Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Royal, or, A Triumph of Head over Heart

When the Royal Opera announced their 2013-14 season last year, this new production of Strauss's too rarely performed masterpiece was the highlight for me. However, from the outset I had my doubts – not about the musical team which promised to be (and was) superb, but about the production, judging from reviews of performances at La Scala. Fortunately it isn't a production to make one want to howl with frustration. It's undeniably a very carefully thought out interpretation which can (though I think with some exceptions) be fitted successfully to the text. But as will be explained, there is a price to be paid, and in my view it is too high.

But let us start with the really fine things. Musically this is a remarkable performance. One of the reasons Die Frau is rarely performed is because of the difficulty of assembling the necessary vocal talent. The only previous time I saw it, a Mariinsky Theatre production at the Edinburgh Festival in 2011, the voices were not in the top class, though one forgave shortcomings because the production and orchestral drive were so spell-binding. This time the Royal Opera House has achieved remarkable things – there isn't a weak link in this cast. Johan Reuter (Barak) and Elena Pankratova (Barak's Wife) make the strongest impression in the first two acts – their emotional punch in terms of the narrative is least weakened by the production and thus the fine singing and the direction are in harmony. Emily Magee's Empress commits herself fully and convincingly to the production (which requires a lot of her), and her singing particularly in the taxing third act is again outstanding, but for reasons which we'll come on to the production contrives to reduce the emotional connection. Perhaps the mark of greatness to all three of them is their capacity not simply to power through the heavier passages but to sing with precision softness in the more intimate sections. Johan Botha (Emperor) I found less fresh voiced than in 2010's Tannhauser but he still holds forth strongly and ringingly. Michaela Schuster's Nurse has great presence and much of her singing has great character but it isn't a voice quite so much to my taste. The supporting roles were all impeccably taken, many of them by members of the House's Jette Parker Young Artists Programme. In the pit the Royal Opera Orchestra under Bychkov were on magnificent form. The richness of sound from all corners of the orchestra, but perhaps especially the string solos, was memorable. Bychkov doesn't approach the work with quite the white heat intensity of Gergiev in Edinburgh but he reads the overall shape far more convincingly (particularly in the Third Act), and the many intimate passages have a beauty here of a far superior order.

The 2014/15 SCO Season

Today, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra launch their 2014/15 season. It opens with a work one would not immediately expect from a chamber orchestra: Mahler's 4th symphony. One might logically assume that it is one of the chamber arrangements (such as Erwin Stein's), but nothing in press information or the brochure suggests this. It must therefore be assumed that they will perform the full version, which would not be out of kilter with Ticciati's fondness for works more usually programmed with larger forces. After all, a couple of years ago they started with the Symphonie Fantastique. More interesting, to me, is the pairing: a new concerto for harp by Hosokawa.

Mahler is something of a theme, with Das Lied von der Erde cropping up later on (which this time is an arrangement, Cortese's though, not Schoenberg, as was the case when he programmed it a couple of years ago). Both concerts also feature Karen Cargill. I'm once again reminded of an April fool I considered a few years back involving an SCO season with a Mahler cycle, but I've written about that before (sadly season announcements in late March are not conducive to such a joke).

Fortunately, alongside one of Ticciati's less appealing, to me, programming tendencies as chief conductor, is one of his most: a series of Haydn's symphonies are scattered through the year, including 70, 101 , 103 and 104. Better yet, as I have long been requesting, he will take the orchestra into the studio with Linn to record six of them. I also look forward to hearing Ticciati's take on Schubert's great C major symphony towards the end of the season.

The 2014/15 RSNO Season

Today the RSNO launched its 2014/15 season, Peter Oundjian's 3rd as music director. Much of the programme leaves me fairly cold, mainly because thus far Oundjian has not impressed me. But there are a fair few things that do catch my eye.

To start with the positives, the orchestra also continues its collaboration with Thomas Søndergård who most certainly has impressed me (most recently with a dazzling account of Messiaen's Turangalîla symphony). I look forward to hearing him take on Strauss's Metamorphosen and Tchaikovsky's Pathetique (though he will have his work cut out equalling the account Edinburgh audiences were treated to by Mariss Jansons and the Bavarians last festival).

Søndergård is also at the centre of a strand that marks the 150th anniversary of both Sibelius and Nielsen. I am a great fan of both composers and wish we heard more of both of them here. That said, I'm a little wary of anniversary programming, and at least two of the works programmed (Nielsen's Inextinguishable and Sibelius's 6th) have been performed by the orchestra in recent memory. That said, drawing the 6th together with Lindberg's Clarinet Concerto does make for interesting programming, and I'm very glad of the opportunity to hear Nielsen's violin concerto.

Superman in Walthamstow, or when heroes were really heroes, all stage Chinese were like Cato, and musical comedies were really musical comedies

There's an awful lot of serious (or would be serious) musical theatre about these days. So it's an absolute joy to be reminded that sometimes musical comedy can be just that. Musical and genuinely, indeed hilariously, funny.

The ever-enterprising All Star Productions now bring, to their performance space above the Olde Rose and Crown pub in Walthamstow, the UK premiere of It's a bird...it's a plane...it's Superman (surely deserving of an award for one of the wackier titles in musical theatre history). The programme note reveals that the original Broadway production in 1966 featured a cast of some 40 people. All Star Productions scale this down to 14 – but with the strongest ensemble I've seen them field I never felt the show needed more people on stage.

