McBurney's Mozart is a Flute for our times

Before we get down to business with Simon McBurney's production of The Magic Flute, here's 2 1/2p about opera in translation. The raison d'etre of ENO is to perform opera in the vernacular. But London today is such a cosmopolitan city that the concept is starting to look outdated. Yesterday The Magic Flute was in English; but the main language in the foyer seemed to be Hungarian.

That was because the holder of ENO's Mackerras Conducting Fellowship was on the podium for a performance for the first time: Gergely Madaras, 28, from Budapest. He has been working at ENO alongside Ed Gardner, being mentored and nurtured. Perhaps The Magic Flute isn't an ideal debut opera - but his conducting was full of vim and whoosh, extremely alive, well-balanced and tender-hearted. It took a little while to "settle" - there were one or two little disagreements over tempo between pit and stage, and a few moments needed a tad more time to breathe. But that will go, in due course, and on the whole Madaras seems a careful accompanist and a fine, full-spirited musician. I look forward to hearing more of him.

So to Flute - a production on which many expectations hang, since it replaces Nicholas Hytner's classic of 25 years or more. It could scarcely be more different. And it could scarcely be more enchanting, more contemporary, more inspired. Flute has been my most-loved opera since childhood, yet I found things in it yesterday that I've never seen or heard before, in the best possible way.

It has been described as the most demanding production ENO has yet staged. Sometimes its effects are stunning: the writhing snake that attacks Tamino is filmed and projected around him; and during the trials the prince and princess swim through a mid-air, hand-drawn spiral, as if starring in Titanic (above). The Temple of Reason emerges from a shelf of giant books; their pages become Papageno's fluttering birds, wielded by 14 actors (below). The Queen of the Night - confined for much of the show to a wheelchair - sings amid a breathing, trembling aura of stars. Moreover, much action takes place on a platform that swings, dips and tips, leaving the singers to balance, pace, slide when necessary and, of course, sing some jolly demanding music throughout - which they managed without the merest flinch.

McBurney was new to opera when he directed the massively successful A Dog's Heart for ENO a few years ago; this is his first classic. A fascinating interview in The Guardian makes the following suggestion: "I want...to take the audience from darkness to light, to make us evolve, to end mystification and embrace reason and rationality. That, as I understand it, is what the opera is about."

It is indeed, and McBurney's staging makes its message one for today, "relevant" in a way that is revelatory and profound rather than contrived. Indeed, we've rarely needed that message as much as we do now. It's as if Mozart himself is speaking to us as spiritual leader, as prophet.

The opera has been divested of its racism and as much of its sexism as possible, and - dare I say - is the better for it. The world that the characters move in is profoundly dangerous, riven by war, delusion, superstition; the plea is for wisdom, love, enlightenment. Everything feels here and now; the crisis of humanity of which Sarastro speaks is our own; everything seems real, the more apparently illogical the truer to life - and, moreover, true to the timeless heart of Mozart's vision.

[Dear Simon, please will you do Parsifal next, then the Ring cycle? Lots of love, Jess x.] 

In this process of "becoming"; everyone evolves, not only Tamino in his quest for initiation or Pamina in her growth from projected image - literally shining onto Tamino's heart while he sings his great aria - to mature and devoted woman. The magic instruments are played by members of the orchestra, the flautist walking on stage to stand alongside Tamino, the magic bells rendered on a keyboard from a corner of the pit where Papageno can interact suitably (the orchestra is raised so that it is just a notch below the stage).

But Papageno gradually learns to play them himself. Unpacking his parcel of food and wine, he creates a row of bottles which he empties - and in one case, er, fills - to reach the right pitch, and uses them to accompany the start of 'Ein mädchen oder weibchen'. "My old friend Chateauneuf du Pape..." he quips, then wonders if his "friend"'s family is present. Sure enough, inside the basket he finds more bottles. "Ahh, here's Auntie Angela and Uncle Roberto. Better keep those two apart!" - with which he places them at either end of the row. (Apologies to my neighbours in the theatre - I may have squawked...) Anyhow, by the time we get to 'Klinge, glöckchen, klinge', Papageno can tickle the ivories perfectly well and the keyboard player, striding on stage to be his sidekick, is put out to find her services aren't required.

Major plaudits to a terrific cast. Ben Johnson is a superb Tamino - his voice better suited to this role than it was to Alfredo in La Traviata - open-toned, focused and deeply musical. Devon Guthrie's feisty, heart-breaking Pamina matched him turn for turn. Roland Wood's Papageno - from Blackburn? - was a delight. McBurney has him carting a ladder around and from time to time he climbs it to escape something that alarms him, as if fleeing from a mouse. The introduction of a cuckoo noise into his first aria is naughty and rather delicious. James Creswell is an ideal Sarastro and Cornelia Götz a mostly strong Queen of the Night - and I love it that she is redeemed at the conclusion. Pamina doesn't often get her mother back.

