Wędrówki operowe/Operatic Journeys

One day during a recent stay in Oslo, I decided to return to my hotel by tram. After a while I got the impression that the tram turned the wrong way. No one reacted. However, the calmness of the passengers ceased to infect me, when the tram came to a halt between stops. The driver announced that he had forgotten to move the points, but would rectify his mistake immediately. The tram began to reverse, with the passengers still on board and still not commenting on the incident. It moved back to the junction and rolled in the right direction. A few streets down it had to return to the depot. Everyone got off without a word and continued on foot.

The situation made me think about a book by Thorbjørn Egner I read as a child. More specifically, about the fragment in which the three eponymous robbers of Cardamom are released from jail: “‘Why don’t you take a ride on the tram?’ ‘Yes, thank you,’ they replied (…). ‘It’ll be nice to take a ride now’. (…) The conductor rang the bell and the tram began to move”. This is a summary, as it were, of Kardemommeloven, or the law of Cardamon Town: you must not tease anyone, you must be nice and polite, apart from that everything is allowed. The Norwegians are held up as a model of civil society. Mutual respect, observance of legal norms and cooperation with state agencies are not seen as a sign of weakness in this country. Just as reticence in showing feelings is not a sign of boorishness, but stems from a reluctance to do unto another what is disagreeable to you. Norwegians value their peace and, therefore, do not disturb others.

How effective a strategy this is has been demonstrated by the last century of the country’s history. In 1905, after the dissolution of the personal union with Sweden, Norway began to rebuild its identity and patiently develop a velferdsstat – a welfare state. Today it boasts one of the highest levels of per capita income in the world and ranks second in the global Human Development Index. Citizens pay their high taxes conscientiously, benefiting in exchange from state-funded education, social welfare and health care. Norway is an extremely egalitarian country, where the principle of equality applies irrespective of gender, religion, social background and ability. Egalitarianism is also advocated by members of the royal family, led by King Harald V, who ascended the throne in 1991, inheriting from his ancestors the motto “Alt for Norge”: everything for Norway. The king’s 2016 speech contained some memorable words: that Norway is first and foremost about people; girls who love girls, boys who love boys, and boys and girls in love with each other who believe in God, in Everything or in Nothing. Kai Østensen – a Christian LGBT activist – summed up the speech with the words “I love the king. Amen”.

Liv Redpath at Oscarshall. Photo: Per Ole Hagen

The king is also loved by his wife, Queen Sonja: it is possible that their complicated love story has also contributed to his worldview. Sonja was a “commoner”, the daughter of a small businessman, a graduate of a tailoring programme at a vocational school, a boarding school in Lausanne and the University of Oslo, where she obtained her bachelor’s degree. For a  long time the young couple kept their relationship a secret. Finally, Harald told his father that if he stood in the way of his happiness with Sonja, he would not marry anyone else. The argument proved irrefutable: the crown prince was the only male heir to the Norwegian throne. The wedding ceremony took place in 1968 at Oslo Cathedral. King Olaf V led his bride down the aisle to the sounds of Purcell’s Trumpet Tune And Air, and the newlyweds left the church to the accompaniment of Bach’s Prelude in E flat major BWV 552/1.

A lavish musical setting of the ceremony was a tradition in the Norwegian royal family, which is related to the ruling houses of Denmark, Sweden and United Kingdom. The future king studied at Oxford, but that period brought him primarily a love of water sports. His wife, on the other hand, an avid music lover and patron of young artists, turned out to be a true ambassador of music in Norway. An initiative that has become firmly established in the international music community is the Queen Sonja Competition, launched in 1988. This year – at the invitation of the organisers and the Ophelias Culture PR agency – I had the pleasure of watching the events of the final few days of the competition.

They began with a private concert at Oscarshall, a neo-Gothic maison de plaisance built on the Bygdøy peninsula above the Frognerkilen fjord. The palace, the decor of which is the work of Norwegian craftsmen and artists, was opened to the public as early as in 1881. Converted into a museum during the reign of the current royal couple, it proved an ideal venue for an intimate recital of songs and chamber works by Grieg, Debussy and Walton, featuring the soprano Liv Redpath and the pianist Sveinung Bjelland. The young American, who won the Lied Prize at the previous competition, is already making a career on both sides of the Atlantic. Deservedly so: her colourful, sensual voice and wise interpretations whetted everyone’s appetite for the auditions of this year’s finalists.

The auditions took place at the Norwegian National Opera, one of the first architectural wonders of the twenty-first century. The building blends perfectly into the urban fabric, also attracting tourists, who begin exploring it on the very shore of Oslofjorden, before climbing to the top of the building on the slanted roof, from which they can admire the panorama of the capital to their hearts’ content.

QSSC final concert: Vladyslav Tlushch, baritone, Ukraine. Photo: Per Ole Hagen

The Norwegian government launched a competition for the Opera House building in 1999. The submissions were evaluated by a professional jury and more than seventy thousand residents of Oslo. The winner was a design by the international Snøhetta group. Construction work began in 2003 and was completed four years later – not only ahead of schedule, but also at a much lower cost than planned, despite the fact that the finest materials were used in the construction.

White granite and marble create an impression of a glacier flowing into the waters of the bay. Above the stage rises an aluminium tower covered with a pattern reminiscent of Norwegian weaving techniques. The entrance is through a gap in the façade – directly into the foyer, with panels of glass supported by steel columns and a wooden “core” that surrounds the stage and the auditorium. The oak slats used for the interior were treated with ammonia, giving them the appearance of seasoned wood. The plafond chandelier casts light diffused through six thousand hand-cut crystals. Several hundred computer models were tested in the design of the acoustics, a process resulting in a perfect two-second reverberation.

At the Opera House we had a meeting with the executive director of the competition, Lars Hallvard Flaeten, who made us aware of the surprising conflict between the Norwegian mentality and the very idea of musical competition. What Norwegians regarded as a mad idea came from the conductor Mariss Jansons, who arrived in Oslo in 1979. If he had not elevated the local Philharmonic Orchestra to a European level during his tenure, even the crown princess would not have been persuaded. However, her competition was to be governed by different rules: uniting rather than dividing, opening a window to the world for Norwegian artists, and opening the eyes of the world to the Norwegian music scene. It started as a piano competition. In 1995 it changed its profile and has been held as the Queen Sonja Singing Competition every two years ever since. Today anyone can apply for entry. The participants’ contest is accompanied by master classes and stage interpretation workshops. The main goal, Flaeten argues, is not to win, but to gain the experience needed in the increasingly versatile world of modern opera.

