ENO: Wozzeck

I'm terribly behind, so only just getting a chance now to gather some thoughts about ENO's terrific new Wozzeck, which I saw at the second performance on Monday. It occurs to me that this production, along with the very encouraging announcement for its 2013-14 season, has done a great deal to drag me out of a slight depression regarding the company. Talk of its perilous financial situation was by no means stilled by Sunken Garden--I'd gone with a sense of hope, and an assumption that some of the more entertaining of the damning reviews were exaggerating for journalistic effect. I don't feel they were, and I was a little perplexed by attempts in some quarters to portray this as proof that professional critics (supposedly representatives of 'the establishment', even though the critics I know are definitely no such thing) are unable to recognise revolutionary, ground-breaking brilliance when they see it. (There's a tendency, sometimes, to call upon the bizarre logic that because critics in the past have dismissed any number of Great Works by Great Composers, the dismissal of certain works by critics of the present can serve as evidence those works' unrecognised greatness).

Anyway, ENO's new season is introduced in this all-singing, all-dancing video, for those who haven't seen it yet:

It's an exciting line-up, but the same old concerns remain regarding the size of the Coliseum and the sell-ability of some of the runs. Having Martin Crimp provide something rather more than a translation for Katie Mitchell's new Cosi is interesting, but I also still can't help wondering whether or not a slight relaxation of the English-only policy will help the company. Singing some of the bigger blockbusters in the original language would open up the casting options, meaning that ENO could maintain a reputation not only for theatrical adventurousness, but also for adventurous casting--snapping up some really exciting singers from all over the world years before they'd ever make it to Covent Garden. Straw polls among friends--and I'm talking mainly non-operatic friends--reveal that few are particularly excited by the prospect, on paper at least, of Verdi or Puccini in English. And another thing: doesn't ENO's weighting towards new productions serve as a tacit admission that many of its productions are not as revivable (for which one might unkindly read 'good') as they should be?

But, as I suggested, Carrie Cracknell's Wozzeck made all my armchair opera reforms (is there an operatic equivalent to Fifa Manager? Maybe there should be...) seem a bit silly--and made John Berry's strategy seem not silly in the least. Here, with Cracknell, was a director new to opera bringing some wonderful theatrical touches, finding power in the characters and telling contemporary resonances in Berg's brutal, brilliant masterpiece. Some things were lost--the inevitable collateral damage in any updating--and the sense nature that's so central to German Romanticism, even Buechner's grim brand of it, fell by the wayside when the drama was transplanted to a modern-day military barracks.

But, in return, the work provided a powerful commentary on the psychological damage wrought by war today. The portrayal of everything as quite so drug-fuelled and irredeemably grotty was a bit of poetic licence, no doubt, but an effective one that took us beyond realism into something a whole lot more nightmarish. Tom Scutt's set ingeniously contained all the necessary spaces, and the use of children (at one point chillingly playing inhabitants of the bar drinking themselves into numbness) was particularly powerful. Richard Stokes, meanwhile, provided a very effective translation--one that successfully retained much of the power and punch of the original.

The cast was excellent, all managing the extra level of intensity that this setting, awash as it was with drugs, required. Leigh Melrose's Wozzeck was vivid and pent-up, and sung with reserves of power that anyone who heard his Escamillo in the Autumn might have found surprising. Sara Jukubiak was a fearless, powerful Marie, Tom Randle all twitching, jittery violence as a topless and tattooed Captain. Bryan Register was a convincingly barbaric thug of a Drum Major, and James Morris was an authoritative Doctor (I'd not looked at great detail at the cast beforehand, so hadn't expected to hear this great Wagnerian in this context). Edward Gardner achieved really outstanding results from the orchestra, and captured all the brutality and beauty of this great score. A very good night at the Coliseum.

