Covent Garden's Glorious Król Roger

Hands down Royal Opera's HD webcast of Król Roger was the easily most fascinating and beautiful HD of any performance I've watched this season.

Kasper Holten's production (along with his lighting, set designer and costumers) laid to rest any notion that Syzmanowski's work is "more oratorio than opera." Here was a compelling drama drawing one into this incredible score and into the head (literally and figuratively) of its protagonist. Within the "stage" area of an ancient ampitheatre, designer Steffen Aarfing created an enormous, three-story, head wherein the opera's first two acts (mostly) occur. Subtlety here was both unnecessary and unwelcome to the symbolism, though one didn't feel as though being banged over the head with obviousness.

Georgia Jarman's strong good looks, her blonde locks pinned under a Louise Brooks bob, created a stunning Roxana, compelling in action and gorgeous vocalizing (indeed, much of Roxana's music in the second act is a wordless vocalise).


Kim Begley's voice has a bit more of a spread to it these days, but his Edrisi was a powerful force in the staging, both as participant and commentator.

The casting and direction of Saimir Pirgu as The Shepherd was a stroke of genius and one of the strongest reasons for the success of this production. Almost glowing in his orange coat/robe and white trousers, his very presence was welcoming though one could easily see why Roger would be threatened and wary. The sometimes high flying role presented little in the way of problems for Pirgu who sailed through the score with ease earning a hearty applause at his curtain.


The dancers - a troupe of mud smeared, men in tighty-whitey's at first bothered me (just a bit) but fit into the action bringing a hypnotic quality to eh proceedings that was as unavoidable as Roger's journey.

As Roger, Mariusz Kwiecien, if not in his absolute greatest voice (he was ill during some of the run) nonetheless gave a performance of such searing intensity, and beauty putting before us a frightened, tormented ruler who held out his resistance until the end. only reluctantly - almost entirely against his will, but unable to do otherwise, became accepting of the message of The Shepherd (who is revealed to be a power-hungry monster). In Act two he sings, "The King has become a pilgrim." Later, "The King has become a beggar."

Antonio Pappano - easily the greatest cheerleader for Szymanowski's opera - leads the Royal Opera forces (including a marvelous schoolboy choir) in a powerful performance, likely as strong a reading as one is going to encounter (and making me regret not being in London, or in Boston for what was apparently another great performance from the BSO). During the intermission, he gave an illuminating discussion from the piano analyzing and explaining the score that should also not be missed.



The final scene, played out before the ampitheatre, the head now gone, (more symbolism) and smoldering fires, flames shooting in the dark, as Roger (no pun intended) "see's the light," was pure heart-in-your-throat theatre. Here, Kwiecien's Roger, beaten (literally and figuratively) rises, for the king's last line "And, from the lonely depths of my power, I pluck my pure heart to offer to the sun in sacrifice," hanging onto that final, powerful note longer than the orchestra, as blinding light explodes across the stage. The effect, the singing and general music-making causing the audience to erupt into cheers, shouts and applause while the music was still hanging in the air. When the curtain rose on Kwiecien alone, it was one of those moments one sensed that neither he, nor the audience will ever forget. I certainly won't.

If you did not catch this, I recommend you remedy that problem immediately by watching the performance while its still available (for free) on youtube in superb quality.

Update (4 October 2024): Somehow I thought I deleted the no longer available YouTube link, but instead deleted the fact this performance is available both on DVD and Blu-Ray - the latter offering a remarkably crisp image and superior sound. Either way you can't go wrong. 

Christine Goerke's Elektra from London: The "WOW!" Factor

I just finished listening to the live broadcast from London's Royal Albert Hall of Strauss' Elektra (my second favorite opera . . . ever) and certainly hope others got to experience this performance. It may be the single most amazing Elektra I've experienced outside of the concert hall or opera house. I didn't think she could have been better in the role than her Chicago opening night last season or her Covent Garden performances, but with more experience in the role, La Goerke really, truly sank her teeth into the meat - and the heart of Elektra.

The audience went (pardon the term) Bat-Shit-Crazy right after the final note and when the soprano came out things got even crazier. A similar roar went up for Dame Felicity Palmer. Then, when Goerke came back out the electricity went up even a notch or two higher . . . one might call it frenzied or fevered.

It's rare when your Elektra has better, lighter, yet solid high notes than her baby sister, and, as good as Gun-Brit Barkmin was as Chrysothemis, when the gals were doing their sister act, it was difficult not to notice who was more secure up there.