Just one other perennial bugbear. The orchestra plays in that contemporary, standardised, "listen!-we-play-18th-century-music-without-vibrato" sound that always has been at odds with that of the human voice, and will always remain so.

In 100 years' time, assuming anyone still remembers who Mozart was, some scholar, assuming scholars still exist, may undertake a research project, assuming research still exists, about The Magic Flute. Of course they will be shocked to see the long hushed-up original text. But where the music is concerned, they might try a daring experiment: have the strings play with vibrato, just once, just to see what happens. And they will be astonished by how beautiful it sounds. And they will look at our generations' reasons for stopping the vibrato. And they will laugh.

RIP Bernard Roberts (1933-2013)

This week the music world mourns one of Britain's best-loved pianists, Bernard Roberts, who has died at the age of 80. He was an infectiously lively and colourful performer, a brilliant and sensitive chamber musician (we used to hear him often in his trio with Manoug Parikian and Amaryllis Fleming), and a sought-after teacher, not least for his energetic masterclasses. Here is a vivid obituary from the Telegraph.

I well remember taking part in one that he gave at Dartington in 1984. He didn't like my Schubert, but I didn't want to play it the way he wanted me to (oh, youth...). He wanted some flexibility and a bit of up-tempo for a modicum of oomph. He was right. The trouble was that everything he told me was the diametric opposite of what my teacher at the time had said, which can be muddling if you're a teenager. He had explained, of course, in the nicest, most positive way, but I was upset and spent a good while pondering his advice, my own reaction and the underlying causes. I think it was as a direct result of that encounter that I decided to leave the teacher I was with and find someone less dogged and dogmatic, and ultimately ended up with the amazing Joan Havill.

Here he is playing the last movement of Beethoven's Op.109. Listen to that tone.

Invitation to drinks & books on Friday

JDCMB readers are warmly invited to a drinks party on Friday at Houben's Bookshop, 2 Church Court, Richmond (about 5 mins from Richmond station) to mark the start of the ALICIA'S GIFT Concert tour-ette. 6.30pm-7.30pm and copies of the book will be on sale, as will concert tickets. Space is limited, so please call to book your place! 020 8940 1055 or 07889 399 862. 

A concert trailer is here, with Viv McLean playing Rhapsody in Blue: http://jessicamusic.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/a-trailer-for-alicias-gift-concert.html

Gubaidulina speaks

As The Rest is Noise at Southbank Centre reached the 1970s, the composer Sofia Gubaidulina arrived to talk to us about spirituality in music. With Dr Marina Frolova-Walker from Cambridge to translate for her, this living legend spoke not only of those times but current ones as well; and she articulated some deep-seated truths about composition and culture that I suspect many of us sense but could scarcely express so well. Today, Gubaidulina said, is the most dangerous time humanity has ever faced, because we are facing "the global impoverishment of the human soul". We are in danger of losing the most human part of ourselves.

Art, she suggested, is always spiritual, because it springs from the subconscious, intuitive part of the mind. It reconnects us with a higher power, the higher part of our own spirit. This also serves as a moral force: she suggested that those who have lost touch with this aspect of art/culture exist without the knowledge of humanity's sensible limits, and she added that she sees such people around her all the time. Art, however, can be our "salvation".

As the space for the quiet, intuitive, spiritual self is eaten up by the ever-increasing flow of technology, information and the superficial part of the intellect, so that aspect of ourselves reduces until we risk losing it altogether. And that is what's dangerous. Along with the fact that art cannot exist without support, which means there must be people/organisations who believe in it enough to provide that support, if it is to survive...

The talk should in due course be available to listen to on the TRIN website and I'll post a link when it is up. Read more about Gubaidulina in this wonderful interview, and don't miss her violin concerto, 'Offertorium', which is to be performed on Wednesday night at the RFH, along with three works by Arvo Pärt.

Sizzling Vespers at ROH

A last-minute invitation to the Royal Opera House's Great Big Verdi Bicentenary Production yesterday was more than welcome. Yet it conspired with blocked local train lines and slow rush-hour tubes to ensure that I arrived a hair's breadth before curtain up for an opera I didn't know, without having had time to read the story.

What a marvellous way to listen. You wouldn't look up the plot before attending a film, would you? If someone gave you a programme containing a synopsis, indeed, you might be cross. You'd call it a 'spoiler'. OK, some operas are so convoluted that we might need a little help. After our 20th Marriage of Figaro, we might have unravelled the plot enough to have some idea of what's going on. But in the era of surtitles, and of certain directors who actually know how to tell a good story when they get the chance, do we still need advance briefing? The only giveaway, in this state of blissful ignorance at a grand-scale, nearly-four-hour romantic roller-roaster, was knowing that the finish time would be 9.50pm. If hero and heroine start singing happy wedding songs at 9.20pm, you can bet your bottom dollar it's all going to go horribly wrong.

