cosi fan tutte, Cavalleria Rusticana and Aleko – all presenting very different views of love – with Valentine’s Day in the middle.

• Alfio/Aleko – Robert Hayward
• Turiddu/A Lover – Andres Presno
• Santuzza – Giselle Allen
• Lola – Helen Evora
• Zemfira – Elin Pritchard

Cosi fan tutte

The second time I’ve seen this production; beautifully done, but I’d forgotten how queasy certain aspects of it make me feel. The cynicism’s fine, but the manipulation of the sisters so that Don Alfonso can win his bet doesn’t look good now that there are words to describe such behaviour: coercion, gaslighting, emotional blackmailing.

But the music’s the thing, and that was great. I suppose you can see it as a lesson in not being too precious about romantic love. Ferrando was played by an understudy, dragged from the chorus, and it was clear from his opening bars that he was going to contribute his share to the evening’s enjoyment.

• Don Alfonso – Quirijn de Lang
• Fiordiligi – Alexandra Lowe
• Dorabella – Helen Lowe
• Ferrando – Satriya Krisna
• Guglielmo – Henry Neill
• Despina – Gillene Butterfield

Albert Herring

Great fun. Shy Albert is crowned King of the May for he is the only clean-living young person in the town. When his celebratory lemonade is laced with rum on coronation day, he escapes for a night and returns a changed man. Small-town life is brilliantly skewered in the music (heavy-handed for Lady Billows, lyrical for lovely Nancy) and the yearning for more fun in life is palpable.

It was in the Howard Assembly Room – my first visit there. It was in the round so was a different, livelier experience from the Grand Theatre.

• Albert Herring – Dafydd Jones
• Lady Billows – Judith Howarth
• Nancy – Katy Bray

And on the way back this morning I had wonderful views of the fresh snow.

La Rondine

Yet another Parisian courtesan finding true love in the arms of a young man from the provinces but giving him up for his sake. Lots of partying, but no one dies. Puccini’s idea of operetta music. It was all well done but left me fairly unmoved – except for an electrifying moment at the end of the second act when the full force of the orchestra and chorus was unleashed: it was as if a gale suddenly blew through the theatre.

Masque of Might

For one irreverent moment, I wanted to compare Masque of Might to Mamma Mia! – i.e. greatest hits stitched together into a contrived plot. But at least the plot of Mamma Mia! still had some coherence.

But Masque of Might has the bigger hits. And the more sumptuous staging. Sir David Pountney has taken a selection of Purcell’s music from the second half of the 17th century, originally composed for the church, court or theatrical entertainment, and amended the libretti here and there to produce an “eco-entertainment” on the all-singing, all-dancing theme of tyranny and environmental breakdown.

I noted early on what Pountney wrote in the programme of Purcell’s masques:

. . . much more like a variety show than an opera. Dance, spectacle and a random disregard for consistent narrative are the hallmarks of these charmingly unfocussed pieces, which makes it difficult for an impatient modern audience to figure out exactly what they are watching.

Well, I can’t say I wasn’t warned. And with that, I settled back to enjoy the glorious, messy feast in front of me. There’s a tyrant (we watch his birth, predicted by a kind of Oberon and Titania pair) and his rise to supreme power: a mash-up of Louis XIV and Putin. The earth is being destroyed; a dreadlocked environmental activist, who resembles Neil from The Young Ones, tries to raise the alarm and is thrown into prison. There are a pair of vicious countertenors dressed like clowns; there is a chainsaw massacre of trees; and Saul and Samuel pop up in the caravan used the previous night as Falstaff’s dosshouse (I see they’d covered up the cocktail cabinet). It all ends well, with a glorious new dawn.

It was just wonderful and, as a narrative or mood, complete chaos. Terror one minute, dancing the next, and then a heartbreaking lament. I keep hearing about the power of art to make people more aware of what is happening to the natural world (like artists accompanying research vessels to the Antarctic), but I’m not convinced that it’s going to change too many minds about the environment. About Purcell though . . . well, that’s a different matter. The music was glorious and – mindful of the woman in the lift the previous night – I was conscious of how well the music and words wove themselves together, with long notes held on the stressed sounds.