There are three performances left, by the way... book here 

Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music: Beznosiuk et al; Imaginarium Ensemble; Andreas Staier; EUBO

It was a Baroque weekend for me, an official assignment reviewing two Lufthansa Festival concerts on Saturday inspiring me to go to a further two concerts yesterday. My review of Saturday's pair is here, in which I inevitably was unable to deal with all the interesting questions thrown up by Enrico Onofri's interpretation of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, in particular.

He's been doing the rounds in interviews, explaining his 'vocal' approach to violin playing. (I'd not read any of these before the concert, but some of his effects brought to mind a TV appearance by Nigel Kennedy, in which he delivered some of the football scores on the violin--a quick YouTube search has proved fruitless, but it must be on there, like everything else that ever existed.) I couldn't help wondering whether or not the roughness and rusticity brought to the playing--more details than I was able to cover in a brief review--constituted an attempt to take this music out of the aristocratic court and back to the land it seeks to capture, to stop those rural folk it portrays just being part of the landscape, to recapture that folk's musical essence and experience of nature. (If that was the case, it's a project that has special pertinence for music that so often is wheeled out in popular culture as a neat shorthand for wealth and prestige, accompanying many a swanky cinematic garden party and cocktail reception).

The performances, as I wrote, had a real energy, but didn't really seem to me to represent a significant advance, interpretatively, on the brilliant 1994 account by Il giardino armonico, on which Onofri plays with the sort of imperious technical command that seemed missing on Saturday. Or was that lack of technical polish itself part of the interpretative approach?

It was glancing through the programme for the rest of the festival on Saturday that I noticed the line-up for Sunday's two concerts: Andreas Staier at St Peter's Eaton Square, in a programme celebrating (if that's the right word) melancholy; and the European Union Baroque Orchestra in 'Open-air Handel'.

Melencolia I, by Albrecht Dürer

Staier's programme consisted of works by Johan Jacob Froberger, Louis Couperin, Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer, Jean Henry D'Anglebert and Georg Muffat, the Froberger suite beginning with his 'Plainte faite a Londres pour passer la Melancholie', which gave the programme its title. Staier followed it with a wonderful little talk about melancholy itself, the Baroque mood par excellence, which, he noted, was routinely linked with counterpoint, the flowing of water and a general awareness of the transience of things. The harpsichord itself, he added, was an inherently melancholy beast, its notes condemned to expire more quickly than those of other instruments. The music that followed demonstrated all these points, not least in two remarkable and highly virtuosic Passacaglias by Fischer and Muffat. Staier played everything with impeccable control and authority.


Melancholy was largely kept at bay in the European Union Baroque Orchestra's excellent evening concert. I've had a soft spot for this band every since hearing them late in 2011, and the superlatives I reached for in my review then tended to apply here, too. And I agree with the orchestra's biography that its unusually 'ephemeral existence makes its concerts special': it disbands and reforms with new selection of young, ridiculously talented personnel every year. It's performance at this May festival, though, forced it to break its usual June-to-December life cycle, meaning that this concert was the last appearance of its class of 2012.  

They were joined on this occasion by the marvellous Swedish soprano Maria Keohane, who brought a big, beautiful voice and generous, playful stage personality to Ero e Leandro (a 1707 cantata), Silete venti (a motet, written 'before that early 1830s'), and 'Cor di padre e cor d'amante' from Tamerlano. The orchestra, under what was clearly inspirational leadership from Lars Ulrik Mortensen, matched her beautifully, interacting and responding acutely. The little duets she formed with the orchestra's leader, Huw Daniel, were a particular joy, not least in the encore, the final number from Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno. 

Daniel was brilliant, too, in the b-flat Sonata a 3, HWV288, and the whole lot of the strings were brilliant in the F-major Concerto grosso op.6 (the two oboes and bassoon were, alas, left out in this strings-only score). Apparently Jose Manuel Barroso described the EUBO as 'a perfect symbol of the power of integration, a subtle and potent instrument of harmonisation between people and nations'--maybe that's going too far, or maybe they're not spending enough time curing the melancholia of Europe's (ahem) great leaders. 

