Wędrówki operowe/Operatic Journeys

It sometimes happens that a future opera critic becomes acquainted with a work from a wholly unexpected angle. That is precisely what occurred with me – a sickly child who killed time spent at home by listening to records from her parents’ collection. No one selected this music for me. My attention was drawn to the 7 inch vinyl with orchestral excerpts from Aida primarily by the intriguing cover and no less intriguing description, in a completely incomprehensible language. Many years passed before I realised that recorded on that disc was a 1959 performance by the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Miklós Erdélyi, who was then associated with the Hungarian State Opera. Thus my acquaintance with Verdi’s Aida began with the overture and three ballet extracts from the second act – in a surprisingly subtle interpretation, shimmering with the softness of the quasi-oriental orchestral textures.

Soon after, I encountered my first Aida at the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw. Again in unusual circumstances – from the wings. Jan Marcin Szancer’s huge sets could not be housed in any of the store rooms, so they were kept in the side-stages. The statue of the pharaoh, several storeys high, was passed by participants in all the Warsaw productions, from Bizet’s Carmen to Wagner’s Tannhäuser. The children of the chorus were dumbstruck with awe. The soloists, meanwhile, experienced growing irritation at the fact that the stage designers were producing creations which, instead of helping the singers, only hindered them in their struggles with the unfriendly acoustics of what was one of the biggest theatres in the world.

Since the time of that production, which was premiered exactly sixty years ago, the Warsaw Opera has tackled Aida just twice. Each time without success. Progressive elements tore their hair out, while the conservative Józef Kański summed up Marek Grzesiński’s 1986 production with the quip ‘And what? And nothing!’ and furnished Robert Lagana Manoli’s concept, from nineteen years later, with the telling title ‘The trumpets sounded beautiful…’

As the years passed, I too became discouraged about Aida, particularly since the greatest titans of music theatre had sought a key to interpreting this masterwork – compared to Verdi’s earlier experiments, an opera almost classical in form, composed to a conventional and exceptionally clear libretto based on a drama of duty – in vain. Some fruitlessly tried to settle scores with nineteenth-century colonialism, some set the narrative in the realities of contemporary conflicts, while others removed Aida from all context, producing incohesive spectacles in motley costumes.

Photo: Marek Olbrzymek

Hence I decided to reignite my old love for Verdi’s Egyptian opera at the Janáčkovo divadlo, which for several seasons now has been for me a haven of good theatre: pared back, clean of form, employing metaphorical signs, allusions and mental shortcuts. And at the same time meeting the expectations of the local audience – as a tool for building a community and a space for reflection and dialogue. And only now has it dawned on me that the vision of operatic theatre realised in the building on Rooseveltova Street is so close to my heart because it is a modernist vision, perfectly at one with the atmosphere of Brno.

I think we still don’t really appreciate the modernistic potential of the Moravian capital – a city whose history was entangled for almost half a century with the fortunes of Bohuslav Fuchs, an urban planner, designer and architecture theorist who raised several generations of Czech architects. His legendary buildings – including the Avion Hotel, squeezed into a narrow, eight-metre-wide plot between two houses on Česka Street – proved to be the perfect example of a modernist game with resistant matter and space. Fuchs brought to Brno a host of visionaries from Czechoslovakia and designers from abroad, among them Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who created the plans for the functionalist Villa Tugendhat. It was thanks to Fuchs that Brno became one of the most important centres for modernism in Europe; also because, unlike other cities, it did not have to rise from the ruins after the war. It etched its name in the history books not just as a herald, but also as a continuator of the ‘new tradition’: unsullied, unbroken, distinctly reflected in architectural thought, design, literature, everyday life and, last but not least, opera.

The new production of Aida, premiered in September last year, is not perhaps an outstanding spectacle, but it was certainly conceived in such a way as to hold its place in the repertoire of the Janáčkovo divadlo for many seasons. Marek Cpil, a graduate of the JAMU in Brno, associated for a while with the Divadlo Na zábradlí in Prague, designed sets which – in my opinion – would have been greeted just as favourably in Moravia a hundred years ago as they were received at the end of the first quarter-century of the new millennium: minimalistic, highly geometricised, in a palette of gold, red, black and blue, referring to the Egypt from the common preconceptions of audiences and perfectly highlighted by the lighting designer Přemysl Janda. Aptly corresponding to Cpil’s vision were the costumes designed by Linda Boráros, distinctly emphasising the contrast between the colourful presence of the Nubians and the hieratical convention in the way the Egyptians are depicted, reflecting the ancient power structures and social divisions (taken to the brink of caricature in the costume of the Pharaoh, the only truly monumental element of the staging – in the form of a towering construction, rolled onto the stage, sparkling with golden scales, out of which emerges only the head of the singer). Director Magdalena Švecová coupled that scenery with quite static action, inspired by symbolic gestures, poses and patterns of robes from Egyptian painting. More energy was breathed into the production by choreographer Marek Svobodnik, who enlivened the temple frescos and bas-reliefs in the ballet scenes with the participation of dancers from the NdB2 junior ballet company.

