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Idomeneus, one of the suitors of the beautiful Helen, made to pledge by the King of Sparta to rush to the aid of her chosen bridegroom if necessary, commanded a fleet of eighty black Cretan ships at Troy. Fearless and fierce in battle, he returned home happily after the end of the Trojan War. As we read in the Odyssey, all his companions survived as well: “none of his men was devoured by the waves”. It was only in the Aeneid that that we find a reference to Idomeneus being later banished from Crete; Virgil, however, does not specify the circumstances of the hero’s banishment. Over four hundred years later the information provided by the Roman poet was complemented by his commentator Servius, according to whom the Cretan fleet came up against a storm on its way back: in exchange for abating the storm, Idomeneus promised Neptune that he would sacrifice to him the first living thing he saw after coming ashore. As cruel fate would have it, the first living thing he saw was his son. Yet Servius does not say whether the sacrifice was duly performed, and if so, whether this cruel deed resulted in the king’s expulsion from his homeland. Servius even presents another variant of the myth, in which Idomeneus is banished from Crete by an usurper put on the throne after the king has left for the war.

The theme of the “wild” king who made a hasty promise to a deity and just as hastily kept it was used in the late seventeenth century by François Fénelon, tutor to Louis XIV’s grandson and author of the didactic novel The Adventures of Telemachus, in which Idomeneus became an example of a ruler unworthy of imitation, a ruler who fails to act in accordance with law and reason. A side version of the myth, it became a warning to enlightened monarchs and the basis for many subsequent adaptations. The first opera about Idomeneus, with a libretto by Antoine Danchet, based on a tragedy by Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon, was written in 1712 by André Campra. An avalanche of more operas, by composers like Baldasare Galuppi and Giovanni Paisiello, among others, was launched by archaeological works around Pompeii and Herculaneum.

In 1778, when Charles Theodore, the new Elector of Bavaria, was transferring the court from Mannheim to Munich, taking with him the Kapellmeister Christian Cannabich and most of his fine orchestra, the twenty-two-year-old Mozart was staying in Paris. He soon returned to Salzburg, but was not particularly surprised when in 1780, on the initiative of his friend Cannabich, he received a commission for a work to open the next opera season in Munich. He decided to entrust the libretto for a new Idomeneus opera to the Salzburg priest Giambattista Varesco, who adapted Danchet’s text, abandoning the tragic finale in favour of a lieto fine, a move that not only weakened the opera’s message, but also disrupted its dramatic logic.

Vasyl Solodkyy (Idomeneo). Photo: Andreas Etter

This, however, did not prevent Mozart from writing a score that sparkles with invention, brilliantly combines Italian, French and German influences, and, at the same time, is extremely demanding for the performers – from the soloists, the chorus singers to the orchestra musicians. The premiere at Munich’s Cuvilliés-Theater, in January 1781, was a huge success, despite the fact that the opera was presented only three times and the announcements did not even include the composer’s name. In any case, Idomeneo, re di Creta has never matched the popularity of Mozart’s later works – its discography is not very impressive, it gets staged sporadically and usually fails to meet the expectations of the critics and the audiences. That is why I decided to see the new staging at the Staatstheater Mainz, expecting a lot of good things from Nadja Stefanoff as Elettra, whose love for Idomeneus’ son is unrequited; and Krystian Adam, who after the September premiere replaced the Ukrainian tenor Vasyl Solodkyy in the title role in several performances.

In fact, there were many more good things, largely thanks to Hermann Bäumer, the music director of the Mainz company since 2011. Bäumer conducted the performance with a great sense of style, in finely chosen tempos, beautifully weighing the proportions between the stage and the orchestra pit. The strings played with a clear, transparent sound, the expanded wind group worked well both in the piled-up dialogues of orchestral colours, contrasted in terms of dynamics and articulation, and in the concertante passages. The singers were provided with a very attentive and supportive accompaniment in the recitatives by Fiona Macleod on the pianoforte. The Staatsheater Mainz chorus – featuring eight coryphaei – was excellent in its fiendishly difficult parts, richly ornamented and full of non-obvious harmonies and spatial effects.

Nadja Stefanoff (Elettra). Photo: Andreas Etter

I was not disappointed by Stefanoff, whose supple and sparkling soprano – combined with impeccable articulation and masterful phrasing – lent not only intensity but also psychological depth to the figure of Elettra (especially in the final aria, “D’Oreste, d’Ajace ho in seno i tormenti”, where the distraught protagonist is on the verge of madness). My expectations were more than met by Krystian Adam, an Idomeneo who was inwardly torn, vacillating between anger and anguish, not losing his royal dignity even in deepest despair. Adam managed to convey this whole range of states and emotions by purely musical means: subtly shaded dynamics, skilfully modulated timbre and great mastery of the coloratura technique, which he showed off in the famous aria “Fuor del mar” from Act II. A fine performance was given by Alexandra Uchlin as Idamante, Idomeneo’s son. Her intonation was spot-on, although her fresh mezzo-soprano proved insufficiently resonant at times. I was much less impressed by Yulietta Alexanyan in the role of Ilia, Idamante’s beloved – a singer endowed with a soprano of great beauty, but produced rather mechanically and often flat. Myungin Lee was rather bland in the tenor role of Arbace. The Oracle of Neptune was voiced by the bass Tim-Lukas Reuter, while the High Priest was sung by the tenor David Jakob Schläger, whom the director additionally gave another highly demanding and substantial role, not included in the original cast.

And here we come to the directorial concept devised by Alexander Nerlich, who decided to show the story of Idomeneus through his war trauma and the hallucinations tormenting him. Not leaving the king for a moment throughout the performance, Schläger is both the dark side of his personality, Neptune controlling his actions, and a sea monster sent by the god. This ghastly shadow, in royal attire but faceless – or, rather, with a face covered in black makeup, which eats into the body like a frayed mask – is, in any case, not the only demon on the Mainz stage. The dramatis personae interact with other faceless figures as well, but these are less aggressive, at times even sympathetic. They bring to mind the Japanese noppera-bō spirits, whose relentless presence torments the living with an illusory resemblance to their beloved dead (the costumes were designed by Zana Bosnjak). The associations with Japanese culture are by no means coincidental. When it comes to the visual layer of the production, Nerlich built his vision on references to the 2011 Fukushima I nuclear power plant disaster caused by an earthquake off the coast of Honshu, an earthquake that was followed by a tsunami. The starting point for Thea Hoffmann-Axthelm’s light and dynamic set design was press material from the destroyed gym at the Ukedo Elementary School, where members of Japanese rescue teams camped out for months in scandalous conditions. In the background we see vivid images of fires, blue skies and the raging sea. Moving walls shape the space of, alternately, the royal residence, palace gardens and the temple of Neptune; in episodes off the coast of Crete, the enclosed scenery gives way to rolling wooden platforms.

Yulietta Alexanyan (Ilia). Photo: Andreas Etter

There is no doubt that Nerlich has extended the chain of the myth’s evolution by adding more links, interpreting Idomeneus’ dilemma through modern threats and disputes over the model of power. However, he has put his vision into practice so discreetly and consistently that the spectators do not feel overwhelmed by the abundance of codes contained in it. The conventional decorations can just as well bring to mind nightmarish memories of the siege of Troy, the storm causes similar terror on the shores of Crete and Honshu, the stylised costumes combine elements of very diverse cultures. Most importantly, Mozart’s Idomeneo returns home happily – welcomed with open arms on successive European stages, listened to carefully, and prompting quite fresh reflection on the experience of war, violence and long separation.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

May Janáček forgive me that once again I could go to Brno for just a few days of his Bienniale and, consequently, once again I faced the difficult decision what to choose from among the festival’s offerings. Two years ago I couldn’t help marvelling how so many musical events could be packed into the festival programme spread over less than three weeks. The organisers winked knowingly, said, “Hold our beer”, and extended this year’s Bienniale by six days, increasing the number of concerts and performances accordingly. And just in case – lest anyone think it’s a one-off excess, associated with the Year of Czech Music celebrations – they announced a tentative schedule for the next festival, which will last more than a month.

Janáček Brno 2024, with the motto “No limits!”, has just come to an end. As many as seven productions were presented in its main operatic strand: a new staging of The Excursions of Mr. Brouček directed by Robert Carsen, with the excellent Nicky Spence in the title role, co-produced with Teatro Real in Madrid and Berlin’s Staatsoper; two productions of The Cunning Little Vixen – one from Ostrava, the other from Brno, both to celebrate the centennial of the Brno premiere at the theatre now called Mahenovo divadlo; Věc Makropulos from Berlin’s Staatsoper (Claus Guth’s 2022 production); a staging of Jenůfa prepared especially for the festival in its original 1904 version, conducted by Anna Novotna Pešková and directed by Veronika Kos Loulová; as well as this year’s Brno production of Dvořák’s Rusalka, directed by David Radok, and the first Czech staging of The Charlatan, Pavel Haas’ only opera, since its 1938 premiere. The festival guests this year included two foreign orchestras, the Bamberger Symphoniker and the Staatskapelle Berlin, conducted during concerts at the Janáček Theatre by Jakub Hrůša, who is just finishing his tenure in Bamberg and next season will be taking over the musical direction of London’s Royal Opera House (he led the Berlin ensemble instead of Christian Thielemann, who had to cancel for health reasons). A novelty in the Bienniale programme came in the form of a series of recitals at Brno’s famous villas: the Art Nouveau Villa Löw-Beer and two icons of modernism, Villa Tugendhat and Villa Stiassni.

Like last year, I decided to organise my four-day stay in Brno around a forgotten opera, in this case Haas’ The Charlatan. Pavel Haas is an exceptionally tragic figure, even in comparison with other modernists whose work has been recently presented in the Czech Republic and Germany as part of the huge “Musica non grata” project, which restores the memory of artists eradicated from musical life after the Nazis’ rise to power. Born in 1899 in Brno, in a family of a Jewish shoemaker and owner of a thriving shoe workshop, Haas began his education with private piano lessons. At the age of fourteen he enrolled in the music school in the Besední dům and after the Great War continued his studies at the newly established Conservatoire. In 1920 he became a student at the master school of Leoš Janáček, who would have a huge influence on his later oeuvre, although, according to Haas, his pedagogical methods left much to be desired.

After completing his studies Haas became a partner in his father’s business, while pursuing a parallel career as a composer and critic. At that time he wrote a lot of music for the theatre and was increasingly toying with the idea of composing his own opera. The first attempts, for various reasons, failed (among the ideas that never materialised was The Dybbuk based on the dramatic legend by S. An-sky). Haas got a second wind only in the 1930s, having established his reputation as a composer of film music. This time his choice was Josef Winckler’s novel Doctor Eisenbart, published in 1929, about an itinerant Bavarian barber from the turn of the eighteenth century, a real-life figure who made a fortune from shows featuring cataract removal and setting of broken bones, staged with a large troupe of musicians, acrobats and mimes.

