Ten composers -Ten operas. 3:Les Huguenots

It is hard now to think that Les Huguenots was once a mainstay of the operatic repertory(the Paris Opera reached its 100th performance of the work in 1906).  Indeed had you turned up at random at any opera house between 1850 and 1900 the chances that you would be seeing Les Huguenots or Faust must have been very high.



Yet now Les Huguenots is a beached whale of an opera - its aesthetic far removed from what we expect an opera to be like.



It is easy to point out what is lacking in Meyerbeer.   Sometimes his harmony can be astonishing crude (I remember at university listening to a recording of Robert le Diable and seeing one of my fellow listeners - now a distinguished composer - literally wince at the gauche chord progression in the opening bars and I could see him thinking -"how many hours of this have I got to listen to!").  Equally he could never be regarded as master of transition: some of the links between numbers are perfunctory in the extreme.





But that is only one side.  On his own terms the operas work!   The big moments in Les Huguenots - such as the consecration of the swords, are thrilling - he certainly knew how to use a chorus, soloists and orchestra together to great effect, and there rage of colours and moods is extraordinary. The bathing scene in act 2 may have been put into please the men in the audience whose reasons for attendance may not have been entirely musical, but the colour in the music and the charm of the melody are still hugely affective  (as a bassoon player I would love to have a chance to play this).

But there is some genuinely great music here.  The big duet at the end of Act 4 has a melody to die for (literally as it turns out) and Verdi must have heard echoes of it when he came to write the end of Aida.  But there is much to admire elsewhere.  It was a tradition for many years to end the opera with Act 4 - this seems very odd indeed given that there is so much interesting music in Act 5, particularly the extraordinary recitative and trio with accompaniment by solo bass clarinet and the use of the offstage voices singing the chorale melody.  Wagner, for all his jibes about Meyerbeer, must have absorbed this scene into his musical DNA.


Les Huguenots will surely never return to the operatic repertoire other than as an occasional curiosity - tastes have changed.  But that it is pity.  So much of the later 19th century operatic repertory would have been very different without this opera - indeed part of my enjoyment when listening is identifying the pre-echoes of later works. I've already mentioned Wagner and Verdi, but you can also hear glimpses of composers as diverse as Sullivan and Mussorgsky.   And there are not that many other things linking those two.


It is remarkable that aural evidence of the great tradition of Meyerbeer performances still exists.  This is one of the famous Mapleson cylinders, recorded live from the stage of the Met in the early years of the last century.  If you have never heard one of the cylinders before you will need to get used to the very heavy surface noise, but if you persist you will be able to hear a surprising amount of the performance.  This is the end of the Queen's aria in Act 2 - one of the great show stoppers of the repertory.  Controversy still remains over whether or not this singer is Melba, or the less well known Susan Adams, but whoever she is she was on blistering form.     Surely this is what the 19th century operatic experience was all about

Ten composers - Ten operas. 2:Don Pasquale

Several of my 10 operas are comic opera of one sort or another - and I start with one of the best - Donizetti's Don Pasquale.  I would't call myself a Donizetti enthusiast - indeed I only really know the famous bits from the other opera - but I've always loved Don Pasquale.  I am pretty certain that what introduced me to the opera was one of the superb Geraint Evans master classes in the 1970s but maybe time has played tricks with me: but I have certainly known it from an early age and it was of the first operas I purchased on LP  (there was a shop selling second hand classical LPs in Norwich in my youth and I built up a good collection on the cheap from there).













Don Pasquale has it all. Moments of high comedy, pathos, and drama.  There are arias a plenty, but it is the ensembles which really stand out. Two of the many highlights to note. First of all the big E major ensemble at the end of Act two when Don Pasquale realises what married life to Norina will actually be like.  The superb wide-ranging melody must have left its mark on Verdi when it came to the ensembles in Falstaff (more of that later).  And then by contrast the great buffo duet between Pasquale and Matalesta which never fails to bring the house down and always make me laugh out loud.  Here is Geraint Evans in fine form.

But there is another reason for my choosing Don Pasquale - it was my route into historic recordings.  I purchased an ultra cheap LP of excerpts from the opera not really realising that it was of historic recordings.  But I was hooked.  It was my first encounter with Caruso among others, but what really grabbed my attention was the famous old recording of the patter duet with de Luca and Corratetti.  Of course the two of them ham it up shamelessly and as pure singing it doesn't compare with the Geraint Evans version.  But who cares.  Scratchy the sound may be and the piano accompaniment is crude but the character and the fun just leap out of the loudspeaker.

Its sobering to think that this recording is now much closer to Donizetti's time than it is to ours.






Don Pasquale is sometimes seen as cruel, and I expect audiences of the time were probably very happy to see Don Pasquale humiliated and a figure of fun, whereas nowadays we see him more sympathetically.  But however you look at it, this is a marvellous comic opera which comes up fresh as a daisy in every performance.