Robert McKee, Hollywood screenwriting story guru par excellence, might be impressed with certain part of this plot. Who could imagine a greater conflict for our young hero, Henri? He is a rebel; he discovers his father is the local dictator; and he has to choose between his newly discovered instinctive feel for his dad, aka Guy de Montfort, and the rebel duchess whom he loves, Helene. Montfort wants to kill Helene, having already killed her brother, but after Henri cracks and obediently calls him "mon pere", he changes his mind and insists that she and Henri marry. Yet the leader of the rebels, Procida - vengeful after the psychologically muddled Henri has betrayed him - declares that their wedding bells will be the signal to unleash a massacre. All of this takes place against background conflict of occupation, wanton cruelty and simmering revolt.

Stefan Herheim's production contains a few absolute masterstrokes. In the prologue, a ballet class is in progress. Soldiers burst in, taunt the girls, abduct them. Montfort chooses one and commits violent rape. The act is witnessed by the ballet master, powerless to help his dancer. He is Procida and becomes the rebel leader after years in exile - and you know exactly where he found his motivation. The rape victim demonstrates to her attacker what is about to happen: evoked in ballet, we see the pregnancy, the baby, the mother and child. The little boy will become Henri. Ballet is a vital part of the storytelling throughout, representing Henri's mother and her appalling history as a vital presence while the action progresses. The details are superb: for instance it's clear that the ballet girls in the crowd recognise, love and respect Procida for his original incarnation in their own world. And we see, on Procida's return to his studio, exactly how the rape of his dancer has become equated in his mind with the rape of his country.

The designs by Philipp Fürhofer are big, bold, convincing. Michael Volle as Montfort virtually stole the show; Bryan Hymel - the current high-register, French-conversant tenor du jour - was often beautiful in tone, but a little underpowered and, as actor, slightly wooden within a drama where so much was detailed and realistic. Lianna Haroutounian (replacing Marina "Popsy" Poplavskaya), matched him well; again, a voice that is basically gorgeous and has much character and distinction, yet perhaps not quite large enough in such a vast-scale opera. Erwin Schrott as Procida seethed, fumed and loomed - though personally I wouldn't have chosen to bring him on in a dress at that particular moment in the last act (and another touch that proved uncomfortable was Helene's cradling - and others' footballing - of her brother's severed head). Throughout, Pappano's conducting existed in technicolour, full of razor-blade edginess and Mediterranean warmth.

As for Verdi in French - it sounds even weirder, if that's possible, than Verdi in English. But it is authentic, so... what was needed was better diction from most of the cast other than Hymel. And despite all the ballet - no actual ballet. There's around half an hour of designated ballet music in this opera and there was to have been a major collaboration on this between Royal Opera, Royal Ballet and Royal Danish Ballet. But thanks to some operatic goings-on behind the scenes some months ago, the whole thing went ballet-up. It's fine dramatically as it is, of course - probably better - but still a pity to lose that.

There are reasons, one suspects, why the opera is not presented more often: it is vintage Verdi in many ways, but the music is more generic and less distinguished than such works as Otello, Rigoletto or Falstaff, while tenors who can pull off the role of Henri are few and far between. Hymel is a godsend, in that respect. This production, despite a few inevitable flaws, seems set to become a classic that will be remembered for many years to come.

Speaking of women conductors...

...a lot of us did just that on Saturday, in a discussion that formed part of the Women of the World Festival at Southbank Centre. A sizeable and spirited group was convened from all corners of the classical music business, including a number of women conductors, composers, performers, writers, directors, educators and more. It was especially wonderful to have Marin Alsop with us. Helen Wallace has written up the event on the BBC Music Magazine website: http://www.classical-music.com/blog/why-arent-there-more-women-conductors-jude-kelly-leads-discussion-southbank-centre

Karita Mattila: Power from Start to Finnish...

Meet my latest interviewee: the astonishing Karita Mattila. "The Finnish Venus" needs no introduction except for this:

 

(A short version of this interview appeared in The Independent on 26 October. Karita Mattila sings Marie in Berg's Wozzeck at the Royal Opera House, opening 31 October.)

 

Karita Mattila is not eight feet tall, but such is the force of her presence and her voice that she almost seems it. At 53, the soprano nicknamed "the Finnish Venus" is among today's most powerful operatic stars, not only vocally, but also as a visceral actress. When she performed the final scene from Strauss's Salome at the Royal Festival Hall recently, a mesmerised audience lived the princess's horror-laden sensuality almost as voraciously as she did.

It is no wonder that opera directors often play to her strengths. “Because I’m such a physical person, they find a physical way for me to serve the character,” she says. “I understand singing, too, as a physical process, so it becomes fascinating to put those things together.”

