CD Review - Marc-Antoine Charpentier: David et Jonathas

Anders J. Dahlin, Sara Macliver, Dean Robertson, soloists of Pinchgut Opera. Cantillation. Orchestra of the Antipodes. Antony Walker, conductor
ABC Classics 476 3691 (2CD)

Having lived with William Christie’s pioneering account of this opera since its release in 1988 on the French Harmonia Mundi label (no longer available), and listening to this new account, I can only register my astonishment at the achievement of the Australian ensemble. The annual offering from the Sydney based Pinchgut Opera is a greatly anticipated event and in less than a decade has reached such high musical and theatrical standards. The sense of period style and performance in the ABC Classics recordings is so thorough that it’s difficult to distinguish this recording from Christie’s, even though Christie is leading one of the world’s pre-eminent early music ensembles. Both performances derive from the critical edition of the score made in 1981 by the musicologist Jean Duron and both display continuing insights into early music performance.

The conductor, Antony Walker, has a keen sense of how the music should flow. Tempos are always well judged; the marches and other musical interludes spring along, as do the conclusions of arias and ensembles that propel the drama. In the travesti role of Jonathon, the femininity of Sara Macliver’s pure, silver soprano perfectly suggests the teenaged boy hero. The Swedish tenor, Anders J. Dahlin, matches her with an exquisitely controlled voice. All of the singers demonstrate the same degree of understanding and preparation in their roles and approach to the music.

In the great scene of Jonathan’s death, the instrumental and vocal writing is so restrained as to be almost chilling and Macliver and Dahlin are most moving in this painfully spare music, the subtle vocal ornamentations beautifully judged. Another great scene, in which the Witch of Endor summons up the ghost of Samuel, is performed with similar understatement. Christie uses a more characterful counter-tenor for the Witch but Pinchgut’s Paul McMahon more straightforward account makes the scene more chilling.

The Cantillation choir, with their radiant sopranos, sing with the intimacy of a madrigal group while the orchestra, with recorder and lute/theorbo/guitar consorts beautifully highlighted by the recording engineers, make this an early music performance that deserves worldwide distribution. ABC Classics has released each of Pinchgut Opera’s productions on CD. Judging from the generous selection of illustrations in the accompanying booklet, Pinchgut has hit its stride in its staging of David et Jonathas and future productions should be recorded for both CD and DVD release. Going from the booklet photographs the production looked very hip-historical-chic and with a heavy awareness of the homoerotic potential. Oversized wall paintings based on Caravaggio's butchest paintings loom large over the proceedings.

It’s hard to believe that the recording derives from live performances; incidental noise is non-existent until - well-deserved – applause at the end of each disc. The intimacy of the performance venue makes an enormous impact on the recording. The sound is constantly sharp and clear, voices and instruments are never “off mic” and the balances are so well judged that it would be little improved if recorded in the studio. In addition to copious production pictures and a background essay the CD booklet includes a full libretto with the original French text and English translation.

This review appears in the May-July 2010 issue of Music Forum

Review - A Streetcar Named Desire - Opera Australia

But 'cha Are Blanche!
Musically, Australia looks to Britain and Europe, especially for its operatic diet and America’s considerable operatic output has been overlooked. Despite the sensational impact Menotti’s The Consul had when it premiered in Australia in 1953 – making a star out of Marie Collier - it was revived professionally only once more in 1985. Even Menotti’s perennial Christmas favourite Amahl and the Night Visitors has had few professional productions. Consequently the 2007 production of André Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire was a significant event.

Previn has composed vocal music and music theatre often during his long career but for his first, fully-fledged opera, he has approached the task from an area he knows better than most other opera composers. When the work premiered in 1998 commentators considered the music and approach, with its many jazz references, to be more akin to cinema in style and form. Listening to the way Previn’s score fits the stage action and libretto it is indeed very cinematic and works in the same way a skilled screen composer (which Previn is) underscores action, giving the visuals a musically dramatic undercurrent equal to the emotional content of the scene. Previn uses a riding motive, a couple of jazzy chords, to open the opera and which come to represent Blance's tragic nymphomania and sexual destruction, That motive returns in the scene when her nympho tendencies come to the fore when the young collector calls. When she entices him to stay, starting the conversation with "Don't you just love rainy afternoons like this" the chords slyly appear, and then return purring as she kisses him and finally the same chords wail in the orchestral outburt as Blanche is raped by Stanley. Musically it is very approachable, with overtones of Copland, Barber, Menotti, Britten and Previn’s very knowledgeable synthesis of American jazz in its make up but never as derivative as some commentators would make it out to be. There are even some moments of great humour such as when Stanley announces that Stella is pregnant and a tuba and piccolo play in unison; the ferocious bellow of the tuba and the petite whine of the piccolo suggesting their very unequal coupling! Very soon one becomes accustomed to the music and style and it appears that vocal lines are created out of the musical undercurrent rather accompanied by it. Not that Previn does not create arias per se. There are many solo moments or aria and arioso, the earliest being when Stella (Antoinette Halloran) describes to the astonished Blance (Yvonne Kenny) her unconditional love for the brutish Stanley (Teddy Tahu Rhodes). Cradled in music of great beauty and lyricism Previn creates a mood within the orchestra as an arching and aching commentary under Stella’s attempt to make Blanche understand her love. As important as the sung music are Previns’s preludes and interludes. The prelude includes jazzy chords that recur and represent, like a motive, Blance Du Bois doom. The interludes, like those in Menotti’s The Consul, hold or develop the action of a scene and seamlessly develop it into the next.