The show tells, in a comic book style also reminiscent of the classic 1960s tv version of Batman, of the trials of the strongest man in the world who nevertheless is unable to sort out his love life (and, indeed, turns out to have some other psychological problems). But the plot isn't really the important thing about this show. Rather it's the glorious homage to the whole idea of the comic book hero and to Superman's many other incarnations.

EIF 2014 - The Opera and Theatre Programme, or, Jonathan Mills Once Again Surprises Me

Jonathan Mills turns out to have a real knack of proving his critics (or at least this one of them) wrong. Last year (as regular readers may recall) did not prove a happy one for Opera or Theatre, mainly thanks to the kiss of death theme of art and technology. I was already mentally planning a shorter visit this summer, and preparing some choice words of advice for Mills's successor, and lo and behold, his final programme proves to be one of his most interesting.

Opera

The clear highlight of the opera programme, and indeed one of the highlights of the Festival as a whole, is the return of the Mariinsky Opera in three performances (part of the strongly programmed final weekend) of Berlioz's masterpiece Les Troyens. I was surprised to see on my twitter feed today quite such a vehemently negative reaction to the prospect of Gergiev's Berlioz. Now, I concede that I haven't heard him perform anything by the composer, but past experience has taught me that I can be surprised by Gergiev. I had doubts in advance of his 2011 Festival Die Frau ohne Schatten and it proved to be one of the most thrilling operatic evenings I've experienced, I similarly doubted whether I would like his Brahms at the 2012 Festival, and again I was surprised (read my brother's review here). Gergiev's other operatic appearances at the Festival in recent years have including several other stunners besides Die Frau so I am overall optimistic about this one. As with Die Frau there are two casts. The Thurs/Sat cast are mostly the same as those who performed this work over two evenings with Gergiev in New York in 2010 (well received here, here and here), I think they will all be new to me. The production by Yannis Kokkos dates from Paris in 2003 and is available on DVD. Some sense of the production's approach can be gleaned here. Will these performances equal the wonderful concert performances from Donald Runnicles and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra back in 2001? Time alone will tell.

The 2014 Edinburgh International Festival Programme

Today Jonathan Mills' launched his 8th and final Edinburgh International Festival. On paper, at least, the programme appears to be one of his stronger ones, presenting some difficult choices for the compulsive festival goer. You can't do everything, the old adage goes, and there have been years when one hasn't wanted to, but it is a very pleasant problem to have.



Oliver Knussen and the RSNO are on duty for the opening concert. The feature work is Debussy's Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien. I'm not familiar with it, and Debussy doesn't as a rule set my pulse racing so hopefully it won't prove one of Mills' damp squib openers, for which he has something of a tendency. (Initial research today on Spotify is not frightfully positive - and I guess I'll have to wait at least another year for the stunning opener Sibelius's Kullervo would make.) Still, Knussen normally brings plenty of energy. And the first half includes Scriabin's Prometheus - The Poem of Fire which should have no shortage of thrills.

La Fille du Regiment at the Royal, or Take One Fantastic Tenor, One Veteran Soprano and One Very Silly Opera and what do you get?

This was a weekend for catching up with long running shows. Having been bowled over by Matilda the Musical yesterday afternoon, I caught up today with the third revival of Donizetti's comic opera La Fille du Regiment at the Royal Opera. It was perhaps a little unfortunate that although Donizetti does his best he just isn't as funny as Tim Minchin.

The opera tells the story of Marie (the daughter of the title), her problematic parentage and marital fate. She has, for those of you who haven't seen it, been raised by a multitude of Daddies (the regiment of the title) but is in fact the daughter of Old Battleaxe Number 1, a.ka. La Marquise de Berkenfeld. For reasons that do not need exploring (and are, so far as I recall, not provided), said Marquise while trying to escape the ongoing Napoleonic Wars runs into the regiment to which her daughter is attached in the Tyrolean Alps. Owing to Daddy-in-Chief Suplice's foolish eagerness to reveal the identity of her daughter, Marie finds herself spirited away to the Marquise's ancestral seat, ready to be married off to the absent son of Old Battleaxe No.2, a.k.a. La Duchess de Crackentorp, just as the passing Tyrolean (Tonio) she really loves (he having saved her, in one of the libretto's silliest devices, from falling off a cliff while she was out picking wild flowers) has enlisted in the regiment in order to allow Marie to fulfil her promise only to marry a member of said illustrious body of men. I trust you are with me so far?

Matilda the Musical, or, I loved it, almost without reservoirs.

Those of you who follow the London theatre news will have noticed that Sir Tim and the Lord have been complaining about the state of affairs for new musicals. This on the back of the early closing of their new shows From Here to Eternity and Stephen Ward the Musical. Sir Tim was quoted, I seem to recall, as complaining that there didn't seem to be a place in London for much apart from the jukebox musical. I can only assume that he hasn't seen Matilda, a show which definitively proves there is a place in London's West End for the non-jukebox musical, it just needs to be really good.

Obviously, I'm coming late to the party on this, but this is a simply wonderful show and I really hope that Tim Minchin (music and lyrics) and Dennis Kelly (book) will collaborate on something else. Like other recent musical theatre it is aware of the form's past. Miss Honey's moving Pathetic has a Sondheimesque wistfulness, the big musical number (possibly the Act One finale) when the light bulbs flicker round the blackboard echoes upteen similar finales, and Revolting Children was the best rock and roll pastiche I've seen for ages. But unlike so many other recent shows Matilda is enriched by this heritage, not buried. This show also succeeds in telling a good story (if I was going to be hyper critical it could be argued that there is a slight loss of focus in the second half, but the numbers are so compelling it doesn't matter) and being interested in its characters – two things, as regular readers will know, which I think essential to great theatre.