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.

Več Makropulos at the Royal Opera House in London, a triumph for Ausrine Stundyte and a convincing re-interpretation by Katie Mitchell

Več Makropulos is really a play with musical accompaniment. One wonders whether the singers would think the same! It was also the debut in the opera house of the telephone, which features in act one of any production. But here it played a central role in the establishment of a feminist interpretation of the work, an interpretation that eventually proved both successful and relevant.

Janacek’s opera was completed in 1925 and staged in 1926. The difficulty of updating the text means that most productions of the work stay in the 1920s of it’s original conception. Here in 2025 in this production the setting is contemporary, which means that when Elina Makropulos finally reveals her age, she has to add an unscripted hundred to the written 337 years. The only problematic detail that arises from the time shift revolves around the patrimony and matrimony of the central characters. In 2025 we have DNA testing to establish lineage, whereas in 1925 such things were unknown. The problem, however, has no impact on the story, since DNA testing takes time, and time, even for a 437-year-old woman, is here in short supply since the action of Vec Makropulos surely takes place over one or two days.

The long running legal case about the inheritance of an estate between the Prus and Gregor families might have been settled before a century had elapsed, let alone two, if the family lineage had been established. The lack of any will kept the dispute alive, so to speak. But until the arrival on the scene of Emilia Marti, who seems to be well informed about the history of the families, no-one involved had any idea that Baron Prus in 1827 had fathered an illegitimate child following a relationship with an opera singer called Ellian MacGregor. Emilia Marti - Ellian MacGregor 200 years on - knows the location of a will in a drawer ostensibly containing letters written by Prus to his lover. The will leaves the estate to the illegitimate son, but there is a problem with the name. As an illegitimate child, the birth registry was unable to record a true father’s name. The singer MacGregor, wary of scandal that might be attached to her fame, used Makropulos as the surname -her own original family name - but entered the name of her long dead father, Ferdinand alongside. Over years, the Mac dropped away and the family name became Gregor, but there existed no definite linkage between the illegitimate son and the name Gregor, and crucially no tangible link to prove that Baron Prus was the father. DNA testing could establish a link, but not in 48 hours.

There is also another document associated with the will. It is a single sheet and written in Greek. It is a recipe for the elixir of life that Ferdinand Makropulos prepared for the emperor Rudolf in the sixteenth century. Emilia Marti - the same woman who as a sixteen-year-old Elina Makropulos was the guinea pig for the elixir, is now reaching the end of it’s effect and, after 437 years, she needs another dose. It is her mission to track down the document that she gave to her lover 200 years before, believing that she would never need it again. Originally, she had fallen ill and the emperor refused the potion, called her father a fraud, had him imprisoned and executed. She recovered, escaped to Hungary and lived on in relative obscurity. “No-one knew I would live for a hundred years…” Then she became a singer and had several careers, several lifetimes.

437 years is a long time. Elina Makropulos has had many identities, gone through many relationships and has had several children. She is now tired of what men might do to her and for some time has preferred the company of women. But she is not one for a quiet life. She has been a famous singer throughout and has lived life in the fast lane. She drinks heavily, takes class A drugs intravenously and is into every sexual expression possible with her female partners. At the start of this production using a split stage, while Vitek and Gregor and Prus discuss the court case in a hotel cafe, Emilia Marti is on her mobile in her room setting up a date with Krista via text messages. Krista comes to the hotel and she and Emilia make love. Krista’s lines in act one describing her infatuation with Marti are here delivered by phone from Marti’s bathroom. It is utterly credible. Though the elevation of the written minor role of Krista into a significant character who drives events was a major risk, the credibility of the result is testament to the genius vision of the director, Katie Mitchell.

When Marti joins the others in the cafe to discuss law, Krista stays behind in the hotel room, riffles through Martin’s bags in search of valuables and communicates her findings via texts to her boyfriend Janek, Baron Prus’s son, who researches and values possible loot.

Thus we have a perfect storm. Everyone on stage is now in competition with everyone else in order to establish advantage, both personal and financial. These are all people who are not nice to one another. The fact that Krista shoots Janek, rather than him committing suicide after a tiff with his father, might stretch credibility, but Krista now regards him as a liability that might threaten her own chances, which are now identified as staying with Emilia Marti to take advantage of her wealth and celebrity. It all makes such sense, given these characters’ propensity for lethal competition.

There are several aspects of the libretto that give rise to a feminist interpretation. Emilia Marti reveals the multiple scars, physical scars, that men have inflicted over the years. She feigns sleep when Gregor tries to rape her. She regards having sex with Prus to get her hands on the elixir recipe as a purely business transaction. It’s all there, despite having been written by the potentially misogynistic Leo’s Janacek. So all this production does is emphasize a thread of the characterization, rather than invent it.

There are several points here where time stands still or at least runs slow. The action on stage mirrors this, and these moments happen when Marti, feeling the weight of years, starts to run low on energy. Jakub Hrůša’s phenomenal understanding of the score allows him to bring this off musically by adjusting tempi, without interrupting the musical flow or sounding clumsy even in an ear that knows the score.

In the denouement, Marti has the elixir formula from Prus, has told Gregor his history, has declared her original name, Elina Makropulos, and has finally run out of energy. It is Krista, the opportunist, who receives the elixir when Marti declares she is no longer interested in a life that has delivered only suffering for so long. Krista can profit and she does, totally, and in this production in character.

Performances do matter, however dominant the plot and Ausrine Stundyte as Emilia Marti plays a more than pivotal role. Not only is she on stage almost all the time, but she is also more often than not singing. In this production, when Emilia Marti is not centre stage, she is still on stage and still acting. As conceived in this production, the role thus becomes demanding throughout the one and a half hours of the three acts, played here without any interval. Sean Pannikar as Gregor is almost impossibly wild and flighty, and John Reuter as Prus is quietly confident, assertive, powerful but almost always wrong. A special mention should be made of Alan Oke who sung Count Hauk-Sendorf, the old man with dementia who remembers wild Spanish adventures with a woman called Eugenia Montez. Who else? Heather Engebretson and Daniel Matousek who play Krista and Janek had to act quite a lot. Their parts did not require them to sing a lot, but in this production their relationship is central to the plot and they are both on stage for a good deal longer than their vocal parts might suggest.

An experiment in reshaping a masterpiece it was. And the experiment was successful.

It’s all in the detail – Madama Butterfly in Valencia, December 2021

Puccini’s Madame Butterfly is a very well-known, much loved, and indeed popular opera. The genre is replete with femmes fatales, Butterfly, Tosca, Manon, Carmen, Lucía, Violetta and Katya, just for example, who get it in the end, so one might think there is nothing much to see in terms of new perspectives when such a familiar work with such a well-worked theme is staged. Opera lovers, however, will confirm that there most definitely is!