The Charlatan. Pavol Kubáň as Pustrpalk. Photo: Marek Olbrzymek

Seeking to have the novel adapted into a libretto, in 1933 Haas approached the author himself, who treated him kindly but with some reserve, aware of what cooperation with a Jewish composer could mean for both sides. Two years later, when the Nuremberg Race Laws came into force, Haas decided to cover up the source of his inspiration and draft the libretto himself, allegedly drawing on the medieval farce Mastičkář (Ointment Seller), from which he took the name of the main character, Pustrpalk. He set the action during the Thirty Years’ War and prudently removed all references to the German reality from the text.

He submitted the score of Šarlatán, completed in June 1937, to the management of the Zemské divadlo in Brno (another name for today’s Mahen Theatre), which staged the opera – with great success – the following April. And then everything began to crumble. In March 1939 the Third Reich seized Czechoslovakia. Two years later Haas found himself in the Terezin concentration camp. In October 1944 he was transferred to Auschwitz along with another transport of prisoners and died in the gas chamber the same day. The family learned about the story of his death from Karel Ančerl, who was miraculously escaped extermination. Yet the memory of Haas did not begin to be revived until the 1990s, after The Charlatan was staged at the Wexford Festival.

This year’s staging from the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava subtly draws on František Muzika’s 1938 sets and highlights all the best features of the directorial craft of Ondřej Havelka, who skilfully weaves his way between the Czech avant-garde and bourgeois theatre, expressionism and folk tradition. The simple, multifunctional sets (Jakub Kopecký) and colourful costumes, referring to various eras and conventions (Kateřina Štefková), effectively outline the space of the drama and emphasise the nature of individual characters. They are the material of vulgar gags, at times turning into an effective tool of illusion (evocative shadow play behind a wooden structure covered by a semi-transparent screen). Havelka masterfully juggles elements of plebeian theatre – with all its coarseness and exaggerated acting gestures. Acrobats doing somersaults, cloth entrails pulled from the bodies of the quack’s clients, two-legged horses without harnesses pulling an alcove transformed into a carriage – the dizzying pile-up of the absurd and the grotesque makes the tragedy of the finale, coming as suddenly as the Nazi darkness that was soon to envelop all of Europe, all the more powerful.

The Charlatan is an opera of crowds, a feature that was perfectly captured by Jakub Klecker, a conductor with vast choral experience, who was in charge of the musical side of things. He sensed the inherent theatricality of Haas’ score, composed – as in Janáček’s works – of short musical ideas combined into coherent, larger systems, rhythmically expressive, with a melody based largely on modal material. Particularly worthy of note in the large solo cast were Pavol Kubáň, singing the title role, an artist possessing a resonant baritone beautifully developed in the upper end of the scale; Soňa Godarská as Amarantha, a singer with excellent acting skills and a rather sharp sounding but very expressive mezzo-soprano; and the bass-baritone Josef Škarka as the wistful old man Pavučina. A separate round of applause should be given to the chorus of the Ostrava company, superbly prepared by Jurij Galatenko.

The Cunning Little Vixen. Doubravka Novotná in the title role. Photo: Marek Olbrzymek

The infectious enthusiasm of the Ostrava ensembles was also shared by the audience of The Cunning Little Vixen, under the baton of the young Prague conductor Marek Šedivý, who has held the musical directorship of the Moravian-Silesian Theatre for four seasons. The director of the new production is the Israeli-Dutch choreographer Itzik Galili, known for his witty and inventive, and yet compellingly lyrical, dance routines. His distinctive style – underpinned by Daniel Dvořák’s clear, very sparse sets and Simona Rybáková’s gorgeous costumes – worked well in Janáček’s “forest idyll”. Despite the addition of a dozen or so dancers to the cast, stage movement did not dominate the other elements of the production. On the contrary: in the almost empty space illuminated by soft light Galili created an even more emphatic illusion of the magical atmosphere of the forest. Nor did his concept hamper the singers, who clearly enjoyed entering the world of this dancing tale. It’s been a long time since heard such a fresh and sparkling interpretation of the title role – Doubravka Novotná is undoubtedly one of the most talented Czech sopranos of the younger generation, an artist who is versatile and, at the same time, has a rare ability to choose her repertoire wisely. I was a little bit disappointed by Martin Gurbal’ as the Forester. Either he was out of shape that day or his bass is not quite open enough at the top for this essentially baritone part. On the other hand the baritone Boris Prýgl was excellent in the bass role of Harašta. But even so – also thanks to his superb acting – the show was stolen by Jan Šťáva in the dual role of the Badger and the Parson: as the latter he rode around the stage on a kick scooter with a blue headlight in the shape of a large cross. It is also impossible not to mention the excellent child soloists, led by Roman Patrik Baroš in the role of Young Frog, a character that always moves me to tears in the finale, when he explains to the Forester that he has mistaken him for his grandfather. This time the circle of seasons closed more evocatively than usual – this was thanks to the Old Butterfly (Michal Bublík) dying on the proscenium, slowly slipping away throughout the performance.

I arrived in Brno on the eve of the performance of The Charlatan to finally hear Martinů’s Field Mass live. And hear it I did: in a very good performance by the baritone Tadeáš Hoza, the male part of the Gaudeamus Brno choir and Ensemble Opera Diversa conducted by Tomáš Krejčí. However, the biggest discovery of the evening at the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was for me Haas’ Psalm 29 for organ, baritone, female choir and small orchestra – a dense and dark piece, combining inspirations from Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass and Honegger’s “polyphonically complex” counterpoint to references to early Baroque art of the fugue. Fifteen minutes of music that helped me delve deeper into the musical fabric of Haas’ Charlatan the following day.

Martinů’s Field Mass at the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Tomáš Krejčí and Tadeáš Hoza). Photo: Marek Olbrzymek

And then understand that all of the festival concerts – including those seemingly less important – were programmed in a way that would place the patron’s legacy in a broader context. An afternoon with the Brno Contemporary Orchestra, conducted by Pavel Šnajdr, devoted to the music of local composers (primarily those from the generation born in the first decade of independence) made me aware not only of their complicated relationship with Janáček’s legend, but also of their overwhelming influence on the artists of later generations. It is good to know that before Martin Smolka’s 2004 Nagano, a wickedly funny opera about Czech hockey players, came less elaborate but equally brilliant parodies of old musical conventions, like Josef Berg’s absurdist micro-opera Snídaně na hradě Šlankenvaldě, with the composer’s own libretto based on a play by Matěj Kopecký, a famous Czech puppeteer from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Once again I must praise Jan Šťáva, the only singer among the actors in this gem, singing the role of the Villager, which Berg – to enhance the comic effect – composed in the classical Haydn style and to a German text at that.

What turned out to be a magnificent musical lecture on the diversity of approaches to arrangements of folk music in song was a recital by the soprano Simona Šaturová accompanied by Marek Kozák at the piano – in the Tugendhat Villa designed by Mies van der Rohe, a dream venue for a performance of works by modernists (in addition to Janáček, Eugen Suchon, Béla Bartók and Klement Slavický, among others). I am glad I went to the Reduta Theatre for a staged concert of folk music from the Moravian-Slovakian borderlands – performed by instrumentalists and singers from Březová, Strání and Lopeník, with commentary in the form of essays by Janáček read by Vladimír Doskočil, an actor born in those parts. In fact, the only item on the programme that did not quite fit in for me with the perfectly thought-out concept of the festival was a recital by the bass-baritone Adam Plachetka and David Švec (piano), promoting their album Evening Songs for the Pentatone label. The songs by Smetana, Dvořák, Suk and Fibich to poems from Vítězslav Hálek’s collection Večerní písně, included in the album, were supplemented by the artists with Dvořák’s Gypsy Melodies, Op. 55, and – pushing it somewhat – a selection from Janáček’s cycle On an Overgrown Path. This, however, is a minor complaint. I was more worried by the fact that both artists failed to grasp the intimate acoustics of the Mahen Theatre and performed the whole thing in a manner more suited to, I would say, a concert or opera: Plachetka with the full volume of his healthy and booming voice, Švec on the piano with the lid open. I left after their recital deafened by the excess of sound, but I fully understand the enthusiasm of the audience, who rarely has an opportunity to see in Brno one of the most highly regarded and internationally recognised Czech singers.

However, in the context of everything I heard and saw over just four days of the Biennial, it would be inappropriate to complain. I am already looking forward to another festival. And I still can’t believe that so much was packed into this joyful, unassuming event without generating a sense of overkill.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

Two operatic stories of transformation – of Actaeon “in the form of a stag”, who would prefer to see his prey rather than feel the teeth of his hounds on his own skin; and Pygmalion, who “once carved a statue of great beauty out of snow-white marble” and the stone became flesh – are separated by nearly three generations. Marc-Antoine Charpentier composed his hunting opera Actéon most likely in the spring of 1684; the exact circumstances of its first performance, however, are unclear. It is highly unlikely that the premiere took place at the Hôtel de Guise, the Parisian residence of Princess Marie of Lorraine, the composer’s patron – the line-up of the instrumental ensemble suggests that it was an outside commission, perhaps from the Jesuit Collège Clermont. It is also difficult to tell whether the eponymous Actéon was played by the composer himself, who apparently had a well-trained haute-contre, a tenor peculiar to the French Baroque with an upwardly extended tessitura. Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Pigmalion is from a different era and represents a completely different style – that of a typical acte de ballet, a short stage form that combines singing, music and dance within a well-structured drama based on a concise, often mythological anecdote. This is undoubtedly the most successful of the eight works of this genre in the composer’s oeuvre, written in the late 1740s and early 1750s. The piece, first staged at the Académie Royale de Musique in August 1748, was rather coldly received. A real success came with a revival three years later and from that moment it was – despite its brevity – second in popularity only to the musical tragedy Castor et Pollux, running for nearly three decades. It was also one of Rameau’s first masterpieces to come back in grace today and now remains one of his most frequently performed compositions. To what extent it is performed stylishly and convincingly is quite another matter.

Strangely enough, Pigmalion opened the gates of Baroque opera to me when I was still a teenager – and in a non-obvious way at that, through Carlos Saura’s ambiguous film Elisa, vida mía. It was only recently that I understood that the Spanish director invoked in it a peculiar variation of the self-fulfilling prophecy, known as the Pygmalion effect. What has stayed with me until now, however, is the aria he used, “Fatal Amour, cruel vainqueur”, performed by the now-forgotten French tenor Eric Marion, whose unique, androgynous, yet still modal voice made me aware of the existence of vocal Fächer, the specificity of which I was to learn many years later.