Photo: Marek Olbrzymek

I caught the last December performances, in which the titular role of Aida – as in the premiere – was incarnated by a former resident of the Janáčkovo divadlo, the Hungarian Csilla Boross. As usual, her voice took a long time to warm up: her supple, rich soprano, at first not open enough in the top part of the scale, only showed its full quality in Act III, in a remarkably subtle rendering of the aria ‘O patria mia’, the warm lyricism of which was ideally counterbalanced later by the final duet of the protagonists. This time, the role of Radames was taken by Eduard Martyniuk, a Ukrainian tenor endowed with a voice of exceptional beauty, backed by fine bel canto technique – unfortunately, too light for this part, and consequently more and more forced as the narrative unfolded. Happily, I could at least relish his gentle cantilena, led in ‘old-fashioned’ style, in ‘Celeste Aida’.

Anastasia Martyniuk fared much better as Amneris. Her rich mezzo-soprano, a riot of colours, is ideally suited to this part: beautifully open at the top, balanced across the registers, thanks to her intelligence and musicality, convincingly split between anger and despair, which the young Ukrainian underscored with very good acting. Paling in comparison was the Slovakian baritone Aleš Jenis (Amonasro), blessed with a voice of interesting timbre, but not particularly sonorous and essentially devoid of expression. The role of the Pharaoh was successfully filled by Jan Šťáva, one of the pillars of the Brno theatre, boasting a typically ‘Czech’ bass with a wonderful bottom range and beautifully nurtured middle. The remaining parts were well within the capabilities of Daniela Straková (High Priestess), Jan Hnyk (Ramfis) and Petr Levíček (Messenger). The choruses – children’s and mixed – also came across quite well, under the direction of Martin Buchta, though at times they lacked energy and fullness of sound.

Photo: Marek Olbrzymek

Quite phenomenal, meanwhile, was the sound of the orchestra, under the baton of Jakub Klecker, who once again demonstrated how much a choirmaster’s experience can bring to the role of an opera conductor. He directed throughout with a sensitive hand, meticulously differentiating the shades of the instruments (especially the strings), taking care to ensure a lyrical quality to the cantilenas, beautiful harmonic details and the specific exoticism of Verdi’s score. He forged an interpretation that was surprisingly intimate, far from the monumentalism and pathos that have effectively turned many a music lover away from Aida.

In Brno, even the trumpets sounded beautiful. And contrary to the review of my former master, there is not a hint of irony in that assertion. For the needs of this production, the Janáčkovo divadlo brought in a set of ‘trombe egiziane’, designed by Verdi specially to perform the triumphal march in the second act. The trumpets were displayed to the audience before the premiere, on the square in front of the theatre. They will certainly serve for many a year. I anticipate that the new Brno Aida – modest, imperfect, quite simply human – will not depart the scene any time soon. It is through such shows that children acquire a love of opera. To such shows they return when they’re old. That is how a theatre community is built.

Translated by: John Comber

Around the same time that Peter Sellars was working on his staging of the Matthew Passion at the Berlin Philharmonic – that is, in early 2010 – Romeo Castellucci, l’enfant terrible of Italian theatre, created one of the most provocative works of his entire career. The production Sul concetto di volto nel figlio di Dio, featuring a fragment of Antonello da Messina’s painting dominating the stage, an image of the Saviour of the World silently watching the agony of the ailing Father, went out into the world after its premiere at the Romaeuropa Festival labelled as the director’s profession of faith. It was admired in Rome, and provoked violent riots in Paris and Avignon. Less than six years later, when Sellars was already coming up with the first sketches for La clemenza di Tito at the Salzburger Festspiele, Castellucci decided on Matthäus-Passion for the opening of the Musikfest Hamburg. Had he been able to implement his original concept, this might have resulted in a production straight from the spirit of Sul concetto di volto. There were some technical obstacles, however: the production was planned in the vast Deichtorhallen, a former market hall without theatrical facilities that has been transformed into a museum of contemporary art. The idea of illustrating Bach’s work with a series of live images reminiscent of Italian Renaissance paintings was, therefore, replaced by Castellucci with a series of installations and performances bringing to mind loose, often disturbing associations with the passion of Jesus and forcing the spectators to engage in difficult reflections on the meaning of human suffering.