Audiences tend to fall into two distinct groups, those for whom any diversion from their own preconceptions signifies the end of civilization, and those for whom radical interpretation is a welcome challenge to the establishment. There is another perspective, however, in which directors, via minor changes to staging, can completely transform the way we understand these often rigidly interpreted stories. Such was the success of Emilio Lopez, the director of the recent production in Valencia. His 2021 staging of Butterfly will be broadcast on Opera Vision on Sunday 19 December and will be available through that website for some weeks. It is successful on several levels, one of which is revelatory.

Let’s start with the term verismo. That certainly applied to the way Puccini approached his work and it implies that the setting should not be palatial and that characters might be depicted as everyday folk. We may assume that the composer never experienced the mid-19 century Japan of the opera’s setting, so if verismo applies to Butterfly, then it applies principally on an ideological level. That said, the opera’s potential for costume drama usually so overcomes designers and directors that even recognition of verismo in the result is obscured. In other words, everything gets pretty before it can become credible. And it is verismo that suffers.

In act one, Cio-Cio-san describes how she is from a poor home and became a geisha because of lack of opportunity. The ceremonial dagger which she eventually uses to take her own life was presented to her father by the Mikado with request that he use it on himself. We must assume that Butterfly’s family were thus already in disgrace. She then compounds this disgrace by rejecting her cultural and religious traditions, an act that uncle Bonze condemns, prompting her friends and community to reject her, all except Suzuki of course. The fact that Puccini then takes us into the love scene of the wedding night often obscures this rejection. In the Valencia production, a backdrop that had featured cherry blossom becomes the starry night of the couple’s ecstasy, but it does so by melting like celluloid in an overheated projector, implying that the comforting blossoms of the past have been destroyed. The starry night persists into acts two and three, but thus becomes a symbol of continued isolation and of Butterfly’s insistence, nay imperative to live in the past.

Cio-Cio-san often comes across as a meek and thus stereotypical Asian woman, who has never even practiced the word “boo” with geese nearby. As a result, she often becomes the single-, even simple-minded naïve devotee of Pinkerton, despite the fact that, as a geisha, she must have had experience of the fly-by-night sailor. The supplicant image endears her to audiences, perhaps, but strips her of the identity and individuality she certainly has, otherwise she would never have pursued her own, private wishes so single-mindedly.

The point is she does not have a great deal of choice. She is poor. She is a geisha. She has done her job. Pinkerton offers her a way out, which she, perhaps naïvely accepts. But once she has made the commitment, she cannot go back. She wants to please him, but by doing so she suffers the rejection of her own community. But she has to go through with the risk.

In Valencia, Emilio Lopez recognizes that Cio-Cio-san is living in poverty. Ignored by Pinkerton for three years and still rejected by her own community, she and Suzuki live amidst decay and grime. The temptation to portray Butterfly still in full, opulent geisha regalia makes no sense and is avoided convincingly in this production. Suzuki confirms this poverty in the libretto. What too often comes across as blind faith on Butterfly’s part now becomes necessity, imposed by her community because of her rejection by and of them. She can’t go back. She has no other option. This is an element of verismo in the opera which directors often tend to overlook.

But in this Valencia production, the real surprise comes at the end. Pinkerton has returned but has refused to see Butterfly. He storms off because he cannot take it anymore... He does want the child, however. His new American wife and Sharpless are told by Butterfly to come back in half an hour to take the child. Note that Pinkerton has not heard her request.

Butterfly has her own plans, however, plans that involve using that ceremonial weapon her father used to kill himself. The elements are clear. Butterfly kills herself, the voice of Pinkerton returning is heard. Or perhaps not…

The usual way to treat this is to have Butterfly stab herself on the orchestral tutti and then for the sound of Pinkerton’s voice to be heard as she dies. If Pinkerton is not seen, it could be argued that he really was nasty all along and that Cio-Cio-san is imagining the voice, still therefore deceiving herself. If he does appear, then his character is rather let off the hook. If only Butterfly had delayed, then the ecstasy of the starry night might just have returned. But then she had already waited three years…

Sometimes Cio-Cio-san hears the voice and then stabs herself. Again, we have her imagining the sound as a possibility, but we then also have the possibility that she is suffering a form of self-loathing the result of the rejection. Again, this approach internalizes Butterfly’s suffering.

In the Valencia production, the orchestral tutti arrives with dagger drawn, but Butterfly turns to face the entrance to her house when she hears Pinkerton’s call. She waits for him to appear and recognize her and then she kills herself.

The effect is to transform her suicide into an act of defiance. She knows the child will be cared for. She has been rejected by her society and by Pinkerton. She is alone and has no future. But she is now also determined that he will not possess her, and she wants to demonstrate her contempt. You will not possess me as chattel, she thinks. And thus, her character is transformed from the meek and mild recipient of tragedy into a defiant individualist, albeit a dead one. At least she has asserted her own position. It’s different and surprising, which illustrates beautifully that sometimes the most radical transformations are achieved via detail.

Billy Budd by Herman Melville

Billy Budd is doubly famous. He is the eponymous principal character of Herman Melville’s novella and, by adoption via E M Forster’s hand, also the eponymous hero a Benjamin Britten’s opera. The contrasting if not contradictory words ‘character’ and ‘hero’ are important in the context of these two masterpieces.

Like all good stories, it cannot be spoiled, because it is in the way the story is told that the real experience lies. Billy Budd is a young man, rather handsome in a simple, lower status, ratings way. He is recruited from a merchant ship called The Rights of Man to HMS indomitable and so joins the King’s Navy as a foretopman. The previous ship’s owner with its explicitly political title is mentioned in the book as owned by someone who sympathises with Thomas Paine and presumably the American and therefore the French Revolutions. This point is merely referenced by Forster and Britten, probably because it might provide an alternative political motive for the antagonism that develops, an antagonism that, in the opera, focuses on sexuality.

The Indomitable embarks on its mission during the Napoleonic Wars under the direction of Captain Vere and is policed by a master-at-arms called Claggart, whom Vere only met on the return part of his last voyage, indicating that exists no personal friendship between them. Melville tells us that Claggart is around thirty-five, an age he generally exceeds by a considerable amount in most productions of Britten’s opera.

Billy Budd is a genial sort of giant. Everyone notices his good looks, his youth, his athletic stature and his obvious strength. But it is also noted that he is naïve, perhaps overly trusting. An old hand tries to warn him that Claggart has taken against him, but Billy insists that he himself has never spoken ill of anyone, so there can be no problem.

