English National Opera Research Articles

Relaxed performances: supporting aural diversity and neurodiversity among classical concert audiences in the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT Current discourse at the intersection between sound studies and disability studies has highlighted the phonocentric nature of conventional understandings of listening – especially in relation to engagement with classical music performance. The perpetuation of ableist notions of “normal” and “expert” listening risk overlooking multimodal and embodied listening practices of the kind advocated by aurally-diverse and neurodiverse concert audiences. In this article, we evaluate the extent to which Relaxed Performances (RPs) may offer opportunities for such diverse ways of listening, through surveying the existing provision of RPs in the United Kingdom and reviewing three examples of performances by the Graeæ Theatre Company, the English National Opera, and the BBC Proms. We conclude that further work needs to be undertaken for emergent RP practices to be codified and become widespread, but highlight the importance of this work in making classical music performance more accessible and beneficial for people who experience differences in sensory processing.

7 Deaths of Maria Callas, Marina Abramović (dir.) (2023) English National Opera, 8 November 2023

Review of: 7 Deaths of Maria Callas, Marina Abramović (dir.) (2023) English National Opera, 8 November 2023

‘REACHING OUT’ OR INSTITUTIONAL VIRTUE-SIGNALLING? THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY OPERA PROJECTS IN UK OPERA HOUSES TODAY

AbstractThe education and outreach departments that coordinate community and participation projects have become a ubiquitous component of opera houses in the UK over the last 40 years yet rarely do their productions appear on the main stage. This article considers recent projects run by Opera North, English National Opera, Opera Holland Park and Glyndebourne and asks whether opera houses are genuinely committed to connecting communities with opera or treat outreach as no more than a means of obtaining funding. The article explores the history of the development of outreach departments and the potential that community involvement offers as a revitalising force for the operatic artform. A series of interviews with opera professionals brings the debate up to date.

An online breathing and wellbeing programme (ENO Breathe) for people with persistent symptoms following COVID-19: a parallel-group, single-blind, randomised controlled trial

BackgroundThere are few evidence-based interventions for long COVID; however, holistic approaches supporting recovery are advocated. We assessed whether an online breathing and wellbeing programme improves health related quality-of-life (HRQoL) in people with persisting breathlessness following COVID-19.MethodsWe conducted a parallel-group, single-blind, randomised controlled trial in patients who had been referred from one of 51 UK-based collaborating long COVID clinics. Eligible participants were aged 18 years or older; were recovering from COVID-19 with ongoing breathlessness, with or without anxiety, at least 4 weeks after symptom onset; had internet access with an appropriate device; and were deemed clinically suitable for participation by one of the collaborating COVID-19 clinics. Following clinical assessment, potential participants were given a unique online portal code. Participants were randomly assigned (1:1) to either immediate participation in the English National Opera (ENO) Breathe programme or to usual care. Randomisation was done by the research team using computer-generated block randomisation lists, with block size 10. The researcher responsible for randomisation was masked to responses. Participants in the ENO Breathe group participated in a 6-week online breathing and wellbeing programme, developed for people with long COVID experiencing breathlessness, focusing on breathing retraining using singing techniques. Those in the deferred group received usual care until they exited the trial. The primary outcome, assessed in the intention-to-treat population, was change in HRQoL, assessed using the RAND 36-item short form survey instrument mental health composite (MHC) and physical health composite (PHC) scores. Secondary outcome measures were the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease assessment test score, visual analogue scales (VAS) for breathlessness, and scores on the dyspnoea-12, the generalised anxiety disorder 7-item scale, and the short form-6D. A thematic analysis exploring participant experience was also conducted using qualitative data from focus groups, survey responses, and email correspondence. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04830033.FindingsBetween April 22 and May 25, 2021, 158 participants were recruited and randomly assigned. Of these, eight (5%) individuals were excluded and 150 participants were allocated to a treatment group (74 in the ENO Breathe group and 76 in the usual care group). Compared with usual care, ENO Breathe was associated with an improvement in MHC score (regression coefficient 2·42 [95% CI 0·03 to 4·80]; p=0·047), but not PHC score (0·60 [–1·33 to 2·52]; p=0·54). VAS for breathlessness (running) favoured ENO Breathe participation (−10·48 [–17·23 to –3·73]; p=0·0026). No other statistically significant between-group differences in secondary outcomes were observed. One minor self-limiting adverse event was reported by a participant in the ENO Breathe group who felt dizzy using a computer for extended periods. Thematic analysis of ENO Breathe participant experience identified three key themes: (1) improvements in symptoms; (2) feeling that the programme was complementary to standard care; and (3) the particular suitability of singing and music to address their needs.InterpretationOur findings suggest that an online breathing and wellbeing programme can improve the mental component of HRQoL and elements of breathlessness in people with persisting symptoms after COVID-19. Mind–body and music-based approaches, including practical, enjoyable, symptom-management techniques might have a role supporting recovery.FundingImperial College London.

