Revisões de produção anteriores
22Both the musical score and Flimm’s staging are finely crafted and offer a wealth of compelling aural and visual material. At its best, the overall effect was akin to a sublime landscape painting rich in detail and impressive in its scope.
Die Einschübe aus Stradellas Kantaten und Opern in „Ti vedo, ti sento, mi perdo“ erzeugen bisweilen jenen Raumklang, auf den das Publikum zumeist vergeblich wartet. Selbstredend sind auch die sich in die musikalische Vergangenheit öffnenden Fenster von Sciarrino deutlich überschrieben im Sinne einer Aufarbeitung der 400-jährigen Operngeschichte. Dazu häufen sich auf der Bühne absurde Momente, die situativ an Pirandellos „Sechs Personen suchen einen Autor“ ebenso erinnern wie in der Operncollagentechnik an John Cage. Und wie bei „Warten auf Godot“, so warten auch die Akteure (darunter ein arg redundantes Kinderballett) dieser Handlung vergebens auf Stradella – er kommt definitiv nicht!
Christopher Ward provided the evening with focused, balanced direction, making sense of the score’s metallic textures, interjections of arrhythmic percussion and myriad musical references without depriving the most grandly-scaled scenes of their force. The choir, too, were on fine form, bringing a vast, weighty sound to key moments. If Mr Widmann intended the opening chorus and the surprisingly optimistic conclusion to sound unwieldy and slightly chaotic, the massed forces of the orchestra and choir gave them an accessible immediacy. Indeed, the musical clarity of Babylon’s most ambitious moments went some distance to tempering the story’s dramatic imbalances. If Mr Sloterdijk’s libretto was unwilling to let plot or character get in the way of large themes, Mr Widmann’s flirtations with traditional operatic pleasures and his ability to construct scenes on an epic scale may prove enough to draw audiences into the opera’s intellectual world. Babylon has traditionally been a world of spectacle, and the opera, for all its attempts at revisionism, was not without its own sense of the spectacular.
Mark Stone is a powerful, flexible Wozzeck, the voice knows how to be humble, but also incisive, projected, voluntary. / Mark Stone est un Wozzeck puissant, souple, la voix sait se faire humble, mais aussi incisive, projetée, volontaire.
Harnessed like a beast of burden to an agricultural cart, Mark Stone in Wozzeck deploys the broad spectrum of his voice in his humiliated cry of despair ‘Wir arme Leut’, but this lament no longer has its character of resistance to the captain, who has left to get dressed. The pronunciation of the title role’s interpretation is intelligible and eloquent, snapping the dental and palatal consonants, lengthening the sibilant and hissing, rounding the vowels. / Harnaché comme une bête de somme à une carriole agricole, Mark Stone en Wozzeck déploie le large spectre de sa voix dans son cri de désespoir humilié ‘Wir arme Leut’ mais cette complainte n'a plus son caractère de résistance face au capitaine, celui-ci étant parti s'habiller. La prononciation de l'interprète du rôle-titre est intelligible et éloquente, faisant claquer les consonnes dentales et palatales, allongeant les sifflantes et chuintantes, arrondissant les voyelles.
The Exterminating Angel is an international co-production, and Tom Cairns's staging scored a hit at last summer's Salzburg Festival. It arrives at the Royal Opera House garnered with critical plaudits and was greeted by the Covent Garden audience with wild approval, so I feel duty-bound to join in. Almost. The composer's orchestrations are undeniably bold and scintillating, and he has the knack of tempering musical challenge with approachability.Christine Rice as the pianist sings with exemplary clarity and expression, whereas Amanda Echalaz as the hostess makes one grateful there are surtitles.There's some above-the-stave virtuosity from Audrey Luna as a high-flying, high-lying opera singer. In places she sounds uncannily like the Ondes Martenot , the electronic instrument of warbling soundwaves that Cynthia Millar plays from one of the side boxe.What exactly is the Exterminating Angel? Adès describes it as an 'absence', although it makes more sense to see it as the thief of free will. We, like the sheep who safely graze as the audience enters, go astray and follow each other blindly towards annihilation. As a parable for our time, that's chilling.
Inappuntabili i giovani del coro a sei voci...Massimiliano Mandozzi,...
Incisivi i numerosi interventi del Coro a sei voci composto da Massimiliano Mandozzi...
