Opera North: Puccini's Xylophone Concerto

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

AND, I cannot stress enough the enhanced Musical benefits of having the solo singers placed in front of the orchestra. AND the way the orchestra then becomes a visual part of the plot - not just in the drama of watching how the instrumental Musicians respond to what is happening, but also in such a "trivial" detail as the large Tamtam that Calaf bashes to announce his acceptance of the challenge doubles (with a clever bit of spotlighting) as a very impressive full moon that the chorus sings to.

[aeolium]

I don't mind the semi-staged concert performance of an opera - as happens at the Proms - as the music is for me incomparably the most important feature of the great majority of operas. And actually I have noticed the reverse trend over recent years - the staging of works that were never meant to be staged, like the Bach Passions, Handel's Theodora and Jephtha oratorios, even the recent Frank Martin oratorio Le Vin Herbé performed by WNO. And many of what I have considered the better WNO productions of operas that I have seen have used very spare sets which have worked very well even though perhaps the primary rationale for using them (rather than more lavish sets) was financial and for ease of touring.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes - I don't like the idea of stagings of the Bach Passions/Handel Oratorios, but would not consider them to be symptoms of the imminent demise of either Opera House or Choral Society, any more than choreographed performances by Ballet companies of the Franck Symphony similarly augered the doom of the ballet company/concert hall.

But if the initial motives for ON's "semi-staged" productions were merely financial, the enhanced artistic and Musical advantages that such stagings could offer quickly became apparent and incorporated into subsequent productions. This is demonstrated in the alterations to the production of Rheingold between 2011 and 2016: the possibilities opened by front-of-orchestra performances in that five-year period had become the moving force, not (merely) an economic necessity. Nor one of space, either - the ninety orchestral Musicians that were part of the visual experience of this production could not have fitted into the pit at the Grand Theatre without compromising the sonority - their presence on-stage enhanced the sonic as well as the visual experience.

[Richard Barrett]

a nasty little story with a lot of cheap Music

That's Puccini for you though, no?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I'm still waiting for Elgar's Caractacus to be staged. The composer wanted this, but nothing ever came of it. There are stage instructions written into the score.

[Simon B]

Part of the point of these semi-stagings (all of large-scale works, usually in the sense of a very large orchestra) is that ON tours them to places where these works simply can't otherwise be put on. So the choice is that these places can either lump it and never have a live performance of Elektra, or Gotterdammerung or Turandot, or it is done this way.

The pit in Leeds isn't particularly big, but for detractors to escape this fundamental point - you produce a workable plan for how you're going to get the orchestra for Turandot in the pit at e.g. Theatres Royal Nottingham and Newcastle. Oh, and in a manner capable of complying with the latest regulations on workplace noise whilst you're at it. Not a chance. None. The percussion alone would fill 40% of the pit at Nottingham!

ON were only able to put on Billy Budd in those venues by shoving the harp in one box, some percussion in another and very clever thinking about how to get three sets of timps plus players in a small space. That and cutting the strings down to really small numbers that can be got away with in the bleak soundworld of that opera but which would be hopeless for the saturated richness of Puccini/Strauss/Wagner. Where are you going to put 8 harps in Newcastle? In the Rhine/Tyne?

Coincidentally, it was also Richard Armstrong who also conducted the Scottish Opera Ring Cycle IIRC. An artistic triumph, and one which by fairly common consent set SO on the path to near bankruptcy and its now fragmentary existence. ON did well to avoid that sort of success!

Finally, I am probably biased as I've found that one of the many things to recommend these ON semi-stagings is that the constraints make it nearly impossible for directors to trample all over the work in question with either obscurantism, egoism or both. Long may they continue - though as at present: as part of a mix of providing a whole range of different offerings in different formats, on a budget of about 10% of that of the ROH and with ticket prices to match.

I was also at the Sunday afternoon Leeds performance of Turandot and, as often happens, found that the orchestra were the most impressive part of what was overall a pretty good show. Apart from anything else, it is a welcome change to have them out of the acoustic and visual strangulation of a pit and to be able to see and hear so much more - especially in such lavishly and fabulously orchestrated stuff.

[Conchis]

I'm still waiting for Elgar's Caractacus to be staged. The composer wanted this, but nothing ever came of it. There are stage instructions written into the score.