They're a really wonderful band, though, and I'm very pleased to see they're going to be playing regularly at St John's Smith Square as Associate Artist there. Until then, here they are--with Mortensen again, and Daniel as concert master--in a bit o' Bach.

LSO/Gardiner (Barbican); LPO/Jurowski (RFH)

Both of these concerts featured works from the same concentrated chronological span: John Eliot Gardiner celebrated his 70th birthday at the Barbican  on Thursday conducting Stravinsky's Apollo (1928, rev 1947) and Oedipus Rex (1927); on Saturday Vladimir Jurowski presented an even more taxing programme with the LPO at the Royal Festival Hall, consisting of Webern's Variations Op. 30 (1940), Berg's Lulu Suite (1934), Bartok's Music for String Percussion and Celesta (1936) and Martinu's Double Concerto for two string orchestras, piano and timpani (1939). (Please excuse me, incidentally, for the lack of accents: I haven't worked out how to do these without the size, font or background colour of my text getting messed up--which is what happens when I cut and paste from anything.)

Between them they presented a fascinating prospectus of what sort of music was being produced within a space of less than 15 years, and while the LPO's concert was part of the Southbank Centre's year-long Rest is Noise festival, the LSO's concert could just as easily have been part of it too. Both concerts had the sort of conviction and quality that makes one despair that such marketing behemoths are necessary, and, although my attendance at the Southbank's festival has been unforgivably sporadic thus far--to say the least--I couldn't help thinking that this LPO concert must have been one of the best in the series. First, the programme contained three truly great works, plus one--the Martinu--that seemed to show that composer at his best. Second, Jurowski gave a brief but passionate and persuasive talk. He said the programme was among the most challenging for him to perform, introduced the four works and offered advice, in particular, on how the uninitiated should listen to the Webern: along the lines of don't try and analyse, just listen.

Jurowski's conducting seemed to do the analysis for us, and the piece came across with impressive clarity and precision, with the LPO's players on outstanding form for their Principal Conductor (a more nuanced comparative view, from Boulezian, can be read here). The Lulu-Suite was outstanding, too, the orchestral playing rich and febrile, the contributions from the brilliant Barbara Hannigan--who recent sang the whole of Berg's opera in Brussels--lyrically free and exciting and extreme. Her  wandering on to the platform in stilettos, silk dress and coat, languidly killing time before taking her position by the podium, was a nicely effective touch. Jurowski had announced a change in the order in the programme, so that the Bartok now preceded the Martinu, suggesting that despite the former's masterpiece status, the latter should still be able to hold its own. Some who left after the first clearly didn't share his view, but the Czech composer's work was performed with terrific commitment and elan by the LPO strings, joined by the excellent pianist Catherine Edwards. There was impressive corporate virtuosity in the Bartok, too, in a performance that buzzed with energy and drive.

The controlled, coolly elegant writing of Stravinsky's Apollo(n Musagète) had shown the LSO strings on no less virtuosic form a couple of days earlier, with the just-turned-70 Gardiner showing a decent amount of balletic flair on the podium himself. It's a lovely piece, and was played with a great deal of charm and flexibility. It was blown out of the water by the performance of Oedipus Rex, though, in a cleverly sort-of-staged performance which had the Monteverdi Choir's men in face paint and the excellent soloists--Jennifer Johnston (Jocasta), Stuart Skelton (Oedipus), Gidon Saks (Creon)--also strikingly made-up, popping up in spotlights stage right or centre. Fanny Ardant was as classy as one would expect as the narrator, and Alexander Ashworth and David Shipley stepped forward from the chorus to make highly impressive contributions as as the Messanger and Tiresias--with singers such as these in its ranks, it is no wonder that Gardiner's choir made such an impact. In fact, the whole thing was fiercely exciting and involving, and rarely have I thought the Barbican's bright acoustic was more suitable, emphasizing each sharp edge (one's tempted to to reach for the sculptural, granitic metaphors) of Stravinsky's score. There wasn't much room for subtleties, but that was fine by me. (It was broadcast on Radio 3, incidentally, and there's a couple more days to listen to it here) 

