'Klinghoffer' opens tonight

...so John Adams came to London a day early and English National Opera held a Friends event at which artistic director John Berry interviewed him about his life and work. I went along to listen.

A thoroughly entertaining discussion: although he must have been extremely jet-lagged, the jokes flowed free and fast, if with serious points behind them. Audience member: "Was there any moment in your career when you felt able to say to yourself, 'Now I am a successful composer'?" Adams: "Possibly last Tuesday...but by Wednesday it was all gone."

The production, by Tom Morris - of War Horse fame (and more) - promises to be much more naturalistic than some of the other stagings over the years. Except, of course, for Penny Woolcock's screen version, which was shown on Channel 4 some years ago. It was filmed aboard a ship and the performers had to be shown how to hold and fire Kalashnikovs. "That was a bit too naturalistic for me," said John Adams. "Oh," said John Berry, "we're doing that as well."

Fascinating, also, to learn that originally Adams had planned the story of the hijacking and murder to occupy only the first half of the opera, with the second half a political black comedy featuring Margaret Thatcher and co. But when he began to compose the opening chorus, he realised that he had something altogether more serious in hand.

He was frank in describing his working relationship with Alice Goodman, the librettist, as stormy - "it made the Israeli-Palestinian situation look like a love-fest!" - and gave us a taste of the most difficult line of poetry he's ever had to set. It's in the captain's scene, when he reflects on the pleasures of being alone with the waves and time to think, though couched in somewhat different language. Listen out for it.

Interesting insights, too, into Adams's background and the attitude during his upbringing towards his hopes of becoming a composer. When he started out (he has just turned 65) it was, he thinks, almost impossible to contemplate a career writing music full-time; that situation has changed considerably over the decades. Nevertheless, he remarked, his parents never tried to push him towards a proper job like law or medicine; they wanted him to be an artist. He says that he always feels strange writing his occupation as "composer" on landing cards at airports, et al, and wonders if the immigration official will say "Composer?...just step over here a minute, sir..." - but for one occasion in the UK when the guy said to him, "Oh, I love Harmonium..."

One audience member asked him what he would have done had he not been a composer. Adams looked momentarily stumped - he eventually said that he enjoys writing, has a blog, has written a book and writes book reviews for the New York Times "because it's fun", so could have contemplated "something literary". But I think it's clear that his vocation as composer is so much part and parcel of who he is that he couldn't really imagine life without it at all.

Full production details and booking here.

I took along my CD of Klinghoffer for him to sign. And, dear reader, though I blush at such immodesty as to tell you what followed, the great composer then thanked me for the piece I wrote in the Independent the other week and said that it was the most eloquent article about Klinghoffer he had read in years. Dear reader, this does not happen every day. I guess that must be how Julius Korngold felt when Brahms got in touch (though hopefully any resemblance stops there). Here is the article again, in case you missed it.

And here is a trailer from ENO in which director Tom Morris talks about the work - followed, below, by extracts from, and reactions to, the dress rehearsal.

British Transport Police seeks violin stolen from Putney train

A member of the Aurora Orchestra was travelling with a lot of luggage on a London-Putney train from Waterloo when her violin was taken from the overhead rack. British Transport Police have released a CCTV image of a person they are seeking in connection with the incident. Here's their press release:

23 Feb 2012 12:10

CCTV released after man takes £25k violin from luggage rack – London Waterloo/Putney

 

British Transport Police (BTP) detectives are appealing for witnesses to come forward after a man took a violin from the luggage rack of the 07:45 London Waterloo to Putney service, on Wednesday, 8 February.
Investigators have also released CCTV of a man pictured carrying the violin, which was taken between 7.45am and 8am.

Detective Sergeant Pete Thrush, the officer leading the investigation, is appealing for the man to come forward as he may have key information regarding the whereabouts of the instrument:

“The victim, a 30-year-old woman from Lewisham, had boarded the service carrying a lot of other luggage so had stored her violin in the overhead rack of the train. But as she rose to leave the service a short while later at Putney station she noticed her violin was missing from the luggage racks.