In 2016 the staging was received favourably, but without much enthusiasm. Castellucci all too soon came up against the legend of Sellars’ production, prompting comparisons all the more so given that Simon Rattle, who conducted the Berlin Passion, and Kent Nagano, who conducted the work in Hamburg – both well known to German audiences – represented radically different musical worlds. Sellar’s pared-down and yet emotionally charged concept was a perfect match for Rattle’s temperament and thus proved to be more accessible. Castellucci’s abstract theatre, using symbol and metaphor, worked perfectly with Nagano’s clear, slightly distanced interpretative style, requiring much more attention and concentration from the listener.

For nearly a decade the Hamburg Passion – although, in retrospect, it proved to be a landmark work in the Italian director’s oeuvre – was preserved only in the memories of audiences present at the three performances at Deichtorhallen and in a video recording that does not convey its many nuances. Over two years after the failed attempt to revive it in Rome, it finally arrived at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale in Florence with the same conductor and the same Evangelist (Ian Bostridge) – for two of the three scheduled performances, as the premiere coincided with a strike of the local trade unions.

Photo: Michele Monasta

Fortunately, I made it to the second and last performance to find out once against that Castellucci was, indeed, a provocateur, but by no means a scandalist. If he is, it is, as he himself repeatedly emphasised, in the New Testament sense of the word σκάνδαλον, the Greek equivalent of michshol, or “stumbling block” from the Book of Leviticus, an obstacle “you shall not put before the blind”. In the New Testament it is above all a “stone of offence”, a metaphor for going astray, inciting evil. Castellucci throws this stumbling block at our feet as if before the blind, transforms it into a silent cry to the deaf. He throws us off balance with a succession of seemingly inappropriate, iconoclastic associations the meaning of which either eludes us or reaches us when we least expect it.

The director leads the audience down the wrong path already at the very beginning of the performance, when white-clad Nagano steps onto the snow-white stage and washes his hands in a bowl brought in by two actors dressed in white. This is not a gesture of Pilate; this is a gesture of purity of heart, made by a priest who will soon descend into the orchestra pit to begin a ritual involving musicians in white costumes. Blinding white is a feature in many of Castellucci’s stagings, but in the Passion it is omnipresent and ambiguous: as a symbol of holiness and truth, but also of emptiness, loneliness and mourning. The director will stage nineteen memorable episodes in this white setting, in which every object, every substance, every tree, every person, and even their absence, will be treated conscientiously and with extraordinary tenderness by the athletes, police officers, doctors, lab technicians, cleaners and “ordinary” Florentines participating in the performance, and silently telling their own and other people’s stories. In the Judas’ betrayal episode they will use the real skull of a thief caught red-handed and killed by a shot to the head. They will take the last supper of a recently deceased patient out of a fridge, they will put sheets stained by the umbilical cord blood of a real newborn in a washing machine. In the Crucifixion scene a group of volunteers – children, young and old people – will attempt to hold the position of Jesus nailed to the cross by clinging with their hands to a suspended bar. No one will last more than a minute. The director will turn water into blood and vice versa, by alternately colouring and neutralising a solution of phenolphthalein in transparent tubes.

All these actions are meticulously described by Castellucci in a separate booklet accompanying the programme book. We stumble over them as if stumbling over stones even without his explanations. All aspects of the last days of Christ acquire a completely different dimension when linked to the ordinary experience of the beginning and end, pain and comfort, hope and despair. I will remember that “my” newborn baby (the director linked a different baby to each performance) is a girl called Anna, who has just turned one month. I will not forget that the fir tree cut down before my performance and stripped of its branches before my eyes was thirty-nine years old. I will remember the story of the illness of the Florentine goldsmith Maurizio, who came on stage on prostheses and left it on stumps of legs that would not have had to be amputated, if it had not been for the chaos in the pandemic-stricken hospitals.

Photo: Michele Monasta

Some episodes proved less, some even more vivid. Many factors influence the degree to which they are perceived as consistent with doctrine and with Bach’s text, factors ranging from personal sensitivity to the experiences of a particular community. The Italians read these codes as intended by the director, as was evidenced not only by the thunderous ovation after the performance, but also – and perhaps above all – by the reaction at the beginning of that mystery play, when no one burst into applause after Nagano’s entrance, recognising that theatre was already happening. However, in comparison with the Hamburg performances, the distance between the musicians and performers on stage has grown. At Deichtorhallen all the action took place in the space between the audience and the performers: yes, it could throw the musicians off balance at times, but at the same time it encouraged them to empathise.

Another thing was that the soloists and members of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino ensembles, safely hidden in the cocoon of the orchestra pit, focused entirely on their tasks. With a truly youthful passion, which is not surprising because, as Castellucci meticulously points out, the orchestra features a violinist who has just turned twenty-one and the oldest singer in the chorus is in his sixties. This is exactly how Bach should sound when performed by artists normally associated with opera: light, airy, with no attempts to ape Baroque articulation on modern instruments, but with respect for Bach’s musical rhetoric – which is especially true of the chorus members, prepared by Lorenzo Fratini and Sara Matteucci, who impressed with their excellent diction, understanding of the text and full commitment to their collective characters.

