Buskers fore and aft

I'd stayed beside Oper Frankfurt and walked through Willie Brandt Square frequently in the past and attended a few chamber concerts in the foyer but never an opera. Mozart Idomeneo was playing and I took my chance.

But first was the walk and another busker. This was Cuban clarinettist Leonel Fernandez Ortega playing jazz and latin with nice conviction and understanding. It's not an instrument I know well in jazz although it has a strong early history. Leonel did a great job, spelling melodies with authority and improvising with nice modern conventions.

Then to the opera. I had the cheapest seat with no view but I moved. It's a surprisingly intimate theatre ringed with dress circles and with a massive stage area and a generous Orchestra pit. Excellent German design. The orchestra was about 26 players with harpsichord and two bassists who I thought playing period bows (French grip held up the stick). Between soloists and chorus there were about 45 singers dressed in modern clothes on a sparse stage frequently using its massive rotating floor. The nautically-themed opera lasted 3.5 hours with one interval. Greek King Idomeneo is thought to be lost in battle. To survive, he's made a deal with Neptune to kill the first person he sees on return. That turns out to be his son so he sends him off. The son is bereft. This all happens against a love story of opposing princesses. And the death of the father and a successful romance. If I got the story right... The son was once played by a male soprano but now is a cross dressed female so that adds some modern day confusion. The music is typical Mozart but sprinkled amongst song. The playing was neat as was the singing although I felt their tightness strayd occasionally. But I think it was the first performance in this series. With the heat and my little experience of opera the first half was trying but I settled into the second. An interesting outing not least for the opportunity to see some casual German operatic audience habits.

I walked out to a hot night and milling people and busy bars and a hip hop beats busker. I like that music when it's done well; simple but with deep deep grooves and otherworldly electronic tonalities and sudden pauses and the like.

Mozart Idomeneo was performed at Oper Frankfurt. Leonel Fernandez Ortega (clarinet) busked.

At the Opera

Newsweek reported* (2014) that Germany has 83 publicly-funded opera houses (and 200 orchestras). We attended Oper Frankfurt for a Sunday brunch Kammermusik im Foyer. The performers were a string quartet for two parts adding piano and tenor singer for one other. The program was Britten Three divertimenti for string quartet, a set of songs by Vaughan Williams On Wenlock Edge and von Flotow String Quartet in C major. The space was a large box, hard but boxy behind the performers and open behind the audience, with timber reflectors to right and left and a slightly raked roof. From the first note I was enraptured by a huge, satisfying sound from the quartet. My guess is much from the players, but the space must have helped. This sounded massive, imposing, authoritorial. And the Britten was fascinating, all slides and atmospheric effects and harmonics and committed dynamics and not a touch of hesitation anywhere. And it’s not that they seemed old-hat and offay: they appeared genuinely chuffed with the performance at its end, smiling easily. Then the songs with piano and tenor. Nice firm voice and the added dynamic of the piano and an interesting balance of parts. More romantic than the Britten. It was amusing to see and hear the original text in English with a German translation - usually I see it the other way around. I caught a few words from the singing, but reading later of teams ploughing, clean and brave / behave, of sweethearts to choose (although not of whose) and dying men reminiscing and Clun and the rest. Rhymes and landscape and memories. Then another pleasure, a string quartet by Flotow. I read that he’s regarded more for comic opera and I can’t find any non-operatic works on IMSLP. It didn’t seem a great work to my ears, but it greatly pleasurable and played with a fitting neatness and I enjoyed it immensely. So, an aptly programmed Sunday-brunch concert with an immense sound and some very pleasurable playing.

The performers were Freya Ritts-Kirby and Nobuko Yamaguchi (violins), Susanna Hefele (viola), Mario Riemer (cello), Simone Di Felice (piano) and Michael Porter (tenor). The place was in the Holzfoyer of Oper Frankfurt.

How Germany is saving classical opera / Elisabeth Braw, in Newsweek, 7 Apr 2014