Laurence Cummings and Bojan Čičić. Photo: Mark Allan

Perhaps that is why I did not hesitate for a moment to go to the West Road Concert Hall in Cambridge for the first of two concerts by the Academy of Ancient Music conducted by Laurence Cummings, featuring the two “Ovidian” one-act works, in which the title roles were performed by Thomas Walker: a genuine haute-contre with a very broad range, dark, meaty and even, not resorting to falsetto even at the highest notes of the scale. His voice must be similar to that of Pierre Jélyotte, Pigmalion at the Paris premiere of the work and Rameau’s favourite singer, who triumphed not only as a heroic romantic lead, but also in en travesti roles, led by Platée, the swamp froggy nymph, to whom the composer entrusted perhaps the most fiendishly difficult role for this specifically French tenor type. Suffice it to say that Walker’s repertoire includes both Platée, Zoroastre and Pigmalion from Rameau’s operas, as well as Pelléas in Debussy’s musical drama, a role intended for a high baritone.

In both one-act operas Walker highlighted the qualities of his voice with beautiful phrasing, stylish ornamentation and sensitive character interpretation – devoid of the hysteria and pathos so common in performers struggling in these roles with the inexorable resistance of the vocal matter. He found an excellent partner in Anna Dennis, as always expressive, captivating with her ease of singing and exceptionally beautiful soprano: especially in the role of Diane in Actéon, although she more than made up for the small size of the “statue animée” role in Pigmalion with graceful acting. Of the other two soloists I was more impressed by the soprano Rachel Redmond (Aréthuze and L’Amour, respectively), who has a voice as luminous as a ray of sunshine, indefatigable energy and a great sense of humour. I last heard Katie Bray (Junon and Hyale in Actéon, Céphise in Pigmalion) live seven years ago – since then her mezzo-soprano has lost a bit of her brilliance and precision of intonation, although some of the shortcomings can certainly be explained by the excessively high tessitura of the roles entrusted to her. There was a magnificent “chorus” of four young singers (Ana Beard Fernández, Ciara Hendrick, Rory Carver and Jon Stainsby), whose soloist ambitions clearly do not stand in the way of splendid ensemble music making.

Thomas Walker. Photo: Robert Workman

The whole was overseen from the harpsichord by Laurence Cummings, who guided the instrumentalists and singers with his usual panache, insight and sense of idiom – both in the modest Actéon, an opera that can be viewed as a kind of practice run to Charpentier’s later stage works, but undoubtedly one that has charm and dramatic nerve; as well as in Pigmalion, a true masterpiece of the genre, full of contrasts and sudden twists and turns, with a level of condensation of material truly on a par with Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Outstanding performances in the small instrumental ensemble – twenty players in Pigmalion and about half as many in Actéon – came from the AAM concertmaster Bojan Čičić (especially in the glorious duet with Simone Gibbs, concertmistress of the second violins, in Charpentier’s opera, where Čičić played the instrument held against his breast below the collarbone, in accordance with the practice of the time); the excellent percussionist Jordan Murray; and the dependable continuo group made up of Reiko Ichise (viola da gamba), William Carter (theorbo) and Cummings at the harpsichord. It is also worth mentioning that what contributed to the success of both performances was not only discreet stage action, but also an excellent “didascalie” prepared by Alistair Baumann, set in a period Antiqua italic font and displayed legibly in the background, without any additional embellishments.

Having found my dream Pigmalion after so many years, I returned to Poland with a sense of complete fulfilment. It was not until a few days later that I came to regret that I had missed the sensation at the concert the following day, at the Milton Court Concert Hall in London, when Walkers, who had lost his voice just before the final, virtuosic aria “Règne, Amour, fais briller tes flammes”, was replaced, much to the surprise of the dumbstruck audience, by Cummings himself. Then, jaded as I am, I realized that he would not have surprised me: during the last Handel Festival in Göttingen under his direction, at the height of the pandemic, Cummings gave a webcast concert in which he played the harpsichord and sang an abbreviated version of the pasticcio Muzio Scevola. And yes, he did that brilliantly. It remains for me to wish all soloists in future AAM ventures good health, while assuring them that Cummings can stand in for anyone, from soprano to bass, if necessary. I do not think anyone doubts any more that one of the best early music ensembles in the world is finally in good hands after years of stagnation.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

I generally tend to avoid quoting overused bons mots, but in the case of Bayreuth Baroque I really cannot think of anything other than Hitchcock’s famous recipe for a good film. Max Emanuel Cenčić’s festival began four years ago with a veritable earthquake and tension has been steadily rising ever since. Cenčić is both the artistic director of the festival, and the director and performer of one of the leading roles in the stagings of forgotten Baroque operas prepared year after year, which on the surface seems like a perfect recipe for disaster. Yet the opposite is, in fact, true: Cenčić’s ambitious and visionary concepts are proving to be not only the highlights of the festival programme, but also the starting point for subsequent festival ventures featuring the stars of past performances, as well as an arena for new experiments in historically informed performance.

I dread to think what will happen next. After last year’s premiere of Handel’s Flavio I expected a temporary loss of form. I told myself that it was not possible to treat the audience every season to a production that would be so musically excellent and theatrically thoughtful. Especially given that all of Cenčić’s productions to date – in addition to their many other assets – have been marked by a light, almost burlesque sense of humour, which I hastily concluded was the most important feature of his directing. This year Cenčić reminded us of Ifigenia in Aulide, one of Nicola Porpora’s least known operas – despite its conventional lieto fine, a deadly serious thing, exposing humanity’s deepest moral dilemmas, explored at length by authors from Euripides, Racine, Schiller and Hauptmann, to Yorgos Lanthimos with his harrowing film The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

Ifigenia in Aulide. Photo: Clemens Manser

Ifigenia comes from the middle period of the composer’s career, when a group of aristocrats hostile to Handel, led by Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, invited Porpora to London to throw down the gauntlet to the revived Royal Academy of Music. The Opera of the Nobility was inaugurated in December 1733 with the premiere of Porpora’s Arianna in Nasso at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, a month before the premiere of Handel’s Arianna in Creta, which was being prepared at the Haymarket theatre. After two not very successful seasons, the Opera of the Nobility moved to the King’s Theatre in Covent Garden and began regularly using underhand tactics against the rival company. The rivalry brought both sides to the brink of bankruptcy, but Handel won in the end. The Opera of the Nobility went out of business in 1737, having been ruined in large by demands of ever-higher salaries from the singers, including the contralto Francesca Bertolli, the castrati Senesino and Farinelli, and the bass Antonio Montagnana. Discouraged, Porpora left England, tried in vain to obtain a position at the imperial court in Vienna and eventually returned to Naples, where he rebuilt his reputation for a time with a new, revised version of Semiramide riconosciuta.

If you don’t count Festa d’Imeneo, his last London opera – or, in fact, a serenata – the 1735 Ifigenia received the frostiest reception from King’s Theatre regulars. Its run ended after only five performances, overshadowed by the much more popular Polifemo. The main culprit for the failure was probably Porpora’s regular collaborator, the librettist Paolo Antonio Rolli, who made the decision – misguided, as it turned out – to stick faithfully to the myth in Euripides’ version and focused too much on the relationships between the characters at the expense of effective dramaturgy. Yet musically, it is an extraordinary work, challenging the established stereotype of Porpora’s “old-fashioned” style. Despite its rather conventional structure – with plenty of virtuoso da capo arias alternating with secco recitatives – Ifigenia delights with its lyricism and beauty of melodic lines, variety of colour effects, as well as the composer’s method of constructing harmonic structures, already heralding classicism.

Aware that Rolli’s “Euripidean” libretto may, paradoxically, better appeal to the sensibilities of modern audiences, Max Emanuel Cenčić this time departed from the aesthetics of theatrical pastiche, creating a production that is clear, and, at the same time, marked by deep symbolism and a plethora of references to the myth’s “imagined” reality, which has changed over the centuries. I have already praised the set designer Giorgina Germanou’s talent for shaping space and mood with the help of simple, brilliantly lit decorations and expressive costumes (also by her this time) in connection with the pasticcio Sarrasine at this year’s Göttingen Handel Festival. The lighting director Romain de Lagarde bathed the sets in evocative shades of red, symbolising bloody sacrifice; idyllic blues; white, suggesting Iphigenia’s innocence; and the fathomless black of Diana/Artemis, in Greek mythology the goddess of hunting, but also of the moon and death. The nakedness of Agamemnon’s soldiers, bringing to my mind scenes from classical red-figure vases, and the war colours of the Myrmidons, Achilles’ cruel and uncouth companions, are contrasted with the ominous purple of the seer Calchas’ robes, the heroes’ costumes suspended outside time and the Baroque splendour of the Atreides’ clothing. However, what turned out to be Cenčić’s most interesting idea was the division of the role of Iphigenia between a young, silent actress (Marina Diakoumakou) and black-clad Diana sporting deer antlers on her head, who accompanies Iphigenia like a shadow – this highlighted the passivity of the eponymous heroine in the face of divine will and, at the same time, provided the tragedy with an expressive narrative frame: from the anger of Diana demanding a human sacrifice for the death of the deer, through her growing decision to save the unfortunate girl, to the inevitably emerging bond between the goddess and her future priestess on Taurida.

Ifigenia in Aulide. Jasmin Delfs (Iphigenia/Diana). Photo: Falk von Traubenberg.

The sophisticated staging made the extraordinary qualities of the musical interpretation all the more powerful. Who knows, this may have been the first time in my life that I witnessed a contemporary performance of a Baroque opera that verged on absolute perfection. I will not grumble that the role of Ulysses, intended for a female soprano, was entrusted to a man (Nicolò Balducci), while Farinelli’s successor in the role of Achilles was a singer with a voice less resonant than that of the famous castrato from Apulia (Maayan Licht). Both soloists demonstrated that a well-trained soprano countertenor can be a true heroic voice, comfortable across all registers, agile in coloraturas, secure intonation-wise in huge intervallic leaps, and fluent in the style of Neapolitan bel canto. In the role of Agamemnon Cenčić once again faced the legend of Senesino and once again emerged victorious from the ordeal, both as a technically sensational singer and a superb actor. A convincing character of Clytemnestra was created by Marie-Ellen Nesi, a singer with an unusually expressive dark mezzo-soprano. Riccardo Novaro’s resonant and supple baritone was flawless in the role of Calchas. However, the most impressive performance may have come from the young Jasmin Delfs in the dual role of Iphigenia and Diana – because of not only her beautiful, luminous soprano, but also her extraordinary ease and lightness of singing.