Hough, BBCSO/Davis (Barbican); LSO/Farnes (Barbican)

These two Barbican concerts--one two days before the death was announced of Sir Colin Davis on Sunday, one two days afterwards--both had links with the conductor, the LSO's concert performance of The Turn of the Screw yesterday most obviously. It was to have been conducted by Davis, and the programme, poignantly, still talked optimistically of how he 'had been much looking forward to returning to the podium for these concerts, but unfortunately he suffered a setback recently and has had to delay his return'. Details were listed for concerts well into 2014, including  those he was to conduct: performances of The Creation in January; a programme of Panufnik and Dvorak in February. The last of these emphasized the fact that Davis, as Kathryn McDowell noted in a brief,  heartfelt speech on the Barbican stage, was constantly questing, learning new repertoire. If his repertoire at the Royal Opera has featured almost nothing by Mozart for the past 15 years (Haensel und Gretel in 2008 the only exception), that in the concert hall has been a lot more adventurous.

The programme for Friday evening's concert by the BBCSO--the orchestra of which he was chief conductor from 1967 until his appointment at Covent Garden in 1970--featured the music of a composer Davis championed passionately, Michael Tippett. And it was from Davis, the programme note told us, that the composer had borrowed a phrase to describe his own Fourth Symphony: as a 'birth to death' piece (a phrase Davis had used to describe Sibelius's Seventh Symphony). Tippett's fourth, incidentally, was composed for Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Georg Solti, who Davis succeeded at Covent Garden and whose scheduled Proms performance of the Verdi Requiem in 1997 was taken over by Davis when the older conductor died suddenly. (The performance was already due to be dedicated, at Solti's suggestion, to Princess Diana, then Solti himself died a matter of days later).

Anyway, enough with musical join-the-dots. On Friday, another Davis and another Sir--Andrew, this time--showed quite what a powerful, concentrated and fiercely committed composition the Tippett is: sometimes disturbing (not least in its featuring amplified breathing, here performed live), occasionally consoling, always burning with conviction. Jonathan Lloyd's Old Racket, here being given its world premiere at the start of the concert, was not really comparable (nor, I'm sure, would Lloyd want it to be). Written for strings (plus a string quartet, tuned a semi-tone sharp), it often seemed to toy playfully with the pastoral English string-orchestra idiom, undercutting lush textures with disorientating slides in and out 'of tune', exploring evocative ostinato figures and jarring tonal effects. I couldn't quite make up my mind on first hearing, but would like to hear it again--as well as its companion piece, New Balls (geddit?). We were on safer tonal ground with Brahms's First Piano Concerto, which followed, but there was nothing safe about the playing of Stephen Hough. As I've noted before, this pianist, the producer of many fine, library-recommendation recordings, is a different animal live. And his playing here was excitingly daring, most of all in a finale launched at breakneck speed. Davis and the orchestra backed him to the hilt in a performance that swept me along, but which had few of the refinements that had so distinguished the Vienna Philharmonic's account of the Second Concerto with Bronfman earlier in the week.

There was no shortage of refinement in yesterday evening's Turn of the Screw, though, the reduced LSO forces showing quite what a high-quality orchestra this is. Richard Farnes, too rare a visitor to London for those who don't get the chance to travel up to Opera North much, conducted with brilliant precision and dramatic pacing, and it was a real pleasure to hear (and see) Britten's ingenious scoring so clearly. With a fine cast of Andrew Kennedy (Prologue, Peter Quint), Sally Matthews (Governess), Michael Clayton-Jolly (Miles), Lucy Hall (Flora), Catherine Wyn-Rogers (Mrs Grose) and Katherine Broderick (Miss Jessel), this performance, the first of two this week, will form the basis for what is likely to be a competitive CD set when it appears on the LSO Live label. And, in the resolutely unatmospheric Barbican Hall, it did a pretty good job of creating just the right creepy, chilling atmosphere.

