Of class and custom

**
It was a revisit for Megan. She had attended Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin at the Bolshoi in Communist-era Moscow. This was EO performed by the Australian Opera at the Joan Sutherland Theatre, under the smaller of the sails at the Sydney Opera House. It’s similarly designed, but more intimate than the larger concert hall. We were seated in the very back row. We couldn’t see the surtitles, and we’d chosen this so could better concentrate on the music. Perhaps it was a poor decision. We’d read the plot, but this work went for over two hours and there were details that were just lost. The back row was also under a low roof, but the sound still seemed good, if not loud. At its peak, the stage with chorus had, perhaps, 50 singers, and the orchestra, in its pit, another 30 or more. I missed a large sound from strings, but this was nicely played nonetheless, with a small, almost a chamber, feeling. (Megan saw 4 basses which suggest as orchestra of ~50, but it didn’t sound so big to my ears). The voices, too, weren’t massive in the space, although in flight they filled the space with ease. It’s a strange story and very dated to modern ears (unless you follow period series or read Victoriana). Young Tatyana meets Eugene Onegin who has come to the country after the balls and sophistication of the big city. Tatyana sends love letter which Eugene rejects. At a ball shortly after, Eugene flirts with Olga, sister of Tatyana and fiancé to Eugene’s friend Lensky. Lensky takes offence, challenges to a duel and is killed (and remains on stage as a body for the rest of the performance). Twenty years pass. Onegin encounters Tatyana at a ball. She is now the wife of Prince Gremin. He expresses his love. She does also but refuses to leave the Prince. End. This takes over two hours, so the surtitles would have filled in some gaps. This version has young and old Tatyana and Onegin variously on stage together (unlike the Bolshoi which played it straight) but only the older incarnations sang. There are a few passages that even I recognised, a waltz that included singing by the chorus, and a mazurka. I am a novice in operas. I was surprised by applause after significant arias that interrupted the theatrical flow. I noticed the difference between attending music and opera, how one was theatre so required visuals; the other you could close your eyes to. I enjoyed the costumes, especially generously draped dresses and mature Tatyana’s stunning white dress with bustle and train and a slit at the front that opened to a vivid red, her theme colour in youth. I was understruck by the chorus which sounded like a collection of individuals (in phrasing and vibrato) rather than a unit like a choir, but thinking back, this may be apt. These are thirty or so people playing parts (admittedly as unnamed peasants) not a whole, so unity may not be the intention. I couldn’t help but be impressed by the main voices, Eugene’s baritone, Tatyana’s soprano, Onegin’s baritone and Lensky’s tenor. I wondered if voices are typecast in opera, so Tatyana is soprano, sister is mezzo-soprano and mother an maid are contralto, and, for the men, the powerful Prince is bass, the intellectual Onegin is baritone and the more lightweight Lensky is tenor. So, opera. I won’t rush back, although it was a worthy outing. I will read surtitles in future, and I may try for a language I have some chance of understanding, Italian or French or English. It’s somewhat like the book I’m reading at the moment, Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence, amongst high society life in New York in the 1870s, about Newland Archer and his impending marriage to sheltered May Welland and how it’s thrown into disarray by the arrival of May’s cousin, the separated Countess Ellen Olenska. There’s social custom and forbidden love and even a return after 26 years. This is another era of class and custom and it shows. Interesting to visit but hardly a daily indulgence.

Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin was performed by the Australian Opera at the Sydney Opera House. Key performers were Nicole Car (Tatyana, soprano), Dalibor Jenis (Eugene Onegin, baritone), James Egglestone (Lensky, tenor), Jacqueline Dark (maid Filippyevna, contralto) and Konstantin Gorny (Prince Gremin, bass) and the orchestra was directed by Guillaume Tourniaire (conductor).

