Ruben Jais and Roberta Mameli surprise with Haydn and Mozart at ADDA Alicante - a concert to remember

 

The anonymous role that expectation plays in our lives is vastly important. Expectation satisfied can often result in a feeling of self-confirmation, that feeling that comes with sensations of “I told you so, and I was right”. On the other hand, expectations not met can sometimes be associated with poor experience, associated with thoughts such as “I knew this was a bad idea”. Just occasionally, one sets off with expectations that are not met, and the result is tantamount to revelation. “What on earth have I been missing all these years?”

Last night I went to ADDA in Alicante with preconceived expectations. On the bill were Haydn and Mozart, composers who I spend many hours listening to, or not listening to might be a better description. In both cases, I hear a lot of their music but rarely pause to listen. That is one of the joys of going to concerts, to be presented with music that one often ignores or is ignorant of. We thereby run the risk of being surprised. Last night in ADDA, at least in the first half of the evening, the music not only did not conform to expectations, but the experience was so rich that it may even have changed my listening habits.

Alongside the ADDA orchestra, there were billed two other musicians, an invited conductor, Ruben Jais and Roberta Mameli, a soprano soloist. All last night’s performers brought an enthusiasm and no little skill of execution to produce a performance that were not only as good as can be imagined, but they may have even been revelatory, at least for this hardened concertgoer.

We began with Haydn’s aria Berenice, che fai? with Roberta Mameli as soloist. The aria is in fact from one of Haydn’s operas. Joseph Haydn wrote fourteen operas. Why on earth are they never performed, especially since the librettists he worked with include Goldoni? Roberta Mameli’s singing of this aria was powerful, dramatic, exciting and vocally superb. There is a lot of sturm und drang around in this music, but it is perfectly crafted and allows the soloist adequate room to show off, while retaining sufficient musical sense not to be merely a showpiece. A program note reminded the audience that Haydn had become a musician via singing, and the composer’s handling of the voice and orchestra combined managed to convey just the right balanced blend of anger and elegance to convince. Roberta Mameli's performance conveyed every scrap of meaning it was possible to extract from both text and music. This was singing of the highest quality in the form of a surprise called Haydn opera.

What followed was a real ear-opener. A Haydn symphony in the first half of concert programmes is not unusual. They are usually mid-nineties onwards, with occasional forays into the eighties and even the seventies. But not the pre-fifties! That is specialist fare. I do often research the music prior to concert, but this time I had not troubled my recordings, since my expectations had convinced me what to expect. The program note did surprise in that it described a series of Haydn mid-career symphonies all composed in minor keys. But surely this was music to order from Esterhazy employers. What could have motivated Joseph Haydn to melancholy?

The reality of Haydn’s Symphony No49 La Passione unfolded. It was nothing less than revelatory. Not only did this music not meet my expectations, but it completely shattered them. They had told of elegance, dance-like rhythms and more icing than cake. And how utterly unrelated was the reality! The first movement never really seems to exist, except in gentle comments around a theme that seems never to be stated. It could not have been more different from what I unexpected. A strange second movement followed, and then even a downbeat minuet before a finale that tried and tried to establish a major key but eventually failed. The symphony provided a musical experience of such surprise that at home I immediately accessed a recording of it and listened to it twice again. There is a lot in this music, both musically and intellectually, and it provided an experience as rounded as any I have had in a concert hall for some time. Hence a New Year’s Resolution to explore more of the symphonies of Joseph Haydn.

But the experience was surely as much as a result of Ruben Jais’s vision for the music, as it was a result of compositional skill. In music, no matter how good the writing, it still has to be interpreted and performed, and it is these qualities that an audience remembers.

In a more familiar second half of the concert, we heard two works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Symphony No25 again explores sturm und drang, with what at the time must have sounded like a procession of dissonance. And in the early Exultate, Jubilate, Mozart conceived a show-off piece for a singer that also makes musical sense and provides a rousing end to any programme. This was especially the case as Roberta Mameli’s voice achieved levels of dynamics alongside purity of tone and musical interpretation that rendered this very familiar piece a real surprise. A standing encore of Corelli’s Christmas Cantata brought the evening to an equally surprising end, because, after all the sturm und drang that had preceded it, these overtly gentle Baroque sounds were truly elegant and relatively simple at the same time.

It is not often that expectations are so completely shattered with utterly surprising results. I will certainly never again listen to the music of Joseph Haydn with my previous assumptions. This was a truly memorable evening.

Verdi's Luisa Miller in Les Arts Valencia is a triumph for all concerned

 

Giuseppe Verdi set Salvador Cammarano's adaptation of Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love) to music to produce the first opera of his now identified “middle” period. In this phase, the composer rejected previous formats of love duets followed by a chorus, which had previously dominated Italian opera. The opera is known as Luisa Miller, named after the apparently blameless heroine who, in the version Cammarano intended, dies tragically along with her lover at the end. In the case of Luisa Miller, the composer’s departure from the norms of stage melodrama initially led to the work’s troubled premiere in Naples. Verdi would never again write for Teatro San Carlo, but, as we know, did move onto other things. Cammarano’s adaptation of Schiller’s Intrigue and Love moved the plot decisively towards the “love”, but in a new production of the opera in Valencia, the intrigue is again in focus. The main themes, however, of this re-envisaged production are clearly social class, family loyalties, stereotypes, individualism, and feminism.