Vienna Philharmonic/Tilson Thomas (RFH)

This, I'm slightly ashamed to say, was the first concert I'd attended in the Southbank Centre's The Rest is Noise festival. I'm not sure it was the best one to start on, with the Vienna Philharmonic presenting on Tuesday a programme consisting largely of Brahms, while the main festival juggernaut has made its way well into the 20th century (the next batch of concerts appears under the rubric 'Art of Fear' and covers 1930-50). I suppose it's not the only time the great Austrian orchestra, which is more controversial than ever after the opening up of its Nazi-era records, has lagged a little behind.

The other name on the programme was Schoenberg, and the ostensible aim was to highlight 'Brahms the progressive', to borrow the title of Schoenberg's famous essay. 'Pure' Brahms, in the form of the second Piano Concerto, was bookended by Schoenberg influenced by Brahms (the 1943 Theme and Variations Op.43b, which Michael Tilson Thomas explained, in a brief intro, took Brahms's Haydn Variations as a model), and Brahms arranged by Schoenberg--the younger composer's orchestration of the G-minor Piano Quartet. 

It was an interesting programme, that's for sure, and one that helped to highlight the slippery nature of musical modernity. (It was a shame, though, that in a frankly embarrassing bit of blurb the Southbank Centre's Artistic Director, Judy Kelly, demonstrated that she has little or no understanding of such subtleties. One terrible sentence pays lip service to the orchestra's sexual politics in a dangling clause before implying, with a hopeless vagueness, that modernity is not only amorphous but also somehow inherently egalitarian:  'Late in admitting women to its ranks, it's fascinating to see the orchestra turn its attention to the modern world and the modern repertoire'. Such stuff really runs the risk of undermining the whole festival's intent, not to mention the Southbank's reputation as a flagship cultural institution).  

Schoenberg's Theme and Variations--Tilson Thomas told the uninitiated to expect a mixture between Schubert and Weill--though tautly composed and entirely devoid of unnecessary ornament or rhetoric, represents the composer in quasi-melodic mood. (The work was composed in California in 1943, initially for wind band, and then orchestrated for performance by the Boston Symphony). Here it was played with clean precision.

The concerto followed in a performance that did little to persuade one of the work's questionable modernist credentials. It's not long since I last heard Yefim Bronfman (a pianist who surely deserved a better adjective from Kelly than 'talented' in her blurb) in the work, with the Berlin Phil and Rattle at the 2012 Proms, but here his occasionally straight-laced playing found a far more interesting complement in the gorgeously characterized playing of the Vienna orchestra. The tuning in the winds, as it had been accompanying Murray Perahia at the Proms, was occasionally a little 'distinctive', but every solo was beautifully shaped, while the outstanding Tamás Varga provided a wonderfully lyrical cello solo in the Andante. Bronfman played the long game, an initially matter-of-fact approach increasingly melting into aching lyricism (again, in the Andante) and light-footed virtuosity (in the Allegretto grazioso finale).

Neither here nor in the arrangement of the quartet after the interval did Tilson Thomas really convey much by way of interpretative approach. Apparently happy enough to allow his players' musicianship free rein in the concerto and encourage lucid textures, he similarly seemed to pursue the middle ground after the interval. There, however, the orchestra--amplified to its full complement, including 16 first fiddles, not to mention a possibly unprecedented 8 women--didn't quite seem on his side. Their commitment seemed wavering, the necessary lightness in the Intermezzo proved elusive (its final bars, in particular, were a bit of a hash), and the wind tuning, again in the Intermezzo in particular, was now seriously suspect (had Schoenberg, I wondered on occasion, added some extra dissonant touches that I'd not remembered?). The martial episodes in the Andante con moto lacked bite and momentum; the opening Allegro never quite caught fire.

And what of the arrangement itself, made in 1937 and premiered by Klemperer and the LA Philharmonic? I seem to remember quite a few dismissive comments of it when Parvo Järvi brought it to the Proms in 2007, but I've always had a soft spot for it, having actually got to know Brahms's work in this guise first, as it was coupled with Simon Rattle's Bournemouth recording of Mahler's 10th (bought with the proceeds of an afternoon's lawn-mowing, I seem to remember).

