Vale Maurice Jarre

Composer Maurice Jarre has died (obit from the Oz) and only a few weeks ago Tom Service had opened a discussion at his blog on how bad movie music is these days too

Review - Susan Bullock in Recital - Melbourne Recital Centre

"It's like a velvet cushion with a sharp edge. Sort of warm and enveloping, but with a glint of steel.''

Susan Bullock describing her voice.

Ahead of her Melbourne opera debut with Opera Australia in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Susan Bullock gave a model recital, elegantly turned out; beautifully mannered and totally unlike the Shostakovitch heroine she undertakes next month. Ever since the (then) ABC curtailed the celebrity recital programmes, and just had singers and instrumentalist perform in the main concerts, recitals have become very thin off the ground in Australia and, when they are given, poorly attended. Even this recital by a leading singer was poorly attended. The diminished status of the recital could also explain the necessity (after the first group of songs) of requesting applause be restricted to the conclusion of each group and not after each song (musical items are selected with a continuity of theme, mood, key relationships and other linking material that is spoiled by interruption).

What Ms Bullock chose might have seemed mainstream to her, but it was obviously 'hen's teeth' to a lot of the audience. Alongside Wagner’s settings of poems by his would-be mistress Matilde Wesendonk and some well chosen Strauss lieder were some lesser known of Schubert’s 600 odd songs and some of Liszt’s salon ‘chansons’. Most formulaic recitals begin a group of old Italian songs and then some Schubert. Ms Bullock rolled the two into one and selected some little known Schubert settings of Italian Baroque poets Jacobo Vitorelli and Metastasio. Although they sound like the recitatives to main arias that never arrive they show Schubert setting other languages with the same care he showed for German. The two Metastasio lyrics reveal the beauty of the poet's word assembly, long phrases composed of pure, open-voweled words which, when set to music, show why his opera libretti were set over and over again by composers.

A famous Elektra Ms Bullock’s scales her voice down. Occasionally there was a hint of how incisive and how easily it can thrust. The presentation of the Schubert group was a little plain, the words not worried too much and, although an instinctive musical line was set through the each song in the group, crescendos sounded unduly rushed as though not to unleash too much voice on such fragile material.

The Wesendonk songs displayed the dramatic qualities of Bullock’s voice although she sounded a little short of breath in the opening phrase of Stehe Still! The build up of phrases like “öde Leere nicht’gen Graus” and “Füllet bang den dunklen Raum” in the Tristan study In Treibhaus were sensuous in the first, thrilling in second and well judged in both (but strange though how bland songs like In Treibhaus sound with piano only).

There was a tentative feeling over the proceedings until the Strauss group, ‘vanilla singing’ or holding back perhaps. Then in Schlechtes Wetter, with just a touch of physical characterization she turned things around. Strauss’s oddball song about an overindulgent old mother out in a rainstorm buying ingredients for a cake for her plump little daughter snuggled at home on the sofa, has so much going on it and, without the text in front of you, can pass unappreciated. Bullock immediately set the scene, peering up at the sky as the accompaniment describes the rain hammering against the window. Smiling at the old ladies plight, a waltz rhythm (suggesting the OTHER Strauss) breaks out as the song comes to an end – Strauss loved doing this, his comic operas often end with sort of lighthearted touch - and the chuckle in the music was infectious.

The Quilter songs were sung with a rich, broad tone like in the Wagner, more thrust in the higher-lying phrases and ending with a generous, big-toned account of Love’s Philosophy.

Stephen Mould was a reliable accompanist, occasionally given to facial expressions and appearing to be singing along with the soloist, but an equal partner to the success of Schlechtes Wetter and the Quilter songs. Pity that Katerina's solo in the opening scene of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk could not have been included as a foretaste of the opera, Galina Vishnevskaya used to include in many of her recitals (probably to compensate for never being able to sing the role on stage) because in the excerpt from Tannhäuser she was on fire (and so was the audience at last).

It’s disingenuous to look a gift horse in the mouth but the complimentary programme brochures are not as professional as they should be for a venue which professes such lofty standards. Apart from occasional incorrect spellings the inconsistencies in the actual list of works performed need attention. Authors and poets are only named for some songs but not all. For the Liszt songs, even though Victor Hugo authored the poems for all of the songs selected, he is only credited for two while the other three do not mention an author. Opus numbers are also given for some songs but not others and the classifications for the Liszt songs have been incorrectly printed as 'opus' numbers instead of S (Searle) numbers.

Programme

Franz Schubert

Non t'accostar all'urna D 688 [Vitorelli]

Guarda, che bianca luna D 688 [Vitorelli]

Mio ben ricordati D 688 [Metastasio]

Da quel sembiante appresi D 688 [Metastasio]

Richard Wagner

Fünf Gedichte von Mathilde Wesendonck (Wesendonck Lieder) WWV91

Der Engel

Stehe Still!