The Shackled King

Reviewed by: The Shackled King Jennifer Moss Waghorn The Shackled King Presented by John Casken and Counterpoise as a pre-recorded broadcast via YouTube for the online conference Shakespeare and Music: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives, hosted by the Universities of Manchester and Huddersfield, and the Royal Music Association (private performance; world premiere). 10–11 December 2020. Written and composed by John Casken, using extracts from William Shakespeare’s King Lear. Audio and video footage edited by Patrick Allen. Instrumental ensemble Counterpoise directed by Barry Millington. Studio space provided by the English National Opera. With Sir John Tomlinson (bass; King Lear), Rozanna Madylus (mezzo-soprano; Cordelia/Goneril/Regan/Fool), and the Counterpoint ensemble: Fenella Humphreys (violin), Deborah Calland (trumpet), Kyle Horch (saxophone), and Yshani Perinpanayagam (piano). Sometimes the most vivid renderings of chaos and uncontrollable emotion through art come from absolute precision—from expression distilled to a razor-sharp edge. In The Shackled King, composer John Casken took the story of Shakespeare’s King Lear and did exactly this, drawing on the formidable ensemble skills of Sir John Tomlinson, Rozanna Madylus, and Counterpoise. Casken’s “chamber opera” focused absolutely on Lear and Cordelia, exploring Lear’s various shackles: his struggles with madness, his responsibility and grief for the fractured relationship with Cordelia, and ultimately their literal imprisonment and her death. Except for brief appearances by the Fool, Goneril, and Regan, everything else was stripped away, including Kent’s involvement and the Gloucester subplot; the production was an intense fifty minutes long. Sections of text from King Lear were underscored or set to music out of sequence, providing concentrated episodic snapshots of moments throughout the play, but framed within and always returning to the prison environment shared by Lear and Cordelia by the final scene. Originally intended for live performance, The Shackled King was rapidly rehearsed and adapted for performance to camera following social [End Page 313] distancing guidelines. It was filmed in a rehearsal studio space using two chairs and a table for a set, and with minimal costuming, which involved single signifiers (a hat or blanket) to denote Madylus’s rapid character changes. Movement was limited and stylized within the stripped-back stage space. A great deal was done with very little, and this minimalism meant that everything was primarily shaped and expressed through instrumental music, song, and speech. Rhythm and pitch placement afforded by the standard written language of musical notation allows for greater precision than a speech-only play text; Casken went further, developing a sliding scale of spoken to sung text with Counterpoise. This ranged from speech performed freely within temporal “boxes,” through to rhythmic or pitched speech, sprechgesang and recitative styles, and fully sung words. While such a precise performance vocabulary could be constrictive in less expert hands, the effect in The Shackled King was to marry the language and verse rhythms of Lear to a rich palette of sounds from a small and relatively unusual combination of instruments (violin, trumpet, saxophone, and piano), sculpting the sounds of disorder and chaos with almost invisibly exact note placements. I was surprised and extremely impressed to discover that the four instrumentalists and two singers had performed without a conductor or musical director leading them through the cues and tempo changes, which were pin-sharp. The ensemble was small but versatile in the soundscapes it produced; it was most effective in moments of contrast between expressions of characters or mood, such as the representations of the three sisters when asked to express their filial love. Goneril’s magisterial, soaring sung speech was accompanied by uneasy violin glissando and trumpet, creating a disorientating feeling of empty space within the music. Regan’s sounded more like siren song, accompanied by voluptuous saxophone and reaching a climactic discord on “your dear highness’ love.” Cordelia was accompanied first by stabs on the piano, accentuating her stark “nothing,” before a higher sustained trumpet and violin refrain over a sweeter sung passage, feeling more sincere in its expression of sentiment through more comfortingly regular rhythms. Percussion was also used intermittently. The Fool was accompanied by a harsh rattle, and dry claves were played at the start of every section as the piece returned to the prison...

