Profiili ülevaated
1Ticciati, an exemplary Berliozian, conducts with great beauty and a keen sense of dramatic pace. The London Philharmonic play with refined sensuousness of detail, while the Glyndebourne Chorus, augmented for the occasion, sound terrific throughout.
Varasemate toodangu ülevaated
5The advantage of Glyndebourne Opera’s performances at the BBC Proms is that they give us a chance to concentrate on the music making. And there was plenty of high-quality music-making on offer at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday 28 August 2017 when Glyndebourne Opera performed Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito.
The set looks airy and minimal, Káťa’s sense of imprisonment and desire for freedom achieved by Alessandro Carletti’s intense use of lighting and high white walls that shut out the world. Three standard visual motifs, drawn from references in the libretto, are brought into play: bird, cage and angel. Magritte’s disturbing birdcage paintings, one of which he pointedly called The Therapist, come to mind. By the end, these symbols have multiplied to the point of distraction. This might irritate more had musical standards not been so outstanding in every quarter, steered by Glyndebourne’s music director, Robin Ticciati.
Michieletto’s production is symbolic and psychological first and foremost. The white set designs by Paolo Fantin suggest an abstract dream space – there is no village or river, only the interior of Kat’a’s mind. Their acute angles are redolent of the kinds of vitrine-like structures that so fascinated Francis Bacon in his paintings; these walls close in on Kat’a at the end of Act one, trapping her in the room with Kabanicha, which then ingeniously segues uninterrupted into the beginning of Act two.
Seeing Isolde sing her Verklärung (Transfiguration – ‘Mild und leise’) standing, centre stage and spotlit, was certainly in line with the production’s aesthetic: it is, of course, all her world then, as the human world recedes, and she ecstatically misreads Tristan’s post-mortem muscle stiffening as a ‘laugh’ (‘… wie er lächelt’). Tristan found himself recumbent for much of the final act on what looked like sheepskin until the delirium became too much for stasis. Memorable takes, both.
Along with that colour, soul and unflagging energy, he knows how to manipulate Wagner’s immense canvas, when to drive the music on through high moments and manage gradual transitions, while his heart-warming rapport with the London Philharmonic bodes well for the future.