Schmerzen

Im Treibhaus

Traüme

Richard Strauss

Zueignung Op 10 Nr 1 [von Glim]

Ich trage meine Minne Op 32 Nr 1 [Henckell]

Allerseelen Op 10 Nr 8 [von Glim]

Schlechtes Wetter Op 69 Nr 5 [Heine]

Franz Liszt

S'il est un charmant gazon S 284 [Hugo]

Enfant, si j'etais roi S 283 [Hugo]

La tombe et la rose S 285 [Hugo]

Comment, disaient-ils S 276 [Hugo]

Oh quand je dors S 282-2 [Hugo]

Roger Quilter

Fair House of Joy and Bliss Op 12 Nr 7 [Tobias Hume]

Dream Valley Op 20 Nr 1 [Blake]

Autumn Evening Op 14 [Arthur Maquarie]

Love's Philosophy Op 3 Nr 1 [Shelly]
encores

Wagner

Dich, taure Halle from Tannhäuser

George Gershwin
Blah, Blah, Blah [Ira Gershwin] from Delicious

Susan Bullock - soprano
Stephen Mould - piano
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
27 March 2009

Also published on the music and opera related blog here

Review - Goodbye Vaudeville Charlie Mudd - Arena Theatre/Malthouse

The Music Hall has been a persuasive means of telling as well as a metaphor for some very good and even very great plays. Joan Littlewood’s Oh What a Lovely War as a means and John Osborne's The Entertainer as a metaphor are two that spring to mind. The music hall setting, music hall style songs and looming First World War nudge Lally Katz's Goodbye Vaudeville Charlie Mudd towards the Littlewood camp, but in Charle Mudd the War never comes, the music hall isn’t really a music hall and the songs aren’t really music hall songs. Mudd’s vaudeville castle is an amalgam of local references turned into an alternative Melbourne situated not geographically but psychologically. Katz’s writing becomes a more elegant Rorschach of ambiguous stimuli with each new play and this one is a doozy.

Situated on the Swanson River where the more popular Tivoli showboat occasionally passes but an actual ticket buyer never does. Every night the motley cast assemble to perform. Occasionally a important producer promises to come but, like Godot, they never appear and the show plays to an empty house. Charlie Mudd (Jim Russell ) and his performers are misfits whose routines enact violence on themselves, each other or manifest the violence enacted on them personally or their class, gender or ethnicity. This community of saltimbanques is, perhaps, a dystopian reflection of Edwardian and modern-day Melbourne and how so little has changed of the indigenous, migrant and socially and sexually disadvantaged.

Maude (Christen O'Leary) is a middle-aged child in her ‘sweet little Alice blue gown’ while her alter-ego, the foul mouthed ventriloquist doll plays the whore that Maude, a victim of incest, was made into as a child. The sight of Maude, literally trying to hold her childhood trauma at arm’s length is truly disturbing. Allarkini (Alex Menglet), the contemptuous, displaced Russian magician whose magic is a repulsive demonstration of self-vampirism. The most pointed of all is Bones (Mark Jones) the melancholy black-faced minstrel whose stage persona has assumed his identity. The new act, Violet (Julia Zamiro) enters Mudd’s castle and assumes the name Ethylyn Rarity, the name that countless ingenues before her have used. Ethylyn and Mudd are like Judith and Bluebeard (his castle even has a forbidden door like in the Bluebeard legend) and as the story progresses Ethylyn becomes trapped like a butterfly in a spider's web. There is even a spider and butterfly dance, a wonderful parody of the old variety turn danced by Violet and Mudd's mute brother Knuckles (Matt Wilson).

Jonathon Oxlade's sets and costumes are luxurious, the painted backcloth of an Australian Bush Idyll is the real deal. The songs and dances are superb. Menglet sings and dances his song damning Charlie Mudd with a pulverising authority and lends a charming elegance to his half of the panto horse and maniacal horror to his conjuring turn. O'Leary's schizophrenic ventriloquism is like Michael Redgrave's in Dead of Night. In his programme note Chris Kohn mentions that the long research time caused the nostalgia to overpower the project. The play at times looks like a purely nostalgic work like the recent Sydney Dance Company Tivoli but Katz’s script bites and scratches. Ethylyn tries to force herself sexually on Bones after first trying to remove his black face make up. Confused he doesn't know what she means but the scene suggests the unsentimental, dark side of history in the fear of miscegenation. The play is a mystery on one level which Ethylyn eventually solves and the actors can separate their lives from their theatre and, as Bones prepares to depart the stage, literally cleansing the black make up from his face, the play ends in a contemporary consciousness. The blend of dialogue, dance and song extends the play to two and half hours but rarely has a drama, song and dance informed each other so well.