“I have since viewed CCTV from on board the train and at the station which shows a man taking it from the racks before leaving the train at Whitton rail station in Hounslow, carrying the violin.

“The primary focus of our investigation is to get these very precious items returned to their rightful owner.

“The missing violin, which is thought to be worth in the region of £25,000, was stored inside a small black Gewa violin case. The violin is modern, but made to look antique, light in colour and made by Frederic Chaudiere, with wording inside it reading ‘Frederic Chaudiere Fecit Montpellieranno 2011’. It has Infeld purple strings and a gold Olive E string, and the case also contained a Tim Bakergold bow. “

DS Thrush said that after making local enquiries he is now appealing for the public’s help to return the violin to its owner:

“This was a very busy carriage, so I am certain that someone will have seen something, if you did, I am urging you to come forward and speak with police.

"Although the violin and the bow are extremely valuable, I want to stress that their sell-on value is practically nil because they are so unique. It would be very easy for an arts or antiques dealer to recognise them as stolen property, meaning they couldn’t be sold for anything near to their true value.

“The loss of this violin has more than monetary value to the victim who, as you can imagine, is traumatised to have lost it.

"I appeal to those who have these items, or anyone who has any knowledge of their whereabouts, to come forward so they can be returned to their rightful owner."

Anyone with information should contact BTP on Freefone 0800 40 50 40 quoting reference B6/LSA of 21/02/12.

Cats and mermaids take over Covent Garden

I went to have a sneak peek behind the scenes at the Royal Opera House the other week, where they were rehearsing Rusalka. The Dvorak masterpiece is new to the ROH - this will be its first-ever staging there - and the production by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito, first seen in Salzburg, looks to be ever so slightly startling. Here is my piece about it from today's Independent. And below the video is the full director's cut.

I’m all for cats at the opera. Toy ones, giant ones, glove puppets, real ones (well, maybe not – they’re not renowned for doing as they’re told) – a fuzzy feline will always raise a smile. But isn’t there something alarming about it when a mermaid meets one? We all know what cats do to fish. It looks as if that might happen to the unfortunate Rusalka, the eponymous heroine of Dvorák’s post-Wagnerian take on The Little Mermaid, in the opera’s first-ever production at the Royal Opera House.

Rusalka is a grand-scale epic, a seriously dark fairy tale, its ending notable for its bleak lack of redemption. A co-production with the Salzburg Festival, Covent Garden’s staging is headed by the long-established directorial duo of Yossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito, with Samantha Seymour as revival director. They have clearly been having some fun transforming Dvorák’s bizarrely neglected masterpiece for the age of postmodern regietheater, or ‘director’s opera’. And, filled as it is with Freudian subtexts and timeless mythical symbols, Rusalka must be an absolute peach of a job.

I meet Morabito and Seymour at the end of a long rehearsal day on the set at the ROH. Bright, surreal couches are in view: in their interpretation, the last act takes place in a type of brothel – an American-style one, Seymour assures me. A glance at photographs of other scenes reveals a lavish wedding dress for Rusalka, a dishevelled witch in pop-socks, large and threatening crosses, a lot of blood – and a giant cat, played by a dancer. In this opera the human world has much the effect on the supernatural side of Rusalka that the cat would have upon the fish tail.

“Everybody knows the Andersen tale of The Little Mermaid,” says Morabito. “We are trying to go with that and to be playful with it. We decided, together with the designer, not to have a naturalistic setting in a wood, but still to try to evoke a summer night’s dream atmosphere, which is a part of the score that you can’t just ignore.” The physical sets are complemented by film projections, which apparently include a jellyfish floating past during Rusalka’s famous ‘Song to the Moon’.

Controversy is still king in opera in Germany and Austria; regietheater holds strong sway. Typically, responses to this production’s unveiling in Salzburg in 2008 were polarised. “Wieler and Morabito tell Rusalka as a gripping narrative of magic realism with every theatrical means at their disposal...heart-rending yet oddly exhilarating,” said one UK reviewer. But a critic from the US, where tastes are generally more conservative, objected to a production he termed “ugly in mind, spirit and soul.” London audiences must make up their own minds.