Pic attribution: Third act, Eugene Onegin, at USSR State Bolshoy Theatre, Moscow, 1965. RIA Novosti archive, image #855192 / Boris Riabinin / CC-BY-SA 3.0

B9 v.2

It was at the Sydney Opera House with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Sydney Philharmonia Choir that we caught our second live performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the famed Choral Symphony, the Ode to Joy. Our first experience is written up here in CJ when we heard B9 done at the Llewellyn by the Canberra Symphony. I know the work a bit more now. Megan and I both experienced this performance as less ecstatic than the Canberra one but more considered and understood. Perhaps it was our location: we had seats in the boxes above and behind the basses. The Music became 3-D with the choir to the right of us and basses to the left. I could follow the bass line in detail, and this was hugely instructive. I had great sight from behind of the fourth bass in the front row: watching the bowing (he wielded a German bow amongst 6 French and 2 German) and the fingering and even the trivial tasks like turning pages and rosining the bow. It was amusing, too, to see the casualness amongst the players: percussionists tapping while waiting several movements for their written part; brass players draining their instruments; the tedium of counting bars; the discomfort of the singers eye-to-eye with the audience throughout the third movement. But also the joy of a good line: Megan particularly noted the timpanist was having a great time. But the performance was serious enough, and demanding. I was following the basses and there were plenty of demanding lines there. But we could also see and hear the various wind instruments: the flutes that passed lines to oboes and bassoons. The cornets that waited, waited, then tapped a note to give harder edge to a repeated horn line. That contrabassoon that I was waiting to see used, then missed. And perhaps the biggest opportunity of all was to see the conductor, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and how he leads his orchestra. I mostly watched his conducting in the Richard Strauss piece (more later) and was a non-plussed. I understand a conductor taps the beat at the top of a baton stroke, and sometimes he did, but he also tapped more frequently and outside the beat at times, perhaps to speed the players up, then other times it was sweeps of emotion rather than direction. That I didn’t comprehend. The voices were blissful as ever. I enjoyed the play of male and female voices and the gut wrench of the tutti. Also, although we were behind the featured singers, we could hear them well enough and, despite the warbled traditions of classical vibrato, I loved the playful interplay. It’s easy to see why this is such a loved and respected work. Despite all the drama and dynamics and stops and starts, nothing ever seems forced. Every line just fits and leads to the next, however diverse. Everything is purposeful. Not for nothing that Beethoven is so respected. One more thing I noticed, and this of the Opera House: it’s surprisingly intimate when viewed from the stage. I’d sat in rear rows for another SSO concert, and the orchestra seemed like dots in the distance. From the stage, the rows of audience well up in serried ranks and the impression is of intimacy. Do the players realise how distant it all seems for their audience? It reminds me of advice on PAs and foldback. Most important is to get the band feeling right, because then they will perform their best. So this approach, an intimacy for the orchestra, is maybe the right way to go. I must also praise the SSO programs. They are free to collect and informative. This one even has an annotated selected discography.

The program started with Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen. I only realised after, but this is subtitled: for 23 solo strings. Presumably the players all have their own charts, so the normal sections are groups of individual instruments. I’d noticed solo lines from a violin, then another, then strangely, a unison line from two distant violinists. And the bassists were similar. There were three, but each played separately, perhaps in a pair and the program says only once together. Quite strange. But the tempo was steady, rich in long lines of quavers that moved in various ways. This didn’t feel like a work of virtuoso demands but the whole was deep and emotional and very satisfying.

Then the B9 after the interval. Those first loud lines of the first movement weren’t loud enough to my ears (or to Megan’s less damaged ears) but I expect they set my response to the performance as considered rather than ecstatic. It was magnificent none-the-less. How could it not be? The second movement was all thrills of the extended chase. It’s probably my favourite movement, except maybe for the fourth which is all of the above and more. How wonderful is this and how unneeded are these words? Just to say B9 v.2 was a great night.

Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor) led the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs in a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9 in D minor and Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings at the Sydney Opera House. The singers were Lorina Gore (soprano), Sally-Anne Russell (mezzo-soprano), James Egglestone (tenor) and Michael Nagy (baritone).