A farmer’s daughter from rural Finland, whose career launched when she won the 1983 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, she has grown as an artist and kept on growing. The increasing range of her pure-yet-soul-shattering voice has brought thrilling new roles within her grasp. She began as a classic Mozartian. Now she is singing Marie in Berg’s Wozzeck for the first time, at the Royal Opera House: next year she is doing her first Ariadne auf Naxos and Schoenberg’s Erwartung, while Sieglinde in Wagner’s Die Walküre and the Kostelnicka in Jenufa by Janacek are in view.

She prepares her roles rigorously: “I try to do my homework,” she declares. “I think it would be an impossibility for me to go on stage and try to do a part without knowing who the character is. In a nutshell, I feel I can’t use my instrument in full if I don’t understand the dramatic background. It’s not just learning your part and knowing the story; you read and you listen to all the material you can get these days. I think it’s wonderful we have everything in the Internet – you can read all kinds of analysis. Then you go to the rehearsals and hope that the director and the conductor are well prepared too – which,” she adds darkly, “is not always the case.”

You wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of this lady. “I work hard before I come to rehearsals, so I’m quite demanding towards the others,” she says. “I demand so much of myself because I know my level and it’s very hard for me to reach it, so I’m expecting everyone else to do their homework too. I’m sure there are directors or conductors who think I’m a piece of work. But you know, I am the most willing tool – if I am convinced that the person who is about to direct me or conduct knows what they are doing.”

Despite that, she insists she has only ever walked out once for anything but health reasons: “It was a concert, a performance of Strauss’s Four Last Songs. The conductor not only mocked me in front of the whole orchestra, but tried to blackmail me into doing something that it had been agreed I wouldn’t do, a recording on the morning of the performance. At first I thought, ‘Oh, he sounds like my father’ and didn’t walk out – but I realised I could not be at the mercy of a conductor whose goal is not the music, but a personal putting-down.” It was a traumatic moment. “Luckily I was old enough and experienced enough to come to terms with the idea that those kind of fossils, those kind of dinosaurs, still exist. And they will soon be dead.”

She pinpoints a few key moments that inspired her and opened up new vistas: “When I did my first Fidelio with Jürgen Flimm directing, at the Met in New York, I went out of the first rehearsal determined that I was going to cut my hair and dye it brown!” Leonore in Fidelio is desperately misunderstood too often, she insists: “Flimm made her this wonderful woman, so moving, so bright, so brave. But there are so many chauvinist directors -  maybe it’s this patriarchal society, that the directors are in their own prison with their ideas! I remember reading such crap analyses written by such men, who didn’t have a clue about Fidelio. There were even women who thought ‘Leonore is so ruthless’!” Now Mattila is on fire: “As if you wouldn’t be ruthless when your husband is in jail and it’s up to you to save him! Any woman in love with her husband would do anything for that!”

Many might modestly put enduring success down to good fortune, but Mattila insists that it’s plain hard work. “My big film idol, Jeremy Irons, once said in an interview that the people who succeed are the ones who work a little harder. They put a little more of themselves into things, they make more sacrifices and they don’t even think about it. That’s exactly how I feel. Yes, you have to be lucky, and I’ve been lucky to be in the right place at the right time and to have the type of voice that I have – but luck alone wouldn’t have got me to the place I’m in now. I’m proud of this wonderful life.”

WQXR takes up fanfare for the uncommon woman conductor

I've just taken part in a discussion for WQXR's programme Conducting Business on the topic of women conductors, together with Emmanuelle Haim, artists manager Charlotte Lee and the station's presenter Naomi Lewin. It feels a bit weird to speak on New York radio from the comfort of my study (cat confined to kitchen to avoid him inadvertently making his NY debut) - anyway, it was an interesting talk with some fascinating perspectives emerging. Here is the article on the website, and the resulting podcast is embedded below.

Solti statue for Budapest

The Ferenc Liszt Academy in Budapest, which is currently enjoying celebrations of its reopening after a major refurbishment, has put up a symbolic statue of Sir Georg Solti, an alumnus of the place. In the picture, Lady Valerie Solti is on the podium at the unveiling. More info here, in Hungarian. Solti studied at the Liszt Academy with Bartok, Dohnanyi and Kodaly, among others.

Google Translate says, rather touchingly: "...fulfillment of an old dream that the name of Sir Georg Solti takes up a small restaurant in the academy." I'm not sure that's quite what it means, but the great man might have enjoyed that. 

Meanwhile, back to Brum for the second of my Mendelssohn talks. Today's topic: Mendelssohn, Queen Victoria and more... Kick-off at 1pm in the Birmingham Town Hall. At 2.15pm the CBSO plays the symphonies nos 1 and 3 and the Piano Concerto No.2 with Martin Helmchen. Ed Gardner conducts.

Felix is back...