Aroma di Roma, a candlelight concert at Ordenskirche St. Georgen. Photo: Clemens Manser

All these wonders would not have happened without Christophe Rousset, leading the soloists and the orchestra of Les Talents Lyriques from the harpsichord with an uncommon sense of the idiom and the richness of the colours contained in the score, with an assured and decisive hand, usually at rather sharp tempi, but with such discipline that nothing was lost from the calibre of this music. The following day the French harpsichordist performed with a dozen or so of the ensemble musicians at a candlelight concert at Ordenskirche St. Georgen, accompanying the excellent Sandrine Piau in a programme comprising two secular cantatas on “Roman” themes, Montéclair’s La morte di Lucretia and Handel’s Agrippina condotta a morire, and Domenico Scarlatti’s cantata Tinte a note di sangue, a letter written in blood to an unfaithful lover, interspersed with instrumental pieces by Corelli and Alessandro Scarlatti. I was very moved by the evening: a display of the most tender collaboration between the musicians and the legendary singer, who more than made up for the now dull sound of her beautiful soprano with phenomenal technique and incredible maturity of interpretation.

Lucile Richardot. Photo: Clemens Manser

It is a pity that there was no such wisdom in Lucile Richardot’s concert the day before at the Schlosskirche with an attractive programme consisting of arias of the “Baroque sorceresses” – Medea, Armida and Circe – with the very capable Jean-Luc Ho at the harpsichord. Her extraordinary, almost tenor-like contralto is still deeply radiant. Her interpretations are getting increasingly mannered – to the detriment of both her voice and the music. It is possible, however, that I am too harsh on Richardot, still unable to recover from the delight of two evenings that transported me to a completely different dimension of historically informed performance.

This year I went to Bayreuth Baroque for a very brief visit – to experience an earthquake and a series of aftershocks. In future seasons I expect tsunamis, landslides and musical fires. Cenčić has already managed to surpass Hitchcock in the art of tension building.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

Veterans of the Polish period instrument performance wax emotional about Innsbruck. In the turbulent 1990s, when they came to the Tyrolean capital – full of hope and poor as church mice – to study with the greatest masters, they would sometimes slip in without a ticket to concerts at the Hofburg, the Spanish Hall of the Ambras Castle or St. James’ Cathedral. Since then dozens of early music festivals have sprouted up across Europe. The dreamers of those days no longer have a sense of being excluded. The time of legends and pioneers is no more: the oeuvre of past eras has escaped its niche and entered the mainstream. The odds have evened out, but, on the other hand, the public’s expectations have changed. In order be able to face up to the growing competition, artists must reassure the listeners that the existing formula is working or must reinvent themselves.

The godparents of the Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik were two enthusiasts: the bassoonist Otto Ulf, a teacher at the local secondary school, and the poet and translator Lilly von Sauter, who in 1962 became the curator of Archduke Ferdinand II’s impressive collection at the Ambras Castle. The following year the two organised the first castle concert – on the 600th anniversary of the handover of Tyrol to the Habsburgs. The idea caught on.  Since then the Ambraser Schlosskonzerte have attracted a growing number of music lovers and curious tourists. In 1972 the Summer Academy of Early Music was launched thanks to Ulf’s efforts. The first “real” festival, under the artistic direction of its founder, was held in 1976. It was Ulf who shaped the Festwochen’s profile, which was unusual for the time and which elevated the event to the rank one of the most important festivals in Europe. Since the 1977 staging of Handel’s Acis and Galatea the programmes of successive Festwochen have featured stagings and semi-staged performances of old, often forgotten operas and oratorios. We can safely venture to say that Innsbruck is the cradle of the modern revival of Baroque opera.

The most fruitful years of the festival were those during the directorship of Ulf and his successor Howard Arman. The Festwochen became a breeding ground for new talent, a stepping stone in the great careers of future masters of historically informed performance, a model for the founders of new festivals and an encouragement to include early music in the programmes of other prestigious events. Something started to go wrong during the reign of René Jacobs, who treated Innsbruck somewhat dispassionately, as a sideline to his international activity, which was developing more dynamically outside Austria. The crisis worsened during the tenure of Alessandro De Marchi, an alumnus of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and one-time assistant to Jacobs, who failed to revive the festival’s tried-and-tested but a bit outdated formula. De Marchi undoubtedly deserves praise for inaugurating the Cesti-Wettbewerb, a competition in honour of the Italian composer Pietro Antonio Cesti, who served for some time as the Kapellmeister at the court of Archduke Ferdinand Charles in Innsbruck. Prizewinners from previous years, including Emöke Baráth, Rupert Charlesworth, Sreten Manojlović and the Polish mezzo-soprano Natalia Kawałek, are developing beautifully, building careers not only in the Baroque repertoire. However, sceptics grumbled that De Marchi was making misguided programming choices and put his own ambitions above the patience of listeners, who were treated to hours-long performances of not always interesting rarities. The critics also raised concerns about De Marchi’s striking but increasingly mannered interpretations.

Graupner’s Dido. Jone Martínez as Menalippe and Andreas Wolf (Hiarbas). Photo: Birgit Gufler

One thing is certain: the festival began to lose the interest of audiences and foreign critics. It was time for reforms. The change of the guard in 2023, after the last season programmed by De Marchi, brought with it a change in the structure of the entire Festwochen management. Markus Lutz, the previous Managing Director, became Executive Commercial Director; Eva-Maria Sens was appointed Artistic Director; while the harpsichordist, conductor and researcher Ottavio Dantone, well-known to Polish audiences as well, was made the new Musical Director.

The motto of this year’s Festwochen was “Where do we come from? Where are we going?” I have already answered the first question above. If, as I suspect, the organisers were referring to the title of Gauguin’s famous painting, the motto was missing the question “Who are we?” Which is not entirely clear in the case of Eva-Maria Sens, a graduate in history and German studies, who has been collaborating with the festival since 2015, previously in the much less prominent position of head of artistic administration, and has no particularly impressive track record. For the moment her vision is not much different from the declarations of most newly appointed directors, trying to lure the audience with an open dialogue between the past and the present. It will be possible to answer the question “Where are we going?” in a few years, although it is already worrying that the festival’s musical directors will serve no more than three to five seasons. In my opinion this is too short a time to give the festival an identity and leave a clear mark of artistic individuality on it. It’s a pity, because Dantone and his Accademia Bizantina, the festival’s resident orchestra, represent the commendable trend of communicating with listeners in a purely musical language, without unnecessary fireworks, with a deep sense that the content and the emotions of compositions written centuries ago will prove intelligible also to a modern, well-prepared audience. Yet it takes time and determination to develop a new audience. Let’s hope both Dantone and his successors will not lack either.

In evaluating the entire festival, the programme of which, spread over more than five weeks, included stagings of three operas, the Cesti Competition, over twenty concerts and as many fringe events, I have to rely on the opinions of the local critics for obvious reasons. I arrived Innsbruck for the last few days of the Festwochen, consciously – albeit regretfully – forgoing Giacomelli’s Cesare in Egitto under Dantone and a concert performance of Handel’s Arianna in Creta featuring the winners of last year’s competition. I chose Christoph Graupner’s Dido, Königin von Carthago, conducted by Andrea Marcon – the operatic debut of the twenty-four-year-old composer, who not long before that got a job as a harpsichordist at Hamburg’s Oper am Gänsemarkt. The building in the square where, contrary to its name, poultry was never traded, with the name most likely referring to the estate of the landowner Ambrosius Gosen, was the first public opera house in Germany, opening in 1678, just over forty years after the inauguration of Venice’s Teatro San Cassiano. It was a stage where no castrati were hired, but where audiences nevertheless expected the same thing as in Venice: elaborate arias full of intricate embellishments and complicated librettos with lots of subplots.

Graupner wrote Dido after the departure of his younger colleague Handel, a violinist and harpsichordist at the Hamburg theatre, who before traveling to Italy had managed to present the well-received Almira and the now-lost Nero at the Gänsemarkt. Of the scores of Handel’s later “Hamburg” operas, Florindo and Daphne, only fragments have survived and they are insufficient to warrant a reliable reconstruction. The operas of Johann Mattheson – the same to whom Händel refused to give way at the harpsichord for a performance of Die unglückselige Cleopatra and was very nearly killed by the enraged composer, an event that turned out to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship between the two men – are yet to see their renaissance. The first performance in our time of Mattheson’s Boris Goudenow, which premiered in Hamburg in 1710, three years after Graupner’s operatic debut, did not take place until 2005. Of the three composers, whose oeuvres from that period perfectly reflect the “programme line” of Oper am Gänsemarkt during the house’s first heyday under the direction of Reinhard Keiser, one, Mattheson, was Hamburg-born, while the other two received their first musical training in two Saxon cities: Halle (Handel) and Leipzig (Graupner). Despite the undoubted stylistic differences, their works from the period represent German opera of the transitional phase between the mature and late Baroque, that is, according to Piotr Kamiński, “an intoxicating mixture of Venetian opera, French choreography, German heartiness and universal bad taste”.

Robin Johanssen (Dido), Jacob Lawrence (Aeneas), and Jorge Franco (Achates). Photo: Birgit Gufler

The occasional stagings of Almira aside, this eclectic genre is still a terra incognita for most Baroque opera lovers. Dido – like Almira, which does not resemble any of Handel’s later operas – surprises with its huge size, mixing of German arias and recitatives with Italian arias, typical of Hamburg opera, a range of improbable subplots and an extraordinary sensuality of sound. It also reveals the composer’s Leipzig training, especially his mastery of the art of counterpoint and fugue. The orchestration is dense and dark, combinations of instruments  not obvious, changes of mood abrupt, play of modes and keys deeply thought out and linked to the character of the protagonists (most of the title role is in minor keys). Worthy of note are the elaborate ensembles and choruses, in part inspired by French composers, and in part even featuring literal references to Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas – which would confirm musicologists’ most recent theories that the father of English opera’s oeuvre had a much bigger influence on the music of continental composers than previously thought. Graupner also made several significant corrections to Heinrich Hinsch’s libretto, demonstrating an unerring sense of drama – corrections sometimes as subtle as changing the order of the chorus’ words at the beginning of Act III from “Dido lebe” (long live Dido) to “Lebe, Dido” to make the link to the following ominous duet between Aeneas and Achates, “Lebe, Dido, lebe wohl” (Farewell, Dido, farewell), all the stronger.

It’s a pity that Marcon took the accusations against De Marchi too much to his heart and opted for rather serious cuts to the score. Many arias were removed from the opera, as was the entire role of Iras, Dido’s confidante in love with Achates, with secco recitatives being drastically trimmed as well, sometimes to the detriment of the musical dramaturgy. Perhaps, however, the audience at the Tiroler Landestheater indeed was not ready yet to sit through the complete work that would have taken at least four and a half hours to perform without the cuts. In the truncated version it did hold the audience’s attention, a lot of credit for which is due to the Italian production team: the dancer and choreographer Deda Cristina Colonna who was in charge of directing (in 2017, shortly after Stefan Sutkowski’s death, her production of Lully’s Armida, presented in Innsbruck two years earlier, was brought to the Warsaw Chamber Opera), and the set designer Domenico Franchi. A sensible compromise between the sumptuousness of the historicising costumes and props, and the minimalism of the geometric, sliding decorations – magnificently lit by Cesare Agoni, who bathed the stage in vivid, saturated shades of blue, red, black, white and, above all, gold – provided space for the singers and ample room for manoeuvre for the director, who patched up the gaps in the libretto with elaborate acting gestures alluding to both Baroque dance and modern forms of dance and pantomime.