Claggart conspires to pin an accusation of recruitment for mutiny on Billy. The name of his previous ship and presumably the political associations of its owner play an important part, as does the impressed status, equals kidnapped, of some crew members. Already I fall into the trap of labelling the ‘bad’ guy with a surname and the foretopman with a forename. But that is the reality. For whatever reason, Claggart is out to get Billy.

Billy has one severe weakness. He stutters. He stutters more when stressed. And when, in the company of Captain Vere, Claggart publicly delivers his accusation against the young man, Billy becomes so incensed that he cannot defend himself verbally. The words will not come and in frustration he strikes Claggart and kills him. Billy is tried, found guilty of striking and killing an officer and is condemned to death. He hangs.

At the trial, Vere presents his version of events in a cold hearted, matter of fact manner that will admit no nuance. In effect, he merely recites the rulebook. In the opera, Vere’s ghost, still troubled by conscience, admits he could have saved Billy Budd, but chose not to. In Melville’s original, things are more complex. Vere must enact the demands of his office and so he behaves as he does. Stability, loyalty to King and country and the rightness of superior social class trump notions of justice, fairness or compassion. The obvious injustice almost creates sufficient reaction amongst the crew to itself provoke a mutiny, but the anger dissipates, defeated by continued enforced subservience.

And, by the way, all of this applies to the opera, as well as the novella. Forster and Britten make more of Vere, paradoxically, than Melville, despite the novella spending much more time on the actual trial than the opera. Vere is torn by conscience, but he is the apparently unwitting possessor of a responsibility that trumps personal judgment. In some ways, Vere is more of an order taker than those whom he orders. And at the end of the opera, Britain illustrates how the aspiring middle classes, those promoted and paid to populate a buffer zone between protest and power, eventually protect the status of their social betters, but cannot salve a collective conscience, a conscience that in any case does not care.

A theme which becomes central but not rarely explicit in the opera is the suggestion that Claggart is homosexually attracted to Billy Budd. The antagonism generated within him towards Billy is thus the result of an inner purging of guilt and self-loathing that the attraction itself generates. There is the mere hint of this in Melville’s words. For obvious reasons, it was a theme that interested Britten deeply.

But the opera’s amplification of the theme is justified. Melville distances himself from anything sexual. The topic clearly exists in the lives of the sailors. But Melville apparently refuses to enter the establishment, let alone the bedroom where implied acts take place. There is a clear reference to Claggart’s attraction, but the author also wrote of the highly ambiguous relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg at the start of Moby Dick. There is evidence enough of the author’s reluctance to enter the bedroom, even when he declares himself explicitly in attendance!

Perhaps the most moving experience in Billy Budd is to read the epilogue, which is a sailor’s poetic retelling of the story. Personally, I find it impossible to read these words without also singing Billy’s almost proud but frank lament from the opera. The story is, undoubtedly, a double masterpiece.

Jenufa by Leos Janacek in Valencia – simple triumph for Corinne Winters

Of all operas, there are a couple by Leos Janacek that I would profess to ‘know’, in that I have seen multiple productions, read and studied the libretti, listened to the music literally hundreds of times and read around the creation and setting. Jenufa would be one of them, all the way from an early 1970s production at Covent Garden in London, where it was sung in a clumsy English translation, through to last night’s offering in Valencia, where the Dutch National Opera’s production took the story out of rural, nineteenth century Moravia, and gave it a contemporary setting, more like a movie than a staging.

To start with the staging is perhaps an injustice to the performances, but that is where we are. This production, in order, perhaps, to emphasize the cinematic concept, featured an elevated space that was set back from the front of the stage. It was a lit rectangle, just like a movie screen. It provided a space that could be subdivided to provide multi-roomed interiors, complete with ceilings. It was a production where everything happened ‘inside’, even in act one, a factor that concentrated attention on the internal conflicts of the characters. Visually, it also concentrated attention on the characters’ actions. Everyone had to enter the space via a door and the rooms’ walls and ceilings seemed to focus attention on the psychological drama that unfolded. A drawback with this design, however, was the enclosure it created, a closure that rather deadened any sound that did not come from the very front of the set. In act one of Jenufa, there are movements in an out, on and off stage, and this set meant that there were moments when the singers fought to make themselves heard from within the rather insulated space.

In acts two and three, of course, there is a much greater concentration on the psychological drama than the introduction of protagonists, and it was here that the set came in to its own. In act two, for instance, when Jenufa is given a sleeping draught by the Kostelnicka, she has to retire to her bed, and this is often offstage, out of view. Here, as part of her concealment from public gaze, the room she occupied was set below the stairs amid gas pipes, drainpipes, and electricity meters. But this staging allowed her to remain centre stage, and, although asleep, in full view of the audience. And thus, while ever she remained centre stage, she still seemed to figure in the dialogue the other characters shared. And far from diverting attention from the interactions between Kostelnicka, Steva and Laca, the continued presence of Jenufa kept her character of the centre of the argument. This single design element allowed Jenufa’s solo, after Kostelnicka had already taken her baby away, to flow with the same psychological force of what had gone before, rather than become a new episode.

Act one of Jenufa is written in a different musical language from acts two and three. Nine years intervened between act one and the opera’s completion. Changes in compositional style are mirrored in how folksong is treated. In act one, the folk song is exactly that, literal, rooted harmonically, and very much a partygoers’ sing-along. By the time he had written the folk song melody that forms the choral passage in act three, where the girls celebrate Jenufa’s wedding, the musical language has been transformed. Yes, it’s celebratory, but there are question marks everywhere, because the song doesn’t easily find a key. Yes, it’s modal, but now not sweetly so.

In this staging, the toilet plays a central role, at least, in act one. Placed centre stage, it was used at the start of the action by Jenufa, who has a bout of sickness, emphasizing from the start that her pregnancy is the main issue. In a beautiful moment, during Kostelnicka’s diatribe about Steva’s drunkenness, when she relates her own experience of an abusive husband, one of the previously partying women retires to the toilet and silently grieves at her own circumstances as the words outside describe domestic troubles. This stresses the ongoing issue, the past for Kostelnicka, perhaps the avoidable future for Jenufa, but also the present for the silent partygoer.

And toilets figure elsewhere. Steva, unable to stomach the criticism in act one, retires, like a spoiled child to the washroom at the side to avoid having to listen. When things get tense in act three, a character retires to the toilet on the edge of the set for a moment of privacy. All of this adds to the internal nature of the drama, the fact that we are always dealing with how individuals cope psychologically with pressure, with challenge, with opportunity, with options. They have to think things through, and even still might come to the wrong conclusion.

