WNO Moses Und Aron

[Bryn]

Thanks, IGI and Steerpike. Let's hope one of the major European radio stations recorded that concert performance and that we might even get to hear it on TtN, one of these nights, or even Ao3, on an afternoon or two.

[Oops! I had forgotten that we briefly discussed the completion 4 years ago, over on r3ok.com. In that discussion Mr. Barrett suggested that Kocsis had re-used some material from the earlier Acts.]

[Roehre]

Funnily enough, I bumped into a colleague in the ROH shop before tonight's performance who declared he was tempted to stay put in his seat after Act 2 and wait for the third act! He told me that Zoltán Kocsis asked the Schoenberg estate to take a look at the sketches the composer had made for Act 3, just to see how much there was. Apparently, "it's all there" and just needed orchestrating, which Kocsis did in 2010. There has been a concert performance, but thus far it has never been staged.

Thank you for that, IGI, that's completely new to me

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Thank you for that, IGI, that's completely new to me

And to me, too! I hope it's right that most of the Music is by Schoenberg, and I look forward to hearing it - but it does rather deflate one of my pet theories about the composer and his attitude to the Third Act. Ho hum; farewell yet another cherished belief.

[Orphical]

I know this opera quite well, starting from the Rosbaud recording (following, as best I could, with a borrowed score) then the Hall/Solti show and so on, and I last saw it in Vienna with Gatti conducting, in 2006.

Musically, last night was the best I’ve ever heard. Above all from the chorus but also from the soloists and orchestra. Tomlinson was now and then on the singing side of sprechstimme, no bad thing because he chose his moments well. The only conductor I’ve heard with a comparable understanding of the score to Koenigs was John Pritchard with the BBCSO in 1988 (I think). With Koenigs I didn’t hear the music as analytic or romantic, it was both and it was beautiful, and it went, as they say.

I thought the production was decent until the Golden Calf scene - what a cop out! Although the chorus were directed brilliantly so as to make the cinema conceit just about bearable, you really do need a spectacle if only to offset the mind-numbing repetition of the libretto in Act 2.

Overall a tremendous achievement I thought. The hours the chorus must have put in!

Berlin next in 2015.

Can you provide more details of Berlin production Steerpike?

[Steerpike]

Orphical

Sorry I can't work out how to paste links but just Google the opera followed by Berlin 2015 and it comes up. The KOMISCHE oper site is has German and English options, you need to scroll forward to April 2015

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Orphical

Sorry I can't work out how to paste links but just Google the opera followed by Berlin 2015 and it comes up. The KOMISCHE oper site is has German and English options, you need to scroll forward to April 2015

http://english.komische-oper-berlin.de/schedule/moses-and-aron/

[kuligin]

I thought the production was decent until the Golden Calf scene - what a cop out! "


I saw this production on Saturday and totally agree, superb musically, and a wretched production, just about OK in Act 1 but Act 2 without a golden calf and all the sacrificies never mind no 3 naked virgins, what was the producer thinking?

In fact most of Act 2 was a concert performance.

Still a magnificent effort by WNO, ROH have not produced this work since 1965, but then we await their first, House of the Dead, Il Prigioniero, Doktor Faust or even Coronation of Poppea

[aeolium]

Ed: message about opera productions deleted and relocated to new thread.

[Belgrove]

Ferney, your considered post about the merits of the work has convinced me that I need to explore it further, but also reveals what I considered to be its weakness; that it can only be appreciated through extensive study. At no time was I engaged, let alone transfixed by the music. This is music I can imagine coming to admire but not love. The ideas that the work contains would be better served by a play rather than an opera, the music did not seem necessary to me. By contrast, Berg's stage works had an effect that, on first exposure, compelled me to learn more about them. These are works I have come to revere and love. Berg's wayward, less rigorous, take on serialism just has greater appeal.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Hi, Belgrove

You're not the only one who so thinks - but it was Schönberg's Music that always attracted me to Schönberg: the "extensive study" came later (as it did with Mozart, Wagner, Monteverdi ... ). The haunting Music of the opening scene (those rocking chords, the mix wordless and whispering choirs); the "pastoral" Music of the second scene (delicate solo woodwinds, Harp accompaniment, a pair of Horns - the gently "jigging" rhythms - the first appearance of a solo singing voice); the people's chorus in scene three (the perky opening rhythms, the first solo female singing voice of the Maiden with that frowsy, whistlable tune, the grumpy old man who's seen and heard it all before; the way Aron distorts Moses' words) the "Trojan March" chorus that ends the first act (and returns at the "end" of the opera); the whispered fugue interlude (a Mendelssohnian Presto pianissimo); the Golden Calf (with its references to Parsifal's Flower Maidens; the accumulating accelerando - Berg is so tight-bottomed in comparison! - the mass of orchestral sound); the unison Violins' concluding melody - anguished, desperate, soul-rending. These are all foregrounded Musical features that require no listener to study the notes extensively; they're sensuous, visceral, charming and impassioned. And so Musically dramatic, I mean - the stuff on stage comes out of this Music; it isn't a play with an illustrating background score.

I hope you do "explore it further" and come to love the work as Music; it's so rewarding and such an experience.

Best Wishes.

[David-G]

Perhaps it is more suitable for a separate thread, but I was wondering just what proportion of the opera productions people here have been satisfied with. I tend to go to WNO productions and I think of the last 10 I have attended, 2 or at most 3 have been reasonably good and some have been truly dreadful (though the music-making under Lothar Koenigs has been generally excellent). It is becoming a real deterrent, especially as WNO performances often turn up on R3.

How is it that the profession of opera directors keeps on getting away with what seems like a consistent level of dissatisfaction among opera audiences without being a source of concern to those running opera companies and trying to get more people to become interested in opera?

This is an interesting and important subject for discussion. But I do think that this really warrants a separate thread. Why don't you repost this in a new thread, aeolium?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

This is an interesting and important subject for discussion. But I do think that this really warrants a separate thread. Why don't you repost this in a new thread, aeolium?

[Sydney Grew]

. . . Berg is so tight-bottomed in comparison! . . .

Goodness me! How could a tight bottom possibly be a disadvantage?

[aeolium]

This is an interesting and important subject for discussion. But I do think that this really warrants a separate thread. Why don't you repost this in a new thread, aeolium?

Good advice, D-G - have done this.

[Orphical]

http://english.komische-oper-berlin....oses-and-aron/

Many thanks Ferney. And a very tempting prospect!