The biggest hero of the evening was, however, Andrea Marcon, leading the soloists, NovoCanto vocal ensemble and La Cetra orchestra with an energy that proved infectious to all the performers, but at the same time with precision and without falling into irritating mannerisms. He beautifully spun tuneful, expressive melodic lines, intricately weaving them into the dense, shimmering texture, only to occasionally pull out a single thread from it. He placed the accents brilliantly, played with timbre skilfully and, above all, perfectly balanced the proportions between the stage and the orchestra pit, which, given the rather uneven vocal cast, was not an easy task.

I was a little disappointed by the eponymous Dido portrayed by Robin Johanssen, a singer endowed with a sensual and fresh soprano with a charmingly silvery timbre, which to my ear is more appropriate for the classical repertoire, however. Her singing, smooth, even across the registers and confident in the coloraturas, lacked primarily specifically Baroque ornamentation. In addition, Johanssen took a long time to warm up and achieved her full expression only in Act III (especially in the harrowing aria “Komm doch, komm, gewünschter Teil”, in which she was accompanied with uncommon sensitivity by Eva Saladin, the ensemble’s concert mistress). Alicia Amo, cast in two roles – Anna, Dido’s sister, and the goddess Venus – has a soprano that is bright and rather harsh in tone, marked by a persistent, uncontrolled vibrato, which the singer tried to cover with expressive delivery of the musical text, not always succeeding. I was definitely more impressed by the velvety-voiced, very technically proficient Jone Martínez in the soprano roles of Juno and the Egyptian princess Menalippe, whose love for the Numidian prince Hiarbas, head over heels in love with Dido, would find fulfilment only after the death of the Carthaginian queen. The weakest links in the male cast were the tenors: Jacob Lawrence (Aeneas), handsome-voiced but unconvincing as a character, and the clearly still inexperienced Jorge Franco as Achates. On the other hand excellent performances came from the unfortunate suitors: Andreas Wolf, who impressed with his sonorous, well-placed bass-baritone and stylish ornamentation in the role of Hiarbas; and José Antonio López, whose noble, mature baritone was perfect for the role of Juba, Prince of Tyras infatuated with Anna.

Musica hispanica. Los Elementos, Alberto Miguélez Rouco. Photo: Mona Wibmer

I stayed in Innsbruck for two more days. The following day, at the Jesuit church, I was able to enjoy rarely heard music by two eighteenth-century composers, José de Nebra and Francesco Corselli, fragments of which – arranged in a vocal-instrumental mass typical of Madrid’s Capilla Real at the time – were performed passionately and unpretentiously by the Los Elementos ensemble conducted by the Spanish countertenor and harpsichordist Alberto Miguélez Rouco. The day after that, as part of the new “Ottavio Plus” series, Dantone and Alessandro Tampieri, concert master and soloist of the Accademia Bizantina, gave a concert at the Spanish Hall, presenting a sophisticated programme featuring works for solo harpsichord and harpsichord in dialogue with violin, viola and viola d’amore: from the “proto-Baroque” Frescobaldi, through Attilio Ariosti, Domenico Scarlatti and Johann Sebastian Bach, to the heralds of Classicism, Johann Gottlieb Graun and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

Ottavio Plus. Ottavio Dantone and Alessandro Tampieri. Photo: Mona Wibmer

The venues were packed, but pilgrimages of music lovers from abroad are yet to materialise. There are new faces among the performers, the repertoire is already a bit different, the festival is slowly changing course and setting off into the unknown. “All remains different”, the new directors announced, alluding to the hit song by the German actor and singer Herbert Grönemeyer. I hope they will keep their word. The refrain of Grönemeyer’s song begins with the words “there’s so much to lose, you can only win”.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

Well, I have been taught once again to never say never. I didn’t make it to the premiere of Valentin Schwarz’s production of Der Ring des Nibelungen, as I still had other some Bayreuth stagings from previous years to catch up on. Last year I gave the new tetralogy a miss as well – discouraged by the generally scathing reviews of the director’s vision, the uneven, in a few cases even ill-judged cast and the return to the podium of the young, undoubtedly talented, but not very experienced Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen, who in 2021 deprived me of any vestiges of pleasure in experiencing my beloved Die Walküre. This season I ran out of arguments – after Cornelius Meister and then after Inkinen, the baton was taken over by Simone Young, to whose debut on the Green Hill we had been looking forward for years. The other sensational announcement was that Michael Spyres would sing Siegmund, an announcement all the more sensational given that this was a double debut – the American tenor had never sung the role on stage before. Professional curiosity prevailed, although I must confess remorsefully that I got myself accredited only for Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. After what I saw and heard, I do not rule out that next year I might take one last opportunity to get to know the whole thing – if only to verify some of the interpretive tropes I spotted when analysing the first two parts of the Ring.

Schwarz arrived in Bayreuth with a hard-earned reputation of an iconoclast and a rebel. He announced that he intended to direct the Ring as if it were a four-part saga on Netflix – a story about the problems and dilemmas of a modern family, adapted to the sensibilities of today’s audiences, with all the resulting dramatic consequences of this decision. Fully aware that Wagner had drawn on dozens of sources to create his own mythology, Schwarz felt himself a myth-maker as well and, as he put it, “with consistent disrespect” for the libretto, made fundamental changes in it: not in the textual but in the interpretive layer. He made the conflict between the two twin brothers, Alberich and Wotan, the dramatic axis of the whole. He replaced the Rhine gold physically present in the Ring with a multiple symbol of power. He turned Sieglinde – pregnant even before the arrival of Siegmund – into a victim of Wotan’s rape, completely turning the relationship between the protagonists of Die Walküre upside down. As Schwarz resorted to comparisons with cinematic attempts to demythologise established myths, let me point out that in Netflix’s nearly thirty-year history no one has made an adaptation so far removed from the original that the viewer – in order to understand anything about it – has to use the director’s extensive commentary. Such commentary was not necessary even in the case of the mad Norwegian series Ragnarok, whose creators took a merciless approach not only to Norse mythology, but also to Der Ring des Nibelungen – and yet the narrative remained clear, above all for the production’s main target audience, that is pimply teenagers who didn’t always have a clue why a certain nursing home resident in the fictional town of Edda wore a black eye patch and was called Wotan Wagner.

Das Rheingold. Tomasz Konieczny (Wotan), Ólafur Sigurdarson (Alberich), and John Daszak (Loge). Photo: Enrico Nawrath

Thus, from a conceptual point of view Schwarz’s Ring is a complete disaster, but visually a perversely attractive disaster, mainly due to Andrea Cozzi’s excellent set design, Andy Besuch’s fine costumes, Nicola Hungsberg’s efficient lighting direction, prepared this year on the basis of Reinhard Traub’s original concept, and – last but not least – the extraordinary qualities of the Festspielhaus stage, the depth of which enhances every detail and brightens every colour. However, Schwarz doesn’t know how to use this brilliantly arranged space, which evokes only superficial associations with a movie set. The narrative unfolds in too many places at once, becomes distracting owing to the impossibility of using close-ups and long camera zoom-ins and, as a result, gets bogged down in the tangled, disjointed side plots.

And yet it is possible to discern in all this a desperate attempt to lure the audience with the promise of a mystery. There is no gold, no ring, no Nothung in this staging, but there are symbols that are yet to be fully explained – perhaps their meaning will be unveiled in the subsequent parts of the cycle. Could it be that gold is the ghastly, cruel boy in a yellow shirt, whom Alberich kidnaps from the custody of the Rhinemaidens? Or perhaps it’s just an illusion, perhaps the real metaphor for the primordial order of nature is the two children in Die Walküre sprinkled with golden glitter – embodied visions of the original state of innocence of Sieglinde and Siegmund? What does the pyramid, shown in various forms, mean? Could it be that in all its manifestations – from a polyhedral variation of Rubik’s cube that Wotan gives the infernal boy to play with, to the luminous space that Brünnhilde heads for in the finale of Die Walküre – it is an ambiguous symbol of power and violence, the ring, Tarnhelm and Wotan’s spear in one?

We don’t get an answer to these questions and I doubt – I may be wrong, though – that we will get it at the end of the Ring. Schwarz has some decent directorial skills, and from time to time he enlivens this incoherent tale of a toxic family with finely played episodes and charming acting scenes that, instead of developing into a coherent narrative, burst like soap bubbles. Like the brilliant, if a bit over-the-top, scene in which Erda impetuously hurls a tray full of champagne glasses against the floor before “Weiche, Wotan, weiche”. Like the beginning of Act I of Die Walküre, in which Hunding, amidst the flashes of a thunderstorm, struggles with a panel of blown electrical fuses. Like the well-captured essence of Siegmund’s disappointment, when, hearing that he will not be reunited with Sieglinde in Valhalla, he abandons his suitcase packed for the journey to the palace of the fallen. Yet most of Schwarz’s ideas come from nowhere and lead nowhere, and this includes the spectacular Non-Ride of the Valkyries: shrouded in bandages and recuperating in a plastic surgery clinic.

Das Rheingold. Tobias Kehrer (Fafner), Jens-Erik Aasbø (Fasolt), Nicholas Brownlee (Donner), Christina Nilsson (Freia), and Mirko Roschkowski (Froh). Photo: Enrico Nawrath

I wonder to what extent this pandemonium of post-dramatic theatre influenced casting choices and style of performance of the various vocal parts. In Das Rheingold, in line with Schwarz’s concept, we got the twins Alberich and Wotan in the form of two repulsive shady-looking characters, whose singing – far from any canons of beauty and subtlety – carried only a powerful charge of contempt, frustration and hatred (Ólafur Sigurdarson and Tomasz Konieczny, respectively). An emotionless and prematurely aged Fricka found a convincing performer in Christa Mayer, who possesses an already tired mezzo-soprano with an excessive vibrato. Freia, terrified and almost in catatonia, was heard in Christina Nilsson’s lovely but at times seemingly frozen voice. Ya-Chung Huang’s technically assured tenor had to cope with an extremely one-dimensional, even caricatural vision of Mime. The same applies to John Daszak, whose interpretation of Loge came as if straight from English vaudeville – which is not surprising, given that Schwarz imagined him as Wotan’s family lawyer. Okka von der Damerau as Erda successfully made up for her technical shortcomings with her expressiveness. Of the two giant brothers the one I found more memorable was Fafner, sung by Tobias Kehrer with a fairly small and at times unstable, but very charming bass. Mirko Roschkowski (Froh) paled in comparison with the excellent Nicholas Brownlee as Donner (I looked up the cast of Das Rheingold to be presented at the Bayerische Staatsoper in the autumn and discovered with satisfaction that I wasn’t the only person to hear more of a Wotan in him). I found softness and lyricism only in the singing of the Rhinemaidens – this makes me all the happier to note a fine performance by the Polish mezzo-soprano Natalia Skrycka as Wellgunde. In the second instalment of the Ring characters familiar from the prologue were joined by Wotan’s traditionally screaming daughters, in comparison with whom Catherine Foster did surprisingly well in the role of Brünnhilde, sung musically, with great commitment and at times an indispensable sense of humour, although the English singer, who has an undoubtedly handsome soprano, as usual did not avoid problems with intonation and excessive vibrato.