Particularly worthy of praise among the soloists were Edwin Crossley-Mercer as Jesus – captivating with his phrasing and the melancholic tone of his beautiful bass, perhaps a little too “smoky” in the middle; the excellent Anna El-Khashem, with her crystal-clear, subtle soprano voice and excellent breath control; the ever reliable Krystian Adam, who possesses a rare ability among tenors to combine a stylish interpretation with a great deal of emotion; and Iurii Iushkevich, singing with a surprisingly colourful, calm, almost girlish-sounding countertenor. Decent though not particularly spectacular performances came from the soprano Suji Kwon, and basses Thomas Tatzi and Gonzalo Godoy Sepúlveda. Ian Bostridge was, unfortunately, disappointing as the Evangelist: his interpretation was too expressive, at times even hysterical already in Hamburg. A decade later the technical shortcomings became apparent: Bostridge was not the only one to struggle in this performance with the 442 Hz pitch, awkward for the “early musickers”, but he was the only one to be defeated in this struggle, shifting between registers with visible effort and losing control of his larynx on several occasions. All the more praise for the highly efficient and singer-friendly continuo group (the organist Cristiano Gaudio, the theorbo player Elisa La Marca and the gambist Mario Filippini).

Photo: Michele Monasta

I was not disappointed by Kent Nagano, a conductor for whom I have had a weak spot for years: for his versatility, for his eminently intellectual and, at the same time, very human approach to the musical matter, for his attention to textural detail and for his innate aversion to flamboyance. In today’s world of extremes Nagano represents the commendable attitude of a tireless seeker of the golden mean – an artist with whom not only a musician, but also an ordinary listener can simply feel safe.

Which is important in the case of a work that grips our imagination so powerfully. Castellucci put a stone before me. Nagano got me on the right path. I think that both got to the crux of Bach’s message. This is exactly what the Matthew Passion is all about.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

It is not a new staging, but in many respect it is memorable. Don Giovanni, directed by John Fulljames, with sets by Dick Bird, costumes by Annemarie Woods and lighting by Fabiana Piccioli, was to be the Greek National Opera’s first new production at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre in the 2020/21 season – announced with great hype, along with a revival of Madama Butterfly and the ballet premiere of Don Quixote, already in August 2020, when everything seemed to suggest that Greece had overcome the pandemic. Fate had other plans. The pandemic struck again, the restrictions were reinstated, but the company was not about to give up. The production, which was scheduled to open in December, was premiered without an audience, was filmed by means of eight cameras, and state-of-the-art video and audio broadcasting technology, and soon proved to be one of the hits of the GNO TV streaming service, which was launched at that difficult time. What contributed to the success of the venture was not only the excellent cast, led by Tassis Christoyannis in the title role, but also the professional editing with lots of close-ups, quick cuts and beautifully framed shots. When the production finally hit the stage – first in Athens, then in Gothenburg and Copenhagen – it was received much more coldly by the critics.

Primarily because it is not very innovative. Many artists before Fulljames, including Sven-Erich Bechtolf and Keith Warner, had come with the idea of setting the action of Don Giovanni in a hotel – a clever idea, it has to be said, as the “democratised” space of contemporary hotel chains helps to resolve the dilemma of the sharp social divisions outlined in the work. However, it reduces the eponymous character to the one-dimensional role of a sexual predator, someone like Harvey Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein – types found in many new stagings of operas, not just those of Mozart. It strips Don Giovanni of the aura of mystery, the “unsolvable enigma” that even some of the greatest theatre directors were afraid to tackle. On the other hand, Fulljames plays with this convention quite skilfully, with a good dose of uniquely British humour. He introduces into the staging a dozen or so extras, brilliantly directed by the choreographer Maxina Braham. They are members of the hotel staff who, with grotesque indifference, ignore the excesses of the guests, remove the traces of lewd orgies and meticulously restore the rooms to sterile order. Fulljames winks at the audience, showing them, instead of the statue of the Commendatore, his frozen corpse in a cold store full of butchered carcasses of pigs (another borrowing, this time from Warlikowski). In the sadomasochistic party scene he plays with drag, dressing Don Ottavio, Donna Anna and Donna Elvira in identical ball gowns.

Photo: Martynas Aleksa

He is less successful in characterising the various protagonists, especially Donna Elvira, who resembles a stalker possessed by unrequited love rather than a proud, betrayed woman. The duel scene in Act I resembles a chaotic skirmish in which Don Giovanni kills the Commendatore by accident. Equally unconvincing is the changing of clothes with Leporello, in which the main role is played by a particularly hideous red wig. Fulljames’ staging, however, undeniably has rhythm and pace, as well as some really strong points, primarily an overwhelming sense of the fleeting nature of all of Don Giovanni’s vile deeds: even their victims do not have time to realise what has actually happened: the door slams shut in front of them, the lift disappears, the light comes on in another room, the staff quickly change the sheets, wipe the table and fluff the cushions.