Valentina Carrasco’s production makes perfect sense, despite at times appearing to be merely decorative. We are presented with a doll factory setting. The director herself makes the point that dolls and the images they present are largely aimed at a female audience.

Luisa’s father, Miller, owns the factory and he is worried because his daughter is in love with Carlo, a stranger of unknown attachment or descent. When Luisa sings of her love for him, the factory workers immediately think of marriage and stereotypical dolls, representing grooms and brides, are brought together in an unfeeling embrace to signify the conventional marriage that awaits. At first sight, this could be literal, it could present a stereotypical idea of romantic love, but it could be kitsch, or it could indicate the conventional thought that dominates a small town. But as things progress it is symbolic of Luisa’s state of mind, a reality that will change by the opera’s end.

Carlo, it transpires, is in fact Rudolfo, the son of the local count, who regards his subjects as possessions. They must conform to his wishes, and certainly not oppose them. This is the kind of patriarchal society that this production of the opera will question. Wurm, the previous suitor of Luisa, reveals the true identity of Rudolfo as the count’s son and thereby casts doubt in everyone’s mind about the lover’s intentions. Was the name change just to hide the aristocratic origins of someone who just wanted to seduce a nice girl from the town? This is the doubt he sows in Luisa’s mind.

In a weak point of the libretto, and the count and Wurm reveal to the audience the fact that the count’s fortune came about by an act of murder against his own family. Here, the characters do little more than tell the audience the plot. It is clumsy, but then Wagner did it repeatedly. The two men, however, decide that their interests are best served by sticking together. The count reveals that he has marriage plans for his son, the suitor being Federica, a rich, well-connected duchess. Rodolfo, who is sincere in his love for Luisa, is not impressed despite having grown up with his intended spouse.

To signify a hunt called by the count, the toy factory displays cuddly dogs. Again, at the time, this could be taken as petty and decorative, but they reinforce the concept indicating that the count will hunt his own prey and stop at nothing to get his own way. When Miller, Luisa’s father, criticizes the count, he is imprisoned. Luisa is then confronted with the plot hatched by Wurm and the count to lever Rodolfo out of her life and replace him with Wurm, thus achieving what he himself and the count want. The dogs, incidentally, reappear in act three, this time set as a pack by Luisa to indicate that now she has become the huntress in wanting to achieve a change her own life. It is this aspect that becomes the twist that makes this production of Luisa Miller so convincing.

Threatening consequences for her father, Wurm has Luisa write a letter in which she falsely admits to her duplicity in leading on Rudolfo to get her hands on his money. It is clear that Luisa is being manipulated, but in the context of events, what other choice does she have? She cannot countenance her father’s death or even suffering, and this is in marked contrast with the count’s act of familial murder to amass his fortune. Rudolfo, on reading Luisa’s letter, takes it at face value and such is his desire to internalise his grief, he contemplates death whilst at the same time threatening his father with the revelation of his crime. Wurm, meanwhile, rubs his hands together in expectation of triumph, the same hands that will explore Louise’s body. The letter is written, Rudolfo suspects intrigue. The plan is working. Wurm and the count will get what they want. Louise’s father can be released.

With marriage preparations on the way, Rodolfo has decided that it he cannot get his own way then no one else is going to have Luisa. He decides that the two of them will take poison in the final act of defiance and enduring love (as he sees it!). Luisa seems to have not agreed or even been consulted about such a plan. It is another example of how the males assume they can impose their wishes on women.

Luisa has, however, lined up her hunting dogs. She has thus become the huntress, and it dawns on her that she can take control of her life. We suddenly see lots of brides and grooms, stereotypical dolls, of course, hanging by their neck. The stereotypes are going to be erased. Rodolfo takes his poison in what is now perceived as a selfish, self-seeking act of revenge born of his own pride, perhaps. But, in this production, Luisa throws her helping of the poison onto the ground, thus refusing to conform with Rudolfo’s wishes.

Thus we have the final redemption, not Wagnerian adoption into heaven, as Luisa sees the light of her own independence from all this male intrigue and in-fighting. As the dying Rodolfo and Miller, Luisa’s father, bemoan the death of a bride doll representing Luisa (signifying their stereotypical view of women), Luisa herself walks towards the light of her own future carrying a groom doll, a stereotype she now controls. If you remain Romantically inclined, it is heaven she approaches via death, and she carries with her memory of Rodolfo. She did not, however, take the poison, and she had previously become the huntress by lining up her pack of dogs. It is enigmatic, perhaps, powerful, yes, and, in the end, it brings together in perfect sense a production that might at first sight have seemed disparate.

