Joy of Creation: Sir John Tomlinson sings Michelangelo in Frankfurt

When putting Sir John Tomlinson's lieder recital on my calendar, I anticipated being immersed in a world of antiheroes and demigods. Instead, Tomlinson used the Michelangelo settings of Britten, Wolf, and Shostakovich to meditate on the fragile beauties of humanity (full program available here.) With Tomlinson's artistic choices--and persona--the angst I associate with the cycles faded into the background, and insight laboriously carved from experience took center stage instead. The audience was far from filling the house ("almost insulting," said a lady in front of me who had brought her CD booklet to follow along) but genuinely attentive and well-mannered. To my surprise, the stage was furnished with more than a piano: a table and chair, an easel, and a large chest of the sort ubiquitous in early modern urban residences; given the themes of the evening, the latter might be construed to suggest a coffin. Sir John himself was clad in a very distinguished ensemble reminiscent of the belle epoque, with cuffed trousers, waistcoat, and silk cravat; over this he donned a painter's smock which might belong to any century. If not representing Buonarotti, then, did he stand in for The Artist? Any artist? In the end, I felt the trappings were extrinsic to the story he told, which was one of closely observing humanity, celebrating and comforting our mortality by revealing it anew.

Owen Wingrave: You forget, you are the enemy too

Finley and Savidge: debating duty

Owen Wingrave may suffer by comparison with Britten's other operas, but it's still, to my mind, a stimulating piece, with exciting vocal writing, some specially beautiful music for its baritone hero, and a drama both moody and poignant. The novella by Henry James is largely expository in its treatment of a warlike family's conflict with last scion, as he turns his back on battlefields. James speaks of their old house as imbued with a "sense of bereavement and mourning and memory, of names never mentioned of the far-away plaint of widows and the echoes of battles and bad news. It was all military indeed, and Mr Coyle was made to shudder a little at the profession of which he helped to open the door to harmless young men." Wingrave is "almost cursed" with a sense of proportion more accurate than his family's.

The Arthaus DVD released earlier this year is of a 2001 for-television production: strangely, it seemed not quite formatted for square home screens. (More background on the 1971 work may be found here; original broadcast here.) Over forty years after the work's premiere, the idea of writing an opera for television still seems rather like a media experiment which might be productively repeated. The disc is mostly frill-less (and though there were credits for titles designers, I couldn't see that subtitling was an option) but it does include an hour-long documentary. I know comparatively little about Britten's biography, so enjoyed it thoroughly and without the ability to assess what elisions or overbold interpretative strokes may have undermined its accuracy or orthodoxy. Perhaps it was the fault of the screen I watched it on that no names for the interviewees appeared. It incorporates delightful footage, from rehearsals (numerous) to home footage of recorder-playing and playing with dogs in the backyard. It makes no mention of Owen Wingrave itself, however, despite the fact that the opera, to a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, focuses the narrative on the problem of the individual against and within society (unsurprising to those who know, or even know of Peter Grimes.)

Turn of the Screw: What goes on in your dreams?

Divided loyalties: Miles, the Governess, and Peter Quint in NYCO's Turn of the Screw (Photo (c) Richard Termine)

On a cold and rainy night in New York City, an audience "subject to a common thrill," as Henry James put it, gathered at BAM for The Turn of the Screw, Britten's deliciously uncanny twist on James' tale of self-doubt, self-discovery, and the supernatural. Sam Buntrock's production is set in 1982, with the Falklands War on the BBC, and the Governess' haircut modeled after that of Princess Diana. The guardian of the children, glimpsed during the prologue, is a Gordon Gekko avant la lettre, with a sleek desk and a ruthlessly crisp manner. Among other things, this choice refocuses the opera's questioning of gender and gender roles on the artificial masculine/feminine divide. Flora is reprimanded by Mrs. Grose for bowing instead of curtsying; she's flustered; it's Miles, debonair and confident, who models the perfect curtsy for his younger sister. The Governess is sheltered, even willfully persistent in her sheltered outlook when confronted with things beyond her ken. She insists that what she sees must fit into her moral categories, with, of course, disastrous results.

If the production had had less happening, I thought, it would have been easier to focus on the essentials of what it was about. Intelligent and nuanced in detail (how does the Iron Lady on the BBC affect this anxious socialization of appropriate femininity and masculinity?) it contained some ghostly gimmicks which I found distracting. If Peter Quint represents repressed (bisexual?) desire, there's no need for his presence to make the lights flicker and the TV go dark. Aside from these tropes of supernatural haunting, there's nothing to suggest that Quint is a tortured soul; rather, he seems the most self-assured character of the piece. Though Quint himself is not troubled, the Governess is, deeply. Miss Jessel was. Miles, by contrast, though disturbed and frightened by Quint, is also his ally, also the singer of his song. This unsettled, unsettling openness contrasts with the insistence of the others that Quint's ways are other and incomprehensible. In Miss Jessel's address to Flora, in Mrs. Grose's outcry, there are repeated assertions that men and women cannot, must not, should not communicate in the same ways. And this is part of what thwarts the Governess: Miles is (almost) a man; he can often seem it in his preternatural self-possession and suave, even challenging maturity. So how must she treat him? As a child? Or as the always-already sexualized, dangerous Other, the male? Miles' hesitant attempts--sometimes fearful, sometimes precociously confident--to reconcile this perceived dichotomy end in frustration, and the tragedy of a forfeited future.