What perhaps none of us rationalizes are the emotions that give rise to physical attraction and sex. Here we are driven by feelings that often control us and take us over before we are even conscious of them. Jenufa is clearly besotted with Steva and continues to be so until, very late on, she is won over by Laca’s albeit flawed devotion. The irrational passion that is in all of us thus explains how the responsible, sensible, caring, competent Jenufa got pregnant in the first place. It also justifies how this particular staging ends, with Jenufa and Laca, rather than walking hopefully towards a better future, get down to having sex the minute the guests have left their tragic wedding. The sensuality, after all, is there in the music.

And, at last, I can turn to praising the Jenufa of Corinne Winters. A more convincing, complete portrayal of the role has perhaps never existed. Roberta Alexander was superb, if a little too suffering. Asmik Gregorian has recently claimed the role for herself with a unique blend of vulnerability and steadfastness. But this evening’s performance by Corinne Winters adds much to this role. Corinne Winters’ Jenufa is a complete and credible modern woman, professional, competent, caring, needing love and affection, passionate, responsible, vulnerable, realistic… the list could be endless. Let’s say human. This, after all, is a complete person, with all the contradictions and qualities that implies.

In act one, Jenufa is in her office, the young competent professional, though abused, perhaps as much by her own passion as by Steva’s insistence. In act two, she is in a jumpsuit for lounging around the house. The elegance has gone, the work-a-day requirements of being a mother having taken over. In act three, she is in white, hardly the ‘dressed like a window’ of the libretto, but the white becomes a statement in itself, a determination to look to the future, however, limited its boundaries may appear. Perhaps the most moving moment of the story happens when Kostelnicka, having just drowned the baby in act two, tells Jenufa that she has been in a fever, and that the baby has died. How easy would it be to revert to paroxysms of pain, histrionics of emotion? Here, Corinne Winters, merely sinks to her knees in her jumpsuit, and stays there, devastated, visibly emotionally destroyed.

Petra Lane, this production’s Kostelnicka, gave a moving and convincing performance of this truly demanding role. One was never in any doubt she was convinced that she was doing the right thing. The guilt of the third act was perhaps a little under-played, but this was probably as directed.

The two men in the principal roles often do not often figure significantly in reviews of Jenufa. They can all too easily become stereotypes. But here they too were rounded human beings, if that term can be applied to the selfish, self-interested, self-obsessed character of Steva. Norman Rheinhardt’s portrayal made the character’s flaws apparent, however, and though never excusable, they became understandable.

Brandon Jovanovich’s Laca, however, was nothing less than revelatory. Here we have a character complex enough to be in love with a woman he physically abuses. But he is ultimately trustworthy and dependable, and here, also, passionate. Brandon Jovanovich’s voice is a perfect match for the part. I never thought I would hear a more convincing Laca than Philip Langridge, but Brandon Jovanovic has indeed made this character his own.

And finally - finally? - the music. Janacek’s score, especially in the final two acts is a masterpiece. The music never dominates, but always contributes. It adds subtle pictures to illustrate and define the psychological drama, often creating that drama via the juxtaposition of small cubist planes and perspectives, so that emotions flutter around an idea that can be seen from multiple viewpoints. Janacek’s musical language is so subtle and so communicative that it cannot be described in words. And like all languages, it does take time to learn, but once familiar, it says so much that is different, and that is original, inexpressible in any other way, or perhaps by any other composer.

Gustavo Gimeno‘s reading of the score emphasized the subtlety and sheer physical beauty of the sound, rather than the composer’s characteristic spikiness. But this reading of the score did emphasize the normality of the people depicted and the universality of their dilemmas. The production proved to be an emotional roller coaster, but overall, it’s gentle contours stressed its everyday significance. It will live long in the mind, and, hopefully, long on the stage.

 

 

Costa Blanca Arts Update - Through the emotions – Soler, Valero and Gandía at ADDA in Alicante

Gala Lirica, Opera Gala or merely Song Medley often labels an admixture of showcase snippets, offered, it seems, primarily to advertise a voice or commemorate a venue. Too often these evenings degenerate into a succession of star turns, offering world-stopping climaxes every three minutes or so, with each old chestnut being greeted with the audience’s enthusiasm merely because it is recognized. One is reminded of the occasions where the star is applauded over the top of the music, making it inaudible, merely because the song has been included.

At its best, this format can offer a memorable evening of fine singing that, via its very brevity, reminds an audience of a multitude of bigger experiences. At its very best, a judgment that would apply to the evening offered by Lorena Valero and Antonia Gandía in Alicante, fine voices deliver superb music and just enough acting and characterization to offer meaning without excess sentimentality. It is often an excess of false emotion that often renders these occasions less than memorable, but the right amount, as here in Alicante, adds to the experience.

These two voices, the mezzo of Lorena Valero and the superb, dramatic tenor of Antonio Gandía gave a mixed program of well-known set pieces from grand opera and, perhaps for many in this audience, a set of pieces from the less well-known world of Spanish Zarzuela. It was a world that was well known, obviously, to the two singers and especially to the conductor, Cristobal Soler, who regularly presents this genre in Madrid’s Zarzuela Theatre.

The format was clear, orchestra, solo, solo, duo and repeat. Juxtaposed with Verdi, von Flotow and Gounod, one is reminded just how unique is the sound world of Puccini. Delilah’s aria from Saint-Saens’s Samson and Delilah and Lippen Schweigen from Lehar’s Merry Widow brought the opera half to close.

After the interval, the Zarzuela began with Chueca, Marqués and Sorozábal, whose sound world is itself very sophisticated. Moreno Torroba featured large, as did Jiménez’s famous Luis Alonso Intermezzo. Fernández Caballero’s El Dúo de la Africana brought the evening to a close, but there was always going to be an encore, which was Me Llamas Rafelillo from Penella’s El Gato Montés, sung in Valenciano to the audience’s delight.

Throughout, the ADDA Simfonica played their part to perfection, as ever, with the brass especially resplendent. Loreno Valero’s voice, always accurate and never forced, coped well with some testing moments. Antonia Gandía’s tenor is a great voice throughout its vocal and dynamic range. And both singers communicated superbly with their fellow musicians, one another, and with their audience. It was an evening that went through the emotions, from love to regret, from anger to sympathy, from playfulness to aggression and ultimately to joy. These occasions often go only through the motions, but this Soler, Valero, Gandía and ADDA combination made this a night to remember.