This year the Norwegian egalitarianism came up against war. The organisers decided not to admit participants from Russia and Belarus – a difficult decision because of the singers’ protests and because of concerns about the quality of the competition, in which representatives of the two nations had ranked among the finalists and winners for years. Yet works by Russian composers were allowed in the repertoire: on the last day Tchaikovsky’s music was heard as many as three times. Doubts arise as to whether the jury acted in accordance with the Kardemommeloven, since in the finals it is the jury that selects the participants’ repertoire, and among those admitted to the final was a Ukrainian national.

QSSC final concert: Jasmin White, contralto, USA. Photo: Per Ole Hagen

However, the atmosphere of the concert – featuring the local orchestra under the baton of James Gaffigan, and Lise Davidsen, who as a host was as brilliant as she had been in Wagner’s roles on the world’s best stages – was joyful and unpretentious. The contest was close, although the podium – apart from the winner, Jasmin White from the United States, a singer endowed with a beautiful contralto voice and an endearing personality – lacked individuality to match the challenges of twenty-first-century opera. We will certainly hear more about White in the future: their final performance was not without some lapses, nevertheless the way White concealed them with purely musical means (especially in Juno’s aria from Handel’s Semele) testifies to the singer’s uncommon intelligence and stage presence. The second prize winner, Armenian baritone Aksel Daveyan, has a lovely, well-controlled voice of the kind that is quickly forgotten – perhaps because his interpretations did not give the impression that they were supported by any in-depth reflection. I found the third prize winner, German countertenor Nils Wanderer, more memorable, mainly because of his poignant performance of “Stille amare” from Handel’s Tolomeo – though I suspect the singer’s voice is not agile enough to win the listeners’ hearts with his overall take on roles in the Baroque repertoire. I wish the Ukrainian baritone Vladyslav Tlushch had made it to the podium. He was rather pale in the aria from Bellini’s I Puritani, but impressed me greatly with his perfect sense of the French style in the chanson bacchique from Thomas’ Hamlet . However, I have no right to question the jury’s verdict on the basis of one stage of the competition, especially as singing is no longer the only indicator of an artist’s potential on contemporary stages.

Let us assume, therefore, that in Oslo all were primi inter pares. I guess we need such a conclusion, not only in the ruthless world of the operatic business.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

Link to the source text:
https://www.tygodnikpowszechny.pl/kult-rownosci-po-norwesku-184599

I remember a conversation with a University of Göttingen professor who in 2019 spoke of the imminent death of the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, an event that, in his view, was anachronistic, cultivated nineteenth-century rituals of art reception and, despite its attempts to woo younger audiences, completely ruled out any in-depth reflection on the composer’s work. His predictions nearly came true just a year later, when the Festspielhaus slammed its doors shut – for the first time in its post-war history. The festival rose back in convulsions from the devastations of the pandemic. In 2021 the organisers had to cancel the new production of Ring and resign themselves to presenting all performances with the house half full. Last season Katharina Wagner still had to take into account the risk of cancelling performances involving a large chorus and a large cast of soloists. In order to prevent any downtime, she commissioned Roland Schwab to prepare a “spare” staging of Tristan and Isolde to fill gaps in the repertoire, if it became necessary.

Making his Bayreuth debut, Schwab accepted the offer without a second thought, despite the fact that he had to deliver the commission in record time. The offer came in December 2021: given the unique scheduling of the preparations for the Green Hill premieres, the director presented a preliminary version of his concept just a month later. He took into account in it the “Covid” distance between the singers. The relatively sparse sets were designed by Piero Vinciguerra, the costumes by Gabrielle Ruprecht, while the lighting was directed by Nicol Rungsberg. In many respects the new production of Tristan appealed to the sensibility and sense of aesthetics of older, more experienced Wagnerites. The oval space above the stage, matched by an analogous shape on the stage floor, brought to mind not only Wieland Wagner’s legendary stagings, but also Vera Nemirova’s Frankfurt Ring. Restrained stage gesture, limited props, and lights emphasising the stark contrast of black and white completed the impression of asceticism of the whole.

Catherine Foster (Isolde) and Christa Mayer (Brangäne). Photo: Enrico Nawrath

After Valentin Schwarz’s mercilessly booed Ring, the new Tristan was received like an answer to everyone’s prayers. The staging had only two performances – despite constant cast changes, the festival programme went on as originally planned. This year Tristan returned to the Festspielhaus and was again very well received, although Schwab’s concept is not flawless. And yet – compared with the avalanche of trashy ugliness sweeping across most European stages – it fulfils the promise made by the director even before the premiere: that this would be a show in which the spectators would not want to find themselves, but, on the contrary, lose themselves.

From the beginning Schwab tries to convince us that Tristan is essentially a story with a happy ending, a tale of the power of true love all the way to the grave and beyond. To highlight this trope, he resorts to some questionable solutions, however. One them is an allusion to Wagner’s alleged Buddhist inspirations – in the form of a neon sign in the  Devanāgarī script, which accompanies us throughout the performance with the Sanskrit word śāśvata, which means more than “eternal” (because it also means primordial, recurring, continuous, lasting forever), and is essentially at odds with the Buddhist message rejecting the errors of both nihilism and eternalism. The word śāśvata refers precisely to the eternalist belief in the real existence of phenomena as they appear to manifest themselves. Thus, it fits neither the Buddhist worldview nor the message of Wagner’s opera. Doubts are also raised by the fact that the story of Tristan and Isolde has been linked to the late ancient myth of Philemon and Baucis, first told in the eighth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. After all, the story of two Phrygian villagers who were the only people to take under their roof Zeus and Hermes – disguised as poor wanderers – and as a reward for their generosity were transformed posthumously into two trees with intertwined branches, is about love that is fulfilled and lasting. Nor am I convinced by Schwab’s argument that the fate of Tristan and Isolde was similarly summarised by the thirteenth-century German writer Ulrich von Türheim in his completed version of Gottfried von Strassburg’s poem. Let me say once again that Wagner’s Tristan is neither an autobiographical work, nor an operatic adaptation of a medieval romance.

Catherine Foster and Clay Hilley (Tristan). Photo: Enrico Nawrath

This does not change the fact that Schwab’s production reaches the realm of the metaphysical and transcendent in many respects. First of all, this is because of the clear separation of the oval on the stage floor from the rest of the theatrical space. That place, which at the beginning of Act I brings to mind vague associations with a swimming pool aboard a luxurious cruise ship, can be accessed only by the protagonists and only from the moment of their amorous confession. However, something strange happens earlier, when the water turns red at the sound of Isolde’s story about the death of the brave Morold. The oval shape gradually draws both protagonists in, like a dizzying whirl of passion. Yet it does not allow them to become united, either in Act II, when their great duet, begun on a surface in which the light of stars is reflected, ends in a desperate struggle of contrasts between the dazzling World of Day and the fathomless, ink-black World of Night; or in the finale of Act III, when the oval freezes into a silvery-grey, motionless pond. A strong idea – though interpreted by some spectators as an allusion to the practices of totalitarian systems – was to have Tristan mortally wounded by strands of white light descending from the flies. This execution, as it were, resembling death in the electric chair, was preceded by tortures inflicted on the lovers by the jealous Melot, who shone a spotlight in their eyes – a moving symbol of the world from which they both wanted to escape into the night.

