Glyndebourne

It is more years than I care to admit since I was last at Glyndebourne, so I was delighted when two friends from London asked me to join their party this year.

We assembled at Victoria Station, complete with picnic hamper and all the necessary food and drink. The train to Lewes took just over an hour and then we were met by a coach from the opera house itself. Despite dire weather warnings, by the time we arrived at Glyndebourne it was a perfect summer afternoon. We selected our spot in the garden and unloaded our picnic. There was then time for a walk around the lake, and a glass of champagne enjoying the afternoon sunshine and admiring the Sussex countryside before we made our way to the opera house.

Opera here started in the 1930s in a converted barn seating just over 300. In the early 1990s a completely new opera house was built. It seats about 1150, is in a traditional horseshoe design but cleverly keeps the twin Glyndebourne themes of ‘summer’ and ‘country’. Inside there are no velvet drapes but instead exposed wood. The outside steps are still in stone or concrete and the balconies around the house are all open: extensively used for opera-goers’ picnics when it is raining.

The opera was Verdi’s”Macbeth”. Glyndebourne have a very careful casting policy. You will not see big names here but you will often catch young singers on the verge of a major career: Sutherland, Pavarotti, Caballe and Alagna all sang here as youngsters. Alternatively you may catch little-known singers who have been carefully chosen because they fit a certain role in a theatre of this size. The latter was the case here.

The title role was sung by Andrzej Dobber, who fulfilled all the vocal and dramatic requirements of the role perfectly well. Even better was Sylvie Valayre as Lady Macbeth, her steely soprano voice just right for the part and well up to the “Cherie Blair” characterisation of Richard Jones’s production. I thought the outstanding vocal performance came from Stanislav Shvets’s sonorous Banquo and it was nice to see Opera North regular Peter Auty as Macduff. The resident orchestra is the London Philharmonic, who played superbly under Damien Iorio.

The production was by Richard Jones. Not always an easy director, I thought his style, often with large elements of back humour, worked well in this opera. There were lots of kilts for the men and the witches were three generations of Glasgow lassies: grannies, mums and short-skirted teenagers. They cooked their witches brew over an exploding gas cooker. After the murder of Banquo (chillingly portrayed), his head is brought to Macbeth in a cardboard box stained with blood – and it is this box that reappears to provoke Macbeth’s outburst during the banquet scene – and even followed him around the stage. Lady Macbeth’s sleep-walking scene was also vividly done with her repeatedly putting on white gloves, only to immediately peel them off and throw them into a washing machine.

The biggest miscalculation of the evening was the decision to include the ballet music. There was no point to it, it held up the action and the tension and the music is not of any distinction. Otherwise this was a production that was never less than interesting and at times totally gripping.

It is easy to dismiss Glyndebourne as a ‘social’ event. There is an 85 minute dinner interval for the picnic (ours was gazpacho, poached salmon and strawberries and cream) or eating in one of the opera house's restaurants. And it is true that it does attract a largely mature and very smart audience: dinner jackets for the men; posh frocks for the ladies. But the standard of the opera is very high indeed and the whole thing continues to set the standard for country house opera. I found it a quite delightful experience.

Festival of St Isidore

Las Ventas is the bullfighting ring in Madrid and it is one of the largest and most famous in the world. The Festival of St Isidore runs from late May into early June and is the highlight of the Madrid bullfighting season. The survival of bullfighting in Spain, Portugal and South America is an extraordinary social and cultural phenomenon. On the final day of the St Isidore Festival (which I attended) the 25,000 seat Las Ventas was sold out.

A classic Corrida will see six bulls dispatched, two each by three toreros. Each individual bull fight is divided into four distinct phases. In the first the bull is released into the ring and the Torero's assistants will attract its attention to different parts of the ring by making passes with large fluorescent pink capes. The torero himself will then emerge and make some genuine close passes, using the same large pink cape: if he does well he might garner a few shouts of 'ole' from the crowd. At a signal from the trumpet the picadors then enter the ring. These men are on horseback and armed with long lances. It is then the job of the torero and his assistants to lead the bull to the picador so that the picador can spear the bull behind its head, causing blood to flow. Another blast from the trumpet is the signal for the picadors to leave and the third phase then starts. This is the work of the banderilleros who run at the bull and place pairs of brightly coloured rods with sharp hooks on their ends into the bull's neck. The banderilleros have to be nifty on their feet to get in close enough to do this and then run off before the bull catches them. The final phase is performed by the torero, working on his own. He is now equipped with the famous red cape, held stiff by a wooden rod and ornamental sword. His task is to work as close as he can to the bull, making it follow the red cape and thus pass and repass around him. For the final stages, the ornamental sword is changed for a sharp, slightly curved weapon. The torero uses the red cape to draw the bull's head down and then puts the sword in just behind the bull's head. Done properly, the sword plunges in to its hilt and the bull dies quickly and cleanly.