Johan Reuter was mighty good as Orest, and the interaction between he and Ms. Goerke led up to a Recognition Scene that was as sumptuous and gorgeous as one is likely to hear.

Maestro Bychkov shaped the score in perhaps one of the most exciting readings I've ever heard of it. The quieter moments have never sounded as intimate as he made them here. He mentioned in an earlier interview that Royal Albert Hall's acoustics - for as vast a space as it is - allows one to do things with a score one might not chance in other houses, something like "everything is possible here." He was right.

Additionally the way he handled the music following the murders was nothing short of breathtaking, the waltz beginning slow and deliberate, not the hurried madness we usually get (and love), then building and building to a positively dizzying effect that threw one (or at least me) completely off balance. It was tremendous and as overwhelming a performance overall that I have experienced of this my second favorite opera.

I think the announcer just said the broadcast will be available for 23 more days. This is happy news, indeed and one would be mad not to seize the opportunity to take advantage of this most generous gift.

Elektrifying!

McVicar's Salome: Bloody Genius

Let's get this out of the way first: With all the negatives continually hurled at Nadja Michael's voice, I happen to think she is a spectacular singer and seriously cannot understand the criticisms about her voice. Her Tosca was tough to gauge as it was mic'd onstage, but other roles I've heard now have impressed me favorably and none more than Salome. If she ain't your cup of tea, read elsewhere for a rave review follows.

Nadja Michaels may be the best Salome I've ever seen (including Mattila's stunning turns the past few years) and David McVicar's production is one of the most disturbing, brilliant and perfect weddings of music and staging I've seen for a production of ANY opera. It's the first Salome I've seen in - forever maybe - that had not one false step and seamlessly strung the evening along with shock, horror and beauty. Michael's voice was thrilling, possessing a quick flickering of the text that I haven't heard from a Salome since Cheryl Studer's recording - and before that Behrens. The text (as with the two previous ladies) flies off of her tongue, ever deliciously carressed with maximum impact on every syllable. While I try to remain impartial in matters of diva-weight, there is no denying the thrill of watching a singer whose body possesses the true and rare physique du role, as Michael's does. Her body is incredible by any standard and she truly moves with the lithe moves of a dancer gracefully throughout the entire role, which seems almost through-choreographed for her, adding a liquid sensuality from start to bloody finish one is simply unlikely to encounter in this opera. Credit Andrew George who is listed in the program as responsible party for Choreography and Movement.

I had heard so many negatives about Michael's Salome that though I've owned the disc for a while, it remained unplayed until I felt ready to hear her "out of tune" singing. I'm only sorry I waited so long, for I found little to complain of and almost everything to enjoy in her vocal interpretation. During the final scene she does exhibit a tendency to squarely land on some big notes, but then sort of slides into flatness - these notes (and one just plain "wrong" note), aside this is a thrilling performance for its totality of the character she and McVicars have created for us. With an often thrilling top end and a rich, plummy bottom we really get those truly creepy, loonytunes moments from the Judean Princess - and more than once she chills the blood.

There was much criticism of the Es Devlin's set - splitting the stage into two levels - an upper level revealing the elegant feast of Herodes and his guests, while a large staircase brings us to a basement which quite resembles another world (there have been many comparisons to Pasolini's "Salo" film and they do seem to be there). Here we find showers, people in various states of copulating and dressing, a hog hanging from a hook, and all manner of symbolism pointing toward stereotypical debauchery. It is powerfully affecting and becomes the setting for nearly of all the evening's action.

Thomas Moser gives a welcome new spin on Herodes; not as outwardly vile when we first meet him, but depraved beyond belief and disturbing. When he makes his first request for Salome to dance, he does a little Carmen Miranda number himself that's both hilarious and disturbing. He sings the music with an almost baritonal timbre to his sound and a lieder singer's precision in painting pictures with words. One or two higher notes threaten to get away, but this is the most integrated and powerful performance of this role I've yet encountered and, as with Salome herself, I love the creation director and singer come up with. Each of his requests (eat, drink, dance) he makes not only to Salome, but a sort of "stand in" for her, a handsome black slave with exotic "Island Hair" who DOES sip the wine and bite the fruit, as Herod's hands wander around him. There is so much "business" going on in every moment, but not one bit of it feels extraneous or too much, so wonderfuly is it woven into the total fabric of this show.