Billy Budd: Farewell, old Rights o' Man

Photo (c) Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

Last night's Billy Budd was one of the stronger all-around efforts I've seen recently at the Met. John Dexter's production has a straightforward Horatio Hornblower aesthetic, but is efficient and structurally clever. The set used space well, underlining the reality that the many-leveled ship is a confined, complex, and dangerously authoritarian society. The claims that fate (or institutions) can absolve individuals from responsibility, and that divine justice renders human injustice less rather than more culpable, were consistently undermined. This may be more due to the performers than the production. There was good energy on stage and in the pit, keeping the emotional tension as well as the ideological stakes of the performance high.

David Robertson led the orchestra in a performance both powerful and powerfully eerie. I thought the delicate moments of the score well-handled, with nicely judged details, especially from the woodwinds. Robertson was attentive to the singers, (and could often be seen mouthing the text of the libretto along with them.) The overall tone was meditative rather than urgent, but I thought it worked. The men of the Met chorus outdid themselves in excellence; the interval audience was abuzz with comments on their superlative performance. From the first, uncanny "Heave away, heave" to the final, inarticulate murmur of outrage, the chorus sang with excellent diction and powerful expression. Theirs was perhaps the standout performance of the evening. This was my first live Billy Budd, so perhaps those more familiar with the opera would say that it is inevitable for the chorus to emerge vividly as a collective protagonist, oppressed by the same systems which enable Billy's unjust execution... in any case, this struck me more powerfully than it ever had in listening to recordings.

Poetry in the Pity: Britten's War Requiem with the LSO

I was not in the forefront of the standing ovation for Sunday's performance of the War Requiem. This was because I was shaking and my legs had gone rubbery. My Really Shameful Confession is that, in listening to recordings, my admiration for the ambition and intelligence of the piece remained somewhat detached, not to say dutiful. The reading provided by Gianandrea Noseda and the London Symphony Orchestra was taut and unsparing. Strings shivered; there were fearful fanfares and sad bugles; the percussion was appropriately terrifying. There were angular, angry crescendos that were as much barbed wire as cathedral spires; pianissimi hushed with reverence, and hushed with fear. The London Symphony Chorus was likewise superb, with sharp diction, impressive dynamic nuance, and great attention to the needs of the text (the eerie "Dies irae" comes to mind particularly.) The American Boychoir, performing offstage, contributed sensitive work as well.

Sing on: Nicholas Phan at Carnegie Hall

My discovery of Nicholas Phan was a little backwards: I linked from mezzo Jennifer Rivera's blog to his, and only then to his website, where I duly investigated audio clips which inspired me to mark the date for his Carnegie Hall debut this past Friday.  Phan's own blog provided me with my homework material: reflections and history on Purcell and Britten, the composers to whose work his recital was dedicated. Carnegie Hall has videos, which I discovered only after the fact, on the preparation of the recital and on Phan's obsession with Britten.  It was a program both passionate and (for me, at least) challengingly cerebral, which Phan delivered with vivid, versatile characterization and impressive command of dynamics and phrasing.  The complete program, with notes, may be found here.

Music for a While

Gentle readers, a narrative of serendipity: on Tuesday, while browsing Kinderkuchen for the FBI (a blog worth investigating not only for its magnificent name, but also for its eclectic content) I chanced across a notice in the blogroll: Jesse Blumberg performs in NYC.  I followed, of course, this scent, and Barihunks (!) informed me that the program would be one of British song.  It remained but to inform my visiting friend, a singer, who exclaimed that this was among her favorite repertory... and we were off to the piano dealership (where we coveted things!) where the recital was to be held.

The personable Mr. Blumberg informed his audience that this was the first time, and hopefully the first of many, that he and pianist Erika Switzer would be performing the recital, and our indulgence for occasional referrals to a music stand was therefore begged.  The program was organized into three sets--a Shakespeare set, a "Young Love" set, and a "Day and Night" set--with Britten arrangements as "palate cleansers" between them.  While I was familiar with most of the texts, much of the music was relatively unfamiliar to me, and some pieces entirely unknown. Mr. Blumberg stated at the outset that the pieces were infrequently heard (especially together,) because of a contemporary sensibility which shies away from their lush romanticism, a romanticism which should require no apology.  I felt that, did I own a lace-edged handkerchief, it would have been suitable to wave it in a gesture of support for Unapologetic Romanticism.