My visit to Las Ventas was something of a disappointment. I had hoped to see some really top toreros (who can be quite thrilling to watch for their skill and courage as they 'work' the bull) but it was not to be. The best of the three was Manuel Jesus "El Cid", who showed real skill in his work with the cape. He could not manage a clean kill in either of his fights however. He received the only 'curtain call' of the evening. Miguel Abellan showed a taste for the flamboyant by meeting his second bull in the centre of the ring on his knees. The weakest torero of the evening was Miguel Angel Perera. He repeatedly got his red cape tangled up in the bull's horns, but worse was to befall him. In trying to kill his first bull he missed the target badly and caused some terrible haemorrhage, so the bull starting vomiting blood. The crowd disliked this enormously and waves of booing and whistling resulted. He was even booed as he left the ring at the end of the Corrida.

A disappinting evening but not quite enough to put me off this extraordinary activity, objectively disgusting, yet also sometimes wonderfully thrilling.

Highlights of "El Cid"'s evening can be seen here:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixyBsElydJQ

Il Trovatore in Madrid

This was my first visit to the Teatro Real, which is celebrating ten years since its re-opening after refurbishment. A traditional ‘horseshoe’ house (still with tiers made up largely of boxes) is now fronted by elegant modern staircases and surrounded by some extravagantly decorated reception rooms. In all this space there did not seem many places to get a drink however.

I had planned this trip to catch Roberto Alagna as Manrico, his recording of this opera being one of my favourites. Sadly he cancelled just a few weeks before the performance.

His replacement was Francisco Casanova, a burly man and not a natural stage animal. His singing started off well enough but proved variable as the evening wore on. At times his voice lost tone and he had a tendency to shout at dramatic moments. His “Di quella pira” went for little and he was left stranded at the front of the stage as the applause quickly petered out. There were other times when he sounded very good. He reminded me of Salvatore Licitra: another ‘almost there’ tenor.

The star performance of the evening came from Dolora Zajick as Azucena. From her rasping chest tones to the top of the voice (with the occasional additional high note) this was a demonstration that old-fashioned grand Verdi singing still does exist – and how effective it is. She was acclaimed by the audience at the end of the performance.

Almost in the same class was Fiorenza Cedolins as Leonora. Not an intrinsically beautiful voice, it is even and well-controlled and used with great skill and taste. She was able to command the grander moments of Leonora’s music and also negotiate the intricate difficulties of the Miserere scene. I had never heard her before and was very impressed.

Anthony Michaels Moore was a reliable if not memorable Di Luna and there was a rich-voiced Ferrando from Raymondo Aceto.

The conductor was Nicola Luisotti. There were many things to admire in his conducting: the singers were always audible, there was real dramatic bite; a lot of orchestral detail was cleverly brought out. There was nothing of the routine and the orchestra were clearly enjoying playing for him. But there was a downside. Most numbers started at a fast speed only to be pulled back by huge rallentandos, sometimes literally halving the speed. He also had a tendency to insert long unwritten pauses, especially at cadential moments. It was all rather like being driven by a taxi driver who roars away from the lights only to stamp on the brake when approaching a slight bend in the road.

The production was directed by Elijah Moshinsky and was new at Covent Garden a couple of seasons ago. It looked handsome and was mostly an effective conventional staging. I was glad to see that the ridiculous camp sword swinging during the Soldiers’ Chorus has gone – to be replaced with some ‘proper’ sword fighting. Leonora goes to make her vows in what looks like a railway station and I still can’t work out what the giant furnaces are in the gypsy encampment. But this is a good mainstream Trovatore production that could be put on any stage without shame.