I came to Vilnius, wondering how this production would fare in the extraordinary building of the Lithuanian National Opera, itself an “unsolvable enigma” of Soviet architecture. The design competition for the building, launched in 1960, was won by Elena Nijolė Bučiūtė, a very young Lithuanian architect, who presented a model of the theatre that anticipated the ideas of many German post-war modernists. Fourteen years passed between the design and the construction, many of Bučiūtė’s novel ideas were lost, but some were kept – they included the bright foyer space, the spectacular decor details of red brick, yellow glass and brass, and the magnificent auditorium with nearly a thousand seats, still the largest stage in Lithuania. The largest, yet still giving a sense of intimacy in experiencing the work – not least thanks to the very good acoustics, in which the singers do not have to try to outshout the orchestra and the conductor can easily balance the sound between the stage and the pit.

Photo: Martynas Aleksa

Fulljames’ Don Giovanni was premiered here in March. I managed to see one of the performances after the autumn revival, conducted by Vilmantas Kaliūnas, a Lithuanian oboist who has been working in Germany for more than thirty years and who has recently taken up conducting as well. And the result is not bad: he conducted the whole thing at reasonable, singer-friendly tempi, the orchestra’s sound, a little thin at first, gradually gained depth, the musicians reacted attentively to his instructions, generally playing with a clean, nicely rounded sound.

The cast was dominated by Lithuanians, led by Modestas Sedlevičius in the title role, a singer with a not very large but exceptionally handsome baritone, beautifully balanced across the registers and phrasing in an old-fashioned, truly Lieder-like style. Leporello was sung by the experienced Tadas Girininkas, whose a bass has an expansive but well-controlled volume, is sonorous, if sometimes a little dull in the middle. Liudas Norvaišas did well in the short role of the Commendatore, while the young baritone Mindaugas Tomas Miškinis fared slightly worse, not quite managing to control his emotions as Masetto, which is by no means an easy role. The only foreigner among the soloists, the Polish tenor Krystian Adam, as usual infused his character with a lot of passion, a feat that is all the more noteworthy given that few singers know how to create a memorable Don Ottavio. Adam managed to do just that: with a voice that is lyrical, but at the same manly in its sound, beautifully developed in the lower register and open at the top, supported by excellent diction and a feel for the idiom. Of the ladies, the one I found the most convincing was Ona Kolobovaitė as Donna Anna. Despite her young age, she is a very mature singer with a wonderfully soft and supple soprano as well as extraordinary acting skills. I was less taken by Gabrielė Bukinė, whose voice is denser, almost like a mezzo-soprano, at times too heavy for the role of Donna Elvira and, above all, rather hysterical, for which – unfortunately – the misguided directorial concept was largely responsible. Lina Dambrauskaitė was more impressive, with her graceful and light soprano, combined with a great sense of comedy, perfect for the role of Zerlina.

Photo: Martynas Aleksa

I don’t know if I would like to see this staging again. I know that in the Lithuanian National Opera building, radiating light and warmth from within, it revealed all its strengths and made it possible to turn a critical eye away from its undeniable flaws. It did not solve the enigma of Don Giovanni. But it certainly did not discourage further efforts to unravel it.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

My return to the Cam riverside to take part in the Autumn Series of the Cambridge Music Festival took place in special circumstances: shortly after the title of Doctor of the Church was conferred on the most eminent leader of Anglo-Catholicism, John Henry Newman, beatified fifteen years ago by Benedict XVI and canonised by Francis nine years later. The catalogue of Catholic saints is quite long. Yet among the Doctors of the Church – beginning in 1298, when Boniface VIII authenticated the list presented nearly six hundred years earlier by Venerable Bede, who included in it Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo, Jerome of Stridon and Pope Gregory the Great – there are just 38 individuals. Bede, an Anglo-Saxon Benedictine monk, who once had “a wife in the lustful passion of desire” and then had intercourse with her in the name of true love of Christ, was proclaimed Doctor of the Church only in 1899, nearly a decade after Newman’s death. John Henry, an alumnus of Oxford’s Trinity College, converted to Catholicism in his forties: after a period of intense activity in the so-called Oxford Movement, representatives of which – advocates of a radical reform of Anglicanism – called for a return to the early Christian idea of a “primitive church”.