At this performance Schoenberg's orchestration seemed more indulgent than I remember it (despite the problems, the playing, particularly of the horns and the soaring strings, was gloriously luxurious). And the orchestra pulled out all the stops in the alla Zingarese finale, where Schoenberg also starts piling on the un-Brahmsian touches: a xylophone, virtuosic trombone writing, intricate divisi strings. Suddenly this emphasizes less Brahms the progressive than Brahms the Dionysian. It's an effect that's already latent, of course, in the original quartet.

That effect is greatly amplified in the orchestral guise, though, the thumping syncopations, biting accents and rollocking oom-pahs suddenly becoming, it seems to me, a great deal more threatening--a vast orchestral machine suddenly possessed. And this orchestra played it with lascivious relish.

(Here's Järvi and his orchestra at the Proms, incidentally--I'm unable to embed the video)

Francesca da Rimini (Met Live in HD); Die Feen (COG)

It was an interesting weekend, defined for me--operatically, at least--by two neglected works. First was Saturday evening's Francesca da Rimini, live, in all its HD glory, from the Met. And Piero Faggioni's unashamedly lavish production--necessitating three long-ish intervals breaking up and elongating an opera that fits easily onto two CDs--certainly deserves its close-ups: the detailing is incredible, the evident effort that went into the production of every studded doublet and wispily embroidered frock very impressive. It made me suspect, not for the first time, that it's no bad thing that the big opera houses keep a few of such extravagant productions in their repertoire as reminders of a once-dominant aesthetic; once they all go, there's no way, in the present artistic and financial climate, that a house would be able to justify, artistically or financially, replacing them with anything so straightforwardly pictorial or unapologetically lavish.

Anyway, I was impressed by Riccardo Zandonai's score, which was first heard in Turin in 1914 (and heard at Covent Garden the same year), before going on the standard couple-of-decade global trip route towards obscurity. It's gorgeously overwrought and tortuous, as if the composer left meaty chunks of Strauss, Debussy, Puccini and generous sprinklings of all the other standard early-20th-century influences out to fester in the Italian heat. Having a libretto by the 'colourful' Gabriele D'Annunzio adds to its sweet-and-sour pungency (it reminded me to get hold of the interesting-looking new biography by Lucy Hughes-Hallett, the review of which on the Guardian elicited one sole pithy comment: 'what a remarkably vile human being'), while the work has a similar, remarkable sense inescapable fate hanging over it as does Tristan (referenced, of course, in D'Annunzio's eclectic libretto) but without the slightest glimmer of any transfiguration--and, obviously, virtually everything else that makes Wagner's score what it is. With lateness now dignified as an aesthetic of considered ascetism, too, to refer to such a work as 'late Romantic' seems very strange; I'm not sure what would serve as an alternative, though.

Anyway, here's a bit of the love duet from when Faggioni's production was new, with the somewhat starrier pairing of Renata Scotto (Francesca) and Placido Domingo (Paolo) than was assembled this time round, committed and highly admirable though Eva-Maria Westbroek and Marcello Giordano were.

Mark Delavan, clad in some impressively heavy-duty leather, was fabulously vivid as Francesca's husband, the bellicose Giovanni, and Robert Brubaker a viciously nasty Malatestino dall'Occhio--you know, the one with(out) the eye. And both were wonderfully chummy and engaging in their interval chats, a great feature of these broadcasts but one that seems to fundamentally undercut their apparent desire for cinematic immersion.