In the face of so much magnificence, it is not hard to forgive the director for having the transformed Isolde/Baucis begin her final monologue from behind a thicket of green leaves; it is also possible to turn a blind eye to the idea of bringing on stage three pairs of the lovers’ alter egos embodying the youthful, mature and old ages of their love. Especially given that Markus Poschner dressed the whole thing in a surprisingly subtle musical garment sparkling with flashes of bright orchestral colours (excellent woodwind!) against the dark sounds of instruments in the lower register, constructing the narrative with the method of persistent gradation of tensions. If anything can be said against him, it’s the occasional unstable proportions between the stage and the covered orchestra pit, which was especially problematic for Tristan in Act II. The American tenor Clay Hilley, who stepped in for Stephen Gould at the last moment, has a voice that is slightly smaller and less developed at the top; in addition, he does not always know how to cover minor technical deficiencies with expressive text delivery. However, it must be said that his phrasing is sensitive and elegant enough for him to possibly join the ranks of the best “lyrical” Tristans in the world in a few seasons. Catherine Foster, endowed with a harsh, but assured and perfectly placed soprano, confirmed her class as Isolde: it is a pity that she ran out of steam for the final “Mild und leise wie er lächelt”, for which she paid with too wide a vibrato and several intonation lapses. Christa Mayer did well as Brangäne, although her singing lacked the softness characteristic of the best performers of the role. I found Ólafur Sigurdarson (Melot), who possesses a rather gravelly baritone, more convincing as an actor. Jorge Rodríguez-Norton (Shepherd), Raimund Nolte (Steersman) and Siyabonga Maqungo (Young Sailor) handled their respective episodic roles efficiently.

Clay Hilley and Catherine Foster. Photo: Enrico Nawrath

However, complete understanding of the text, both literary and musical, was demonstrated only by Markus Eiche (a surprisingly fragile Kurwenal, with a baritone voice that is bright and melancholy in tone), and above all by Georg Zeppenfeld in the role of King Marke. His extraordinarily handsome bass, phenomenal diction and unfailing sense of the stage were as usual appreciated by the audience, who rewarded their favourite with a roar of applause.

And so Tristan, as presented by Roland Schwab, again served to wipe away the tears of music lovers disappointed with the new Ring, which reportedly somehow failed to settle. I was about to say that makeshift solutions sometimes proved to be the most durable, but not this time – the staging has been removed from the repertoire for good; next season it will be replaced by a new production by the Icelandic director Þorleifur Örn Arnarsson, with an almost completely different cast conducted by Semyon Bychkov. This was not the end of the festival surprises, especially for fans of good singing. The rumours of the Bayreuther Festspiele’s death turned out to be greatly exaggerated.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

During operatic holidays I no longer feel like discovering new lands. I prefer to return to places that bring back good memories: to trips to tried and tested theatres, to favourite works featuring reliable singers. So I planned both my July trips to Germany well in advance. My pretext for going to Dresden was Günther Groissböck’s appearance in the role of the demonic Caspar in Weber’s Der Freischütz – a little over a year after Kirill Serebrennikov’s bizarre and not entirely successful staging of the opera at Amsterdam’s De Nationale Opera with Groissböck in the cast. I travelled to Munich – unlike some of my colleagues who went there to see the new production of Semele directed by Claus Guth primarily because of Jakub Józef Orliński in the role of Athamas – to hear Jupiter as portrayed by Michael Spyres and to compare his interpretation with Jeremy Ovenden’s recent performance at the Göttingen Handel Festival.

I’ve written so much recently about Der Freischütz – admired not only by Chopin, but also by the young Zygmunt Krasiński, who reported to his father after the Warsaw premiere that the piece was “full of ghosts, monsters, bats, thunders, etc., etc., very much in the Romantic taste” – that I’ll get straight to the point. I saw the thirty-fifth performance of the staging, which has been in Dresden’s Semperoper repertoire for over eight years. Responsible for the direction is the Dresden-born countertenor Axel Köhler, who first tried his hand at the directing in 2000, thirteen years after making his debut in the part of Eustazio in Rinaldo, on the stage of the Staatstheater Halle. Since then he has directed more than fifty productions, while continuing his singing career and achieving notable successes as a teacher. His Freischütz gets rave reviews after each revival. This is hardly surprising – in a seemingly traditional production Köhler has managed to successfully move the action from the times of the Thirty Years’ War to a decidedly more recent period, with a conflict lurking somewhere in the distance, a conflict that only in the scene of the casting of bullets in Wolf’s Glen begins to evoke irresistible associations with the Second World War. However, there is no “for dummies” approach; instead there are monsters and thunders, there is a lot of laughter, even more emotion, and in the finale there is bright hope for redemption. Most significantly, however, Köhler – in perfect collaboration with the set designer Arne Walther and lighting director Fabio Antoci – has created a space that is extremely friendly to the singers, giving them not only vocal freedom, but also an opportunity to consciously use the tools of acting expression.

Der Freischütz, Dresden, 2015. Sara Jakubiak (Agathe) and Christina Landshamer (Ännchen). Photo: Matthias Creutziger

Such a clear and carefully thought-out concept facilitates the appreciation of the musical qualities of the production. The 2015 premiere was prepared by Christian Thielemann, who contributed to the subsequent success of the staging recorded on DVD. This season Antonello Manacorda took over the baton, leading the soloists and ensembles with a decidedly lighter hand, with verve, but not too excessive tempi, and above all with extraordinary attention to the variety of orchestral colours, emphasising the masterful dramatic structure of the work. He also had at his disposal a very even cast, the weakest link of which was, I regret to say, Groissböck, who sang forcefully, with intonationally uncertain phrasing, on the verge of audibility in the lower register and with an ugly, dull sound at the top of the range. Judging from the Austrian artist’s recent performances, his voice is beginning to betray the first signs of fatigue. Perhaps this could be remedied, for example by a more prudent choice of roles: the part of Caspar, however, requires a different kind of bass, with a bigger volume and more demonic colour. A much better impression was made by Stanislas de Barbeyrac as Max. He is a singer possessing the truest “French” lirico spinto tenor, with a beautiful golden tone and the makings of a great old-style dramatic voice. The only thing he could have done better in the Dresden performance was to have paced himself more wisely: after a very well sung Act I (excellent rendition of the aria “Durch die Wälder, durch die Auen”), he lacked energy in the Wolf’s Glen scene, but fortunately regained his form in the finale. Of the two performers of the main female roles, I was more impressed by Nikola Hillebrand (Ännchen), who has a warm, perfectly controlled, rich voice that may soon develop into a beautiful jugendlich dramatischer Sopran. The youthful freedom, especially at the upper end of the range, was somewhat lacking in Johanna van Oostrum’s singing, but the artist nevertheless managed to create a sympathetic and touching character of Agathe. Among the singers in the supporting roles, special mention goes to Sebastian Wartig, whose round, dignified baritone was a perfect match for the part of the good Prince Ottokar.