It’s all in the detail – Madama Butterfly in Valencia

Puccini’s Madame Butterfly is a very well-known, much loved, and indeed popular opera. The genre is replete with femmes fatales, Butterfly, Tosca, Manon, Carmen, Lucía, Violetta and Katya, just for example, who get it in the end, so one might think there is nothing much to see in terms of new perspectives when such a familiar work with such a well-worked theme is staged. Opera lovers, however, will confirm that there most definitely is!

Audiences tend to fall into two distinct groups, those for whom any diversion from their own preconceptions signifies the end of civilization, and those for whom radical interpretation is a welcome challenge to the establishment. There is another perspective, however, in which directors, via minor changes to staging, can completely transform the way we understand these often rigidly interpreted stories. Such was the success of Emilio Lopez, the director of the recent production in Valencia. His 2021 staging of Butterfly will be broadcast on Opera Vision on Sunday 19 December and will be available through that website for some weeks. It is successful on several levels, one of which is revelatory.

Let’s start with the term verismo. That certainly applied to the way Puccini approached his work and it implies that the setting should not be palatial and that characters might be depicted as everyday folk. We may assume that the composer never experienced the mid-19 century Japan of the opera’s setting, so if verismo applies to Butterfly, then it applies principally on an ideological level. That said, the opera’s potential for costume drama usually so overcomes designers and directors that even recognition of verismo in the result is obscured. In other words, everything gets pretty before it can become credible. And it is verismo that suffers.

In act one, Cio-Cio-san describes how she is from a poor home and became a geisha because of lack of opportunity. The ceremonial dagger which she eventually uses to take her own life was presented to her father by the Mikado with request that he use it on himself. We must assume that Butterfly’s family were thus already in disgrace. She then compounds this disgrace by rejecting her cultural and religious traditions, an act that uncle Bonze condemns, prompting her friends and community to reject her, all except Suzuki of course. The fact that Puccini then takes us into the love scene of the wedding night often obscures this rejection. In the Valencia production, a backdrop that had featured cherry blossom becomes the starry night of the couple’s ecstasy, but it does so by melting like celluloid in an overheated projector, implying that the comforting blossoms of the past have been destroyed. The starry night persists into acts two and three, but thus becomes a symbol of continued isolation and of Butterfly’s insistence, nay imperative to live in the past.

Cio-Cio-san often comes across as a meek and thus stereotypical Asian woman, who has never even practiced the word “boo” with geese nearby. As a result, she often becomes the single-, even simple-minded naïve devotee of Pinkerton, despite the fact that, as a geisha, she must have had experience of the fly-by-night sailor. The supplicant image endears her to audiences, perhaps, but strips her of the identity and individuality she certainly has, otherwise she would never have pursued her own, private wishes so single-mindedly.

The point is she does not have a great deal of choice. She is poor. She is a geisha. She has done her job. Pinkerton offers her a way out, which she, perhaps naïvely accepts. But once she has made the commitment, she cannot go back. She wants to please him, but by doing so she suffers the rejection of her own community. But she has to go through with the risk.

In Valencia, Emilio Lopez recognizes that Cio-Cio-san is living in poverty. Ignored by Pinkerton for three years and still rejected by her own community, she and Suzuki live amidst decay and grime. The temptation to portray Butterfly still in full, opulent geisha regalia makes no sense and is avoided convincingly in this production. Suzuki confirms this poverty in the libretto. What too often comes across as blind faith on Butterfly’s part now becomes necessity, imposed by her community because of her rejection by and of them. She can’t go back. She has no other option. This is an element of verismo in the opera which directors often tend to overlook.

But in this Valencia production, the real surprise comes at the end. Pinkerton has returned but has refused to see Butterfly. He storms off because he cannot take it anymore... He does want the child, however. His new American wife and Sharpless are told by Butterfly to come back in half an hour to take the child. Note that Pinkerton has not heard her request.

Butterfly has her own plans, however, plans that involve using that ceremonial weapon her father used to kill himself. The elements are clear. Butterfly kills herself, the voice of Pinkerton returning is heard. Or perhaps not…

The usual way to treat this is to have Butterfly stab herself on the orchestral tutti and then for the sound of Pinkerton’s voice to be heard as she dies. If Pinkerton is not seen, it could be argued that he really was nasty all along and that Cio-Cio-san is imagining the voice, still therefore deceiving herself. If he does appear, then his character is rather let off the hook. If only Butterfly had delayed, then the ecstasy of the starry night might just have returned. But then she had already waited three years…

Sometimes Cio-Cio-san hears the voice and then stabs herself. Again, we have her imagining the sound as a possibility, but we then also have the possibility that she is suffering a form of self-loathing the result of the rejection. Again, this approach internalizes Butterfly’s suffering.

In the Valencia production, the orchestral tutti arrives with dagger drawn, but Butterfly turns to face the entrance to her house when she hears Pinkerton’s call. She waits for him to appear and recognize her and then she kills herself.

The effect is to transform her suicide into an act of defiance. She knows the child will be cared for. She has been rejected by her society and by Pinkerton. She is alone and has no future. But she is now also determined that he will not possess her, and she wants to demonstrate her contempt. You will not possess me as chattel, she thinks. And thus, her character is transformed from the meek and mild recipient of tragedy into a defiant individualist, albeit a dead one. At least she has asserted her own position. It’s different and surprising, which illustrates beautifully that sometimes the most radical transformations are achieved via detail.

 

Costa Blanca Arts Update - Alfaz del Pi February concerts - Pilar and Pedro Valero, Duo Evocacion and Maria Kosenkova

Music can take an audience to many different places. It all depends on where they want to go. But during a period of coronavirus restrictions, merely out of the house might just be enough. The Comunidad Valenciana rules for public gatherings are clear, and it is within these rules that Alfaz del Pi Classical Music Society operates, complete with socially spaced seating, temperature checks and contact lists. But once out of the house and in that space, music can still transport us and there was no better example of how this happens than during the Society’s two February concerts.

On Saturday 20 February in Casa Cultura, we heard the piano playing of Pilar and Pedro Valero in a program that featured composers from no less than eight countries, probably mirroring the cosmopolitan nature of the small but highly appreciative audience. What the pianists presented was effectively two solo programs with a little four hands at the end.

Pilar Valero first performed Ravel, a Prelude followed by Ondine and then she played the Rachmaninoff Prelude Opus32 no12 and Study Op39 no5 before finishing with Rondeña by Albeniz. Pilar Valero’s playing really did illustrate the stylistic differences between these composers, whose active life spanned shared decades. In many ways, the music of Albeniz is the most unconventional of the three and marries the post-impressionism of Ravel with the nationalism and sentimentality of Rachmaninoff.