I'm preoccupied with Felix Mendelssohn at the moment. Right now, am between the first two of three pre-concert talks that I'm giving for the CBSO's Mendelssohn symphonies series, which is being conducted by Ed Gardner, and the glories of the music seem endless - galvanising, thrilling, visceral, quicksilver. There's nobody like Felix. Yet I'm still gnashing teeth with frustration over the way that those old slanders keep getting repeated and repeated and repeated, often by people who ought to know better.

The view of Felix as glib and shallow needs to be scotched once and for all. It comes from Wagner, who was finding reasons to damn the Jewish-born composer with rootless-Cosmopolitan syndrome. Poor old Felix was excoriated on the one hand by certain Jewish lobbies for having abandoned his faith - like he had much choice, as his parents converted and had him baptised when he was about six years old; and condemned on the other hand by anti-Semitic musicologists for the sake of it.

Glib, nothing. He was a perfectionist; he took years to polish up some of his smoothest-sounding works, among them the 'Italian Symphony' and the Violin Concerto. Even the Octet, that utterly perfect masterpiece, didn't emerge that was first go when Felix was 16, as is often thought. Yes, he was lucky, privileged, well-educated, deeply cultured; yes, he was a favourite of Queen Victoria; no, he was not spoiled, nor was he immune to suffering, as the Jenny Lind story has proved.

In my talk the other day, on Saturday afternoon, I suggested that Mendelssohn is, as Peter Maxwell Davies has called him, "the Prophet of Light": the ultimate enlightened musician, grandson of Moses Mendelssohn - philosopher father of the Jewish Enlightenment - in every way, a man and musician who reconciled apparently conflicting ideas as if they barely existed. Thus he's the shining beacon that proves to us that such a thing is possible.

Come along to Birmingham Town Hall on Thursday at 1pm for the next episode, in which I'll be looking at Mendelssohn and Victorian Britain - from the very stage on which he conducted the world premiere of Elijah. Ed and the orchestra will perform a wonderful programme including the 'Scottish' Symphony and the Piano Concerto No.2, with Martin Helmchen - another work written specially for premiere in Birmingham.

Meanwhile, have a listen to the Ebene Quartet's marvellous recording of the Mendelssohn siblings, Felix and Fanny. Anyone who needs reminding that Mendelssohn was as prone to crises of the soul as anybody who ever lived simply needs to hear the F minor Quartet. End of story.

A trailer for the ALICIA'S GIFT concert

Here is my Alicia's Gift Concert partner, Viv McLean, playing Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which will feature in our programme in a big way. This was at the gorgeous 12th-century church of St Mary's, Perivale, where the tireless Hugh Mather runs an exceptional concert series - Viv is a regular there. Enjoy.

Alicia's Gift will be at St Mary's on 8 December, but don't forget we kick off on 9 November at the Musical Museum, Brentford, with Kensington & Chelsea Music Society to follow on 13 November, Vernon Ellis's Queen's Gate Terrace salon on 27th, and finally before Xmas a performance for our North London fans at Burgh House, Hampstead, on 15 December.

Benjamin Grosvenor at the Wigmore Hall - review

My review of Benjamin Grosvenor's astonishing recital on Monday night, for International Piano Magazine. Contains names I do not throw around without seriously good reason.

http://www.rhinegold.co.uk/magazines/international_piano/news/int_piano_news_story.asp?id=1873

The concert went out live on BBC Radio 3 and is available to listen to on the iPlayer for the rest of the week: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03cnd6y

Enjoy!

More precious than rubies

Who can find a virtuous woman? And what does "virtue" mean? I had a fascinating talk with Fiona Shaw, who is directing Britten's The Rape of Lucretia for Glyndebourne Touring Opera. The first night is on Saturday and the cast includes Kate Valentine and Allan Clayton/Andrew Dickinson as the Choruses, Claudia Huckle as Lucretia and Duncan Rock as Tarquinius, among others. Part of the interview appeared in The Independent the other day, and here is the director's cut...




Fiona Shaw is worried about our view of “virtuous” women of stage, page and history. Earlier this year, the renowned Irish actress and director took the role of the Virgin Mary on Broadway; but the production, Colm Tóibín’s play The Testament of Mary, sparked protests outside the theatre by members of the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property.

“Who is the Virgin Mary? We discovered her to be a mother very angry about her son being crucified,” Shaw says. “But apparently it is sacrilege to suggest that a ‘virtuous’ woman is more interesting than the bland version that’s been handed down to us.”

This is a concept more than pertinent to Shaw’s latest project: she is staging Britten’s chamber opera The Rape of Lucretia for Glyndebourne Touring Opera. Its storyline is outwardly simple, but the emotions behind it are anything but; and its final attempt to extrapolate meaning from tragedy heightens its ambiguities. 

The story is based on a Roman legend that has been reinterpreted in many forms over the centuries. The army officers have tested their wives’ fidelity in their absence; only Lucretia, wife of the general Collatinus, has emerged untainted. This provokes jealousy among the soldiers whose spouses have strayed. To test her virtue, or indeed to prove it, the prince Tarquinius visits Lucretia’s house by night and eventually rapes her. When Collatinus returns he places no blame on his devastated wife; but rather than live under such a shadow, she takes her own life. 