Der Freischütz, Dresden, 2015. Michael König (Max). Photo: Matthias Creutziger

Der Freischütz was played to a packed audience, as is usual in Dresden, where spectators celebrate every performance of this opera – starting in 1985, when it was presented during the inauguration of the Semperoper, rebuilt after the war. There was a slightly different atmosphere at the summer festival organised under the aegis of the Bayerische Staatsoper, which has grown to become one of the most important theatre and music events in Europe. It attracts music lovers and the curious from all over the world, and at the same time does not get in the way of the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals, which start a little later. The programme of this year’s Münchner Opernfestspiele included Handel’s Semele in a co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, where it will be presented in November 2024. In Munich it was staged at the Prinzregententheater, more than three times smaller than the Met and built in 1900–1901 after a design modelled on that of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. This is especially true of the amphitheatre-like auditorium – the exterior of the theatre, designed by Max Littmann, is more reminiscent of Gottfried Semper’s earlier, historicising buildings. Originally conceived as a Wagnerian theatre and opened with a production of Die Meistersinger, today the building is home to the Theaterakademie August Everding and a second stage of the Bavarian Opera, hosting concerts as well as performances of Baroque, twentieth-century and contemporary operas.

In Semele, prepared for this year’s festival, Claus Guth again analyses the motivation and behaviour of his characters from the perspective of modern psychology. He transforms the story of the Theban princess into a tale of her desperate attempt to break free from the glitz of the world around her, to transcend her own boundaries, to reach regions where a frenzied pursuit of happiness may end in failure and bring even more suffering. Semele pierces the wall between reality and the unknown with a few axe blows. She finds herself transported from an ice-cold, blinding white to an equally blinding black of the land of the subconscious and myth. The two worlds begin to intermingle, squeezing into a space that is not their own. At one point the audience is no longer certain of whether it is Semele who is trying to worm her way into Jupiter’s good graces, or whether the god is invading her world and ruthlessly cornering her. Black feathers – symbolizing Jupiter’s eagle – ooze through cracks in the white walls and ceiling like a thick, sticky lava. A crystal chandelier from “this” world illuminates the thick, sticky darkness on “the other” side. In the lieto fine reality only seemingly comes together. The scene is shrouded in semi-darkness, Semele sits alone in a chair away from everyone, in a shaft of white light, clutching in her arms a bundle of cloth – hiding the void left by Dionysus or the child that never was.

As usual, Guth’s concept can be debated, but it is hard to deny its suggestiveness, achieved thanks to – apart from the director’s mastery of his craft – Ramses Siegel’s choreography and, above all, Michael Levine’s set design, phenomenally lit by Michael Bauer. It’s been a long time since I saw such fathomless black and such cool, polar white on stage, both softened by a number of significant intermediate hues. The few comic elements – including Orliński’s breakdancing act, widely commented on in the media – seemed like ghastly hallucinations against this background.

Semele, Munich, 2023. Brenda Rae (Semele) and Michael Spyres (Jupiter). Photo: Monika Rittershaus

The musical assessment of the performance will not be so easy. First, this is because of the participation of regular Bayerische Staatsorchester musicians, whom even Gianluca Capuano was unable to inspire to play stylishly, with both the tone colour and clarity of Handel’s texture suffering as a result. I also have to admit that I was annoyed by the basso continuo group playing its part in the manner of a folk or janissary band, which I can tolerate only in Jordi Savall’s old recordings. Secondly – because of the decision to cast Brenda Rae in the title role. Rae’s is a soprano with a puny volume, excessively wide vibrato and a coloratura technique that leaves a lot to be desired. Fortunately, Rae made up for this with her excellent acting, for which the audience rewarded her with a true storm of applause.

The other soloists were at least fine, although there were no revelations. Michael Spyres as Jupiter outclassed Ovenden from the Göttingen Semele in every respect, singing with a tenor beautifully open at the top, seductively deep in the lower register, improvising very stylishly as much as he could – but I have the impression that this excellent singer is still looking for a métier for himself after the inevitable evolution of his voice towards spinto. Let’s hope he doesn’t lose his way in this search, being fully aware that the bravura roles in French grand opera are slowly beginning to elude him. The roles of Juno and Ino this time went to two singers, Emily d’Angelo and Nadezhda Karyazina, respectively. It was probably the right decision: both singers have magnificent, dense mezzo-sopranos with a truly contralto low register. However, they lack the ability to differentiate their interpretations – although in this respect Karyazina, who is almost a decade older, still compares favourably with her colleague. Philippe Sly, cast in the dual role of Cadmus and Somnus (the short role of the High Priest was sung by Milan Siljanov), impressed me particularly with his sensitive portrayal of Semele’s father.

Semele, Munich, 2023. Final scene. Photo: Monika Rittershaus

I have left Jakub Józef Orlinski for last, as his participation in this production involved not only daring directorial ideas, but also interesting musical solutions. Let’s start with the fact that Handel wrote the part of Athamas for a tenor, then rewrote it for the first performer, the countertenor Daniel Sullivan (who did not sing in falsetto, but in his own natural voice, with the full alto range). In addition, Handel removed the soprano part of Cupid in its entirety even before the premiere of the work. In modern productions the character of Cupid is often brought back – primarily for the heavenly beautiful aria “Come Zephyrs, come” – sometimes combined with the role of Iris. In Munich Orliński sang the role of Athamas in a truncated version, but in Act II got Cupid’s aria, which was transposed down and which Guth very cleverly integrated into the dramaturgy of the staging. What was the result? Well, with his angelic, honeyed voice Orliński did much better with Cupid’s aria than with the role of Athamas, in which his light countertenor often disappeared in the lower register and did not reveal all the harmonics in the middle range. Whatever motivated the producers of the staging, they went for a Solomonic decision in allowing Orliński to develop his acting talent in the role of Athamas and showcase the best of his vocal technique in an aria intended for a different voice type. It’s a pity that this intelligent solution has not been honestly commented on by either the creators of the production or most critics.