I was completely unprepared for the Dance of the 7 Veils which is a true coup d'theatre. The set disappears before our eyes and a series of rooms - one for each veil - moves across the stage, as Prince and Princess perform a horrifying pas de deux that McVicars and choreographer Andrew George turn into one of the most gripping pieces of theatre imaginable. The pair waltz elegantly through these tableau, each room revealing a more disturbing level of the girl's degradation and descending us further into the hellish world that formed such a bizarre creature as she. The rear wall of the stage has vivid projected images changing with each room and which help reveal even more of this bizarre couple's ritual. Whatever painstaking rehearsals were required pay off handsomely as Michaels and Moser perform this long, devilish dance with a sense of detached elegance that is both creepy and utterly beautiful. Moser is not a small man, and it is thrilling to see him waltz with such panache and style, his feet sliding across the floor like a natural dancer - not a moment of awkwardness or sloppiness - this is Herod's game and he plays it brilliantly. We don't see what happens in the final room/veil, with the set returning to its original design as Herod sings his lines re-entering the room. It's a stunning moment in an evening full of them.

Michael Volle is in remarkable voice as Jokanaan and he belts out his prophecies and denunciations of Herod's court with authority and ringing, magesterial tone. His long scene with Salome is, predictably, chilling theatre, the pair of them playing off of each other, each offering a wonderful sense of outrage and ego. Volle, more than any Jokanaan I can think of in recent times - has an animalistic sense of rage to go along with his piety. His physical manipulations of Salome may strike some as too much "off the page" but for others (like me) it's always fun seeing that there really IS more than one way to skin a cat!

Like the best Herodias's Michaela Schuster makes a meal out of her assignment, strutting and chewing up the scenery and driving her husband bananas.

Joseph Kaiser (looking like a beefy Josh Groban) sings rapturously as Narraboth and (for once) Salome looks at his corpse with a tender concern, even Herod kisses him before having him carted off. Once again, it is this kind of detail (knowing Narraboth's noble past and the affection felt for him) that makes McVicars productions so engaging - offering so much to chew on besides the obvious.

Duncan Meadows' silent executioner plays a big role here, barefoot, but dressed in a long miltary trenchcoat he hints at things to come, and, sword ever present, seemingly ready to burst into violence at any given moment. When Herodias gives him the ring, she removes his trenchcoat revealing his naked bodybuilder physique and he descends into the cistern. When he re-emerges, covered in blood, he holds aloft the prophet's head in an image instantly evoking a twisted version of Caravaggio's "David and Goliath." His dispatching of the princess at opera's end also produces some chills.

There has been criticism of Phillipe Jordan's leading of the Royal Opera House Orchestra, but I found his performance to be ideal for this setting, and if it doesn't always have the remarkable clarity that von Karajan or Bohm (or more recently Gergiev) bring to the quieter moments of this piece, it is still damned fine playing, with the big moments sounding as thrilling as anyone could demand from a live performance.

I think McVicar staged this for me and I thank him. Most of the reviews I read when this was first staged last year, spoke of how "unshocking" everything felt. One critic who attended both opening night and reviewed this DVD set, wrote that staging this work out of its context (?) takes away its ability to shock us. I disagree and LOVE what McVicar did here - which was to basically scare the you-know-what out of me, making me wonder and guess at what could possibly happen next - which almost NEVER happens anymore! While the critics all took potshots, audiences gobbled this up and the roar for Miss Michael when the curtain opens to reveal her alone, is deafening.

I really love this Salome and have been able to think of little else for two days now. Not for everyone, but what really is?

Simon Sez: Maazel's "1984" on DVD

"Maazel has perpetuated a fraud" . . . "a slick perversion of Orwell by the super rich Maazel who bought his way to [Covent Garden]" . . . "Keenlyside (Smith) and Gustavson (Julia) fail to relate" . . . "Maazel sucks the life and irony out of Orwell" . . . "Why this tripe has been given airtime at Covent Garden . . . is a mystery"

These and more like it were all that I read following the premiere of Maazel's opera. It seemed as though every critic attempted to outdo the next in finding witty words to tell us what a piece of crap this "non-opera" was. Still, with its brilliant cast, the direction of theatrical wizard Robert Lepage, and one of my favorite stories (that I and a friend/fellow student attempted to musicalize at theatre school) I've been waiting - admittedly anxiously - to see what inspired all this venomous writing. To my surprise I found a profoundly moving, if seriously flawed work of musical theatre populated by a cast who seemed to believe in the project and conducted with near abandon, passionately by its creator.