Luisa Miller, English National Opera

Review of: Luisa Miller, English National Opera London Coliseum, 21 February 2020

Hybridised Performance: Disruption and Deferment in Wagner’s <i>Tristan and Isolde</i>

The following focusses on aspects of hybridised multi-layered performance as seen in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, recently in a new production at the English National Opera (ENO). The notion of Wagner’s, ‘Gessamtkunstwerk’ (his own spelling) is particularly relevant, as are the influences of Schopenhauer’s ‘Philosophy of Pessimism’ and to a lesser extent Nietzsche’s apologias. There are nuances within music and libretto which invoke all of these in the work’s treatment of Liebestod, self-immolating romantic passion. This production was conducted by Edward Gardner, directed by Daniel Kramer, and designed by Anish Kapoor with digital assistance from Frieder Weiss.

Charles Mackerras ed. by Nigel Simeone, John Tyrrell

CONDUCTORS AND SYMPHONIES Charles Mackerras. Edited by Nigel Simeone and John Tyrrell. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2015. [xxii, 298 p. ISBN 9781843839668 (hardcover), $45; ISBN 9781782044895 (e-book), $34.99.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, discography, index.Celebrated Australian conductor Charles Mackerras (1925-2010) was known throughout his long career for his probing musicianship and insightful performances of works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Benjamin Britten, George Frideric Handel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Giacomo Puccini, Arthur Sullivan, and Giuseppe Verdi. But it was his discovery and promotion of the works of Leos Janacek and other Czech composers that helped to mark his legacy as one of the most important conductors of the twentieth century.A musical polymath, Mackerras began his career as a professional oboist, but early on turned his attention to opera and conducting. In 1947, he was awarded a scholarship to study conducting in Prague with Vacklav Talich, which provided his first exposure to the music of Janacsek. Mackerras and his wife Judy returned to England after the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia, and soon thereafter he was appointed to a post with the Sadler's Wells Opera Company (which would become English National Opera). He eventually rose to the position of Music Director at Sadler's Wells and was later associated with the Welsh National Opera, all the while expanding his international reputation as a conductor.The collection titled Charles lovingly edited by Nigel Simeone and John Tyrrell, presents Mackerras's life and legacy through a carefully selected collection of essays and tributes by many who worked with him. As the editors state in their preface, the volume neither a conventional biography, nor is it a symposium, but it aims to combine elements of (p. xi). Mackerras's widow Judy, who provided the editors with access to the extensive family archives, encouraged the publication. In their collection, the editors aim to enhance coverage of the last part of the conductor's life, but they also take note, and make appropriate reference to, the only other major book on the conductor, Nancy Phelan's Charles Mackerras: A Musician's Musician (London: Victor Gollancz, 1987), which was published more than a quarter-century prior to his death.While a symposium (or Festschrift) type of approach allows a number of different figures to discuss an individual's legacy, it also presents a disadvantage to readers who might prefer a single narrative discussion of the musician's life and works. In this volume, the main chapters on Mackerras's career by Nigel Simeone (An Immense Stylist Evolves: 1947-87; The Musical Values of Opera: WNO, 1987-92; Triumphs and Tribulations: Opera, 19932001; Rethinking Old Favorites: Opera, 2002-10) are interspersed with tributes and commentaries by others, including David Lloyd Jones (A Portrait of Charles Mackerras) and Patrick Summers (The Lion: Charles Mackerras).Of particular note in Simeone's chapter, An Immense Stylist Evolves, is the section on Mackerras's interest in historicallyinformed performance practice (Mozart and Handel: Figaro and Fireworks, [pp. 16-27], which includes copies of the conductor's annotated scores. In the 1950s, Mackerras was an early adopter of eighteenth-century vocal ornamentation (notably appoggiaturas), a practice that was widely accepted at that time. This chapter includes excerpts from Mackerras's own writings about his musicological research and implications for performance practice, along with reviews, both positive and less than positive, about the resulting performances.In his own Personal Portrait of Charles Mackerras, David Lloyd Jones recounts the response to Mackerras's performance of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte with the Hamburg State Opera in 1965. When Mackerras complained that there was not one damn appoggiatura the whole evening, the reply was, Herr Mackerras . …