All in all, however, there is nothing to argue about. Both the Dresden Der Freischütz and the Munich Semele gave me at least a brief respite from the usual blandness of the summer opera season, artificially hyped up by the media as a feast for music lovers and theatre enthusiasts. It’s good to return to tried and tested places. It is good to be able to enjoy art that does not offend anyone’s aesthetic sensibilities and openly invites discussion.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

The circle is slowly closing. April marked nine years since the Warsaw premiere of Lohengrin in a co-production with Welsh National Opera, a staging that brought me – through a complicated coincidence – to Longborough for a performance of Tristan the following year. Since I found my Wagnerian Promised Land there, every June has been associated with a new production conducted by Anthony Negus. This year LFO staged Götterdämmerung, before the presentation of all parts of the tetralogy, originally planned for this season, but delayed by the pandemic. Next season the Bühnenfestspiel will take place three times, directed by Amy Lane, who still has not managed to show us her complete concept. She prepared Die Walküre in 2021 in a semi-staged version, fortunately available for some time on the OperaVision platform – to wipe away the tears of overseas music lovers and critics, unable to travel to the UK.

When the borders did finally open, I began visiting the British Isles with even greater intensity than before the pandemic. Last season I wrote about a production of The Flying Dutchman by Grange Park Opera, one of the youngest and most ambitious “countryside opera” companies in England. That experience was linked to Longborough through the person of Negus, who confirmed his class as an outstanding interpreter of Wagner’s legacy, leading an ensemble unfamiliar with his baton with a truly stellar cast of solo voices. This time I got the opportunity to make a completely different comparison. The Longborough Götterdämmerung and the new staging of Tristan in Grange Park featured both Isoldes discovered by Negus: Lee Bisset, who sang Brunhilde in LFO’s latest Ring, and Rachel Nicholls, whose 2015 debut in Tristan proved to be a prelude to an international career in the Wagnerian and Straussian repertoire. Two excellent singers representing a distinct, specifically British Wagnerian singing tradition. Two operas about the end of the world or, depending on the interpretation, a hope of building this world completely from scratch. Two stories of transfiguration through love. Two productions the final form of which was largely influenced by the personality of these two artists.

In Longborough the stage is tiny, the orchestra pit is really deep and contact with the audience is extremely intimate. This was one of the reasons why I got the best impressions at LFO from performances presented in a space almost devoid of props, masterfully painted with light by Ben Ormerod, who, following the example of Alphonse Appia, proclaims the primacy of the author and the drama, synchronising the intensity and colours of light with the plot and musical narrative of the work. Amy Lane is a very insightful director, revealing layers of meaning in the Ring that are inaccessible to most contemporary directors of the tetralogy. Unfortunately, her sensitivity is not always matched by the ideas of the other participants in the theatrical concept. Lane’s apposite interpretive cues were not fully reflected in either Rhiannon Newman Brown’s sets – fortunately less overloaded than in last year’s Siegfried – or in the not very inspired lighting direction (Charlie Morgan Jones), or Tim Baxter’s overly literal projections. The director managed to achieve the best understanding with the costume designer (Emma Ryott), who correctly read the intention of universalising the myth, combining the traditional ideas of the appearance of eternal beings (the Norns) with the slightly more contemporary dress – though still not placed in any specific context – of the other dramatis personae.

Götterdämmerung, LFO. Freddie Tong (Alberich) and Julian Close (Hunding). Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis

There are several memorable and harrowing tropes in Amy Lane’s concept, from the idea to have the thread woven by the Norns bring to mind associations with both the earthly umbilical cord and the roots of the sacred ash tree, chopped down at Wotan’s command before the expected “twilight of the gods”, to the extraordinary scene of Hunding’s Dream, which in Lane’s rendition took the form of a Freudian showdown between the father and the son. Most of Lane’s directorial decisions found their justification in the work and were appropriately reflected in the concept followed by Negus, who, as usual, made sure that there would be logic in the musical dramaturgy and that the narrative pulse would remain brisk without becoming lofty – this was evidence by, for example, Siegfried’s Funeral March, in which the procession did not drag, and the sounds of the orchestra rose like the waves of an angry Rhine or shot sparks from the flames of the funeral pyre and the upcoming conflagration of Valhalla. Negus has an uncanny ability to tell stories with music and engage the listener’s attention to the point of hypnosis. Nevertheless, the level of attention to every detail of the texture, to even the smallest elements of the sound of the various orchestral groups, to every syllable and phrase of the sung text – in Götterdämmerung it exceeded anything we had dealt with in previous parts of the Ring.

The same goes for the vocal side of the performance. Bradley Daley was more convincing than in last year’s Siegfried. His indefatigable, a bit rough, but superbly controlled tenor gained powerful expression in the dying monologue in which the singer gave the audience a sense of who Siegfried would have become, if fate had allowed him to mature enough to become a worthy partner for Brunhilde. For most of the drama the phenomenal Julian Close reigned supreme on stage as Hunding – superb as an actor, but building his character equally with purely musical means. An ominous majesty hides in Close’s voice, black as new moon night, yet seductively beautiful, derived from the best tradition of powerful and dark German basses of the Gottlob Frick variety. Similar power was missing in Freddie Tong’s singing, but the conductor and the director turned this to his advantage in the poignant Hunding’s Dream scene, skilfully contrasting Alberich’s humiliation with the storm of conflicting feelings tormenting his son. Plenty of passion was infused into Waltraute’s short part by the ever reliable Catherine Carby, the memorable Brangäne from the 2015 Tristan. A superb pair of the naïve Gibichungs was created by Laure Meloy (Gutrune), a singer with a round soprano and very secure intonation, and Benedict Nelson (Gunther), who is blessed with a lovely, intelligently used baritone and great dramatic instinct, thanks to which he was able to create a multi-dimensional character, full genuine shame and contempt for his own weakness in the finale. A separate word of praise should go to the two finely tuned ensembles – the Norns (Mae Heydorn, Harriet Williams and Katie Lowe) and the Rhinemaidens (Mari Wyn Williams, Rebecca Afonwy-Jones and Katie Stevenson) – as well as the Festival Chorus, reinforced by members of Longborough’s Community Chorus.