Pedro Valero offered three pieces, Schubert’s Sonata in A major D664, Fazil Say’s Variations on Summertime and then Resurrección del Angel by Astor Piazzolla. The amazing understatement of the Schubert was often contradicted by how darkly many of the phrases finished. The contrast with the jazz-inspired glitter of the Fazil Say variations was stunning and then Piazzolla’s slow, halting dance supplied a troubled tranquility.

And then to conclude we had four-hand versions of the Dance from La Vida Breve of Manuel de Falla and finally Brahms’s rousing Hungarian Dance no5.

And then on Sunday 21 February in Albir, we had Dúo Evocación with Maria Kosenkova in a program of songs and arias. Dúo Evocatión comprises soprano, Olha Viytiv and the piano of Hilario Segovia Badia. They opened with the Mozart concert aria, Io No Chiedo, before mezzo-soprano Maria Kosenkova took the stage to start with two of four Strauss songs. Like all such concerts, the list of pieces is long, so I will not list them all by title. After the Mozart, we heard four songs by Richard Strauss, two pieces each by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, and then Delibes, Massenet, and Thomas. We then heard an aria from Barbieri’s El Barbarillo, two of Manuel de Falla’s popular songs, Nana and Polo, and then Ma Llaman La Primarosa of Gimenez and Nieto. An encore of the Barcarole from the Tales of Hoffmann brought the concert to a rapturous close. The sheer volume created by the two sopranos was, at times, simply stunning, especially in the vocal acrobatics supplied by the aria from Delibes’s Lakme.

But what shone through both events was the musicians’ determination to interpret and communicate, an approach that reached out to the audience and was gratefully received and acknowledged. In these difficult times, these two concerts were bright examples of how performed music can uplift and regenerate.

Giacomo Puccini by Wakeling Dry

 

Another Project Gutenberg book is a short biography and critical appraisal of Puccini, written around the time of Madame Butterfly's premiere. It's after Boheme, Manon Lescaut and Tosca, but before Turandot, of course. Puccini was certainly a man of his kind, and unapologetic to boot. Attitudes towards music and especially towards things people are unfamiliar with never fail to amaze.

Eros and Psyche by Ludomir Rozicki

Opera reviews usually carry no spoiler warnings. On the contrary, they usually begin with an exhaustive, sometimes exhausting blow-by-blow account of every contrived detail of plot. So let this be no exception. Eros and Psyche by Ludomir Rozicki could be just another nineteenth century classical rewrite, just another femme fatale tear-jerker, but it is much more than that.

Psyche dreams of being swept off her feet by love. We feel that these Arcadian maidens occupying a green room to make up for a performance are almost imprisoned so that they might beautify themselves. Psyche is enamoured of, perhaps obsessed with a man, who has taken to visit her nightly. It´s a good time to pop in!

She reveals to a friend she has been seeing someone. Eros reappears and offers eternal love, but only on his terms. Somehow he has managed to conceal his identity, if not his intentions, until Blaks, the caretaker, inadvertently casts light on Eros’s face and then all hell is let loose. Eros condemns Psyche to suffer an eternal life of constant wandering and disappointment, a life in which Blaks will regularly reappear to deny her any fulfilment. It’s a judgment delivered by Perseus, who announces exile and eternal wandering as he hands over a passport and tickets for both Psyche and Blaks. As Psyche embarks upon her fate, we realise we must not blame the messenger.

Her first subsequent port of call is a party - perhaps a drunken orgy - in ancient Rome, a Rome that is of course not ancient for her. A couple of Greeks at the gathering lament what Romans have done to their culture, a culture inherited from their own people, including Psyche. She appears, but she is obviously out of place, of a different culture and time, and she is mocked by everyone, especially by the women, who ridicule her appearance. They label her mad and Blaks, who here is a Prefect, apparently in charge, delivers condemnation.

We move on to Spain during the Inquisition. Psyche embraces Christ crucified on the cross. There is sexuality in her obsession with the figure. She enters a convent, but still yearns for a life outside its confines. The other nuns do not trust her. She tells of her need for the sun and fresh air, but she is warned not to have ambition. She must do as she is told, because asking questions is sinful, here. There is to be a visit by the abbot, a man who recently condemned a nun to be burned at the stake. Psyche is thus warned. Her attitudes are described to the abbot, who condemns her. Blaks, of course, is the abbot, who wields power more easily than he exhibits faith. Eros appears, we think to save her, but all he offers is a facile song.

Our heroine’s next port of call is revolutionary France. She works while men drink. We learn that it was Psyche who led the storming of the Bastille in the name of freedom. She rejects an offer of marriage because she would rather serve the people. She wants to lead the commune into battle. She is too radical to be a revolutionary. She insists on principle and finds herself on the wrong side of politics. Guess who might be the pragmatic leader who condemns her beliefs.

A final scene is in a bar or nightclub, where psyche dances to entertain the drinkers, who are all men. Blaks, here called the Baron, is the owner of the club and the principal exploiter of the women who work for him. The women attract the men to the bar, they drink and the baron, not the women, makes money. Psyche laments her role, but the baron says it’s all her own fault. She laughs at offers of love, saying she wants to be independent. But, having achieved her liberation she finds she can’t cope with it.

Eros appears, perhaps to save the day. Psyche is still infatuated, but now also exhausted. Eros reveals he has an alter ego by the name of Thanatos, the personification of death, and thus Psyche learns she is doomed. Her response is to torch what remains of her life, a life that has now rejected her. Eros-Thanatos has the last word, however, by presenting Psyche with a sports car which has already crashed. He invites her to sit at the wheel and then paints her with her own blood to show the end has finally arrived.

Eros and Psyche was premiered in 1917 and Rozycki’s style is not unlike that of Symanowski, but there is also Richard Strauss in there, alongside not a little Debussy. Many of the short phrases are also reminiscent of Janacek, though usually without the bite. Given the opera’s date, we would expect Psyche, though still femme fatale, to be at least a little forward looking. She is certainly not a Violetta or Mimi, in that she is no mere victim of bad luck, disease or circumstance. She is closer to a Butterfly, but she does not accept her fate meekly and without protest. In classical terms, we may have here a Salome or Elektra, but these were anti-heroines who probably deserved what they got. Tosca got mixed up in politics that went wrong. One has the feeling that Psyche would have relished the opportunity, but it never arose.

