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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
It was perhaps unwise of Edward Gardner to warn the audience that they were in for an evening devoted to child murders, suicide and death. Probably not many of them had thought about that when they bought the tickets for the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s opening concert of the season.
Despite the conductor’s apology this was not an evening of doom and gloom. The presence of Joyce DiDonato provided season-opening glitz and a neatly-devised programme brought together infrequently-heard works by Samuel Barber and Berlioz, leading to a Beethoven symphony.
There is an opportunity waiting for somebody to champion the music of the postwar, neo-Romantic composers. Barber’s compact orchestral showpiece, Medea’s Dance of Vengeance, combines a mastery of atmosphere worthy of Hollywood with mounting excitement, ending with Medea slashing at her children with a knife. It makes an exciting opening number and deserves to be heard more often.
Compared to that, Berlioz’s La Mort de Cléopâtre, though wildly original, is a lot less violent. DiDonato has been performing this “scène lyrique” a lot recently and its writing for the voice suits her vocal range and dramatic instincts to near perfection. Her French is good and she has plenty of vocal colours at her disposal, the half-fluted, almost quavery top notes with fast vibrato an effect that was sparingly used here. Magisterial, intense, vulnerable, and living the role as she sang, she was a Cleopatra to remember.
Gardner supported her as though his baton was hard-wired to Cleopatra’s nerve endings. The LPO played superbly for him, as they did in a strongly-propelled performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, energised by the swift speeds and valveless trumpets of the period instrument movement. The funeral march, picking up the “death” theme, dug deep. ★★★★☆
This week also saw the start of English Touring Opera’s autumn season, as it prepares to set out across the country from its starting-point at Hackney Empire. It will take two fairytale operas on tour, Judith Weir’s concise, sinister Blond Eckbert and Rimsky-Korsakov’s more sentimental treatment of The Snowmaiden.
The latter is quite slow-moving, but should appeal to those who like Russian seasonal folk legends. The story is similar to Dvořák’s Rusalka, a coming-of-age tale in which a folkloric maiden longs for human love, but is destined to melt if she experiences its heat.
Olivia Fuchs’s production warms to its theme as it goes on. At the start, the designs by Eleanor Bull look modestly conceived for touring purposes, but through imagination and subtle lighting they radiate magic in the closing scenes. By that point Ffion Edwards’s Snowmaiden, presented as an Alice-in-Wonderland figure, is also floating crystalline top notes. Rimsky-Korsakov’s music, rather thin earlier on, blossoms with the once-upon-a-time radiance at which he can excel. Katherine McIndoe sings well as the rival Kupava, Edmund Danon creates a character of depth from the anti-hero Mizgir, and conductor Hannah Quinn does well to get sounds of some Romantic depth from a small orchestra thin on strings. ★★★☆☆
