Music
Fresh vibrant production with fluid and dramatic performances of Verdi’s melodrama Un ballo in maschera. Royal Opera’s new production is about reclaiming the drama as well as the big singing. The leading ladies, Liudmyla Monastyrska (Amelia) and Dmitri Hvorostovsky (Renato), gave committed and satisfying musical performances; Marianne Cornetti gave a particularly spooky interpretation of Ulrica, the fortune teller. But for me it was Joseph Calleja (Riccardo) who commanded the stage musically, dramatically and with an athleticism that showed his enthusiasm for this role. Though I wasn’t convinced by Liudmyla Monastyrska as Amelia that he would be so much fallen in love as the plot requires.
This is an apparently straightforward setting but unusually is based in Austro-Hungarian Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, within which the production design holds consistent with a lot of detail and depth. The main benefits of this setting appear to be an opportunity for some tasty uniforms and sumptuous frocks. It sort of works as fitting preconceived ideas about how a grand opera should look though actually the staging is for an era fifty years after the premiere. The staging and lighting are complex but come over as straightforward, helping to build the melodrama without distracting from the music.
New Year’s Eve Viennese Gala Concert - Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra - Brighton Dome
A sparkling and stylish New Year’s Eve Viennese Gala Concert in the historic but refurbished Brighton Dome; Stephen Bell conducting the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra in music of the Strauss family plus twentieth century Viennese music of Emmerich Kálmán and Franz Lehár.
Brighton thinks of itself partly as London-on-the-Sea, in the same way the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra draws on a pool of players from the nearby metropolis and thus delivers concerts of unexpected quality for a city of the size of Brighton and Hove. Now restructured after a couple of difficult years, the orchestra is in fine form and today’s concert was well supported by an enthusiastic and attentive audience.
“Daniele Gatti’s journey from the Romantic to the modern era - Transcendence, Creativity, Deconstruction”
The Berlin Philharmonic orchestra is one of the small number of orchestras of which almost everyone has heard of, yet relatively few have heard in person. My first trip to Berlin for twenty years (and my first to the former west for more than twenty-five) could not pass over the opportunity to book a ticket online to hear and see the Berlin Philharmonic playing in their home concert hall, the Philharmonie.
Just getting to the Philharmonie is a new journey: the U-bahn line used to stop at or before Nollendorfplatz. Now the line once more runs through to Potsdamplatz and beyond. The Philharmonie is a stylish modern hall and surprisingly small considering the reputation of its home orchestra. It's on the edge of the culture area of the city, sandwiched between the brashness of Postsdamer Platz and the lush woodland of the Großer Tiergarten, Berlin's city park (seeGroßer Tiergarten, Berlin - October 2014). The Berlin Philharmonic has a big presence online with its “digital concert hall” presentations so it wasn’t a surprise that there are numerous microphones and more than half a dozen television cameras on remotely operated pan and tilt heads.
Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde is not the best opera as an introduction to Richard Wagner. Described as a chamber opera, although the orchestra is vast, it is arguably the composer’s most intense and most psychological opera. So there’s a strong argument for a conceptual or heavily symbolic production which exposes the psychological themes rather than a naturalist design which portrays merely the superficial setting. The idea of a conceptual production comes much later than any production within the Richard Wagner’s lifetime so it is inevitably an expansion of the piece not within the composer’s intentions.
Nonetheless this is an illuminating production despite the contradictions. The libretto states the action of act one takes place on a ship whereas we see a formal banqueting room behind a faux and off-centre proscenium arch, downstage of which there is a severe asymmetric rake. Stage right there is a large flat which has shadows of the performers; their shadows deliberately vary from sharp and intense black shadows to two shadows deliberately offset. The performers specifically make shadow images that illuminate another facet of the character, for example a profile.
I was finishing off my weekend listening to Ton Koopman playing a couple of the old organs of Groinigan and Amsterdam and I remembered the strange sound of the organ in Embrun, which I heard last month.
Here's the Wikipedia article on the cathedral
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cath%C3%A9drale_Notre-Dame_d'Embrun
And an article on the organ, which dates from maybe 1464 and still has mechanical action
http://www.atelier-quoirin.com/Embrun_etude.php
(there is an option for English).
But the only recordings I can find, are here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juDlKIDTsac
and a CD (seems to be only available as a download)
Michel Corrette played by Jan Van Mol
http://www.qobuz.com/fr-fr/album/corrette-pieces-dorgue-jan-van-mol/5425016540848
I suggest listening to track 9 onwards for the rich but unfamiliar sounds and colours of this instrument. And strange pitching.
Another online version (which is more complete but not the whole disk). The first track after the introduction isn't that strange but the following tracks are using stops which sound quite unfamiliar
http://radio.omroep.nl/f/87010/
Interesting that it's a Dutch organist rather than a French one who is motivated enough to get a CD published.