Ten composers - Ten operas. 1:Peter Grimes

How on earth did Britten do it?

That's always what occurs to me when I listen to Peter Grimes.  

My rhetorical question has two limbs

The first is how a composer growing up in the inter-war years could find such a strong individual operatic voice.  There were of course operas by English composers before 1945 but nothing in them could possibly have been seen to lead up to Grimes.  I think that now, from an early 21st century perspective we can see that there are elements of that extraordinary melting pot of early 20th century opera - Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Puccini, Janacek, Berg and others - threaded through the language of Grimes, but in 1945 most of this would have been completely outside English musical discourse.   It remains a miracle that an Englishman could have absorbed all of this, fused it within an native tradition and produced a masterpiece that holds the stage all over the world.

But the second limb is more personal - where did Britten the man find the means to produce such a score.  I've never believed the "happy composer writes happy music - sad composer writers sad music" school of thought, but there has to be some link between the man and the music.

One of the most fascinating recordings I know is the rehearsal tape (secretly recorded, much to Britten's annoyance) of the Decca recording of the War Requiem.  Britten comes across as an affable, slightly effete prep school master directing a group of talented but inexperienced pupils.    Over the years I have played in ad hoc performances conducted by such individuals.  They tend to produce enthusiastic, if rough and ready performances without much in the way in excitement or energy.  So listening blind to Britten rehearsing one might expect something similar - and then you get this extraordinary energy and intensity, in some cases savagery of the music.  It really is hard to connect the one with the other.

It is the same with Grimes.   How could that elegant , softly spoken, reserved man have conjured up the terrifying choral outbursts as the crown hunts down Peter Grimes.  The roots of creativity and inspiration are truly incomprehensible.

Grimes is not I think a perfect masterpiece.  Britten himself is supposed to have said that it was full of howlers - though I shudder to think how this notoriously thin skinned man would have reacted if somebody had pointed out one of them!  Some of the music for the minor characters , such as Mrs Sedley and Hobson, can be tedious and there are times when things drag, but these are small matters. Time and time again Britten's inspiration is red hot.    I've already mentioned the hounding of Grimes.  Those chorus shouts of "Peter Grimes" are in a good performance among the most thrilling, and terrifying moment in the operatic repertoire, but perhaps even more notable is the mad scheme, with the offstage choir now reduced to a whisper and the low moaning of the tuba in the distance.  To reduce the texture at the most critical point of the opera was a extremely courageous step, but it works!

Finally a personal recollection.  I attended a concert in the Norwich festival in the early 1970s.  I went to hear Stravinsky's Firebird and Symphony of Psalms, but sandwiched between them Peter Pears sang the Britten Nocturne.   Britten was in the audience and stood up to acknowledge the applause.  But shamed as I am to admit it now, not much of the applause was from me!  I'd come to hear the Stravinsky and I found the Britten very hard going and uninspiring.  I know better now.  But at least I did see Britten in person.

 There are wonderful moments elsewhere in Britten's operas - the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream  is my favourite - but I don't think that he ever quite achieved the level of consistent inspiration that he achieved in Grimes......and all in his early 30s.

So why Rameau?

Yesterday I wrote about my conversion to Rameau.  So what it is about his music that I find so compelling.


Well first of all it is the sound itself.  Now I know that that seems self-referential because what is there in music apart from sound?  I suppose what I mean is that there is a richness of texture and a really good sense of balance between the bass line, the melody and the inner parts.  It is constantly inventive.


Digging a bit deeper I would say that the use of the orchestra is a constant joy.  Just three examples out of many.

• the use of bassoons in the recitatives in Zoroastre
• the low sustained notes in the horns in the musette in the last part of Les Fêtes d'Hébé
• and my favourite - the totally mad oboe parts in Platée representing the pond life



Then we have the ensembles.  Rameau is surely one of the great masters of the operatic ensemble - nobody came near him in my opinion until Mozart, and if one is talking about ensembles involving soloists and chorus then one has to look into the 19th century for anything as impressive as, say, the end of the first act of Platée or parts of Act 4 of Les Boreades

(although I must say that I find this too fast - Gardiner judges the tempo much more effectively in my view)

But finally there is the dance music. Surely Rameau must be counted as one of the great masters of theatrical dance music - in my view his only competitors are Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, and much as I adore both them I think that I would have to hand the gold medal to Rameau.  The variety is astonishing - at one time elegantly languid - at others infectiously foot tapping.    Of course it is the dance that is the biggest problem to deal with in modern productions.  I don't believe that there is any point in trying to recreate the original steps, but I do sometimes feel that modern choreographers must have a tin ear, given the astonishing gulf between the sense of movement in the music and what appears on the stage.  The dancing in the performances of Les Boreades above is a case in point - it seems far too busy and fussy, as if trying to overcompensate for what the choreographer doesn't hear in the music.