It seems odd that Rusalka – based on a universally known story and written by a composer whose Symphony No.9 ‘From the New World’ is the ultimate popular classic – should be new to the UK’s leading opera house. Perhaps its sinister qualities and tragic conclusion have proved daunting; or perhaps it is too derivative of Wagner (the opening, starring three nymphs and a water goblin, parallels Das Rheingold, while the final scene has something in common with Tristan und Isolde). Then there’s the awkwardness of singing in Czech. And there’s the paradox that the heroine, struck mute by the witch, sings not one note for half of the second act.

There could be another strand to its long absence from international stages. Fairy tales are dark by nature: the more alarming their imagery, on the whole, the better they address our psychological depths. Many adaptations try to neutralise this bite and replace it with cutesiness. But in Rusalka, Dvorák, writing in 1900, did exactly the opposite. Andersen’s already pain-filled The Little Mermaid is only its starting point.

His nameless Prince is a defiant, screwed-up wastrel who betrays Rusalka with ease, before going mad with grief. Rusalka herself journeys from young, infatuated girl to passionate woman suffering horribly for the sake of love; from there she becomes a supernatural sprite, denied rest or salvation for eternity, her only mission to lure men to their deaths. Jezibaba the witch is vicious and cruel in the extreme, complete with that sidekick cat, who is in the text.

“The little Rusalka we see at the beginning has a toy cat: it is funny that this fishwoman loves a toy cat,” says Morabito. “Then in the scene with the witch, it transforms into a cruel monster which transforms her and gives her legs instead of her fish tail.” Seymour adds: “It’s very ambivalent: it has sexual elements and is horrific, but at the same time Rusalka really wants this to happen to her.” But in act III, says Morabito, when the foresaken Rusalka goes back to Jezibaba in the brothel, “there is a cat sitting next to her – it is privileged to sit next to the Madame – and that is when Rusalka realises she is trapped and she commits suicide.”

In Dvorák, there is no suicide. Morabito and his team have Rusalka kill herself rather than face a degrading life; thus they transform her into an ‘undead’ vampiric figure – a concept far from out of place in the legends of eastern Europe. There is nothing gratuitous about this interpretation, Morabito insists: “We always develop the aesthetic of a production out of the interpretation of the written and musical text. Here it was a question of achieving a very careful balance.”

Ultimately, he adds, Rusalka is “a modern fairy tale with wonderful late-romantic music. It’s an incredibly colourful score, permeated by a deep sadness. Dvorák takes elements of Czech folk music and a strong influence from Wagner, then melds them together in his characteristic style.” What would he say to those who, like that American critic, just want a traditional fairy-tale, with mermaids, wood nymphs and visual enchantment? “We have them!” he insists. “We have mermaids. We have a giant cat...”

Rusalka opens at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 27 February. Camilla Nylund stars as the eponymous heroine and Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducts. Box office: 020 7304 4000

BREAKING NEWS: New chief conductor for BBC Symphony Orchestra is...

...It's Sakari Oramo. Rumblings yesterday about "a Finn" have left little surprise about this. Want to see who's about to be announced when an appointment's in the offing? Check who's been working with the orchestra recently, matches the nationality in question and got great reviews. Oramo was in town for a Sibelius cycle with the BBCSO in the autumn and the critics glowed with many-starred write-ups.

This is seriously good news for orchestra and conductor alike. Look at Oramo's track record with the CBSO: the odds were stacked against him when he took over from Rattle, yet he brought in a batonprint all his own, championing much British music - including resuscitating, almost single-handedly, the reputation of the long-lost John Foulds. He is a lovely character and a terrific musician: a Finn in tune with Britain, British music (he won the Elgar Medal in 2008) and contemporary music, all important concerns with the BBCSO. Read more about it here.

Hello, is that the Paradise Garden? Please could I speak to Ken Russell?

Come back, Ken Russell, and please, please have another shot at Debussy? My latest post for The Spectator Arts Blog casts an eye over the late, great filmmaker's approach to two of this year's big anniversary boys: Delius and Debussy. One worked. The other didn't, but should have. Read the whole thing here.