In many respects Newman was a tragic figure. The Catholics distrusted him, the Anglicans treated him as a renegade. His rich written legacy, which is still regarded as one of the pinnacles of Victorian literature, was discovered for Poles by Stanisław Brzozowski, author of Legenda Młodej Polski (Legend of Young Poland). In 1937 Zofia Bastgenówna asked in her excellent essay “The mystery of Newman”: “What do we, Poles, know about this outstanding personality of the previous century, who so perfectly and originally illustrates the era of the so-called modernism and brings together the peculiarly English features of Catholicism in an individually profound experience of an internal transformation?”. She observed at the same time that “with the exception of theologians and historians of literature, no Englishman is any longer familiar with this great figure whose fame associated with the Oxford Movement was accepted more than a century ago once and for all, without objection, and has never been considered in its essence since”.

The Dream of Gerontius, Newman’s 1865 poem or, rather, poetic drama, is in its essence a large-scale depiction of Purgatory. In 1900 it was used as the basis for a work that Elgar, for good reason, did not allow to be referred to as “oratorio”. The composer used this tale of dilemmas of the soul – leaving the body and setting out into the unknown – as an answer to the questions about death, meaning of suffering, existence of God and of the beyond, questions that troubled Victorian England. The Anglican clergy did not like the references to saints and the Virgin Mary, while musicians were not enamoured of the references to Wagner’s oeuvre, especially Parsifal. And yet Elgar’s score was equally strongly influenced by the style of Dvořák (who, incidentally, himself toyed with the idea of writing a work to Newman’s poem) as well as nineteenth-century French composers, not to mention the fact that The Dream of Gerontius proved to be, on the whole, such a distinct and innovative work that its premiere at the Birmingham Music Festival came close to becoming a disaster. The chorus failed to cope with its part and the tenor Edward Lloyd, experienced in the oratorio repertoire, paced himself badly and barely made it through to the end of the concert.

Stuart Jackson. Photo: Gerard Collett

Fortunately, history did justice to the work while the composer was still alive. However, the time of its greatest popularity, is now behind it – also in Britain, where it once occupied as prominent a place in the repertoires of choral societies as Handel’s Messiah. Performances outside the composer’s homeland are a rarity and rarely meet the expectations of the admirers of Elgar’s work, yours truly included. This is why out of the six concerts in the autumn instalment of the Cambridge Music Festival I chose without a second thought The Dream of Gerontius at King’s College Chapel, featuring soloists, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the BBC Singers and the King’s College Choir conducted by Daniel Hyde, the current Director of Music at King’s College. The whole thing seemed all the more interesting to me because in the sumptuous yet intimate interior of the Gothic chapel, the piece was to be heard in a version by Iain Farrington, pianist, organist and composer, author of dozens of arrangements of symphonies, operas and oratorios – including works by Mahler, Brahms, Sibelius and Wagner – for smaller ensembles.

Farrington has orchestrated The Dream of Gerontius for an ensemble of about thirty musicians, almost three times smaller than the large late Romantic orchestra envisaged by Elgar. And yet he has managed to preserve the colour palette and richness of texture of the original, giving the soloists much more room to shine and balancing the proportions between orchestra and chorus, the Achilles’ heel of most contemporary conductors, who unwittingly fall into the trap of monumentalism that is inappropriate in this work. Hyde conducted the whole thing in rather brisk tempi, highlighting perhaps the most significant peculiarity of this score – the already mentioned affinity with Wagner’s Parsifal, in which the music flows in an almost uninterrupted stream, with melodies and leitmotifs emerging from one into another. Singificantly, after a brief interval between the first and the second part the conductor managed to completely change the mood of the story – from a timid prayer full of suffering to an ecstatic, Dantean journey into Purgatory, culminating in the harrowing “Take me away” and finding release in the long farewell song of the Angel and the chorus.

The most experienced among the soloists was James Platt, a typical English bass, with an ease of articulation and an extraordinary expressive voice, which, however, had too much vibrato at times, a trait that was particularly evident in the first part, in the essentially baritone role of the Priest. The eponymous Gerontius definitely benefitted from Farrington’s chamber version: Stuart Jackson’s handsome tenor is agile and technically impeccable, but its volume is not large, which in this version the singer more than made up for with an intelligent Lieder-like phrasing and ability to differentiate the emotions contained in the prosody. The best among the three was Claire Barnett-Jones as the Angel. Hers is a pure, excellently placed and well controlled mezzo-soprano, which, if necessary, would certainly cut through a much larger orchestra. I must emphasise, however, that despite the soloists’ efforts and the disciplined playing of the orchestra, the real protagonists of the performance were the choirs: attentive, expressive, diverse not only with regard to the nature of the characters they portrayed, but also in terms of timbre and voice production. The apt and heterogeneous juxtaposition of female and boy sopranos, altos and countertenors, tenors and basses – sounding different in the BBC Singers ensemble and different in the King’s Chapel choir – further emphasised the drama of the composition, which, according to musicologists, bears more hallmarks of an opera rather than of any variety of oratorio.