“What is virtue?” Shaw demands. “It’s interesting that we meet Lucretia when she is at her most frustrated and fed up, with her husband away. ‘Virtue’ is nothing to do with not being frustrated, or with not having another glass of wine because you want to stay up; after all, it’s also virtuous to want to be awake because you can’t bear to go to bed without your husband. That doesn’t come in any guise of prudery. Lucretia’s an immediate person, not a saint.” The central role is sung by the mezzo-soprano Claudia Huckle, who will, Shaw says, give a “feisty” interpretation.

The opera, which was premiered at Glyndebourne itself in 1946, must have been shocking in its day, when rape was very much a taboo subject. “I find it quite shocking still,” Shaw remarks. “It’s painful, what is being exposed, and the music is so brilliantly constructed that you feel pierced by it. It leaves Mozart standing, some of it.”

Nevertheless, the composer – famously homosexual in an era when this was still illegal – was not always at his best when creating female characters. His finest are often motherly figures, like the Governess in The Turn of the Screw; but his Queen Elizabeth I in Gloriana never becomes as real as the eponymous heroes of Peter Grimes and Billy Budd, outsiders amid hostile societies that reject their troubled or non-conforming visions of life. Lucretia is often regarded as his one truly convincing heroine; and Britten and his librettist, the poet Ronald Duncan, provide her with a wealth of concealed or unconscious depths, desires and conflicts. 

“Britten is so good at dealing with the most complex issue: what is it to have secret desires and be punished for it?” Shaw says. She has no doubt that in the opera the rape is precisely that: Lucretia refuses Tarquinius at every turn, is ultimately forced, and the act drives her to suicide. Yet there is still a suggestion of an attraction to him, upon which she refuses to let herself act. “What a hell to be put through: to be forced to do something that your moral sense would make you not do, but your instinct would desire you to do. In that way, with that double twist, the opera is nearer to a Greek tragedy than anything else. At the end she tells us the she knows the consequences of living now, admitting to desire – not to acting on desire, but to having desire – would be a blemish on her marriage. So she’s the most honourable person – and the opera throws a little light on a very dark part of our psyches.

“Britten is looking under the stone and seeing the muddy waters that lie beneath us all, maybe beneath morality itself,” she continues. “The Greeks were very good at this – but the notion of Christianity is that Jesus looked with compassion at us, but our sin is to be human, is to be flawed, is to have these contradictory feelings and try to deal with them. Lucretia is the most upright person. She is at home, passive, she made no action – but somewhere her secret desire came to her in the night. And she resisted. And yet it ruined her marriage. That’s the tragedy of it.” 

Britten adds a male and female ‘chorus’, who watch and comment on the action throughout; Shaw says that in the new production they are a present-day couple whose marriage is suffering and who work through their own issues by observing Lucretia’s story. The opera’s Christian element is articulated in their bleak yet compassionate postlude: “Is it all?” they ask.

She has introduced a further twist still: “I want it to be about the destruction of a family, not only a couple.” Lucretia and Collatinus therefore have a small daughter, an eight-year-old who witnesses the horror of her mother’s death: “It’s to do with the continuity of children; the consequences for the next generation are worth showing.” 

Lucretia, in Shaw’s opinion, is “up there with the classics,” as she declares. “It’s explores that terribly deep psychic schism that’s in us and it’s a brave and beautiful opera. Humans in it are not all terrible; Tarquinius is not a baddy and Lucretia is not a goody. That’s the beauty of opera: it allows you to meditate on the complexity of our choices. I think it’s fantastic that Britten writes so much about that. The chilly unease that he brings to most of his work is to do with the fact that the major chord of society’s vision of itself is not his experience.” 

Is Britten, then, his own outsider, that “different” figure at the heart of most of his operas? “Yes,” says Shaw. “But we all are.”

The Rape of Lucretia, Glyndebourne Touring Opera, from 19 October. Tour dates and booking online: http://glyndebourne.com/production/rape-of-lucretia-tour-2013

Fiona has also written a 'director's diary' which is out in The Guardian today.

Watch Julian Jacobson's Beethoven Marathon live today!

Assuming this works, you should be able to watch Julian Jacobson's extraordinary undertaking today - all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas in one day - in the livestream below, starting at 9.15am London time. (If for any reason it doesn't work, here is a link to one that should.) To donate to Julian's chosen charities, WaterAid and The Connection at St Martin's, please click here. And if you missed the original post, read it here.

Break a leg, Julian!

Watch live streaming video from marathonman at livestream.com

My autumn & winter schedule

Here are some dates for your diaries, fresh from my writing desk: a brand-new words&music concert, a brand-new play, more HUNGARIAN DANCES. Please come along! (The info is also in the sidebar, but certain people are telling me to put it somewhere more prominent...)