Rant over!

So lets finishwith the wonderful contredanse that ends Les Boréades.  I don't normally like clapping to live music but you can see why the audience wanted to join in.  

Rameau

Tastes change.

If you went through the playlist on my IPOD today I think that you would find that I have played more "tracks" by Rameau than any other single composer.  I would never have predicted this even 10 years ago.

I don't recall hearing a note of Rameau's music all the way through school or university.   We did cover Rameau a little in the history of music theory and also briefly in the history of opera.  If any Rameau was played as an example I have not memory of it whatsoever - not that there would have been many recordings back in the 1970s which could have been used.  I do remember looking at some Rameau scores, but didn't find anything of interest there.  I found them too fragmentary to get my teeth into and all of the ornamentation very fussy.

The only real memory I have of Rameau is a conversation with one of my lecturers in the music library.  He told me that they had a bit of spare money in the library fund - that dates it! - and that they were  going to use it to expand the range of complete editions which we held.  When he told me that the first priority was Rameau I can still recall my reaction, which was "why can't we get something more interesting".   I also remembering reading revues of the Rameau revivals by the English Bach festival and wondering why on earth anybody would bother!

Even when I started to develop an interest in Handel Rameau was still a closed book.    I can date my first real encounter fairly precisely.  In an early issue of one of the CDs which started to be included with Gramophone magazine.   John Elliot Gardiner was being interviewed about his musical experiences and he mentioned how Rameau had come to life for him when he started to work with original instruments.  The musical extract chosen to illustrate this was the Entreé from Act IV of Les Boréades.

I was hooked!   I immediately ordered the CD of the entire opera and never looked back.  I think that I now have at least one recording of each of the operas which have been released on CD or DVD.  I managed to get to a couple of concert performance of Les Boréades (including one at the Proms conducted by Simon Rattle which left an indelible impression) and two staged performances of Castor et Pollux.


In my next post I will try to explain a little just why I find Rameau so captivating.  In the meantime here is the wonderful Chaconne which ends the opera Dardanus.

An enigma and a connection

Back tonight after a rehearsal of Elgar's Enigma Variations.

I am not what you would call an out-and-out Elgar enthusiast.  The one performance of The Dream of Gerontius which I took part in was enough for me, and I am one of those, perhaps rare, people who doesn't respond instinctively to the cello concerto.  On the other hand I greatly admire the first symphony and enjoy some of the lighter music - if you don't know Mina, Elgar's very late musical tribute to his dog, then I thoroughly recommend it.

But the Enigma Variations is his masterpiece.  The wit and tenderness of the portraits of his friends are irresistible, and there is not a note out of place (well perhaps the finale is a bit bombastic in places but who cares....).  The variations are one of those pieces which just works!

At the heart of course is Nimrod.  This is so embedded in the British musical psyche that it is sometimes difficult to hear it for what it really is - not a dirge but a heartfelt tribute to friendship.    At least that is how I hear it.   Of course there are other views.  If you have never heard it before you should listen to Bernstein trying to turn it into the slow movement of a Bruckner symphony.  I can just about see what he was trying to do - and on its own terms the performance is magnificent - but I can't help but regarding it as completely wrong headed and self indulgent.







Under the bonnet Nimrod is a wonderful example of the use of harmony to generate forward momentum.  I don't yet have the blogging technique to incorporate and annotate a score into this post, but if I could I would love to show how the use of dissonance and resolution builds the tension and the forward propulsion towards the climax.  Elgar may have been self conscious about his lack of formal training but in fact he was in complete control of his material in a way that never fails to impress.

I'd like to end with a treasured personal memory.  When I was a school I occasionally attended meetings of the Norwich gramophone society and one evening the speaker was Wulstan Atkins, who was Elgar's godson.  Afterwards I went with a few other members to somebody's house and Mr Atkins kept us entertained with lots of anecdotes of Elgar the man.

Not only was this fascinating in its own right but it opens up links to the musical past.  For example Elgar's violin teacher was Adolf Pollitzer, whose teacher was Joseph Bohm, who was one of the members of the quartet which worked with Beethoven on the early performances of his quartets.

I suspect that if I did enough work I could probably find a link to Beethoven with one fewer steps.  I wonder whether in his youth Elgar met somebody who himself had met Beethoven.  The dates would work.  Beethoven died in 1827, so somebody who met him aged 20 would have been born in 1807.  Elgar was born in 1857 so if you project him to age 20 that would take us to 1877.  Our putative man who met Beethoven would have been 70 then, so it is all possible.   Perhaps one day I will identify him.

Welcome back

Like so many other people I have started a blog with the best of intentions and then let it lapse.  So I am going to have another go