Daniel Hyde. Photo: Leon Hargreaves

Six days before the concert Leo XIV, proclaiming Newman Doctor of the Church, named him Doctor Amicitiae, Doctor of Friendship. Newman was inveterately celibate and introverted by nature, but he engaged in friendships with his whole being, seeing them as the most effective way of communicating the message of faith to loved ones. This may have been the reason why the interpretation of The Dream of Gerontius at King’s College Chapel appealed so powerfully to my agnostic imagination. Since that evening I have been coming back again and again to the story of Newman’s relationship with another convert, Ambrose St John, believed to be the prototype of the Angel from the poem. The two men lived together for over thirty years. After his friend’s death Newman experienced such a strong sense of loss that he compared it to mourning a deceased spouse. He asked to be buried with St John in one grave.

In 2008, when the grave was opened to move Newman’s remains elsewhere in view of his expected canonisation, it turned out that the body had completely decomposed. It had simply vanished. As if the Angel had really plunged it into the penal waters. I think, however, that even without knowing this story I would have remembered the Cambridge performance as the most tender depiction of Gerontius’ journey through death I have encountered to date.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

It is still a difficult time for the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, at which renovation started in November 2022 and which will not open its doors until next season at the earliest. It has been a strange time for Oksana Lyniv, who appeared for the first time at the conductor’s podium of one of Italy’s most beautiful theatres in March 2021. Four months later, as the first woman in the history of the Bayreuther Festspiele, she conducted a new staging of Der fliegende Holländer at the Green Hill, before taking over as music director of the Bologna company the following January. During her three-year tenure she was able to prepare just one “real” premiere in Bologna’s Sala Bibiena. The following productions, not only those under her baton, wander from hall to hall in Emilia-Romania’s capital.

It was not without reason that the theatre closed in 2022 with a production of Wagner’s Lohengrin. This was where the Italian premiere of the opera took place in 1871. Over the following three decades Teatro Comunale presented all of Wagner’s most important works and became the first company in the world to receive official permission from the Bayreuth Festival to stage Parsifal, on 1 January 1914, under the baton of Rodolfo Ferrari, with the phenomenal Giuseppe Borgatti in the title role and Helena Rakowska – the wife of Tullio Serafin – in the role of Kundry. Bologna became the most important centre for Wagnerian performances in Italy. It was this tradition that Lyniv, the first female conductor at the helm of an Italian opera company, not just in Bologna, decided to revive.

She has carried out her reform with kid gloves, seemingly without neglecting the repertoire beloved by the local audiences. However, she has handed this repertoire over to other conductors, focusing herself on music opening up other horizons – on Wagner’s operas, on the late Romantic idiom of Mahler and Strauss, on Puccini’s last works. I encountered the Bologna Holländer under her baton in 2023, still having vivid memories of the Bayreuth performance. My impression at that time was that Lyniv was still struggling with the local orchestra, which stubbornly played in the Verdian style, in a manner unsuited to any of Wagner’s scores. That is why I initially was reluctant to face the concert performance of Der Ring des Nibelungen, presented in Bologna in stages since June last year. I gave in only when it came to Siegfried, which in the end I did not manage to see. It was, therefore, with even greater determination that I went to see and hear Götterdämmerung – especially after my recent, very positive experience with the entire Ring cycle conducted by Simone Young, another “debutante”, that is, the first woman to conduct the entire tetralogy in Bayreuth.

All concerts in the cycle – just eight in total, two for each part of the Ring – were held at the Teatro Manzoni, an elegant building in a style reminiscent of Liberty, a uniquely Italian variety of Art Nouveau. Although the edifice, opened in 1933, is located at the very heart of Bologna, it stands away from the main thoroughfares, amidst buildings cramped into the old town backstreets. Before the war it housed one of the most modern culture venues in Italy, with a vast orchestra pit and a very spacious auditorium. It became a venue for concerts, opera and theatre performances, as well as film screenings for thousands of people. After the war the building functioned as a cinema, undergoing extensive renovation in the early twenty-first century. The old theatre was replaced with a state-of-the art concert hall with an auditorium of just over 1200 seats.

Oksana Lyniv. Photo: Anrea Ranzi

I will not delve into the reasons for not staging the Ring in its full stage form – as was the case with Der fliegende Holländer presented over two years ago in the much larger EuropAuditorium, which has the necessary machinery at its disposal. Let me point out, however, that the full Wagner orchestra took up the entire space of the Auditorium Manzoni stage – the chorus had to be placed in the balcony (to an excellent dramatic effect, but more on that in a moment). Instead of a beautifully produced and exemplarily edited programme book that I praised so much in my review of Holländer, we got a ten-page booklet into which, apart from notes on the performers and a partly out-of-date cast, only an essay by Alberto Mattioli could be squeezed.