Götterdämmerung, LFO. Lee Bisset (Brunhilde) and Bradley Daley (Siegfried). Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis

I left the great role of Brunhilde performed by Lee Bisset for last. This splendid actress and, in my opinion, still underappreciated singer should appear on stage more often, if only to make critics realise that the too wide vibrato and squeezed high notes – which the critics like to point out to her sometimes – are not the result of voice fatigue, but the opposite: of not singing enough. I realized already back in December in Inverness that the minor technical shortcomings in her singing were slowly becoming a thing of the past, revealing the incredible beauty of her dark yet surprisingly warm soprano. In Götterdämmerung under Negus’ baton Bisset’s vocal potential went hand in hand with interpretive wisdom. With each line her Brunhilde became – in an almost palpable way – more and more aware of the role assigned to her by fate in the inevitable end of the old world order. She reached the fullness of this enlightenment in her final monologue. Most contemporary Wagnerian sopranos put all their strength into merely singing this powerful scene. Bisset was able to make it varied: with gestures, facial expressions, a whole palette of voice colours, speaking to the Gibichungs in one tone, accusing Wotan in another, using a different one still to delve into the meaning and cause of Siegfried’s death, and finally becoming united with him in the ecstatic words “Selig grüsst dich dein Weib”. In such an interpretation Brunhilde’s transfiguration appeals much more strongly to the imagination than any transfiguration of Isolde – especially when complemented by such a painterly interpretation of the annihilation of the Ring and the ruin of Valhalla. No wonder, therefore, that after the last chord in the orchestra died down, complete silence fell in the auditorium, broken only after a minute by an outburst of frenetic applause. After such twilight, dawn does not come soon.

This was not, in any case, the first such experience in Longborough. I don’t think I will live to see another Tristan on a par with the premiere and the subsequent revival at LFO two years later – conducted by Negus and directed by Carmen Jakobi. I have not given up hope yet: every season I try to see and hear at least two new productions of this opera. And I must admit that this year’s Tristan at Grange Park Opera turned out to be one of the best in musical terms.

I can’t say the same about the theatrical side of things, despite the fact that Charles Edwards is a very versatile artist and has an impressive number of opera productions to his credit – mainly as set designer, but also as lighting director and creator of original productions in which he was responsible for the whole staging concept. Frankly speaking, I would have trouble pointing out characteristic elements of his style, which is in constant flux – largely dependent, I think, on the current demand for specific aesthetics and interpretive themes. I admired his superb set design for Katia Kabanova directed by David Alden in Warsaw; I wrote warmly about the coherent visual concept of the Little Greats cycle at Opera North, where Edwards also directed I Pagliacci; my hair stood on end when I saw how he littered the stage in the bizarre production of Gounod’s Faust at Poznań’s Teatr Wielki, a production directed by Karolina Sofulak. In his Tristan for Grange Park Opera, he followed the fashionable biographical trope, suggesting – rightly, to some extent – that Wagner composed the opera in the throes of passion for Mathilde von Wesendonck, forgetting, however, that the composer had come up with the idea several years earlier and under the influence not of his affection for the silk merchant’s beautiful wife, but of reading Schopenhauer. Edwards cluttered the stage almost as much as in Poznań, styling it neither as the interior of the Wesendoncks’ Zurich villa, nor as the chambers of the fairytale castle of Neuschweinstein, and closing it with sets that, contrary to the pre-premiere hype and misleading announcements, did not draw on the first performance of Tristan, but on later productions in Bayreuth, the first of which was presented three years after Wagner’s death. It was for this production, directed by Cosima herself, that Max Brückner designed the sets. But Edwards did not stop there: in Act III he used Kurt Söhnlein’s design for Siegfried Wagner’s famous 1927 staging.

Tristan und Isolde, GPO. Gwyn Hughes Jones (Tristan). Photo: Marc Brenner

This is what may happen when the director doesn’t commission thorough research before getting down to work. Instead of a bold reinterpretation we got a cliché replicating common myths about the circumstances of the work’s creation and its Munich premiere. Edwards entrusted the lighting direction to Tim Mitchell, who bathed this panopticon in colours that brought to mind a B grade horror film rather than the story of two lovers joined in death. The situation was remedied a bit by Gabrielle Dalton’s stylish costumes, but we still got a story of common marital infidelity instead of symbolism and metaphysics. In addition, the finale was dangerously reminiscent of the ending of Katharina Thoma’s Frankfurt staging three years ago, where Isolde’s love’s transfiguration, like in Edwards’ interpretation, took place without Tristan, sent backstage before that.

Tristan was rescued by Wagner himself or, more precisely, by his music – in an above-average, at times even thrilling performance. Stephen Barlow conducted, confidently and elegantly, though approaching the Wagnerian matter quite differently from Negus, who builds up the dramaturgy in Tristan by alternating tensions and relaxations. In Barlow’s interpretation the musical narrative follows an ascending curve slowly but inexorably, especially in the overall agogic plan. At first I found this boring then began to appreciate it, especially since the Gascoigne Orchestra played under Barlow’s baton with precision, a beautifully balanced sound and an excellent sense of the proportion between the pit and the stage.

The Welsh tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones, who had been primarily associated with Italian repertoire over the years, made his debut as Tristan in Grange Park. Jones has a soft voice with a beautiful, golden tone, excellent technique and a valuable ability to pace himself throughout the performance. His melancholic, endearingly lyrical Tristan may not have appealed to the advocates, so numerous today, of casting stentorian Heldentenors in the role, but I think he would have won praise from Wagner himself, who valued intelligence and a sense of musical drama in singers above all. Both qualities were not lacking in Jones’ performance in the great monologue of Act III, from the first bars shrouded in the darkness of the longed-for night of death. Keeping vigil over the wounded hero was one of the finest Kurwenals I had heard in recent seasons – David Stout, who with such sensitivity and with such a well-controlled baritone, perfectly developed in the lower register, could soon begin to consider making a debut in any of the heavier Wagnerian roles. That was not the end of the revelations, however. Matthew Rose provided me with yet another argument to substantiate the thesis that in the finale of Act II of Tristan Wagner came the closest to the heart of ancient tragedy. King Marke’s monologue, phenomenally interpreted by Rose, contained neither fury nor shame: only a calm, bitter statement of a fact that can no longer be reversed. I think that the English bass deliberately added a bit of a Verdian hue to his singing: I was not the only one who began to wonder about a possible affinity between Don Carlos and Tristan, premiered a few years before Verdi’s opera. Brangäne found an equally outstanding interpreter in the person of Christine Rice, one of the finest mezzo-sopranos of her generation as well as an excellent actress. Very decent performances in minor roles came from Sam Utley (Shepherd) and Thomas Isherwood (Steersman). Mark Le Brocq deserves separate praise for his take on the role in which Edwards merged the characters of Melot and Young Sailor into one. A silly idea, but splendid performance: especially memorable for me was the sneer heard in the sailor’s song “Irische Maid, du wilde, minnige Maid”, fully justifying Isolde’s later outburst of rage.