Die Walküre. Michael Spyres (Siegmund) and Vida Miknevičiūtė (Sieglinde). Photo: Enrico Nawrath

Only the first act of Die Walküre fulfilled my dream of the truth of the most humane of Wagner’s musical dramas – thanks to two phenomenal Bayreuth debutants: Vida Miknevičiūtė, who conveyed all the anxiety, ecstasy and anguish of Sieglinde with a soprano that was quite sharp, but at the same time agile, spontaneous, sparkling with colour, impeccable in terms of both intonation and articulation; and Michael Spyres, who took Bayreuth by storm and immediately presented himself as one of the best Siegmunds in the festival’s post-war history. I admire the extraordinary intelligence of this singer, who perfectly senses the moment when a change of repertoire should be made without damaging the voice and, at the same time, in full harmony with the aesthetics and performance tradition of the newly mastered roles. His German still leaves a bit to be desired (this also applies to the production of certain vowels, which continue to bring to mind associations with the French grand opera), but in terms of vividness of his voice, his uniquely baritonal sound, beautifully open top and rounded notes at the bottom of the range, and above all the sensitive, truly song-like phrasing – I think Spyres would have delighted Wagner himself. The singing of this Sieglinde and this Siegmund could move a rock: it certainly moved the ever-dependable Georg Zeppenfeld, who complemented the artistry of the two singers with an astonishingly sensitive portrayal of the unloved, frustrated Hunding.

Die Walküre. Tomasz Konieczny (Wotan). Photo: Enrico Nawrath

It was worth coming to Bayreuth for this one act, for this hour of wonderful music making under Simone Young’s tender baton. The Australian conductor tried to brighten the score of the whole Ring, to extract hitherto neglected details from its texture, to emphasise the tragedy of gods, people and in-between beings with an almost impressionistic play of lights and shadows. She fully achieved this goal in the orchestral layer. When it came to singing, she often had to fight against recalcitrant matter, especially in Das Rheingold, when the soloists sometimes managed to drown out, shout down and stomp down the subtly and wisely playing orchestra. How much of this was Schwarz’s fault, how much was contributed by the booming singing manner, so beloved on the Green Hill, how much was contributed by the conductor herself, defending her vision against all odds – I might find out next year. I already know that the festival should let go of neither Miknevičiūtė, Young nor Spyres. Wagner’s masterpieces deserve the return of sensitive interpreters.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

What do famous stock market investors and investment fund managers do when they retire? Warren Buffett, who will soon turn 94, apparently still enjoys playing the ukulele. Anthony Bolton, twenty years his junior, one of the UK’s most successful investors, retired from big capital management in 2014 and decided to complete his first opera. The premiere of The Life and Death of Alexander Litvinenko took place in 2021 at Grange Park Opera and received a rather mixed reviews from the critics, although even the fussy reviewers had to admit that the work was by no means inferior to most new British operas. Bolton’s composition received considerable publicity abroad, including in Russia, where Andrei Lugovoy, a deputy to the State Duma and the main suspect in the murder of the former KGB lieutenant-colonel, declared that the opera was the work of Western secret services, and thought that its premiere was a blatant provocation.

I did not make it to that performance due to pandemic-related travel restrictions. And I was really sorry I couldn’t make it, because Anthony Bolton, a graduate of the elite Stowe School and the famous Holy Trinity College Cambridge, studied music more diligently than many a professional composer in Poland. He played the cello and the piano, and his first composition teacher – while he was still at college – was Nicholas Maw, who later composed the opera Sophie’s Choice, based on William Styron’s novel and staged at the ROH in 2002 with Simon Rattle conducting. That same year Bolton returned to his old passion and began taking private lessons, for example with Colin Matthews, the same man who, together with his brother David, collaborated with Deryck Cooke on the reconstruction of Mahler’s Symphony No. 10.

Hugh Cutting (Ariel). Photo: Marc Brenner

This year brought another opportunity to check Bolton’s credentials. I realised that a visit to Grange Park Opera to attend the premiere of his second stage work, Island of Dreams, based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, required that I extend my stay in England by just two days. I decided to use this opportunity to catch up.

Malcontents once again complained that there was no point in attempting to create yet another adaptation of Shakespeare’s masterpiece given that Adès’ The Tempest already existed. Besides, in their opinion, one of the Stratford master’s last plays is not particularly suitable for operatic treatment, which should explain composers’ limited interest in this source of inspiration. This is not entirely true: The Tempest was hugely popular among opera composers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. In addition, unlike Adès, Bolton compiled the libretto from excerpts from Shakespeare’s original text, just as the Swiss composer Frank Martin did in 1956, taking Schlegel and Tieck’s classic German translation as the basis for the libretto of his opera Der Sturm.

Brett Polegato (Prospero). Photo: Marc Brenner

A lot suggests that Bolton can afford to engage in experiments, even unsuccessful ones. The cast of his Island of Dreams included Hugh Cutting in the countertenor role of Ariel. Prospero was originally to have been played by Simon Keenlyside, who was eventually replaced by the Canadian baritone Brett Polegato. The opera was directed by David Pountney in collaboration with the Austrian video artist David Haneke, with whom Pountney had tried out the innovative “triptychon” system – consisting of three precisely synchronised sliding projection screens – at the San Francisco Opera a few years earlier.

Musically, I got more or less what I had expected: a technically well-written and accessible opera, clearly inspired in its instrumental layer by the oeuvres of Holst and Britten, at times perhaps taking too sharp a turn towards the soundtrack of a non-existent film (multiple references to traditional English songs and Juventin Rosas’ nineteenth-century Mexican waltz Sobre las olas), though colourfully orchestrated with a great deal of imagination. Bolton fared a bit less well in dealing with vocal parts, giving ample opportunity to shine only to Prospero – in this case in a fine and wise portrayal by Polegato, a singer who possesses a seductive baritone with a beautiful timbre. The duets of the soprano Miranda (Ffion Edwards) and the tenor Ferdinand (Luis Gomes) lacked the passion of real emotion, though this was no fault of the performers, who sang with fresh, well-placed voices and made every effort to breathe some life into their cardboard characters. It is also a pity that the production failed to fully utilise the capabilities of Cutting, whose handsome and technically superb countertenor seems to be the dream voice for “Ariel’s music”, once so accurately contrasted by Jan Kott with “Caliban’s music”. The most memorable of the former for me was the wonderfully sensual song “Where the bee sucks, there suck I”. The latter was performed with great dedication by Andreas Jankowitsch, but his bass-baritone was not very resonant. Of the other soloists I was particularly struck by the baritone William Dazeley as Alonso, impressive because of not only his cultured singing, but also his excellent diction. I feel sorry the most for the overacted roles of Trinculo and Stefano (the tenor Adrian Thompson and the baritone Richard Suart). Compliments are due to the conductor George Jackson for his diligence and precision in preparing the whole thing with the Gascoigne Orchestra. As for Pountney’s concept – wherever any directorial work was in evidence, the overwhelming impression was that of a rehash of several dozen of Sir David’s past productions (an impression compounded by the costumes designed by April Dalton). As for the very colourful projections – I’m not sure that, if I were in Haneke’s place, I would let my name be associated with such an obvious AI work.

Brett Polegato and Ffion Edwards (Miranda). Photo: Marc Brenner

Despite all the reservations, I left the theatre satisfied. In England not every new opera has to be a masterpiece. Sometimes it can be the equivalent of a competently written easy read or a slick but unmemorable film adaptation of a classic. After all, there are sounds that give delight and hurt not.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

I arrived in Longborough for the last of the four June performances of Das Rheingold in 2019 from the scorching heat of Warsaw straight into pouring rain and bitter cold. I joked later that I expected a snowstorm before Act I of Die Walküre, planned for the following season, and that I preferred not to scare anyone by trying to guess what weather anomalies would accompany the performances of Götterdämmerung. What I did not foresee, however, was the pandemic, which slammed the United Kingdom shut in lockdown and put a question mark over the production of the second complete Ring des Nibelungen at LFO. The situation began to improve a bit in 2021, but I was unable to see Die Walküre. Foreign observers decided not to take the risk of getting stuck in either self-isolation or quarantine, especially as most B and Bs and hotels were closed. In any case, the production was semi-staged and featured an orchestra of just thirty-strong. Fortunately, the delayed premieres of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung took place as planned, in 2022 and 2023, respectively, and this season, after five years of preparation, the complete Ring, directed by Amy Lane and conducted by Anthony Negus, was presented in Longborough three times.

I can’t remember ever waiting more eagerly for accreditation. The tickets were not on open sale at all: they sold out in a flash among donors and patrons six months before the beginning of the festival. The small theatre in the Cotswolds, affectionately referred to, albeit with a degree of irony, as the “English Bayreuth”, finally provided a legitimate basis for comparisons with the festival house on the Green Hill. It is not and probably never will be a match for it. It is certainly already a counterbalance – a pilgrimage destination for Wagnerites from all over the world, for lovers and connoisseurs who do not feel the need to deconstruct or “rediscover” Wagner’s oeuvre, sufficiently aware as they are of the cultural determinants and interpretive traditions to believe in its immanent potential.