The Indian Queen Giove in Argo La Serva Padrona

Review of Henry Purcells The Indian Queen, directed by Peter Sellars, conducted by Laurence Cummings, English National Opera, London, February and March 2015; George Frideric Handels Giove in Argo, directed by James Bonas, conducted by Laurence Cummings, London Handel Festival, Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music, March 2015; Giovanni Battista PergolesTs La Serva Padrona, directed by Johanna Byrne, conducted by Clare Clements, Insieme, Wiltons Music Hall, London, February 2015.London opera-goers have been fortunate this spring to have the opportunity to view rare seventeenth- and eighteenth-century operas representative of very different operatic genres, two of which have not been performed since their first stagings until very recently due to the incomplete state of the source materials.A tour backstage and a view from the technical gallery of the Coliseum before the performance of Henry Purcells The Indian Queen (first performed 1695) gave a preview of the backdrops which were such a significant feature of this production. They were by the Los Angeles artist Gronk, "the Banksy of LA." The technical manager called this a "flying show" because these specially commissioned backdrops dominated the performance, and there were few props. The technical manager explained that a season of opera which included Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger gave no space in the theatre for storing sets for the other two productions-The Indian Queen and La Traviata-which therefore had to rely on backdrops, curtains, and minimal sets. But there was nothing small-scale or minimalist otherwise about the production which expanded a forty-five-minute original work into a three-and-a-half-hour spectacular. Purcell scholar Andrew Pinnock argued in the program notes that while early music audiences would find an "archeological reconstruction" satisfying, something different was required in a large modern opera house. Californian director Peter Sellars is known to be eclectic in his use of theatrical and artistic influences. Sellars associates this semi-opera ("dramatic opera" as Purcell named it) with the work of Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, and Jean Cocteau in the 1920s, that is as a "multi-disciplinary work" which combines music, dance, and the visual arts. An exotic location and the use of magic were ingredients of opera in the seventeenth century. In such operas, both singers and actors performed and consequently Purcell had to write music for all of them.Purcell's The Indian Queen is loosely based on the play of that name by John Dryden and Robert Howard (first performed in 1664) which deals with the conflicts between the Inca and Aztec Empires before the invasion of the Conquistadors. There is speculation as to the date of the first performance of the semi-opera, but it is now thought to have been in June 1695. Following Purcell's death in November 1695, the work was completed with a masque by his brother Daniel. The first performance was jeopardized by the actors' rebellion, led by Thomas Betterton, against the patentees of the Theatre Royal and their establishment of a new theatre company at Lincoln's Inn Fields. New actors were recruited and the script seriously cut.Where Purcell's opera, following Dryden and Howard, treats of wars between Mexicans and Peruvians, Sellars' production uses a modern work by the Nicaraguan writer Rosario Aguilar: The Lost Chronicles of Terra Firma (1997). This work looks at the Spanish conquest of Mexico through the experiences of three women at the time, Dona Isabel (Lucy Crowe), wife of the Spanish Viceroy; the Mayan princess Teculihatzin (Julia Bullock) forced into a sexual alliance with a brutal conquistador Don Pedro de Alvarado; and their daughter, Leonor (Maritxell Carrero).Maritxell Carrero, an actor, was employed as narrator to read from Aguilar's work, words which introduced each scene. In the manner of eighteenth-century pasticcio operas, Sellars added sacred and secular choral and instrumental works of Purcell's, arguing for the sacred that church music was being reintroduced with the restoration of the monarchy in a "heartfelt way," just as was theatre and secular music. …