Tristan und Isolde, GPO. Rachel Nicholls (Isolde). Photo: Marc Brenner

Isolde was portrayed, once again in her career, by Rachel Nicholls, an extremely musical singer with an exuberant stage temperament and expressive personality. Her voice is as full as Bisset’s, but sharper, more girlish, sparkling with different colours. There is more frustration and rebellion in her anger, and more impulsive passion than calm, intimate closeness in her displays of feeling. In Edwards’ staging she had to play the role of an unfulfilled bourgeois woman who did not appreciate the potential of her femininity until the final transfiguration. Nicholls correctly read this cue as a turn towards modernism, including musical modernism. She imbued her interpretation with her recent experience in the Straussian repertoire, building a character at times more human than Tristan, or in any case better understood by a contemporary audience. She created a memorable Isolde, also, I think, thanks to her own efforts, because I saw in her singing and acting many gestures remembered from earlier productions.

And we are complaining about the twilight of Wagnerian idols. Perhaps it’s time to set fire to this rotten Valhalla and start everything all over again?

Translated by: Anna Kijak

I missed Handel. The last time I listened to him to my heart’s content was in 2019, at the Händel-Festspiele Göttingen, the place where the oeuvre of Il caro Sassone was revived on 26 June 1920, when the first modern performance of Rodelinda took place thanks to the efforts of Oskar Hagen. In 2020 an anniversary festival was being prepared with great pomp to mark the centenary of those memorable events. The organisers intended to present – in one form or another – all 42 of Handel’s operas, headed by Rodelinda in a fully staged production at the local Deutsches Theater. Their plans were thwarted by the pandemic. It was not until the following autumn that the festival returned – the long-awaited premiere of Rodelinda was not only the most important element in the truncated programme of the event, but also a farewell to Laurence Cummings, who ended his ten-year tenure in Göttingen. The following season the Greek conductor, pianist and director George Petrou took over as artistic director of the Händel-Festspiele, while the outgoing general director Tobias Wolff handed over his duties to Jochen Schäfsmeier, the manager of Concerto Köln until then.

After forty years of absolute British rule the festival changed its course. Which way it is now going I was not able to find out until this year,  and in a rather limited way at that, as I could make it only to the last three days of the Göttingen Handel celebration. In all respects the trip was informative and successful. However, I did not expect I would precede it with a Venetian prologue of uncommon beauty: the premiere of Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno at Teatro Malibran as part of the La Fenice season. Such an opportunity was something I could not miss. This was because today’s name of Malibran is that of the oldest surviving opera theatre in Venice, erected on the remains of Marco Polo’s residence – the famous Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, which was opened in 1678 with a production of Carlo Pallavicino’s Vespasiano, and served as the venue of the world premieres of Alessandro Scarlatti’s Mitridate Eupatore and Handel’s Agrippina, the title role of which was sung on 26 December 1709 by the then prima donna Margherita Durastanti. The golden age was fairly brief: the theatre began to decline already in the 1730s; it changed hands, but nevertheless continued to operate. Maria Malibran sang there in 1835: appalled by the technical condition of the theatre, she gave up her fee so that it could be used for the renovation of the building. Renamed in the singer’s honour, Teatro Malibran continued to experience various ups and downs. In the 1980s it began collaborating with La Fenice. It was only natural that it took in the La Fenice ensembles after the disastrous fire of 1996. Today it operates independently, but also hosts concerts and some productions of the Venetian Phoenix.

Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Handel’s first oratorio, composed in the spring of 1707 and soon after that performed at the palace of Pietro Ottoboni, superintendent of the Apostolic See in Rome, has enjoyed remarkable success on stage recently. This is all the more surprising given that the libretto, by Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, is practically without any action and from the point of view of today’s audiences it carries little dramatic tension. It is, in fact, a philosophical dispute – true, heated at times – involving four paired allegories: Beauty and Pleasure, as well as Time and Disillusion. It leads to the inevitable conclusion that spiritual beauty is superior to sensual beauty, and eternal life is superior to earthly life. If there is anything theatrical in this work, it is Handel’s music, which became for him an inexhaustible source of self-quotations, like Pleasure’s aria “Lascia la spina”, echoes of which would appear later in Rinaldo and the magic opera Amadigi di Gaula.

Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Teatro Malibran, Venice. Photo: Michele Crosera

This is the track followed by Saburo Teshigawara – director, dancer, choreographer as well designer of sets and costumes for the Venetian production of Il trionfo. The Japanese artist finds his inspiration in the butoh dance, in Martha Graham’s techniques, in Tadeusz Kantor’s “zero theatre”; he plays with time and space, combines very expressive dance – alternating between dynamism and stillness – with a bright play of light, and with optical illusion. The stage is black as night and on it Teshigawara “tells” the music with four singers – personified concepts whose message he emphasises with the colours of the costumes (from snow-white Beauty, silvery Pleasure, grey Disillusion to black Time). He complements the concepts with the movement and gesture of four dancers (Alexandre Ryabko, Javier Ara Sauco, and sometimes also the director himself and his assistant Rihoko Sato), and frames them in the only props used in the production: four openwork metal cubes, which delimit the space of the discourse as well as boundaries between concepts.

The clockwork precision of Teshigawara’s concept was perfectly matched by Andrea Marcon’s interpretation – highly expressive, detail-oriented and insightful in terms of shaping the dramaturgy and musical time. The Teatro La Fenice orchestra was inspired in its playing, with the singers generally giving fine performances. Among the female soloists one that deserved particular praise was Silvia Frigato as Beauty. Hers is a light, luminous soprano, used with ease and a great sense of phrase. Not far behind her was Giuseppina Bridelli (Pleasure), whose dark mezzo-soprano, silky in the middle range, only initially sounded jarring with an insufficiently rounded tone in the coloratura. Slightly less successful was Valeria Girardello – in my opinion miscast as Disillusion, a typically contralto role requiring a voice finely developed in all registers. However, she made up for her colour shortcomings and some intonation flaws with good acting and considerable expressive power. Surprisingly – and not only for yours truly – the strongest point of the cast turned out to be Krystian Adam (Time), singing with an uncommonly handsome tenor, with a dark spinto hue, with excellent diction and, above all, with a sense of the intense, typically Baroque play of affect. His spine-chilling aria “Urne voi”, rightly rewarded with the first ovation of the evening, found a worthy equivalent only in Beauty’s final declaration “Tu del Ciel ministro eletto”, interpreted by Frigato with admirable lyricism and restraint.