Das Rheingold. Mark Le Brocq (Loge). Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis

Longborough productions have never been at odds with the work, but did not always dazzle with richness of imagination. Amy Lane’s concept, which I have been following in stages since 2019, rarely refers the spectator to the sphere of the symbolic (lighting: Charlie Morgan Jones; set and props: Rhiannon Newman Brown; costume designer: Emma Ryott). The director focuses more on storytelling, at times resorting to solutions that are too literal and exaggerated, reaching for superfluous and unnecessarily “familiar” props, not taking full advantage, on the other hand, of the possibilities offered by projections and stage lights. I have already written about this when reviewing the previous, individually staged parts of the cycle, and I feel even more sorry that Lane lacked the time or energy to correct the shortcomings pointed out earlier. This is because this year’s Die Walküre turned out to be unquestionably the best part of the cycle in theatrical terms. Set on a gloomy looking stage, amidst flashes of moonlight emerging from graphite blackness, amidst the blue of the night sky, toned down with a brown hue, and the cool green of a spectral forest, it perfectly matched the intention of Wagner himself, who emphasised in his stage directions – which were ahead of his time –  to leave the rest to the imagination. This painting-like purity – bringing to mind the symbolic meaning of Friedrich’s works and the poetry of Lessing’s forest landscapes – was lacking especially in the overloaded staging of Siegfried. I must admit, however, that it was only after watching the entire Ring within a short period of time that I became aware of the homogeneity of the concept developed by the director, who decided to link all the parts of the tetralogy with a clear compositional idea, like in a true epic. Lane introduces individual characters and motifs with unrelenting consistency, making them more and more easily recognisable and closer to the spectators as the stage action progresses. In the background of all the productions run loose thoughts, reminiscences and forward-looking visions, presented in an old-fashioned picture frame. The key to interpreting the whole thing is a mysterious leather-bound notebook – perhaps Wotan’s diary – passed from one person to another, and helping the participants in the drama return to previously suspended threads and slowly close the tale, the finale of which Wagner had suggested already in Das Rheingold.

The sense of consistency and stage truth was also reinforced by Negus’ decision to entrust the roles of characters returning in the successive parts of the tetralogy to the same singers – an idea that had proved impossible to fully implement in previous seasons and that is rarely reflected in casts of Der Ring des Nibelungen at other theatres. The artist who deserves a special mention is the tireless Bradley Daley, whose technically assured, yet rough sounding and a bit “rough-hewn” tenor perfectly suits the character of Siegfried – a kind of anti-hero of this tragedy, a thoughtless and sometimes cruel boy, whom fate has not allowed to mature, except perhaps in the last flash of his agony. One of the brightest points of the cast was Paul Carey Jones (Wotan/Wanderer), who has a sonorous and very focused bass-baritone with a distinctive honeyed tone. He gave a memorable performance especially in Die Walküre, poignantly torn between a desperately kept up semblance of authority and voice of the heart. I found him slightly less convincing in Das Rheingold and Siegfried, where an unquestionable display of vocal skill sometimes took the better of the subtlety of interpretation. Of the two Nibelungs I was definitely more impressed by Adrian Dwyer, a singer with a meaty and flexible tenor, in the role of Mime. Mark Stone did not repeat his success of five years previously: his portrayal of Alberich, blinded by hatred and lust for power, brilliant in terms of acting, did not find sufficient support this time in his vocal performance, given in a voice that was loud, but dull and no longer seducing with a wide colour palette. On the other hand, Madeleine Shaw’s rounded, luscious soprano took on even greater clarity in the role of the intransigent Fricka, haughty to the point of caricature.

Die Walküre. Foreground: Paul Carey Jones (Wotan). Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis

Two singers took on dual roles, which deserves particular mention especially in the case of Mark Le Brocq, a versatile artist with a resonant, clear, well-trained tenor. Opera regulars associate him primarily with Mozart and Britten (he has recently received excellent reviews for his portrayal of Aschenbach in WNO’s new staging of Death in Venice), although Le Brocq does not shy away from lighter and supporting roles in Wagner’s operas (last year I could not praise him enough after Tristan at Grange Park Opera, where the director cast him in a role that merges the characters of Melot and the Young Sailor into one). In Longborough he accomplished what seemed impossible: sang Loge and Siegmund three times on consecutive days. In his showpiece part from Das Rheingold he played with phrasing and caressed every word with the same flexibility and ease with which he schemed against the Nibelungs. He approached Siegmund in Die Walküre quite differently, with a darker, more focused voice, coloured alternately by shades of misery and love ecstasy. Although Le Brocq’s singing lacked a denser, truly heroic tone, the artist made up for this shortcoming with his ability to “narrate” his role, to build it as nineteenth-century theatre actors did. In the first two acts of Die Walküre he was accompanied on stage by one of the best Hundings I have ever encountered live. I found Julian Close’s bass – cavernous and black as night – combined with a chilling interpretation of the character more memorable than his take on Hagen in Götterdämmerung, less convincing, at times even overdone, in comparison with last year.

I delayed my assessment of Lee Bisset, who once again portrayed Brünnhilde, until the last moment. The Scottish singer has a beautiful, rich, golden-coloured soprano, a splendid stage presence that seems perfect for the role, and outstanding acting skills. Unfortunately, there is an increasingly intrusive vibrato in her voice, over which the artist completely loses control in dynamics above mezzo forte. Perhaps this is due to fatigue, perhaps to insufficient breath support, which is also suggested by forcibly attacked notes at the top of the scale. But what can I say, I would have followed her Brünnhilde into the fire that consumed Walhalla anyway – there is so much wisdom in her singing, such a fusion with the character portrayed, so much truth derived straight from the pages of the score. I find it hard to extricate myself from this paradox, especially since in every part of the Ring sparks were literally flying across the LFO stage, kindled by the characters present on it. They included the phenomenal Sieglinde of Emma Bell, whose warm, luscious soprano brought to my mind irresistible associations with the voice of young Régine Crespin; the magnificent, slightly baritonal Froh portrayed by Charne Rochford; the velvety-voiced Fasolt (Pauls Putnins); the exquisitely matched Gibichung siblings (Laure Meloy and Benedict Nelson) and the fiery Waltraute (Claire Barnett-Jones). Not to mention the twenty-two-strong male chorus in Götterdämmerung, which would outclass many larger ensembles with its power and clarity of sound.

Siegfried. Bradley Daley in the title role. Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis

There would have been no such marvels, if it had not been for Anthony Negus – an absolutely uncompromising man, a conductor who came to the fore only when he knew far more about Wagner’s music and its contexts than most of his colleagues making their debuts on the Green Hill today. I have written many times that he is a master at deciphering and exploiting the dramatic potential of the music to the full. Just as often I have compared his interpretations to living beings – undulating to the rhythm of their collective breathing, teeming in the depths of the orchestra pit, wailing like sea birds and rustling like leaves. Negus is a natural-born narrator, who can attract and focus the listener’s attention for hours without missing a single detail of the musical tale.

Yet it is not enough to come up with an apt interpretation. It still needs to be exacted from the musicians. Or in other words: the conductor needs to win them over to his vision, to make them recognise it as their own and speak with one voice in rapture. I spent my childhood and early youth behind the Iron Curtain, briefly raised in the 1970s, which enabled me to experience my first live tetralogy – in Warsaw, in a production featuring Berit Lidholm and Helge Brilioth, among others. I had to wait nearly half a century for a Ring that would be as coherent and equally thrilling – albeit immersed in an earlier tradition, closer to the original contexts – until my visit to Longborough. And I fear that the world of Wagnerian mythology will never again emerge as vividly from nothingness as in the prelude to Das Rheingold under Negus. That I will not live to see a future Siegfried reforge his father’s sword at the pace indicated by the composer, “Kräftig, doch nicht zu schnell”. That in no finale of Götterdämmerung will the Rhine flow so widely, having returned to its former bed.

Götterdämmerung. Lee Bisset (Brünnhilde) and Bradley Daley (Siegfried disguised as Gunther). Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis

Whatever happens, I will certainly not forget the introduction to Act I of Die Walküre, conducted and played in such a way: with the violins’ and violas’ tremolando persistently and yet powerfully contrasted dynamically – sometimes within a single bar – with references to the Wotan’s spear motif in the cellos and double basses tearing into it as if into living flesh, with later flashes of Donner’s thunderbolts in the brass. And when the storm began to subside, all you had to do was “nudge the branch with your hand to still be able to smell the phosphorus of the lightning”, as in Nowak’s poetry. And it is still possible to smell this phosphorus. May it smell as long as possible.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

It is hard to believe that it has been over half a century. This may be because the Academy Ancient Music, established in 1973, has had only three music directors to date: its founder Christopher Hogwood, who spent thirty-three years with it; Richard Egarr, who headed it for fifteen seasons; and Laurence Cummings, who took the helm in 2021, after ten years as the artistic director of the Internationale Händel-Festspiele Göttingen. The name of the ensemble is an allusion to the elite group of musicians operating from 1726 at London’s Crown and Anchor Tavern near Strand and then the Freemasons Hall in Covent Garden. Although in the eighteenth century time flew more slowly than it does today, the term “ancient music” was used to refer not only to pre-Reformation works, but also to rarely heard old works by English and foreign composers. This included the music of George Frederick Handel, who has been one of the pillars of the “new” Academy.

The most important events in the celebrations of the AAM’s fiftieth anniversary included the launch of Richard Bratby’s book Refiner’s Fire – in which the author tells the story of the ensemble against the background of the twentieth-century revolution in period performance of early music – as well as the first-ever complete recording of Mozart’s keyboard pieces. In the flurry of other engagements I had to miss most of the orchestra’s ambitious ventures in the concert halls of London and Cambridge. I could not, however, resist the temptation to hear Orlando at the finale of the anniversary celebrations at the Barbican Centre, especially given the fact that I encountered Handel’s last opera written for Senesino and staged at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, in my youth in the AAM’s 1990 recording, conducted by Hogwood and featuring James Bowman in the title role. Another “magic” opera by Handel and, at the same time, the first based on Ariosto’s Orlando furioso – and compared later by musicologists with Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte – is ostensibly an opera seria, but with fantastic elements, full of unexpected twists and turns, watched as if from a distance and sometimes clearly with tongue in cheek. The anonymous libretto (perhaps by the composer himself) draws on an earlier text by Carlo Sigismondo Capece, the court poet of the queen consort of Poland Marie Casimire Sobieska. In Ariosto’s work the mad Orlando flies across the world and travels to the moon; among the multitude of characters we find Saracens, brave knights and sorcerers; and there is also room for a sea monster and a winged hippogriff. Handel’s version is slightly simpler, which does not change the fact that the brave knight falls in love with a Cathayan princess, who in turn has given her heart to an African prince, of whom a simple shepherdess is enamoured. The figure pulling the strings is the magician Zoroastro, who makes sure that the protagonists guide the plot towards a relatively happy ending.

Iestyn Davies (Orlando) and Laurence Cummings. Photo: Mark Allan

The opera is full of peculiarities, from the sinfonia in the disquieting key of F sharp minor, used by Handel probably once before (in the harpsichord suite HWV 431), Zoroastro’s first elaborate showpiece – a magnificent bass aria, Italian in style, at a point where listeners of the day would have expected instead a bravura aria of the main protagonist, all the way to one of the most famous mad scenes in the history of the form, with Orlando’s supposed descent into the underworld, in which Handel changes the soloist’s tempo seven times and metre five times, resorting, for example, to the “indecent” measure of 5/8, and, in addition, giving Senesino a tempo di gavotta aria, interrupted in the middle by a despairing larghetto, where pathos competes with the grotesque. What is also peculiar are the relationships between the protagonists – with the shepherdess Dorinda being unexpectedly put on a par with Orlando, able to draw far wiser conclusions from her unrequited love for Medoro than the King of the Franks’ paladin in love with the unattainable Angelica. If we add to this Orlando’s sleep scene from Act III – accompanied by two longing violette marine and cello pizzicato – we will see a masterpiece that broke with the convention of the period enough for the composer to fall out with the first performer of the title role, and for the opera to disappear from the stage after only eleven performances, only to return nearly two hundred years after its 1733 London premiere.