Reviews

Abstract Apollo, 24 Preludes and Aeternum (2013) The Royal Ballet, March The Oracle (2013), Meryl Tankard (dir.), London: Queen Elizabeth Hall, May The Perfect American, Phelem McDermott (dir.), Philip Glass (2013) English National Opera, June LOLPERA, Angela Lopez (dir.), Ellen Warkentine and Andrew Pedroza (2012) Los Angeles: Hollywood Fringe Festival, 24 June LACE:HERE:NOW, Nottingham, September 2012–February 2013 ‘I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America’ (2012–2013) Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin, 11 September–6 January ‘Visions of The Future’ (2012) the tenth biennial Fleur Cowles Flair Symposium, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin, 1–3 November

Charles Bernstein's Shadowtime and faithful interpretation

‘With the legalization of gay marriage, faith has been violated and we've been forced to respond’, says Charles McVety, the president of Canada Christian College in Toronto.1 Following the logic of...

Richard Wagner: Parsifal

Considering that Richard Wagner never wanted Parsifal seen or heard anywhere outside the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, a recorded performance of the opera already assumes a breach of the composer's intentions. As such, there is ample reason to welcome the recent DVD release of the much-traveled production by Nikolaus Lehnhoff, directed for television by Thomas Grimm and featuring an all-star roster of singers. Shunning fidelity to Wagner's stage directions, Lehnhoff's production offers a stark contrast to the only other available DVD of the opera, the strictly by-the-book Otto Schenk production for the Metropolitan Opera. (Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's adaptation is also available on DVD, but its status as a film, rather than a recorded performance, puts the work in a different category from the aforementioned releases.) With appearances at the English National Opera, the San Francisco Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, and Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu, this Parsifal may well have been seen by more people around the world than any other interpretation of the work. And now, with a wide release on DVD of the production as seen at Baden-Baden, the Lehnhoff Parsifal has reached critical mass—or, depending on one's opinion, overexposure.

‘First-Class Evening Entertainments’: Spectacle and Social Control in a Mid-Victorian Music Hall

First-Class Evening Entertainments was the title given to a variety programme presented at Hoxton Hall in East London when it first opened in 1863. In 2000 Nicholas Till and Kandis Cook were commissioned by Hoxton Hall and the English National Opera Studio to make a new music theatre piece for the Hall, which led to an investigation of the content and context of the original programme. In the following article Nicholas Till offers a reading of the 1863 programme as an example of the mid-Victorian project to exercise social control over the urban working classes. Nicholas Till is Senior Lecturer in Theatre at Wimbledon School of Art, and co-artistic director of the experimental music theatre company Post-Operative Productions. He is the author of Mozart and the Enlightenment: Truth, Virtue, and Beauty in Mozart's Operas (Faber, 1992), and is currently editing The Cambridge Companion to Opera.

London, English national Opera: ‘The Handmaid's Tale’

Poul Ruders's opera The Handmaid's Tale is hardly an unknown quantity: its world-première production in Copenhagen in 2000 was recorded by da capo (8.224165–66) in a three-CD set that received justly loud encomia. But the UK stage première, transferring the Danish production for a run at the English National Opera that began on 3 April, revealed – in a way that the recording obviously could not – what a superior piece of theatre it is: music, libretto, direction, stage design, costumes and lighting all coalesce to thrilling effect. A depressing number of operatic productions sacrifice musical integrity to directorial whim, so it's deeply heartening to report that, for once, everything pulled dedicatedly in the same direction, with outstanding results: it has been years since I've seen something this good.