Goodbye Vaudeville Charlie Mudd (2009) by Lally Katz
Charlie Mudd - Jim Russell
Bones - Mark Jones
Maude Adle (and Doris) - Christen O'Leary
Knuckles - Matt Wilson
Allarkini - Alex Menglet
Ethylyn Rarity - Julia Zemiro
Director - Chris Kohn
Set and Costume Desinger - Jonathon Oxlade
Sound Designer - Jethro Woodward
Lighting Designer - Richard Vabre
Illusions Designer - Lawrence Leung
Beckett Theatre, Malthouse
6-28 March 2009

Review - Don Giovanni - Victorian Opera

White Knight
Jean Pierre Mignon’s production of Don Giovanni scales the opera down and in a production with as much farce as drama makes for an exhilarating rather than grandiose story. In a gleaming white costume, the reverse of his true colours, this Don (Samuel Dundas) looks as though he stepped out of a Mills & Boon bodice ripper. Although his voice is still young (remember though that Luigi Bassi, the first Don Giovanni, was only 21) and light toned, he uses it with great skill, projecting the text, in very good Italian and giving it shape and nuance. For a young singer he has a good grasp of the Don’s mercurial character even if it beggars’ belief that so young-looking a Don has so extensive a catalogue of conquests. Physically he is everything you could want (ie: barihunk) but also conveys the swaggering, aristocratic arrogance, arm resting raffishly on his sword-hilt and, above all, the snake-eyed charm. With only three modest solos Don Giovanni's persona lives through music involving other characters. Dundas savors the recititative passages, making them carry the bulk of his characterisation. An example is the brief scene with Zerlina (Michelle Buscemi) before their duet where his words drip like honey. Only the softest parts of the music, the opening phrase of “La ci darem la mano” and the act two serenade need a softer tone but, overall, roll over Teddy Tahu Rhodes (now there's an image!).

Zerlina’s music suits Buscemi’s silvery voice and she conveys Zerlina's gentle eroticism, ecstatically sighing the words “toccami qua” in ‘Vedrai, carino’ with same understanding as Dundas in conveying Giovanni’s lust . A terrific Zerlina in her own right Tiffany Speight steps up to the dominant female character Donna Elvira. Speight’s radiant soprano easily encompassed the music including the often-difficult lower passages (listen to her marvellous downward runs in the epilogue!) . She is a very subtle comedienne too, doomed by her unshakable obsession with the faithless Don her Elvira is like a frustrated schoolmistress and flusters about like an operatic Maggie Smith. The insistence now on either the Prague or Vienna versions of the opera (from the looks of it the über-urtext Bärenreiter edition is used here) is a pity; if Speight had been allowed her big aria ‘Mi Tradi’ it would have crowned a spectacular performance. As Don Giovanni’s sidekick Andrew Collis is another more experienced singer who creates an oily Leporello, the director relating him back to the character, Sganarelle, in Moliere's play Don Juan, clowning the part without overdoing it. He clearly hates his master but in the 'catalogue aria' there was just a hint of admiration. With no sign of stage nerves, Dundas is a natural clown too and with Speight and Collis makes the serenading scene in act two hilarious without undermining the beauty of the music.

Donna Anna is a big sing and challenged Caroline Wenborne. She managed the difficult fioritura without any compromises but the fearful drama in "Or sai chi l'onore" was less evident. She does a terrific stage faint. James Egglestone was equally adept at Don Ottavio's 'Il mio tesoro'. Pity his 'Dalla su pace' - another post-Prague addition - was omitted, his well supported tenor voice would sound nice in it. Anthony Mackey's is a really interestingly rebellious Masetto, holding back from physically attacking the girlfriend usurping Don but ultra sarcastic in 'Hai capito' (the Figaro rebelliousness again?). His voice is a little backward sounding but a genuine bass baritone. Occasionally too rigid, as in the ensembles but adding the bass weight to important ones like the act two sextet where Don Giovanni and Leporello are absent. The vocal preparation of all of the soloists was obviously thorough.

The smaller scale allows for some details that would never work in a larger theatre. The Don, for example, gives Zerlina a flower which drops suggestively from her hand at the end of “La ci darem la mano”, it is retrieved and passed again, along with the Don's come-on lines, until it ends up planted in Elvira's hopeful cleavage. Richard Roberts’s set is a marvel of economy transforming from back streets to a Moorish palace and sinister tomb. The lighting, however, could have been more varied. The overture like most of the music in general moves swiftly with the action. The omnipresent fate theme that begins the overture or the mysterious few seconds of string music that follow it was somewhat understated but, thanks to the intimacy of the production, it was like examining a masterpiece under a microscope. The ensembles ending each act shone like little gems and balance allowed the younger singers to show their potential and the more experienced singers, like Speight, to hint at glories yet to come in their careers.

picture: Samuel Dundas (picture by Jeff Busby)

Don Giovanni - Samuel Dundas
Donna Elvira - Tiffany Speight
Donna Anna - Caroline Wenborne
Zerlina - Michelle Buscemi
Don Ottavio - James Egglestone
Leporello - Andrew Collis
Masetto - Anthony Mackey
The Commendatore - Steven Gallop
Conductor - Richard Gill (3,5 & 7 March) Nicholas Carter (10, 12 & 14 March)
Director - Jean-Pierre Mignon
Costume Designer - Christina Smith
Set Designer - Richard Roberts
Lighting Designer - Paul Jackson

National Theatre, St Kilda
3, 5, 7, 10, 12 & 14 March 2009
followed by a metropolitan and regional Victorian tour between 28 March and 25 April
175 minutes (including one interval)
Victorian Opera