After such a powerful dose of excitement in Venice, I found myself almost overnight in Göttingen’s Deutsches Theater for a performance of Semele, a musical “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and one of Handel’s most original stage works, which the composer disguised as an oratorio and presented as part of a series of Lenten concerts at Covent Garden in 1744. Rediscovered and appreciated only in the twentieth century, today it is among the top ten of Handel’s most frequently staged operas. After Giulio Cesare, which in 2022 opened up “new horizons” for the festival, time came for Semele, which, owing to its mythological inspirations, fitted in perfectly with this year’s motto of the event: “Hellas!”. The devil is in the detail, for the formula of the Händel-Festspiele has remained essentially unchanged. George Petrou, however, puts greater emphasis on the continuity of the Mediterranean cultural tradition, on the exploration of the oeuvres of lesser known composers, and above all on a radically different approach to the music of Handel himself – fiery, effervescent, closer (all things considered) to Marc Minkowski’s extremely theatrical interpretations than to the intellectual, balanced interpretations of the masters of the English historically informed performance.

In the case of Petrou – who not only conducted, but also directed the two productions at the Deutsches Theater – a substantial role is also played by a bond with the legacy of Greek theatre: with the seriousness and realism of ancient tragedy, understood by modern audiences, and on the other hand with the bawdiness – quite surprising today – of plays by Aristophanes and later authors of Attic comedy. There is a bit of everything in Semele, though in Petrou’s directorial concept the comic element, sometimes bordering on slapstick farce, prevails. However, the production begins on a dramatic note: a pantomime reenactment – to the sounds of the overture – of the death of the Theban princess in a maternity ward, in a bed surrounded by relatives and medical staff. The mood soon changes: we are entering a conventional space with no direct associations with the temple of Juno, where the action of Act I takes place. Things pick up only in Act II, when Juno descends into a nightclub, where access to Jupiter’s love nest is guarded by two bodyguards instead of fire-breathing dragons. The whole gets really funny in Act III, with Somnus characterised as the leader of Hindu sadhus plunged into a drug-induced trance and confused by the sudden intrusion of Iris and Juno at least as much as their semi-conscious guru. The final scene of Semele veers dangerously towards a lieto fine: in my opinion the least successful element of the staging, as we learn of Semele’s tragedy already in the prologue and are moved to tears by her martyrdom at the end of the opera. I’m not sure whether the idea of Bacchus being born from Semele’s ashes in the form of a bottle of champagne won anyone over to this risky Baroque convention.

Semele, Deutsches Theater Göttingen. Photo: Alciro Theodoro da Silva

Compared with Teshigawara’s poetic, visually stunning theatre, Petrou’s concept (created together  with the set and costume designer Paris Mexis, and the lighting director Stella Kaltsou) war neither revelatory, nor particularly captivating. The main contributors to the unquestionable success of the venture were the performers, led by Marie Lys in the title role, a singer who boasts a clear, well-placed soprano, excellent technique and good acting skills. She may have been outclassed in that last respect by Vivica Genaux in the double role of Ino and Juno – changed beyond recognition by a fat-suit, red wig and red glasses as the former, made to look like Jackie Onassis as the latter. I have to admit that I am not a fan of the unique timbre of her voice or her peculiar coloratura, but I did not expect her to show such a sense of comedy and verve on stage: as Ino, she even sang with a different timbre to make the roles entrusted to her all the more different. Marilena Striftombola was a phenomenal Iris (and Cupid). She is a quicksilver artist wielding her agile soprano with a truly youthful lightness and bravura. Jeremy Ovenden (Jupiter) is past his prime, but he made up for it with his musicality and experience, which came to the fore especially in the famous aria “Where’er you walk” in Act II. Riccardo Novaro gave a very decent performance in the triple role of Cadmus, Somnus and High Priest, as did Rafał Tomkiewicz – excellent in terms of singing and acting as usual – in the thankless role of Athamas. The whole – with an Athenian chorus under Agathangelos Georgakatos and the FestspielOrchester Göttingen – was conducted by George Petrou with truly Mediterranean verve and panache, often at breakneck tempi, though without destroying the formal freedom of Handel’s score, one of the most beautiful ones in the composer’s oeuvre.

Later that same evening I let myself be led blindfolded – like Bruegel’s blind man – to the Concert in the Dark in the Lokhalle, a former Göttingen locomotive depot, where festival instrumentalists and singers played with our perception for over an hour, presenting in the darkness music from Delphic Hymns to Rautavaara – in the most diverse line-ups and spatial configurations. The following day I listened with the greatest pleasure to an intimate performance by the French Ensemble Masques – over coffee and cakes, as part of the Café George series at the Forum Wissen Göttingen. Earlier, in the University Auditorium I admired the virtuosity of the flautist Erik Bosgraaf and the harpsichordist Francesco Corti in a programme featuring works by composers associated with the court of Anne, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange, a favourite pupil of Handel. I grumbled a bit that the immanent melodiousness of these gems got lost a bit in the dizzying tempi of their performances. I stopped grumbling, when Fanie Antonelou, the soloist of the Greek ensemble Ex Silentio sang Handel’s solo cantatas without the slightest sense of the composer’s idiom and with an instrumental accompaniment equally lacking in style. Pity, because the programme of the concert in the great hall of the picturesque Welfenschloss near Hannover could have been limited to pieces by unknown composers from Crete, which the Venetians ruled until the Ottoman conquest in 1669.

Jeanine de Bique. Photo: Sorek Artists

However, this year’s festival ended on a very strong note in the form of a gala recital by Jeanine De Bique, a Trinidadian soprano and graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, who recorded her first solo album Mirrors in 2021 with Concerto Köln – featuring arias of female characters from Handel’s works, juxtaposed as if in a musical mirror with portraits of the same women in works by other composers of the period, including Carl Heinrich Graun and Georg Philippe Telemann. De Bique has been presenting this programme in concert for the past two years, sometimes shifting the emphasis a little, as she did in St John’s Church in Göttingen, where she replaced the aria “Mi restano le lagrime” from Alcina with the much more spectacular monologue “Ombre pallide”. I listened to her streamed recital from last year’s Bayreuth Baroque festival. Since then the singer has matured, has become more at ease, has engaged in a wonderful dialogue with both the musicians and the audience. Her voice is a true diamond, still not fully polished, but nevertheless worth hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling – it already shines like a crown jewel in the royal treasury: indomitable, clear, captivating with its brilliance and rainbow of colours. If it still lacks anything, it is only some softness in the upper register and a touch of vividness in the low notes of the range. De Bique’s interpretations – supported by Concerto Köln’s extraordinary sensitive accompaniment – touch the heart and at the same time make us realise the essence of the greatness of Handel, who favoured complex musical drama, revelatory colour effects and poignant lyricism over empty virtuosity.

Called to sing encore after encore, De Bique finally sang “Tu del Ciel ministro eletto” from Il trionfo. I will not compare the two performances. Let me just write that I find it hard to imagine a more beautiful link between the impressions of these few days in Venice and Göttingen.

Translated by: Anna Kijak