I suspect the reason that it has never been done is because the commercial potential of such a proposition is seen to be limited, at best.

Gerontius apart, Elgar's choral works don't seem to be crowd-pullers.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

That's Puccini for you though, no?

"Particularly nasty (at least the torture in Tosca is literally ob skene) with a lot of particularly cheap Music (all those pentatonics)".

[vinteuil]

I suspect the reason that it has never been done is because the commercial potential of such a proposition is seen to be limited, at best.

Gerontius apart, Elgar's choral works don't seem to be crowd-pullers.

... "the Apostles" - 'an unspeakably dreary piece of music...' Professor Eamon Duffy dixit, 'Private Passions' Sunday 30 April.

[jean]

In the 1950s, my father's choir sang four oratorios a year. One was always Messiah, the others might include the Apostles and the Kingdom as well as Elijah.

They were all a bit much for me at the age of eight, frankly.

I never remember them tackling Caractacus, though.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I suspect the reason that it has never been done is because the commercial potential of such a proposition is seen to be limited, at best.

Gerontius apart, Elgar's choral works don't seem to be crowd-pullers.

I would have thought an Elgar opera would be a bigger crowd-puller than a hybrid Great Expectations ballet with music by Elgar.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

... "the Apostles" - 'an unspeakably dreary piece of music...' Professor Eamon Duffy dixit, 'Private Passions' Sunday 30 April.

Each to his/her own, but I'm tempted to suggest he should keep such dreadful thoughts to himself.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Richard Morrison in The Times:

Turandot at the Town Hall, Leeds: thewell-drilled chorus was striking and the soloists could have stopped a cavalry charge by decibels alone. *****

Having dispatched Wagner’s Ring in a highly imaginative semi-staged concert presentation, Opera North is applying the same format to something even more brutal, if considerably shorter. Confession time: I wouldn’t mind if I never saw Turandot again. I find the vicarious cruelty repellent, the main characters loathsome and the ending (which Puccini left unfinished at his death) desperately weak in Alfano’s completion.

If you have to do Turandot, however, do it like this. Book a massive, and massively resonant, town hall. Hire an army of extras to swell your orchestra and chorus, and soloists who could stop a cavalry charge by decibels alone. And hurl out the piece as though you have taken the show’s hit tune — Nessun dorma, none shall sleep — as your motto.

It was shatteringly loud at times. And that was before they whacked the gong, luridly spotlit in yellow in Annabel Arden’s sparse yet compelling semi-staging. The only other elements of Joanna Parker’s designs were a bizarrely oversized chair draped with an oriental cloth, behind which the towering figure of Orla Boylan’s Turandot lurked for most of Act I, and some nasty-looking cleavers and pliers for the torture scene — mercifully stylised as a macabre dance by the whey-faced trio of Ping, Pang and Pong (Gavan Ring, Joseph Shovelton and Nicholas Watts — all excellent).

What the show lacked in scenery, though, it made up in gesture. Arden’s use of the well-drilled chorus was particularly striking. They didn’t move from their seats, yet their faces and Chinese-opera style hand movements added a powerful extra layer of melodramatic frisson. Even the garishly decorated pipes of the town hall’s massive organ seemed as if they had been specially painted to match the strident climaxes of Puccini’s score.

And how well that score was delivered under the direction of Richard Armstrong, stepping in at a week’s notice after the mysterious departure of Opera North’s only recently appointed music director, Aleksandar Markovic. Yes, there were ear-splitting moments, but also some lovely detailed playing in Act II, where there is a brief respite from the noise and the fury.

In the latter department, Boylan’s turbo-charged Turandot and Rafael Rojas’s full-blooded Calaf duelled thrillingly for the shake-the-chandeliers prize, but it was the liquid lyricism of Sunyoung Seo’s Liù that enchanted the ear and stole the heart.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/opera-turandot-at-the-town-hall-leeds-295dj6djj

[verismissimo]

What's the story with 'the mysterious departure of Opera North’s only recently appointed music director, Aleksandar Markovic'?

He was excellent in Rosenkavalier recently.

[jean]

Lunchtime O'Boulez has a paragraph about it in the new Private Eye, but he doesn't seem to know any more than anyone else.