Tackling such a landmark drama as A Streetcar Named Desire was a brave and almost heroic undertaking but Previn’s confidence and skill have made it one of the better American operas of the last twenty years, if not one of the best since Samuel Barber’s Vanessa of half a century ago. Like Barber, Previn has the compositional nouse to make time stand still, even when the imminent tragedy is piling up. Blanche’s “I Can Smell the Sea Air” - in the play just another Blanche’s hopeless and self-deluding rambles - appears in the opera as moment of stillness and beauty (as well as a tragic indicator) and not surprisingly started to gather as much popularity as a stand-alone concert item as the more outgoing “I Want Magic”.

Blanche may be the opera’s tragic protagonist but, as in the play, her antagonist, Stanley Kowalski almost overshadows her. Teddy Tahu Rhodes has made a name for himself in the role both physically and vocally since first singing it for the Washington Opera then in the Viennese premiere in March 2007 followed by the Australian premiere later that year. His physical credentials as ‘barihunk’ are well enough know and discussed* (often in in alarming detail) throughout cyberspace. Vocally Rhodes has a deep and well-focussed baritone. Here he lessens that focus to give a blunt edge to Stanley’s frequent and violent outbursts. Philip Littell’s libretto follows the play text with often slavish faithfulness and Little retains enormous amounts of the original text in, what can sound when it sung rather than spoken, rather banal. In his earliest appearance, and already displaying his contempt for Blanche’s pretentious mannerism, Rhode’s voice sounds almost cavernous in darkness and depth. That their relationship will end in one of the most frightening assaults in theatrical literature seems almost pre-ordained from the moment Rhodes opens his mouth. In the scene leading to Blanche’s assault he goads and threatens her while Previn’s music, now keenly integrating the vocal and orchestral fabric into an explosive scene with the same cathartic power as the verismo operas of the early twentieth century. These final two scenes are disturbing to watch and, even the though the opera has been served well by a recording taken from the premiere, it really needs to be re-recorded to preserve the boiling, aggressiveness of Rhodes’s interpretation.

Blanche is rightly the opera’s heroine and Yvonne Kenny achieves her best work in the many introspective moments. Only the most dramatic moments appear to tax her voice but her interpretation of “I Can Smell the Sea Air” is ravishing. Mad women and mad scenes are noting new to opera and the pathos of Blanche Du Bois’s final scene is as good as any of them. Caressing the final floating high notes of “I Can Smell the Sea Air” she is minutes later pinned to floor by the madhouse nurse and finally lead away in final scene as disturbing in its pathos as the brutality of the rape scene that precedes it.

Stuart Skelton is another singer of international status. Fresh from a recent triumph in Sydney as Peter Grimes, he brought the same naivety to his interpretation of Mitch. The hopeless desire for and then cruel rejection of Blanche even harks back to the scenes between Grimes and Ellen Orford in Britten’s opera.

As Stella Antoinette Halloran is in the same vocal league as her internationally known colleagues. Her singing is constantly subtle and is beautifully supported soprano. Halloran features in a disc on the Australian label ABC Classics of Puccini arias and duets and which is worth seeking out, hers is a voice to listen out for.

The opera’s hothouse atmosphere is well captured by John Stoddart sets; seeming to be mouldering through years of damp and neglect although there is no suggestion of Blanche’s cramped and curtained sleeping quarters. The State Theatre stage is larger than its more famous Sydney counterpart and the revolving set sits within the larger area concentrating the attention to stage action. The director, Bruce Beresford, has, (like Previn) a long career in motion pictures and, as a film director, understands the importance of a musical undercurrent. He achieves many detailed effects despite working on a large stage and even employs film projections in key moments to clever effect.

This current revival is a significant event in the company’s repertoire development and hopefully signals that the production will now remain Opera Australia’s permanent repertoire.

André Previn – A Streetcar Named Desire
Libretto – Philip Littell after the play by Tennessee Williams
First performance - 9 September 1998 San Francisco Opera
First Australian performance – 2 August 2007 (Opera Australia)
Blanche DuBois - Yvonne Kenny
Stanley Kowalski - Teddy Tahu Rhodes
Stella Kowalski - Antoinette Halloran
Eunice Hubble - Dominica Matthews
Steve Hubble - Andrew Brunsdon
Harold ‘Mitch’ Mitchell - Stuart Skelton
A Young Collector - Stephen Smith
A Mexican Woman - Jacqueline Dark

Orchestra Victoria
Conductor - Tom Woods
Director - Bruce Beresford
Set & Costume Designer - John Stoddart
Lighting Designer - Nigel Levings
Vision Designer - Michael Gruchy
State Theatre, The Arts Centre, Melbourne. December 2, 5, 8 & 12 2009.

*The barihunk phenomenon was recently discussed by Irene Lacher in the Los Angeles Times.