Short, squat, silly, a bad actress, with a doughy, cross face and a "figure not advantageous for the stage": this was Horace Walpole's yobbish description of the star soprano who created the role of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt in Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto (1724). Matters have improved, not just in the etiquette of criticism. Sarah Tynan, making her Opera North debut in Tim Albery's attractive new staging, is slim, pretty, good at acting and able to grace a pair of royal blue hot pants so brief as to scare most rivals for the role away from the production.
Giulio Cesare remains a Handel favourite, offering a familiar scenario in the central characters with the benefit of a politically explosive love match. Action takes place in Egypt following the murder of Pompeo. Death, grief, vengeance and sex provide Handel with the helter skelter of emotions out of which he created one of his most glittering works. The sequence of fabulous arias is shared between characters. The complete four-hour score is usually trimmed, as here. Committed Handelians aside, few will wince at the omissions. Modern-day consumption of opera – honouring the performers with silent attention instead of socialising during the slow bits as in the 18th century – presents a challenge to Handel audiences as well as directors, however much you admire the extraordinary musical achievements.
Albery avoids the common tendency of combating longueurs with frenzied action. Successful and ingenious though it was, Glyndebourne's recent production which turned Danielle de Niese as the coquettish, dancing-babe Egyptian Queen into a star, erred in that direction. Opera North's Cesare is far less playful, and more sober. With stylish ancient-modern sets and costumes designed by Lesley Travers, the plot is easy to follow, the updated elements – chiefly the clothes – faithful to a clear guiding aesthetic even if anachronistic in historical terms.
Cleopatra and her effeminate, identically dressed brother Tolomeo (James Laing), both clean, sleek and blond, adorned with gold-plated Edward Scissorhands fingers to signify power, could double as the Volsung twins in Die Walküre, in looks if not voice – definitely not since Wagner, though happy to embrace incest, stopped short at writing for countertenor. The way the blank, tomb-pyramid of the opening revolves to become a gold-encrusted dugout, twinklingly and imaginatively lit by Thomas C Hase, ensured we had something good to look at as the music processed from mood to mood.
The anguished scenes involving Pompeo's widow Cornelia (Ann Taylor) and her vengeful son Sesto (Kathryn Rudge) came across powerfully. In a strong cast, Pamela Helen Stephen convinced as a rough, tough Caesar, her debut in this elusive role. Handel showed less interest in his hero than in the psychologically fascinating Cleopatra. Tynan, lithe rather than opulently erotic, cast her in a fresh light. If I have reservations, it's that the dramatic action, despite vivid moments such as the crisscrossing of spears and swords mid-fight, or the powdery shower of ashes trickling from the top of the pyramid, passed almost in parallel to the music, as if a separate entity. But that is the nature of baroque opera.
Robert Howarth, directing from the harpsichord and supported with expert continuo playing by Sally Pendlebury (cello) and Andrew Maginley (theorbo), instilled the Opera North orchestra with period instrument sensibility, though the sound, produced by modern instruments, remained robust, the speeds steady – an acceptable compromise for an opera house tackling its first Handel for more than 10 years. In a rigorously varied season, Norma opens next week in Christopher Alden's new production, followed in May by Carousel. And reliable rumour has it that the company's Janácek series will be completed with a new Makropulos Case at the Edinburgh festival in August. Expect an announcement soon. Boldness, not caution, may be the best weapon against paltry budgets in 2012.
Some performers help finances along by charging no fee for their virtuoso services, but the circumstance has to be exceptional. The quixotic Wye Valley chamber music festival, now in its 13th year, is just that. Whereas unpaid summer collaborations between musicians are not unheard of – the international musicians seminar at Prussia Cove is a prototype – you have to be made of sterner stuff to hole up in a chilly castle perched high above the Wye in the Forest of Dean, in midwinter, purely to play chamber music.
Founded at St Briavels in 2000 by pianist Daniel Tong with friends such as fellow pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips and violinist Matthew Truscott, the festival began in heroic but melodious discomfort. The village's medieval castle and church remain key venues but now the musicians sleep, eat and rehearse in the warmer environ of nearby Treowen Manor. This year's five days of concerts and workshops, held in venues around Hereford and Monmouth over two weekends, attracted a couple of dozen brilliant young players and included an Elgar day concentrating on the late chamber works.
St Briavels' tiny church was packed for Ben Hancox and Crawford-Phillips's fearless, exciting account of the Violin Sonata Op 82 and the Elias Quartet's fervent reading of the String Quartet Op 83. The youthful Kreisler Quartet, formed last year and selected from a long list of entrants to be Wye Valley chamber festival's first resident string quartet, deserve special praise. Barely having completed various post-graduate studies, they will benefit from coaching with their more experienced colleagues. That said, their delivery of three movements from Thomas Adès's early Arcadiana, taut, precise and atmospheric, appeared flawless.
Studying train connections in order to squeeze an orchestral concert into a cross-country week of opera and chamber music brought to mind the late Shura Cherkassky. This maverick Russian pianist lived his last years in a London hotel room occupied chiefly by a concert grand and a stack of airline timetables. He could tell you in an instant the best connection from Luton to Phuket on a Tuesday with only four stopovers. Leeds, Monmouthshire and, on Thursday night, Basingstoke may be less exotic but they each, in different ways, demonstrated the range, excellence and excitement of UK musical life.
The hard-working Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra serves the south and south-west, an area less well supplied orchestrally than the north and north-west. Their programme of Bach, Beethoven and Shostakovich (also given in Poole) looked, on paper, almost too safe to make the detour. Instead, the orchestra's blazing quality, in the pin-drop transparency of the Anvil's acoustic, made you wonder why this ensemble, and its serious and electrifying young Ukrainian conductor, Kirill Karabits, do not command noisier headlines. The unexpected kick-off, buoyantly played by 10 BSO front-desk strings with harpsichord, was Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No 3.
This limbered us up aurally for a terrific account of Beethoven's Violin Concerto with Simone Lamsma as the sensational and glamorous soloist. Powerful in control, the young Dutch violinist drew silvery meticulousness and burnished tone out of the Stradivarius she has on loan (the "ex-Chanot-Chardon", 1718), but it was her sense of line and phrase that held her audience spellbound. The BSO were alert and sensitive in support, with a lovely bassoon solo in the slow movement.
Then came Shostakovich's Sixth Symphony, home territory for Karabits, who led the journey from sorrowful opening through to brittle, glinting, gaudily percussive finale. He converted me to a piece I've long resisted – medalworthy in itself. Today, after a busy week, the orchestra's bass trombonist, Kevin Smith, and some of his colleagues will lead the BSO's 12th Rusty Musicians project when amateurs, teens to octogenarians, play alongside orchestra members, culminating in a from-scratch performance of Dvorák's "New World" Symphony. The orchestra's next non-scratch concert, on Wednesday, broadcast live on Radio 3, will include another Dvorák – the Cello Concerto. It will be as far from rusty as Luton is from Phuket, you'll see.
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