Three other theatrically destroyed women of the era come to mind, Judith, Katya and Elena. Judith’s plight in Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle parallels Psyche’s here. Judith can only know Bluebeard by probing the psychological spaces of his mind. He resents this, but allows her to continue, knowing that once she knows him, he will have taken possession of her. Similarly, Psyche is punished because she gets to know Eros, thereby reducing his control over her, a control he must reassert by condemning her. The Bartok-Balasz character, however, is more modern than Psyche, despite the existence of castles and visions. It is only when Judith understands the mental make-up of Bluebeard that he has to punish her, because only then that she becomes a threat to him. She is eternally mummified alongside the wives who have preceded her.

Janacek’s Katya Kabova is a step back into the nineteenth century by virtue of originally having been a creation of Ostrovsky, but her achievement of a finality of death does ask some modern questions.  Ostrovsky’s nineteenth century provincial dramas general do away with their heroines, but it is the societies rather than the individuals that are seen at fault. When oppression and hypocrisy are cultural and structural, it is hard for any individual to oppose them. But here it is these attitudes that make female existence a tragedy. Yes, Katya takes her own life, but it is another woman, her own mother-in-law, who asks the community to witness the doing of justice and not to shed tears for a woman who brought her fate on herself. The music, in fact, ends with neither tragedy nor anger, but with a question mark. Elena Makropoulos presents a different challenge. In many ways she is in control. Like Psyche she has lived, or at claims to have done so, in many eras, has inhabited many roles and has had a string different lives. Her original fate, however, like Psyche’s, was imposed on her by a man, in Elena’s case her father. Like Psyche, Elena has become cynical about men’s motives and dismissive of their capabilities. Crucially, however, when Elena is offered the opportunity to take back control of her eternal existence, she rejects it, preferring death to repeating the same old things. Psyche was never offered control and its attainment was never in her grasp. But Psyche thinks she achieved a liberation from oppression at the end, though she was unable to cope with it. This makes her a more modern figure.

So, for a modern audience, Psyche cannot be merely a classical beauty who crosses a god. And in the production by Warsaw’s Polish National Opera, she isn’t. Each of the scenarios is transformed into a film set. Scene one is a giant green room, populated by women who clearly want to be stars. Whether Eros operated a casting couch is unclear, but the probability is high. From scene one’s green room, Psyche is cast her role in each of the other four scenes, each of which is destined to be part of a feature film in which she stars. When Blaks repeatedly frustrates her activities and condemns her, the two of them become near stereotypes for femme fatale and callous male power. If we ask if it has to be this way, we have to answer that it was a male god in the first instance that insisted it should be so.

By the end, Psyche has had enough and she torches the world that has exploited her. It ought to be a final act of self-destructive defiance but the god and men even then reassert their control. A car crash is organised and she is painted with blood. The car itself part of the trappings of the stardom she has sought, and thus Psyche potentially becomes a tabloid press headline, probably moralising about a life of debauchery or excess. Psyche thus becomes a modern victim. She is a Marilyn Monroe ruined by fame, or perhaps a Jayne Mansfield, epitome of womanhood exploited for male voyeurs.

Thanks to the internet and Opera Vision we can all view this production from Warsaw and thereby draw our own conclusions. Streamed via a smart TV or perhaps better in the case of Opera Vision via a laptop and cable, the opera even comes with subtitles for anyone who might not catch all of the  original Polish . Joanna Freszel as Psyche gives a stunning performance, being vocally up the task as well as combining the confidence, ambition and assertion of a modern woman alongside the naivete and vulnerability of anyone who might fall in love. Mikołaj Zalasiński as Blaks is brilliant at using his power whilst never really appearing to be worthy of its extent, which is exactly what the character of Psyche must be thinking. He also makes the role anti-intellectual, thus stressing the contrast between the use of power and any knowledge of its consequences. 

The broadcast was in 2018 and these days there are only extracts from this production. But they are still excellent.

Verdi: Man and musician by Frederick J Crowest

I began reading this on the bus coming back from Valencia, having consumed Byron’s Corsair on the way up, before a performance of Il Corsaro. Amazing to see what had happened to the English language in a few decades! OK, the Byron was supposed to be poetic…

Crowest’s short critical biography was written at the end of the nineteenth century. Verdi is still alive, but has completed all of his operas, including Falstaff. What is truly amazing about the book is the inclusion of quotes from reviewers throughout the century. It should be compulsory reading for anyone who might be put off expressing themselves because of a fear of what criticism might bring. In an apparent stream, critics of the nineteenth century queued up to lambast Verdi’s work as crass, unintellectual, in bad taste, loud, shallow… By the end of his life, most of the critics are kowtowing to greatness.

I have to find myself agreeing with quite a lot of the detailed points, however, as the above illustrates. Otello and Falstaff are different, however, in that they have stopped using the set pieces that he seemed to love in the earlier years.

An interesting if now irrelevant fact relates to the composer’s name. VERDI, Crowest assures us, came to stand for Victor Emmanuel Re d’Ilalia. Though Verdi, we are told here, shunned all aspects of politics, his identification with Italian nationalism cannot be denied.

Overall this seems to confirm what I am coming to believe more strongly by the day – that people don’t know what they like, they like what they know. Given enough airings, even Verdi became acceptable!

Leaves From His Life, essays by Leoš Janáček, edited by V and M Tausky

About twenty years ago my wife and I were on a train that came to a halt. It was late afternoon in mid-August. We were on holiday. A weak sun was already casting long shadows from the power-line gantries across the heavy industrial landscape in view. It was a local train with low priority at the signals. The carriage was nearly empty on this service form Kutná Hora to Prague. As we awaited the passing of an express, the only sounds came from steam hissing from vents in the pipe-work of nearby factories.

A young man on a seat opposite started to doze. His head nodded forward. His dark checked shirt opened wider at the neck to reveal white skin which, unlike his head and neck, had remained untouched by the sun while he had worked his day on a construction site. His boots and trousers had streaks of earth and cement that confirmed his trade. The express passed by, slowly, without much noise and then, just seconds later, our train lurched into slow motion. The young man woke up with a start. “Pfui,” he said as he rubbed his palms against his face.

And, for the next few minutes, all I could hear in my head was music replayed from memory. There is a moment in an opera, a Czech opera, where a character awakens from sleep. He not only says this word, but he sings it with exactly the same intonation and stress as my fellow traveller did that August afternoon on a stalled suburban train. I ought to have realised immediately that this was no coincidence. 

In part I did, but I was not prepared for how perfectly the composer had set that strange little word. The music literally came to life. The opera in question is by Leoš Janáček. He spent much of his time listening to and notating the music of everyday sounds and speech. These he used to set the words of his own libretti, all of which are highly naturalistic rather than stereotypically operatic. He repeats very little. There are no set pieces. The people are never counts or kings, princesses or heroes. There is the occasional fox and frog, however, and many chickens. But for the most part, Janáček’s characters are like the slumbering builder on the train, ordinary people, working class, middle class, merchants or labourers, sometimes artists, sometimes prisoners. 