The Performance of Pastoral Politics: Britten's Albert Herring

British historians and cultural commentators have tended to fight shy of opera as a site of critical and political engagement. Dismissed as a rich person's entertainment, its radical possibilities are ignored by all but a specialist few. Opera has, however, always been a critically political force, from Claudio Monteverdi's uncompromisingly humanist critique of sensual and political corruption in L'Incoronazione di Poppea (1642-3), to John Adams's controversial exposition of the terrible symmetry of Israeli and Palestinian enmity in The Death of Klinghoffer (1991), an opera which was jointly commissioned by Glyndebourne but has yet to be performed there. Opera has a long and honourable tradition of championing in song the otherwise voiceless. In the season of 2002, for instance, Covent Garden staged an opera concerming the tragic collapse of a destitute soldier, victimized into insanity and provoked into the murder of his common-law wife by the selfishly deluded experiments of an exploitative doctor, and the selfrighteously patronizing injunctions of an army captain. Alban Berg's Wozzeck is an uncompromising score, inspired in part by its composer's experience of dehumanization as a member of the Austrian army in the First World War; like so many Viennese of the generation that came of age around 1900, Berg was fascinated by the misfortunes of the socially marginalizedI Earlier in 2002, English National Opera had memorably staged Berg's Lulu, the drama of a street-girl who both exploits and is exploited by the fatal

Arnold Whittall. Exploring Twentieth-Century Music: Tradition and Innovation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xi, 238 pp. ISBN 0-521-81642-4 (hardcover)

Arnold Whittall. Exploring Twentieth-Century Music: Tradition and Innovation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xi, 238 pp. ISBN 0-52181642-4 (hardcover). It was as a neophyte graduate student, fresh from the colonies, that I first encountered Arnold Whittall in the Master's program in Theory and Analysis at King's College, London. Following a brutal term of Schenkerian analysis under the cold gaze of Professor D., our class greeted the arrival of Professor Whittall in the second term with some relief. His incisive instruction in the rigours and intricacies of set theory was delivered in a disarmingly mild, faintly avuncular manner. More than his demeanour, however, what engaged us was the way in which he interspersed instruction in technical matters, such as the Z-relation and nexus sets, with conversations about the of the century. He introduced us to the of Michael Tippett, whose opera The Midsummer Marriage was being performed contemporaneously by the English National Opera, he provoked us to think about how the concept of modernism found form in composers such as Benjamin Britten and Elliott Carter, he discussed the ways in which aspects of musical structure may offer insights into a composer's reaction to their society and its cultural climate. For many of us, this was our first encounter with the enriched world of ideas and interpretations that constitute musicology, having previously only been exposed to the routine description of historical events, dates and documents in music history courses. And for all of us, it influenced the way we thought about of the twentieth century, and laid rest to the belief that theoretical analysis could operate independently of musical context. It is Whittall' s ability to inhabit both the realm of the analytical and the musicologicai that makes Exploring Twentieth-Century Music: Tradition and Innovation such a fascinating and unique book. Musical works of this century are presented not only as expressive structures generated by specific compositional methods and techniques, but also as objects of interpretation and meaning. Whittall skillfully blends analytical examination of specific pieces with discussion of the larger context in which they are formed by providing critical and musicologicai commentaries on those compositions, and by examining the fundamental forces that affected composers and their works within the complex and challenging world of the twentieth century. Having been thinking and writing about since the 1960s, when he published his first article, Rousseau and the Scope of the Opera Whittall' s perspective on of the twentieth century has been gained over a period of at least four decades.1 His career, encompassing the roles of teacher, broadcaster, concert presenter, and writer on and theory, has involved a detailed examination of of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and his dedication to contemporary composition has made him a formative force in the world of modern music. It would not be an overstatement to say that his work has helped to shape generations of musicians, directly influencing the academic landscape in both Europe and North America. Most books about twentieth-century take a chronological path in their presentation of the of this century, starting with what they identify as the tipping point between high romanticism and early atonality, and organizing the rest of the century either by consecutive compositional trends - avant-garde, nationalism, neoclassicism, serialism, and so fortli - or by focusing sequentially on prominent composers of the time. Books of a more technical nature tend to concentrate almost exclusively on aspects of pitch organization in the twentieth century, covering topics related to set theory, serialism, the use of alternative scales and modes, and occasionally paying brief attention to other parameters such as rhythm and texture. …

The Cunning Little Vixen (review)