During its final concert of the season the AAM – led by Cummings standing at the harpsichord – also confirmed its dramatic qualities, thanks especially to the extraordinarily lucid and disciplined playing of the twenty-strong orchestra. Particularly worthy of note in it were Bojan Čičić (who together with William Thorpe put aside his violin to lull Orlando to sleep in “Già l’ebro mia ciglio” with the soft sound of two violas d’amore, in lieu of the mysterious violette marine); the remarkable oboists Leo Duarte and Robert de Bree, who also played the recorders; as well as Ursula Paludan Monberg and David Bentley, who complemented the colour of Act I with the pure and full sound of two natural horns, held high with the bells facing upwards. The strings were magnificent with their luscious sound and masterfully nuanced narrative, while Alastair Ross (harpsichord) and William Carter (theorbo) impressed with their stylish ornamentation in the continuo.

Iestyn Davies and Anna Dennis (Angelica). Photo: Mark Allan

The Academy of Ancient Music’s line-up was twice as small as that of the ensemble which accompanied the first performers of the opera and which was described – admiringly, it must be said – by the Scottish politician and composer Sir John Clerk as so powerful that it occasionally drowned out the singers. The voices of the five soloists reached the Barbican Hall auditorium with no problems whatsoever, although the supple and colourful bass of Matthew Brook (Zoroastro) carried over the orchestra much better in dazzling coloraturas than in the sometimes dull notes in the lower register. In the title role Iestyn Davies was certainly no much for the legendary Senesino in terms of volume, but he made up for his lack of powerful sound with the nobility of his countertenor voice, immaculate technique and exceptional musicality (excellent “Fammi combattere” from Act I). The role of Medoro – entrusted to a female singer as the composer intended – was sung well by Sophie Rennert, a singer endowed with an agile mezzo-soprano, spot-on intonation-wise, but perhaps just a bit too bright for this en travesti alto part. It would be hard, however, to direct any criticism at Rachel Redmond, whose clear, “dancing” soprano was perfect for Dorinda, while her fiery temperament and exceptional sense of comedy would surely have won praise from Celeste Gismondi, who played the beautiful shepherdess during the premiere of the work. Yet the highlight of the entire cast was Anna Dennis (Angelica), who, as she had done two months earlier in Göttingen, was impressive in her freedom of phrasing, her wonderfully open top register and her ability to paint a mood with an appropriate voice colour – in her “Verdi piante” the grass really swayed and the leaves were reflected in the river as if in a mirror.

Thus, there is no need for sumptuous sets and elaborate gestures to learn from Handel’s perverse sentimental education, to reflect on Orlando’s madness, Angelica and Medoro’s happiness, and Dorinda’s surprisingly mature wisdom. All that is needed is a belief in the magic power of one the greatest masterpieces of Baroque opera – a belief fuelled by Laurence Cummings’ infectious enthusiasm. The Academy of Ancient Music will have more jubilees to celebrate: since its very beginning it has been looked after by some genuine wizards.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

The beginning of June marked precisely seventy years since the first attempt to perform L’Orfeo on period instruments: at the Wiener Festwochen, under the baton of Paul Hindemith, officially with the Wiener Symphoniker, in fact – with musicians recruited from that orchestra, who were part of the still “nameless” ensemble, Concentus Musicus Wien, founded a year earlier by the Harnoncourts. In the long journey of Monteverdi’s masterpiece to operatic stages, Swiss tropes were already present: the performers used material prepared by Hindemith, who took up a professorship at the University of Zürich after the war. The modest staging on the Konzerthaus stage was by Leopold Lindtberg, who had left Vienna in 1933, fleeing the brownshirt revolution, and reached Switzerland by a circuitous route through Paris, Warsaw and Tel Aviv.

The sound recording of the 1954 event was released just over a decade ago, too late for L’Orfeo aficionados – even the oldest ones, who grew up with the famous recordings featuring Layos Kozma or Nigel Rogers – to treat it as something else than a mere period curiosity. What did go down in history, however, was the Opernhaus Zürich’s venture, initiated shortly after the composer’s four-hundredth birthday and launched with a staging of La favola d’Orfeo that proved to be a real breakthrough in the history of the work. Firstly, because of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s theatrical concept, which defined the canon of staging Baroque operas for many years to come. Secondly, by commemorating this production in a television film, later released on DVD, thanks to which we gained access to the chronologically oldest video recording of L’Orfeo. Thirdly and most importantly, because of the musical direction of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who decided to create a separate ensemble at the Zürich company for the Monteverdian cycle and to assemble the cast primarily from among local artists (the eponymous Thracian singer was portrayed by Philippe Huttenlocher, perhaps the first baritone performer of the role in the history of period instrument performance).

José Maria Lo Monaco (La Musica) and Krystian Adam (Orfeo). Photo: Monika Rittershaus

Thus it would not be an exaggeration to say that L’Orfeo began its modern stage life in Zürich. And however we judge Ponnelle’s stagings today – long outdated according to malcontents, still treated as an important point of reference by no less numerous enthusiasts – it is impossible to avoid comparisons between the memorable initiative of the 1970s and the new productions of Monteverdi operas, which have appeared regularly on the local stage since Andreas Homoki took over as director of Opernhaus Zürich. After Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria directed by Willy Decker and L’incoronazione di Poppea by Calixto Bieito it was time for Orfeo.  The latest premiere was prepared by Evgeny Titov, a relatively young graduate of the St. Petersburg Theatre Arts Academy, who, after a brief acting career in Russia, went on to study at the Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna and has since directed mostly drama. His experience in opera is limited to just a handful of productions, of which last year’s Poppea at the Opéra national du Rhin was unanimously criticised for being incompatible with Raphaël Pichon’s musical concept.

The Zürich Orfeo fared even worse in that it diverged from the concept of Monteverdi himself. Titov places the whole thing in a uniformly dark setting (set design by Chloe Lamford and Naomi Daboczi, costumes by Annemarie Woods), only occasionally illuminated by the cold flash of steel, the pallid light of fluorescent tubes and the bluish glow of slow-motion projections, bringing to mind irresistible associations with ectoplasm floating in the dark. Orpheus digs a grave already in the Prologue, Eurydice will rise from a coffin before the wedding, and will return to it often enough to make the spectators doubt whether they are really dealing with a flesh-and-blood being. The phrenetic energy of the first act and the beginning of the second act – until the words “dopo il mal vie più felice”, after which the Messenger arrives and Orpheus sees for himself in the cruelest possible manner that the sleeping dogs should be left lying – is not reflected at all on stage. The joyful dances of the shepherds take the form of grotesque pre-nuptial rituals – in the barren blackness of basalt rocks, with faded flowers in men’s boutonnieres and large artificial fruits in place of the lushness of Thracian meadows. It gets brighter – paradoxically – only after the descent into Tartarus. Death, however, lurks everywhere. Having lost Eurydice again – though she may have been dead from the very beginning – Orpheus finds himself back in the same setting with a white coffin and a dug up grave. Summoned by Apollo to heaven, he lingers a bit too long. A loud shot is heard in the darkness of the stage.

Krystian Adam. Photo: Monika Rittershaus

There was some discussion in the lobby about whether the director wanted to turn Monteverdi’s tale of Orpheus into a suicide’s nightmarish dream, an equally nightmarish journey into the depths of emotions that accompany loss, or a universal parable about the disastrous consequences of an excess of feelings. I dare to formulate yet another hypothesis: that Titov made an unsuccessful, though at times visually appealing, attempt to tell the story of Orpheus through Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. Hence the strange resemblance of scenes in the first act to the grand ball at Satan’s. Hence the ubiquitous darkness of the staging, for the Master does not deserve light, only peace and quiet. Hence the suspiciously Mephistophelean appearance of Apollo in the finale. Hence the suggestion that both Orpheus and Eurydice must die in order to depart for another world. That’s all very well, but there is no connection to Striggio’s libretto and sometimes there is blatant contradiction with the music.

The music, which resounded in Zürich with sufficient brilliance to make up for any shortcomings of Titov’s staging. The artists who stood out in particular among the carefully selected cast were the male singers: the bass Mirco Palazzi with his noble and perfectly supported voice in the dual roles of Caronte and Plutone; the experienced British tenor Mark Milhofer as Apollo, singing with a voice that was clear and even across registers; and Massimo Altieri as 1. Pastore, captivating with his flexibility and freedom of phrasing. Particularly striking among the female voices was Simone McIntosh, whose rounded and rich mezzo-soprano was just as convincing in the role of La Speranza as in the expressively extremely different role of Proserpina. Miriam Kutrowatz was slightly disappointing, singing Euridice as if from a distance, as a result of which she failed to fully show the qualities of her silvery soprano. José Maria Lo Monaco (La Musica/Messagera/Eco) sometimes had trouble restraining her excessive vibrato, but otherwise her interpretations stood out by virtue of their considerable musicality and sense of style.

Miriam Kutrowatz (Euridice), Simone McIntosh (Proserpina), and Mirco Palazzi (Plutone). Photo: Monika Rittershaus

The revelation of the Zürich production, however, was Krystian Adam as Orfeo. His ardent tenor is getting an increasingly beautiful baritonal tinge at the lower end of the scale with each passing season, without losing the purity of the high notes or the ability to make smooth transitions between registers. Most importantly, the singer impresses with his superb Italian diction, understanding of the text and technical ease, thanks to which the immeasurable wealth of the Monteverdian ornamenti and abbellimenti loses all marks of empty showmanship and serves only what it is supposed to serve, that is to highlight the affects contained in the music. The absence of L’Orfeo from the repertoires of Polish opera companies is a growing mystery to me: surely we can no longer make excuses, saying we lack a worthy performer of the title role.

The beautiful overall picture was made complete by the superbly prepared chorus of the Zürcher Sing-Akademie and La Scintilla orchestra, which has continued the tradition started at Opernhaus Zürich by Harnoncourt for more than two decades. The whole thing was conducted by Ottavio Dantone, who for the second time used a new edition by Bernardo Ticci, prepared for an earlier production in Lausanne, which premiered in 2016. This time it got more sensitive and competent performers, which was apparent already in the famous Toccata, enriched by the bright, soft sound of Baroque cornettos. It’s a pity that the director did not let himself be inspired by this musical energy. However, I do not lose hope that one day the words of Bulgakov’s Margarita will come true and everything will be as it should be.

Translated by: Anna Kijak