On first hearing his music can sound disjointed, lacking the flowing lines that lyric opera fans might expect. But Janáček’s music is both cubist and yet still wholly naturalistic. People really do speak like that. Of course he stretches the points. It is opera, after all. But it is not only speech that is naturalistic in Janáček, as anyone who reads this beautiful little book, Leaves From His Life by Vilem and Margaret Tausky, will soon realise. Janáček notated the sound of the sea, birdsong, the trickling of water in streams, the wind, coughs and sneezes, and about anything else that took his fancy. 

Above all he notated the sounds of speech, words married to their expression. In one respect, he was the complete impressionist, but in another the complete opposite because he then reassembled these snippets of collected reality to form something wholly original. Some of essays, reminiscences, musical analysis and occasional literary reflections that fill leaves From His Life were written for the composer’s own column in local newspaper in Brno. 

I first read the book over twenty years ago, just before my holiday in then Czechoslovakia, during which I visited Brno to stand in Janáček’s study. Re-reading it now is something of a revelation. If anything it seems fresher now than then, but there again perhaps it’s me that’s mellowed with age in a way that Leoš Janáček never did. If I had another life I would learn Czech to gain a fuller appreciation of the man’s music. It must be worth it! As an example, just imagine the sound of the opening of the Credo from the Glagolitic Mass. In Czech, the word is vĕruju, I believe. Janáček’s setting is three notes with a long stress in the middle. Try saying ‘I believe’ or even worse, ‘credo’ to the same sound. It only works in Czech. Anyone who is the least bit interested in opera and certainly anyone who as listened to Leoš Janáček’s music will love Leaves From His Life. 

The writing style alone is a wonderful insight into his music. The man really did think in those terse little aphorisms. But what shines through his music and his words is his love of and devotion to the experience of ordinary folk, and the occasional bird, furry creature or insect: life, in short. View the book on amazon Janacek: Leaves from His Life

Puss in Boots (El Gato con Botas), an opera by Xavier Montsalvatge

Just occasionally – in fact pretty rarely these days – something utterly surprising emerges from an evening in a concert hall. Almost forty years into an interest in music which has focused on every style of western music from Gothic to minimalism (perhaps not such a great leap!), real surprises are now quite rare and often come about on hearing a work by a young composer, someone just starting to seek a voice. But Xavier Montsalvatge died aged ninety in 2002 after a lifetime longer than most as an active composer, but few outside his native Catalunya were then familiar with his music. Since moving to Spain I have actively sought programmes that featured his increasingly popular output and have been impressed with the eclecticism of his style, usually neo-classical, but often laced with popular tunes, folk song and jazz, and sometimes even giving more than a hint of Bartokian toughness. But nothing from the piano works and pieces for strings I have heard up to now could have prepared me for the experience that was Montsalvatge’s opera, El Gato con Botas, Puss in Boots.

Obviously an opera for children and with a text by Charles Perrault which faithfully follows the familiar pantomime version of the tale, we know from the first rhythmic string figures, with their shifting harmonies and ambiguous keys, that we are to experience a work which exists simultaneously on different levels, similar in some ways to Janacek’s Cunning Little Vixen, but lighter in its touch, a Miro to Janacek’s Dadd.

The work lasts just an hour and has five scenes. In the first our Puss is lazing on a cushion in front of the television, occasionally offering her skin-tight costume with its hanging baubles in languorous lines to the audience. The children were captivated from first to last, mesmerised by this wonderful engaging character, elegantly and excitingly portrayed and sung by Marisa Martins. Older members of the audience might have had other things in mind, such is the nature of pantomime. It is in this first scene that her new sequinned, high heeled and pointed boots are presented, along with a cloak to emphasise her pinkness. The king and princess lament the state of the kingdom. Apparently it’s a boring life when there are no wars or civil strife. Neither are there husbands, it seems. Puss with boots appears and is hired. The miller, a suitor for the king’s daughter, strips to his shorts and takes a swim in the river and immediately gets into difficulty. Puss summons her trusty white rabbits who, until now have balletically moved props and rearranged the kindergarten’s alphabetic furniture. They don snorkels and goggles and rescue the lad. The king is overjoyed and the princess’s eyes are seen to bulge a little. And then the ogre appears to rough things up a bit. In his lair, he laments the fact that the high life might have rendered his nose the colour of an aubergine. Puss sorts everything out, of course, whimsically avoiding the lion into which he transforms himself, then wooing the canary which is his next trick and finally, of course, dealing (offstage) with the radio-controlled orange mouse which was the form she requested him to take. Are all ogres that stupid? Anyway there’s a wedding and clearly all live happily ever after, including Puss who gets her television back.

So that’s the story. It’s pantomime, but it is superbly done and it’s filled with wonderful imagery. Marisa Martins as the Puss is quite outstanding in the role. She has a dancer’s use of the body alongside coquettish expressions and interpretive gestures which seem to draw the music rather than follow it. And she also has that unmistakable talent to sing beautifully and act apparently effortlessly at the same time. Enric Martinez-Castignani as the king gives an excellent portrayal of a bumbling idiot whose deafness perhaps hides his wisdom. Miguel Zapater as the ogre is outstanding. He becomes a real pantomime character who admits he has had a few too many glasses of wine. Maria Luz Matrinez as the princess carries off the apparent naiveté of the character with aplomb and her voice shines in a role that has to bear the sledgehammer imagery of a wedding dress of pure white hung with bright red balls. How’s that for subtlety! And if David Menendez had stripped down to his swimming trunks to take his dip in the river in an older-style opera house, no doubt a section of the audience would have called for a diversion of the glasses otherwise permanently trained on Pussy’s pinkness. His playing of the role was a superb blend of clown and suitor and his singing was excellent.

But underpinning all of this was the music, which was brilliantly expressive, a deceptively simple yet eclectic mix of recitative, full orchestra and inventive ensembles. The trombone and tuba figures that accompanied the ogre were a touch of genius. The recitatives were superbly cast as not quite Mozartian, whilst the neo-classicism was always delving into interesting harmonic shifts. And there was always the hint of a cat’s paw flick in the strings to allow Puss to draw us all in with that playful flick of the hand and wrist. In the pit the World Youth Orchestra played flawlessly and Josep Vincent, who is surely one of the brightest and most accomplished of young conductors, is surely destined for global recognition.

This was music and performance of the very highest standard – and all happening in this increasingly sophisticated little town of La Nucia, just outside Benidorm. What a wonderful place to live!