Finally, a quick mention of the Chelsea Opera Group's performance of the 20-year-old Wagner's Die Feen. The official Bayreuth line dictates that these early works be dismissed as negligible, of mere academic interest; but, despite some technical ropiness, Dominic Wheeler and his forces gave a pretty good idea of what a lively, inventive piece this is. It's probably wildly optimistic to imagine its return to the repertory--it makes some pretty exacting demands on a large cast, which were dealt with bravely on this occasion--but there's some delightful music in it. I was unprepared for quite how many portents of things to come there were, too, and, if you'll excuse a slight detour into Strauss-Hofmannsthalia, it was fascinating to see how the early Wagner dealt with what would later be one of many sources for that 'late Romantic' work par excellence, Die Frau ohne Schatten. Peter Branscombe cited Die Feen itself as a source for Frau, but it seems unlikely, even though Strauss was himself heavily involved in the posthumous premiere of Wagner's work, that Hofmannsthal wasn't just going straight to Gozzi's La donna serpente.

In any case, the 20-year-old Wagner's ending is fascinating in the way that it sees Ada and Arindal united as fairies, whereas Frau is all about becoming human; and the related Rusalka-Undine stories founder on the irreconcilability of these worlds. The performance was cut a bit, and we missed out on a buffo duet between Gernot and Drolla, a fact that slightly over-emphasized how Wagner, as he did with Heine for Die fliegende Hollaender, missed the humour that was central to the Gozzi source. Here it is, though, with a young Cheryl Studer and Jan-Hendrik Rootering.

Elitism in Opera

The idea of opera as elitist is never going to go away, I fear, and nor, I suppose, should it. It sets up camp regularly in comments sections beneath reviews, is a standard observation of anyone charting the cultural landscape, and seems to hover behind every press release or PR campaign to do with this extravagant art-form--ENO's much maligned 'undress for the opera' perhaps being a low-point for a company whose PR this season has had a few, and it was hardly a coincidence that it was yoked to its poor Don Giovanni. 

I have no intention to dive headlong into the debate here: it's too often fruitless, with those, basically, who love opera locking horns with those who, basically, don't. And it's also a debate shot through with highly problematic language, with the word 'elite' slipping treacherously in meaning between 'unashamedly excellent', 'prohibitively expensive' and 'only for the social elite'. Opera is often compared with sport--particularly by those trying to defend the price of the former, arguing that it is really no worse value than the latter--and it is remarkable how the word 'elite' can exist in a state of grace when it comes to sport, while it is weighed down with all manner of self-flagellating guilt and shame when applied to opera or classical music (witness the phenomenon of technical proficiency in music being seen, somehow, as morally suspect--much better a performance by a plucky amateur).

This, of course, is in part down to the historical position of opera and ballet as entertainment funded by wealthy courts, as a brief article by Sarah Crompton, who chairs a debate this Monday at the Royal Opera House, notes. I won't be there, alas, since I've got a ticket to Written on Skin, but will be interested to hear if anything new comes out of it (and to see if the stream will be available after the event, too). The timing seems propitious, given a certain amount of not unrelated activity in the blogosphere, reacting, for example, to the BBC's two recent programmes to deal with C20th music: here are interesting pieces from Tristan Jakob-Hoff, Gavin Plumley and Gavin Dixon, which have in turn inspired some fascinating comments. It coincides, too, with Nicholas Hyntner's stinging critique of the BBC's arts coverage. 

One of the UK's main faces of operatic accessibility is Kasper Holten, who provides a typically passionate introduction to the debate below, albeit one that only really sticks to the line, 'Opera isn't elitist because, well, it's really good'. This seems largely to equate 'elitist' and 'off-puttingly different'--perhaps the first thing to do on Monday will be to define what exactly is meant by 'elitist', whether we're talking intellectually, socially or financially... 

I'm inclined to prefer the argument put forward by Marek Weiss of Opera Bałtycka in Gdańsk, which I came across this morning when researching something else. What he says--from around 9'16; what comes before is specific to the company's premiere of Elżbieta Sikora’s Madame Curie a couple of years ago--is laced with a healthy dose of cultural pessimism (particularly from around 11'10). I don't know if this is shared by Holten, but it seems such thoughts are taboo when it comes to the debate in this country--which surely doesn't help anyone.