It's all going nuts at the ballet

Wall-to-wall Nutcrackers this year, left, right, centre, north and over the Pond too. I mean, how many do we need? My article asking this is in today's Independent (and this morning it has made it to the front page of the Indy website): http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/the-nutcracker-its-all-going-nuts-at-the-ballet-6270098.html

Meanwhile - with impeccable timing - my dear friend "Entartete Musik", aka Gavin Plumley, has started a Nutcracker advent calendar today. It's wonderful! Find it here.

Overkill? Let's add to it. Please welcome those gorgeous former Royal Ballet stars, Lesley Collier and Anthony Dowell, in the great pas de deux.

Friday Historical: In memoriam Sena Jurinac

The great soprano Sena Jurinac died earlier this week, aged 90. In this film from Glyndebourne 1955 she sings 'Porgi amor' from Le nozze di Figaro. I'd challenge anyone to find a purer and more directly from-the-heart performance anywhere.

Here is her obituary from The Guardian.



This Friday Historical is additionally dedicated by JDCMB to all those who have been forcibly separated from their loved ones.

Yes? Maybe

An intriguing evening at the world premiere of Errollyn Wallen and Bonnie Greer's Yes. 'Intriguing' because in some ways it succeeds, in others it doesn't, and some of its strengths also handspring its weaknesses. It seemed a work in progress, needing some nips, tucks and the addressing of some continuity issues.

But at its heart it strikes a deep, true chord: when Wallen is let off the leash of very short scenes and has the leisure to unfurl her best music, moments of great beauty emerge from the distillation of uncomfortable contemporary truths. How and why do we create in a world that is "baking in its own shit"? Thus the artist character, trying to work out what lies behind the "dark, malevolent" quality of what he's just painted, faces the existential question of any creative here and now, and it's a knock-em-dead performance by that brilliant, all-giving, stage-creature baritone that is Omar Ebrahim. 

A reflective ensemble number accompanied by purling strings and pizzicato almost a la Bach or Mozart proved another highlight, evoking the classical underpinning of Wallen's eclectic contemporary idioms; and the recurring, developing chorus, ratcheting the tension, helps to bind together a tricky multi-protagonist structure. Wallen's music has - as it often does - empathy, riff-edged sophistication, high intelligence and, best of all, a big, strong heart. And much of the singing was spectacular.

The problems are that mosaic structure and the staging. The latter first: the Linbury is opened up and the black and white stage is in the centre with seats on both sides. The singers must address one side, then the other and whichever you're on, you tend to miss the words when performers' backs are turned. The brevity of the scenes and the inevitable awkwardness of moving quickly from one to the next means that the flow of drama and music is constantly interrupted, and punctuation by supposed news announcements - delivered in a tone that is unfortunately more Open University than Newsnight - do little to help. Just when you think it's getting off the ground, it stops again.

There's one format in which Yes would work brilliantly. It is TV. On film you could project writing instead of the spoken announcements, create an unbroken musical web that slides easily from scene to scene without interruption and develop each character that much more; at the moment we can only see a tantalising glimmer of them. 

Greer's libretto may at times feel difficult - the words of John Stuart Mill don't lend themselves especially well to singing, and using terms like "relevance" and "diversity" risks missing the mark in the context of operatic drama rather than commentary from outside. But the threads and connections build: the phone call from Greer's mother, talking about stargazing, finds an echo in the final words from the white grandson of an East Ender. Greer's mother says, "Nobody does that but us", yet this child from another place, another culture and a family of another mindset proves that in fact...we're all the same. We are all the same: we are all human beings. Why is that always the hardest lesson for us to learn?

So, in short: Yes is maybe a success in the making, it has some wonderful moments, it is brilliantly sung, it could use a bit of rethinking and - perhaps appropriately for an opera based around a forthcoming TV show - it ought to be a film. Stand by for snide remarks from white males.

Saying YES

"The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race... of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth." (John Stuart Mill)

 Yes, the new opera by composer Errollyn Wallen and playwright Bonnie Greer (pictured: Errollyn, left, and Bonnie, in rehearsals), opens tonight at the ROH Linbury Studio. It's the story of the run-up to Bonnie's appearance on the BBC's Question Time alongside...That Politician. What emerged from her experience is a picture of the state of the nation: how we see ourselves, our country, our fellow human beings and freedom of speech. My article about it is in today's Independent. As we point out in the feature, it's not every day you hear the words of John Stuart Mill being sung at Covent Garden.

Here's a taster, from Bonnie:

"Any organisations or groups of people that prevent others from expressing a legitimate opinion, whether in print or in person, are absolute enemies of democracy...That's the reason I said yes. I'm the daughter of a man who grew up under racial segregation and couldn't speak out, so there's no way I'm going to be part of anything that won't allow a person to speak his or her mind. I think some of the great and the good were upset that I did this [appearing on Question Time]– and they were even more upset that it turned out to be OK. This is about freedom of speech and expression; about saying yes to the tumultuous nature of democracy."

Friday Historical: Stokowski conducts Nielsen

I am feeling quite fond of Denmark at present (most of you know why, I think). Here is part of a hair-raising, gut-grabbing performance of that Great Dane Carl Nielsen's Symphony No.2 with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski. This was 1967, Stokowski was 85 and it was the first time he had tackled the work.

I've been promised some good seafood and a Sarah Lund sweater when I go over soon. Unfortunately the largish pack of thermal stuff I ordered from Uniqlo has vanished into thin air in transit, though naturally my credit card has been charged. Perhaps someone in the delivery company has to go to Denmark too? It's cold out there. Dear readers, here is my lesson for you this week: use your internet to read my blog, but not to place orders for anything that requires manual delivery after payment.