And there were theorbos as well. How theorboists manage not to take somebody’s eye out, I can’t imagine.

Falstaff

Well, that was fun. Falstaff himself was great (if gross), the other characters were engaging and the young lovers charming. It was – liberatingly – played entirely for laughs as if concepts like fat-shaming, forced marriage and toxic masculinity had never been heard of. The bow to modern sensibilities was the really important one of environmental impact: Opera North calls this their green season and is doing its best to recycle props and costumes. So I recognised the bed from Tosca and the windows from The Marriage of Figaro.

• Sir John Falstaff – Henry Waddington
• Mistress Alice Ford – Kate Royal
• Ford – James Davies (understudy, who got a big round of applause for stepping up)

On the way back, in the hotel lift, I noticed a woman carrying the Falstaff programme and I asked her if she had enjoyed it. She was disappointed that the libretto was in English; she felt that only Italian would suit Verdi’s music.

The Cunning Little Vixen

A Janáček opera from 1924. I eventually remembered his use of speech melody – which may not work so well in English rather than Czech. But how can one not look forward to a piece whose dramatis personae include Mosquito, Chief Hen, Badger, Woodpecker and Caterpillar? (Other species were available.) It’s a wonderful piece: colourful, fun, veering between a folk tale and a philosophical acceptance of the cycle of life and death. Vixen Sharp-Ears as a cub is caught by the Forester but cunningly sows discord and escapes to live freely on her own terms. She meets the Fox, is married by the Woodpecker and raises an unknown number of Cubs before being shot by the Poacher. She is spirited, and her spirit touches the thoughts of the ageing men who encounter her, reminding them of their youth and lost loves (even when they married them).

I’d read before that Janáček had an intense period of creativity in his sixties at a time when he developed unreciprocated feelings for a much younger woman: perhaps it’s facile to see the elusive Vixen as a sublimation of that desire. But such nuances make this a far more layered piece of work than my initial reading of the cast list suggested.

• Vixen Sharp-Ears – Elin Pritchard
• Forester – James Rutherford
• Fox – Heather Lowe

Tosca

The same – wonderful – production that I saw a few years ago. On a second viewing of this staging, the bond between state and church in suppressing political dissent and allowing free rein to vile tyrants like Scarpia was even more chilling, for Cavaradossi was sung by a Ukrainian tenor.

• Tosca – Giselle Allen
• Cavaradossi – Mykhailo Malafii
• Scarpia – Robert Hayward

Ariadne auf Naxos

Music Richard Strauss, libretto Hugo von Hoffmansthal, 1912 – I felt I was in Zweigworld! I had no idea what to expect: probably lots of lamenting from Ariadne until her deus ex machina appeared. As indeed there was, but it was preceded by behind-the-scenes preparation of an opera seria that the unseen megalomaniac patron insisted must be combined with an opera buffa – much to the Composer’s chagrin but to our, the audience’s, delight. Seriousness was always punctured by fun, and fun morphed into sincere emotion.

It was brilliantly staged – set in a kind of Cinecittà, which meant that the second act could be filmed and characters from the first re-appear as bystanders. A wonderful mix of “high” and “low” art and the transformative power of love and music. I winced a little at Zerbinetta’s top notes on Großmächtige Prinzessin, but everything else was just great and so cleverly layered.

• Composer – Hanna Hipp
• Zerbinetta – Jennifer France
• Ariadne – Elizabeth Llewellyn
• Bacchus – Ric Furman

Orfeo ed Euridice

Like La Traviata, a lot hangs on the central performance – this time of Orfeo. And s/he delivered with a lovely voice and the ability to convey overwhelming grief. It was presented in the programme as a concert staging of Gluck’s opera, but the performance was far from static. Once again, a hankie was necessary – but this was the legend with a happy ending, since Amore declared that Euridice should live and the evening ended with the chorus singing a hymn to love and beauty.

A much smaller orchestra than the previous night, with a harpsichord and a wind machine, which produced the eeriest sound. I’m not sure I’ve seen one of those before.

• Orfeo – Polly Leech
• Euridice – Fflur Wyn
• Amore – Daisy Brown