Maazel's score certainly has its low points: an annoying tendency to repeat the final word or syllable of a sentence or phrase wears thin and has little dramatic or musical purpose; a rambling of styles that recall (instantly) Bernstein, Sondheim, Weill, Barber and most of all, Britten (not in and of itself a bad thing); some less-than-inspired music when the words could have been effectively declaimed/spoken (especially since there is spoken dialogue present anyway) and other things that seem obvious or in need of rethinking. Nonetheless, these flaws (at least in my opinion) fall by the wayside when placed alongside what DOES work, and of that there is plenty.

Simon Keenlyside's Winston Smith ranks among the most intense, perfect (and insanely physical) creations of any character I've witnessed created for the stage. The dramatic arc as Winston - beginning as frightened, angry and hopeless drone, to thinker, dreamer, lover - before being utterly destroyed and thus, assimilated properly into Orwell's hell on earth, is as devastating as anything I've witnessed. Musically, this may not be Wozzeck (what possibly could be?) but Keenlyside makes him, perhaps, Wozzeck's brother . . . or worse, his son. Maazel seems to play with this theme and one cannot help (particularly in the third act) feel a strong bond between Berg's and Maazel's antiheroes as they're emotionally stretched beyond the breaking point. Indeed, throughout Keenlyside is nothing short of magnificent and, as difficult to watch as his torture scene in the Examination Room is, it barely prepares us for the horrors yet to follow in Room 101. Simon gives us EVERYTHING in Winston, and by the third act I forgot I was watching an opera - or indeed any sort of theatrical production at all - as he cries, sputters, vomits water, turns his contorted torso at wildly impossible angles during his break down. But it isn't all just "acrobatic theatrics" - Maazel gives Winston a big aria here, and composer and singer each know how to put this across in a way that had me in chills and tears. (Watching from my sofa, I managed to squeeze a king sized pillow into something nearly asprin sized.)

In similar fashion, Nancy Gustavson gives it her all in a thoroughly believable portrayal of Julia. The change in her character from cold, feelingless drone to the woman who leads Winston to a realm of love and hope, almost made me believe the story could turn another way. Even the filmed image of her dancing in a golden field projected as Winston dreams (following his torture) makes you believe in their despairing hope.

The love scene - interrupted by another chilling scene with Richard Margison's sensational O'Brien - returns and extends finding the couple taking flight to near ecstasy before their true hell begins. Here, Maazel gives them (and us) music that soars passionately - sweeps elegantly and rises away from the din of this oppressive world of Big Brother. It's really rather good music here!


Diana Damrau does double duty (are there enough D's in that phrase?) as a charmless, near robotic Gym Instructor, then returning in the final act as a rotten-toothed drunken hag of a whore who elicits both pity and disgust, as in remarkably clear English she sings at the top of her range, trilling through coloratura flights of fancy that feel remarkably right.

Lawrence Brownlee was a pleasant surprise as Syme, his elegant, gorgeously toned tenor also pushed to the top of his range - but always free and ringing - his voice lighting up the stage. The duplicity of his words in praise of "newspeak" and that sunny voice, one of the true highlights of the first act.

Richard Margison was another surprise. I don't always care for this singer in the big romantic leading roles - he just sounds and looks uncomfortable and unconvincing so often, but here he is lithe, sinister, duplicitous and sings with abandon and elegance all at once. It is a terrific performance.

There are moments like the anthem-like Hymn to Oceania (a hilariously touching sendup of nearly the modern national anthem), the blues numbers, the children's music, the Barbershop-type jazz men's quartet, all were moments the critics said dragged this down to "Broadway Musical" levels, but I felt were not only well crafted, but correct and persuasive in each of the spots where they occur.


I know no one wants to believe in an ovation as an indicator of a work's worth, but the audience goes crazy at the conclusion. Perhaps they were just a bunch of proles, like me, easily entertained and worthy of being summarily dismissed by our wise critics who despised the thing.
Robert Lepage continually amazes me in everything he puts his hands on and this is no exception. He's already well on his way to becoming one of the most original thinking designers/directors in 21st century opera production. Watching his incredibly detailed direction - and these magnificent sets, only continues to whet my appetite for what he will bring to the Met's new Ring Cycle. I can hardly wait!

So, while admittedly "imperfect," Maestro Maazel's opera entertained me, moved me, brought out the tears and chills and made me feel the three hours were worth the investment. I'd call that a success and I look forward to watching this again.