ALICIA'S GIFT: THE CONCERT OF THE NOVEL - new!

Starring Viv McLean (piano) (left) & Jessica Duchen (narrator).

A concert adaptation of my novel, lifting the lid on the world of a child prodigy pianist trying to grow up. Music includes Chopin, Debussy, Ravel, Viv's famous performance of Rhapsody in Blue, and a little surprise to end (clue: I have to practise...). News story in International Piano, here.

World premiere: 9 November, Musical Museum, Kew Bridge.To book tickets, call Houben's Bookshop, Richmond-upon-Thames, 020 8940 1055 or Yvonne Evans, 07889 399862. Ticket price includes a tour of the museum's amazing collection plus a glass of bubbly.

13 November, Kensington & Chelsea Music Society

27 November, Vernon Ellis Foundation, 49 Queen's Gate Terrace, SW7. Info from Yvonne: 07889 399862.

8 December, St Mary's, Perivale

15 December, Burgh House, Hampstead, NW3. Tickets from Yvonne: 07889 399862.

18 January, Soirees at Breinton, Woking


SINS OF THE FATHERS - new!

World premiere of my first full-length play, exploring the relationships of Wagner, Liszt and Cosima: rehearsed reading starring John Sessions (right) and Sarah Gabriel. 24 November, Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond-upon-Thames. Part of the International Wimbledon Music Festival. NB - the performance is sold out, but please watch for returns/standing room!


HUNGARIAN DANCES: THE CONCERT OF THE NOVEL

A dazzling journey in words and music through the 20th century, following the story of Mimi, a Hungarian Gypsy violinist who becomes a famous classical soloist, but at a terrible personal price... Works by Bartok, Dohnanyi, Brahms, Ravel, etc.

27 October, 7.45pm, Teesside Music Society.
Bradley Creswick (violin), Margaret Fingerhut (piano), Jessica Duchen (narrator). (Team pictured left)

27 January 2014, Hungarian Cultural Centre, Covent Garden
David Le Page (violin), Viv McLean (piano), Jessica Duchen (narrator). Special performance for International Holocaust Memorial Day.

2 March 2014, St Mary's, Perivale: again, Dave, Viv & muggins.

Marathon man and the Beethoven challenge

He says himself, "It's basically bananas". Nevertheless, the pianist Julian Jacobson is about to play all 32 Beethoven sonatas in one day. From memory. For charity. On Tuesday 15 October 2013, 9.15am – 10pm at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London. The aim is to raise money for WaterAid and St Martin-in-the-Fields’ ‘The Connection at St Martin’s’ that gives crisis grants to people in need across the UK.  You can make a donation here. 

The whole day is being live-streamed on the Internet, and (drumroll) I hope that you will be able to watch it right here on JDCMB. (This assumes that I can get the technology to work.)

What's without doubt is that Julian's a brave man. I asked him some questions...

JD: Julian, you're playing all the 32 Beethoven sonatas in one day, from memory?!? How and why did you cook up this extraordinary idea?

JJ: Thanks Jessica. Well, it's actually my third marathon - and it will almost certainly be my last! By around 2001 I had done five complete cycles over the normal seven or eight concerts (once over ten, as they were lunchtimes), from memory except that I sometimes used the score for the "Hammerklavier". One day the idea suddenly came to me: "I wonder if it's actually possible to do them all in a day..." I counted up the timings and found that, by omitting most of the exposition repeats, it was just about manageable. And from then on the idea wouldn't let me go. 

I thought I'd do it just once, and that was in St James's Piccadilly in October 2003, for WaterAid as this time. A Beethoven lover, Mr Tom Glaser, was at that performance and booked me for a repeat performance in 2004 at the Harrow Arts Centre. And I thought that would be that, and I remember driving back down to London yelling to my companion "Hooray, never again!". But a couple of years ago I began to wonder if I had it in me to do it one more time, as a tenth anniversary and because I'm 65 this year! So here we are.

In 2003 I used the score just for the "Hammerklavier"; in 2004 I did the lot from memory as I intend to this time. It's not even that I particularly adhere to the custom of playing from memory, either for myself or certainly for anyone else (except that one's students still have to do it, poor things), but it doesn't seem quite like a real marathon performance if I just put the books up there and read through them all. And there IS something of the "stunt" about it, I'm very aware of that, some musicians think it's not really a serious venture at all, and I insist that it's for charity. Though of course I will play it all to my best ability!  

JD: What do you think is the single most difficult thing about it?

JJ: Keeping going! Not losing concentration, avoiding thinking what I have already played or am going to play, Monitoring hands and back to ensure they hold out.

JD: Any special favourites among the sonatas? 

JJ: Op 101. Then some overlooked gems like Op.79. The "Appassionata" remains permanently sublime.  

JD: How long has it taken you to learn them all and how have you been preparing for the big day? 

