Friday 24 May 2019

Stockhausen's Donnerstag aus Licht at Southbank, or, Striking...Excessive...Sometimes Incomprehensible...And Yet...

Note: This is a review of the first of two performances on Tuesday 21st May 2019.

Years ago I recall reading a newspaper feature about Stockhausen's Licht cycle which must at that point, I think, have been unfinished. It stayed in the back of my mind and I always thought it would be interesting to see what some of it was like in practice. But as I trekked off to the Festival Hall on Tuesday contemplating 4+ hours of a composer virtually unknown to me I did begin to wonder what I was letting myself in for. I won't say he never needed an editor, but on balance it was worth it.

The opera proper consists of three acts, preceded by a Greeting (played in the Clore Ballroom) and followed by a Farewell (played from the Balcony and the Terraces outside to magical effect by five trumpeters. I don't pretend to have grasped all the finer points of myth and plot, and the autobiographical dimension is not I suggest apparent unless you've read it up in advance. However, a central narrative does come through concerning the struggle between good and evil - personified by angels, particularly Michael, and the devil Luzifer. As part of that struggle Michael, for reasons which remain slightly opaque, has decided to experience life as a human. Act 1 follows his childhood, in Act 2 (the highpoint of the evening) he travels round the world, in Act 3 he returns to the stars. Finally, in Act 3 Scene 2 Michael tells us the whole story all over again (Wagner's Norns have nothing on him), providing some additional clues to the frankly rather confusing action of Act 1. To further muddle matters two of the principal characters - Michael and Eva (at times his mother and at times in some other guise his lover - again the relationship between the two never became wholly clear to me) are represented in multiple forms - dancer, singer, instrumentalist.

Thursday 2 May 2019

Billy Budd at the Royal Opera, or, In the Shadow of Past Glories

Note: This is a review of the performance on Monday 29th April 2019.

We've been lucky in the UK recently to have two excellent productions of this masterpiece - Michael Grandage's for Glyndebourne and Orla Phelan's for Opera North. Altogether this was, I think, my fifth production of a work I cherish. At both Glyndebourne and Opera North I was powerfully moved. Indeed, there were sections in the latter stages of Phelan's production that were overwhelming. Here, in Billy's monologue and his farewell with Dansker tears did come to my eyes, but overall this evening fell short in various ways of those triumphs.

Deborah Warner's production has been imported from Madrid, and arrives trailing praise. From my customary Amphitheatre perch I had more mixed reactions. There's an awful lot of ropes in evidence (something seen before in other productions) and sails (less common) but Warner is much less successful than others at creating that claustrophobic seaboard world so critical to the drama. For most of the evening the stage is very open and there is simply too much space, and not just around the sides. Despite the large numbers of extra chorus and actors credited in the programme they often feel lost in the space in the big chorus numbers, where they should be jammed in. Similar problems apply to the more intimate scenes - when Vere sings of his "narrow cabin" it just isn't. The open stage also, I suspect, has musical consequences diffusing rather than concentrating the vocal sound of all concerned making it harder for dynamic variety to impact and for individual voices to come through the texture at key moments.