Radiant Leonore, but trouble down t'pit

Karita Mattila must have been born to sing Fidelio. Opening afternoon (a Sunday matinee) found the Finnish soprano conquering Covent Garden at one stroke. She's about six foot tall with a knock-em-dead stage presence; this was the first time I've been convinced that poor little Marzelline could have been taken in. Her voice has the strength and purity of a laser. Never mind that The Times ran one of the bitchiest articles imaginable about her the other day (no wonder artists don't like talking to British journalists - this was so unnecessary, I don't see the point of writing pieces like that, I mean, really...). She's one of the greats; I doubt that Leonores get better than this.

A pity that the rest of the show wasn't consistently up to her level. First, the opening bars of the overture revealed some nasty stuff in the pit, namely the horns. I suspect it was widely assumed around the house that they'd spent Sunday lunchtime in the pub, but this morning Tony Pappano told me that it was more serious than that: the first horn had hurt his lip and as a result there'd been a last-minute cabinet reshuffle, with first horn playing third, etc. I'm not sure that the rest of the orchestra recovered from the experience; there was some uncomfortable ensemble (or lack of) and generally the effect felt lacking in tension, especially compared to Mark Elder's recent account at Glyndebourne. But there were some fine moments - a wonderful hushed tone at the beginning of the magical Quartet - and perhaps things will settle down as the run progresses: the ROH hasn't done Fidelio for around 15 years.

Production: fresh from the Met, directed by Jurgen Flimm and set in a prison in the 1940s or 50s. A world where guns are casually tossed about, where Pizarro wields a champagne bottle in one hand and a pistol in the other; the prisoners are kept in cages three storeys high. Leonore, not Rocco, takes it upon herself to let them out for the King's name day, and they emerge in absolute silence before the chorus begins - the effect is both touching and startling. Anyone hoping for the Leonore No.3 Overture before the last scene will be disappointed - but the opera works perfectly well without it, since the duet between Leonore and Florestan acquires a climactic significance that can sometimes be dissipated by the interpolated orchestral work.

Ailish Tynan is a fantastic Marzelline, Eric Halfvarson and Terje Stensvold excellent as respectively Rocco and a ferocious, neo-Con-style Pizarro. The big surprise, literally, was Endrik Wottrich as Florestan. He's huge. Massive, like something out of Lord of the Rings. He looks like he spends his life body-building. And then he opens his mouth and out comes - this rather odd voice. Bizarrely small, given the size of the soundbox. Unfocused, tight and lacking resonance, with rapid continual vibrato but no real centre to the tone. A physical match for Mattila, but certainly not a vocal one.

Of course, anyone who was anyone was there, my dears. We ran into Elgar expert Michael Kennedy, Sunday Times critic Hugh Canning, politician-turned-presented David Mellor and the inimitable Sean Rafferty from Radio 3's In Tune, and said hello to fellow blogger Stephen Pollard, who's already written up the show...we have some pretty different opinions, but are in perfect accord over Mattila.

UPDATE: Tuesday, 1.30pm: Fellow London music blogger Intermezzo, whom I've shamefully neglected to add to the blogroll until now, was at Fidelio too, struggling with the sightlines, feeling seriously scathing about the orchestra and has no time for the first horn...

A damp bank holiday

I have a piece in today's Independent about Britten & Aldeburgh - rather content to see that it made the Editor's Choice listing on the website. Not sure I did work out what it was about Suffolk that inspired him, but I found some fascinating stuff by Hans Keller, and tried to give a plug for the excellent local fish and chips, though that has been cut.

Off to Covent Garden to interview Maestro Pappano this morning. More about yesterday's opening performance of Fidelio later on...

Sticking up for Edu

Everyone else is busy writing about Elgar now. His birthday isn't until next weekend, but here's conductor Sakari Oramo in The Guardian with a ream of good sense. What Elgar needs, he insists, is foreign champions. Dead right. With the same peculiar nationalist whateveritis that insists you have to be Russian to play Rachmaninov, English musicians have tended to prevail in Elgar - whose fault? Promoters? Record companies? Elgar's perceived 'Englishness'? Sakari says something I've been saying for a while, which is that Elgar's music is not particularly English: his principal influences are Strauss, Schumann and Wagner.

Michael Kennedy takes the Englishness line in a different direction in The Telegraph, but I guess he/they would. He begins with 'Windflower', Alice Stuart Wortley, talking about Elgar coming from the heart and soul of England etc etc.

Oh lordy, and The Times says we're wrong to downplay his love of Empire. That's all he needs... but at least they are offering free downloads (only short ones, mind).

Pay your money and take your choice. Or alternatively have a look at my angle on the matter in my archive.

Tasmin Little is going off to the Far East and Australia next week to tour the Elgar Violin Concerto around Kuala Lumpur, Perth, Adelaide and, appropriately enough, Tasmania (which is what will take over Launceston and Hobart when they hear her play!). Meanwhile I missed Philippe Graffin's performance of the piece in its pre-Kreislerised version in Liverpool with the RLPO and Tod Handley on Thursday night. I had to give about a talk about Schumann and Brahms down the road in Manchester at the same time - this went well, by the way. It was in the Bridgewater Hall, one of my favourite venues, combining good modern design, excellent acoustics and a relatively intimate atmosphere. My fellow Indy journalist Lynne Walker and I discussed the cross-currents between the composers and persuaded the resident CD player to cooperate with illustrations now and then.

I'm still overwhelmed with relief when I walk on to a concert platform and find that I do not have to play a piano.

Sevdah at the Barbican

Next week (1 June) the Bosnian sevdah singer Amira is playing the Barbican, part of a celebration of Gypsy (and Gypsy-influenced) music and film. She's also at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester the next day. Good piece about her in today's Guardian:

All who survive a war remain scarred, each in their own way. For Amira, who was studying economics when Yugoslavia brutally disintegrated, war pushed her into song. And not just any song, but sevdah, the ancient lyric ballad of Bosnia. Sevdah - the word is Turkish and suggests desire, yearning, thwarted love - has existed for hundreds of years in this region, often composed of just a voice and a saz (a Turkish lute). Yet it took Bosnia's suffering to focus the world's attention on this small nation's music. Sevdah bears comparison to Portuguese fado and Spanish flamenco; all three are vocal arts rooted in Arabic courtly love songs from a millennium ago. Amira, who comes to the UK for the first time this week and whose debut album, Rosa, is a recording of startling beauty, looks set to do for sevdah what rising Portuguese star Mariza has done for fado.

I am going to Bosnia on 7 June and will hopefully be learning much more about sevdah, the war and musical healing.

Cheers!

Big cheers for shoutout to Stephen Pollard who, along with the tremendous Clive Davis, has now had his blog taken under the fold of The Spectator. His opinion is that here we do what we say on the tin. And he's got an eye for La bloggerissima Opera Chic too.