The singing of all concerned was, however, the opera’s undoubted highpoint. Freddie De Tommaso as Rodolfo and Mariangela Sicilia as Luisa were simply faultless. They were more than this, however. Rudulfo’s arrogance and at the same time sincerity were clear. Freddie De Tommaso struck the balance between confidence of his masculinity married with a sense of inferiority with regard to his father. Mariangela Sicilia’s Luisa combined the simplicity of female prospects at the start of the opera with the growing realisation that something had to change to release her from the frustrations of a life controlled by others.

Alex Exposito’s count was convincingly powerful, whilst conveying the fact that he was hiding something embarrassing behind the status. Gianlucca Buratta’s Wurm was slimily convincing. Germán Enrique Alcántara as Miller sang every line elegantly and with clear meaning, and the Maria Barakova as the Federica, the duchess-suitor played a role that was a little one-dimensional, but she sang and acted with terrific and convincing style. This was a woman who knew what she wanted, but, because of Luisa’s assertion of independence, she was denied her prize. At the opera’s end, it is only Luisa who walks towards new existence with confidence. Everyone else has suffered, but then everyone else was in some way involved in the intrigue that was designed to entrap her. It is therefore, but triumph for feminism that Luisa’s new resolve prevails.

It must be sad that I have not mentioned the music. Having opened the review with the name “Giuseppe Verdi”, I have not yet mentioned anything about the music. Verdi has apparently played second fiddle, but not so on stage. The music of this opera bursts with ideas and textures, all perfectly communicated and played by the Orquestra de la Communidad Valenciana under Sir Mark Elder. Luisa Miller might not be one of Verdi’s better-known operas, but in this production, it is a roaring success that makes perfect dramatic and musical sense.

Leticia Moreno plays Fazil Say's 1001 Nights in the Harem with ADDA orchestra under Josep Vicent in Alicante

Last night’s concert in ADDA featured a program of unusual style. The main work on offer was a half hour violin concerto, and there is nothing strange about that. This, however, was a violin concerto with a difference. But the rest of the program comprised three works by Ravel, two of them excerpts and the third, that strangely familiar experience we call Bolero. Throughout this concert featuring effectively a Spanish-Turkish sandwich, a thread linking these works was their “orientalism”, that nineteenth century concept blending mysticism and magic in the eyes of then colonial Europeans. But the orientalism imagined by Ravel was here contrasted with the voice of a contemporary Turkish composer, whose claims to authenticity were surely justified, despite his having studied in Germany and his liking for jazz. In this world, after all, everything is syncretic.

The concert started with Ravel, the Feria from Rhapsodie Espagnole. The orchestral sound, textures and ensemble were perfect throughout. This was Ravel at his most joyous, and perhaps once forgetting manacles that kept his asceticism to the fore. The playing of this piece, so familiar, was exceptional, and was duly noticed by and remarked upon, via applause and acclamation, by the audience.

In the second half, a second Ravel excerpt, the Ouverture de Féerie from Shéhérazade was, by contrast, much more restrained, much more of a conscious recreation of a scene in the composer’s mind than a depiction of a place and time.

Then, to complete the Spanish-Turkish sandwich, we heard a performance of Bolero. It is such a strange piece of music that I doubt anyone other than its composer understands what it is doing. The composer himself said there was no music in it. In some ways, it is an essay in orchestration, which is eventually one orchestral tutti played in slow motion with a drum beat. Here, the master orchestrator has the majority of the strings played pizzicato for half the piece, and some of the strings remain pizzicato until near the end. In Ravel’s music, however, you can always hear the harp.

But despite the strangeness of this music, basically two repeated melodies varied only in dynamics in texture, it has gained remarkable popularity. And this performance, as ever by the ADDA Orchestra under Josep Vicent was greeted with cheers of appreciation.

The main part of the Turkish filling in this sandwich came from the evening’s main work, which was 1001 Nights in the Harem, a violin concerto by Fazil Say. In this world, the composer mixes extended violin technique, Turkish percussion, a traditional song in the slow movement and a multiplicity of understated orchestral textures to create the quiet world in which Sheherazade might have told her bedtime stories. Leticia Moreno, who was soloist, gave a truly memorable performance of this monumental solo part in which she is rarely silent throughout the half hour duration of piece. Some of the scrapes and scratches of the first movement perhaps had the audience worried that she would have no bow left by the end, but all was well. This is virtuosity that rarely involves simply showing off. Much of the solo part is very quiet, accompanied by mere orchestral punctuation. Here is a concerto where the soloist must feel like a specimen under a microscope. There is simply no room for error whatsoever and every detail is audible. The fact that the orchestra and the soloist gave such a faultless performance of this strange and reflective work is testament to everyone concerned, Josep Vicent. Leticia Moreno, the ADDA orchestra and ADDA audience, attentive as ever. I did listen to Kopatchinskaja with Pappano in 2024 in the same work before writing this this review and I could spot no difference in interpretation or playing. Both were faultless, followed similar tempi and phrasing.

There were two encores. Having taken her bow at the end part one, Leticia Moreno returned to the stage to play Piazzolla’s Oblivion with orchestral accompaniment and then we had the final section of Bolero repeated. This was one to remember.