It is a pity that one of Lyniv’s most ambitious ideas was given such modest treatment – especially as this was both her debut in the Ring and the return of the tetralogy after more than a quarter of a century of absence from the Bologna music scene. The return was certainly successful; so much so that I began to regret my earlier prejudices. The orchestra had finally become accustomed to the idiom of this music, playing attentively and with commitment, grasping every suggestion from Lyniv, who this time not only broke down the score into its constituent parts, precisely extracting from it all the details of texture and emphasising the sophisticated interplay of leitmotifs, but also took care of the continuity and coherence of the narrative. The story moved forward unstoppably and in such a broad wave that I can forgive the winds some false notes and intonation slip-ups – surprising in that they appeared rarely, but in an accumulation that resulted in a veritable cacophony, perhaps most severe in the prelude to Act Three. Perhaps there were not enough rehearsals, or perhaps there was a lack of practice in using authentic Wagnerian instruments, including three steerhorns, or cow horns. On the other hand, the chorus, prepared by Gea Garratti Ansini, did a phenomenal job – this is true especially of the male voices in the stunning intensity of the Gibichungs’ response (from the balcony) to Hagen’s chilling Call in Act Two.

When it comes to the soloists, there was a merry-go-round in the casting of the two most important roles. Siegfried changed twice, finally entrusted to Tilmann Unger a few days before the concert. Wagner lovers became familiar with the German tenor’s name during one of last year’s Bayreuth performances of Parsifal, when Andreas Schager fell ill and his replacement Klaus Florian Vogt missed his plane, as a result of which Unger took on the title role in Act One. I advise you to pay attention to this singer: the only thing he still lacks for the role of Siegfried is a bit more volume and, thus, freedom at the upper end of the range. His voice is very handsome, with the right baritone tinge at the bottom, ringing and clear as befits a Heldentenor. His text delivery is excellent; he intelligently builds his characters and skilfully plays with the mood, as he demonstrated especially in the beautifully constructed monologue “Mime hiess ein mürrischer Zwerg” in Act Three. A perfect Siegfried for modestly-sized stages, and young enough to be able to still develop and “grow into” theatres with more difficult acoustics.

Brünnhilde was to have been played by Eva Vesin, but she was in the end replaced by Sonja Šarić, with whom Lyniv had worked since the beginning of her tenure in Bologna. I noticed the Serbian soprano’s extraordinary musicality already in Holländer, in which she sang Senta. This time she captivated me with her unique timbre – soft, velvety, a little nasal, so different from the bright, often wobbly sopranos that, for reasons I cannot fathom, have taken the lead in the Wagnerian repertoire today. In Šarić’s interpretation Brünnhilde evolved in perfect harmony with the score: from a girl in love to a mature woman who had lost everything and only then appreciated the power of love. I once sensed a similar note in the voice of my first Brünnhilde – the phenomenal, unjustly forgotten Berit Lindholm. Similar technical ease and interpretative wisdom are easier to find today in archive recordings than on the stages of renowned opera houses.

Albert Pesendorfer (Hagen). Photo: Andrea Ranzi

The Bologna Götterdämmerung had one more protagonist – the magnificent Hagen of Albert Pesendorfer, whose bass is powerful, intense and terrifyingly dark, which the singer enhanced even more with his carefully thought-out portrayal of the character and excellent acting. Of Hagen’s two unfortunate siblings I found Gutrune the more memorable by far – in Charlotte Shipley’s lyrical portrayal she was fragile, arousing compassion, and, in her reaction to Siegfried’s death, even shocking in the truth of her emotions. The otherwise lovely baritone Anton Keremidtchiev was disappointing as Gunther, singing the role almost mechanically, with his eyes fixed on the score, without any connection to the text. Just as disappointing was Atala Schöck in the role of Waltraute, sung in a voice that was tired, had too much vibrato and lacked sparkle. On the other hand, fine performances came from Claudio Otelli as Alberich as well as brilliantly marched Norns (Tamta Tarielashvili, Eleonora Filipponi, Brit-Tone Müllertz) and Rhinemaidens (Julia Tkachenko, Marina Ogii, Eglė Wyss).

If the previous parts of the Ring were as convincing as Götterdämmerung, Oksana Lyniv’s mission in Bologna can be regarded as accomplished. Teatro Comunale has returned to the Wagnerian tradition inaugurated so beautifully with Lohengrin conducted by Angelo Mariani. Lyniv has not parted company with Bologna for good – she will work closely with the local opera house at least until the Sala Bibiena reopens. I am becoming more and more taken by women conducting Wagner’s music. Lyniv is like fire. Young is like aether. Time for female incarnations of other Platonic elements in this repertoire.

Translated by: Anna Kijak