JJ: I claim to be the only Beethoven pianist - if I may call myself that - who learnt the "Moonlight" and "Pathétique" at the age of 45! I would never learn the popular pieces in the first part of my life. I hatched the idea around 1989, by which time I'd played perhaps 12 of them. Firstly I learnt the "Hammerklavier" and played it at Dartington, as I felt there was no point in even considering a Beethoven cycle until I had that under my belt, or at least vaguely attached to the buckles. (I had already done op 101, 109, 110 and 111). Then I put the idea on ice till I got my job as Head of Keyboard Studies at the Welsh College in 1992. At that point, with the security of a salary, I planned an initial couple of cycles and spent the whole summer vacation of 1994 learning all the rest.

Preparing for the big day: impossible to know how to do it really! Mainly I've been going through them all in decreasing time spans, so I started around six months ago to re-study every one, then worked through them all again in a few weeks, then over about ten days, and now just in four days. A short while ago I stopped listening to any other pianists, and indeed to most other music, in order to concentrate entirely on my own performances "right or wrong".

JD: Tell us a little about the charities you've chosen to support.

JJ: I'm a long-term supporter of WaterAid: firstly I love the work they do, as water is such a fundamental need and it is something we can actually do something about, and then it is a very well run charity that I feel happy about giving extra support to. The Connection does vital work among the homeless and I've been impressed by the care and thought that goes into their activities and projects, also by the dignity with which they treat the people they are helping. It's a homegrown charity, whereas WaterAid is largely active in the third world, so they complement each other nicely.

JD: And there's a live stream on the Internet? How do you feel about that?

JJ: Apprehensive! And that I will try to put it out of my mind. The point is to increase the amount of money for the charities.

JD: Anything else you'd like to tell us about the task ahead?

JJ: Well, I really won't do it again! I mean, it's basically bananas. I've had fantastic support from friends and family. A few people have said they'll come for the whole day to follow Beethoven's progress throughout the 32 sonatas and that's a nice thought. And, when it comes down to it, the fundamental thing is that the music is immeasurably great and wonderful: Beethoven had such creativity and he never repeated himself (as he was well aware). Whatever I feel about the marathon aspect, I love the music, and every sonata, every movement, has given me intense pleasure to re-study.

Here is Julian's donations page again. 

Protecting music education: a vital message from the ISM

The ISM has emailed today with the following message. Please support their call!
Take action now to protect music education
Thank you for supporting the Protect Music Education campaign. We still don’t know for certain whether or not funding for music education hubs in England will continue after 2015. Whilst the schools budget has been protected from cuts, the Education Services Grant is to be cut by £200 million: that’s almost four times what the Government will be spending on music education by 2015! We have asked the Government to confirm their continued support for music education; whatever the reply, we need as many people as possible ready to fight to protect music education.   Here is what you can do to help today:   1. Tell us why music education matters to you With more than 30 music organisations now backing the campaign, from the Music Industries Association through to NMC recordings and Conservatoires UK we now want to hear what you have to say! Each organisation has contributed approximately 100 words on the importance of music education and we want you to do the same - all you need to do is tell us why music education matters to you by using the forum on our petition page. For some inspiration, our newest supporters, Yorkshire Music Education Service said: 'The inspirational work done by music educators across the country transforms the lives of young people every day. The effect of music on personal development is phenomenal - it promotes dedication and teamwork, and can provide a lifetime of enjoyment. It is essential that ring-fenced funding to support high quality music education is retained - without it, access will be diminished and our society will be poorer for it.' We now want to hear why music education matters to you!   2. Tell others about the campaign As well as telling us about the importance of music education, you can also encourage others to sign up. Ask your pupils, parents, friends, family and colleagues to sign up to the campaign today. And you can tweet about the campaign and tell people about it on Facebook using the #protectmusic campaign hash tag.   Thank you again for your support. Please spread the word about the campaign as wide as you can. Together we can make an impact on Government policy and ensure that music education is protected for the generations to come.

Women conductors: encore furore

In an excoriating piece for the NPR blog, Anastasia Tsioulcas shreds the latest sexist remarks against women conductors - which include comments by the head of the Paris Conservatoire, for heaven's sake - and says that women in the classical music industry must start speaking up in earnest. Read it here.

You might like to know that my Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman Conductor has had more hits than any other post on JDCMB ever, in nearly a decade, and still rising.

Speaking isn't enough. We have to do something. Here is my idea from about a year ago. I still think it's a good one. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/sexism-with-strings-attached-8197972.html?origin=internalSearch

Verdi bicentenary: Anja Harteros and Jonas Kaufmann in Don Carlo

It's Verdi's bicentenary today and as everyone is choosing their favourite bits, here is one of mine. I've been lucky enough to hear these two in this opera twice this year - once at Covent Garden, once in Munich. Life in music just doesn't get any better than that.