Reviewed by: The Cunning Little Vixen Byron Nelson The Cunning Little Vixen. By Leos Janácek. English National Opera, Coliseum, London. 10 March 1995. There are few more inviting introductions to twentieth century opera than Leos Janácek’s animal opera, The Cunning Little Vixen, which lays claim to serious discussions of human loneliness, sexual awakening, and ecology, as well as a joyful score, among its considerable and immediate charms. Consistent with its policy of presenting all operas in English (usually with relaxed tempos and restrained orchestral playing, in order to increase audience comprehension), the English National Opera’s production used Norman Tucker’s briskly contemporary translation of Janácek’s own Czech libretto. One suspects that such phrases as “I’m a feminist” and “bloody hell!” are closer to the spirit than the actual letter of Janácek’s—>Janácek’s text, which was [End Page 108] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. The English National Opera’s Revival of Leos Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen, with Sara Fulgoni as the fox and Lesley Garrett as the vixen. Photo: Clive Barda [End Page 109] based on local newspaper animal cartoons and a subsequent series of newspaper columns. Maria Bjornson’s charming set consisted of a grassy hillock which allowed the animal characters to keep in constant motion, alternately tumbling and prancing and emerging from foxholes with trapdoors; to frame the earthly events, a set of grandmotherly birds sat knitting in rocking chairs suspended in trees. The hillock occasionally opened to reveal a playing space which served variously as a doghouse, chicken coop, and village pub for the forlorn human characters. The insect characters like the Dragonfly and Mosquito carried images of themselves on poles, while the human characters seemed vaguely Edwardian and definitely frustrated. David Pountney’s direction encouraged constant movement and animal-like energy among all the characters, and Stuart Hopps’s choreography took advantage of all the orchestral passages to keep animals flitting about the stage. As this is an opera about the cycle of life—maturation, curiosity, sexual awareness and fulfillment, death and regeneration—it is also one of the most infectiously optimistic of operas; Spinoza would have loved its clearly pantheistic message of the indissolvable intermingling of God, nature, and mankind in a seamless web of being. The title role is a dream for England’s operatic pop diva of the moment, Lesley Garrett, who was transformed from a curious young vixen who is caught by the Forester and subjected to various humiliations at the hands of people, to a sexually awakening animal (in something like a flapper dress) and mature woman—who dies cruelly at the peak of her fulfillment. Garrett was an ideal choice for the flirtatious, curious, and fatally adventurous aspects of the Vixen—always in motion and irresistibly optimistic. Sara Fulgoni undertook the pants role of the Fox who introduces the Vixen to mature sexual love, and their marriage is the occasion for a rapturous celebration among the animals at the end of the second act. The Forester, who initially captures the Vixen but who learns to surrender to the mystery of natural renewal at the opera’s climax, was sonorously sung by Nicholas Folwell. Among the lesser characters, John Graham-Hall (dressed like a proper Edwardian gentleman, down to plus-fours and bicycle clips), elegantly typified the alienation and loneliness of the human characters, who so painfully lack the spontaneity of the animals; Rachel Lopez beautifully danced the Spirit of the Vixen whom the chained-up Vixen watches forlornly from the doghouse. Chief among the scene-stealers were the Cock, doing a music-hall turn, and the Hens, dressed as refugee charladies from Monty Python, puffing on broken cigarettes while they wearily turned out their supply of eggs. Stephen Barlow’s conducting was happily indulgent of the singers, in the best tradition of ENO, which traditionally favors the audibility of the text over purely musical considerations, although there were still plenty of opportunities for orchestral richness, as in the gorgeous hunting-horn passage in the last act. The English have found a vein of pure gold in Janácek’s operas that Americans never have...

Verdi's Macbeth

Mark Jones continues this occasional series by examining Verdi's Macbeth of 1847 in the light of David Pountney's new production for the English National Opera premiered at the London Coliseum in April.The ten year period 1840–1850 saw the appearance of ten operas by the young Giuseppe Verdi which now constitute his ‘early’ musical output. Not all the operas were equally successful and Verdi later acknowledged their inconsistencies; but here was the work of a genius who was to become the greatest composer in the Italian tradition, and at this time was thought of as a worthy successor to Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini.