“Agency” is a current buzzword in opera, well-worn but still valid and usually preceded by “female”. Women, abused, controlled, dying, were long assumed to have no free will. A radical rethink, of history in its entirety, and of opera, has put this expectation in the dock. One of the sharpest cross-questioners, scrutinising every hardened attitude, is the British director Katie Mitchell, whose work has been seen (alternative wording: “has divided audiences”) across Europe since the mid-1990s.
Her production of Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), as troublesome as it is unnerving and perceptive, has returned to the Royal Opera House for a second revival. The soprano Nadine Sierra excels in the title role (her fellow American Liv Redpath will give three performances). Sierra alone, leading a uniformly strong ensemble, would be a reason to see this show. Giacomo Sagripanti conducted, with chorus and orchestra on passionate form and a notably lovely solo flute obbligato in the celebrated mad scene.
While the men in this opera are preoccupied with ancient rivalries and future fortune, the tragic Lucia is here shown to act, in ways usually unseen and despite oppression on all sides, with an independent mind. Finally her sanity, perhaps always frail, collapses. Based on Walter Scott’s novel of 1819, the work is a prime example of Italian “bel canto”, which only means beautiful singing but encapsulates an entire 19th-century Italian operatic style built around vocal fireworks, trilling ornament and elegance. Sierra’s fearless, gold-silver high notes and super-rapid trills are matched with answering grace and intensity by the young Spanish tenor Xabier Anduaga, as Edgardo, the enemy she loves. The Polish baritone Artur Ruciński is rich-toned and convincing as her bullying brother Enrico.
Mitchell’s Lucia reminds us, unequivocally, of the etymology of hysteria (origin, uterus). The fated bride’s bloodied midriff, her stomach clutching and vomiting, may indicate a shameful pregnancy or, merely, if that adverb is allowable, menstruation, both lazily associated with female madness. Designed with immense detail by Vicki Mortimer, the staging splits the action into two: public and private, outer and inner, unfolding in parallel. Sometimes the simultaneous goings on are distracting; easier to follow if you’ve bought a programme and studied, in advance, the second column of the double synopsis. Mitchell’s seriousness is beyond question, if in the end the results are overemphatic. This revival (directed by Robin Tebbutt) shows us, again and again, the power of brilliant singing. On opening night the audience felt like a fourth main character, alert to every vocal triumph, cheering, ebullient, generous. It may be an opera of top notes, but this production, for all its minor frustrations, reveals it as far more than that.
Two chamber concerts I went to last week acted as unwitting preludes – of which more shortly – to this year’s BBC Proms, launched on Thursday. In the first, at Wigmore Hall, Lawrence Power, viola player supreme, led the Nash Ensemble for the last programme in an all-day event devoted to the Australian composer-violist Brett Dean (b.1961). Dean’s hallmark is his special gift for creating musical atmosphere: a reworking of music by William Byrd, in Dean’s Byrdsong Studies (2021), transported us to a ghostly Tudor past, the sound of a soft, zigzagging harpsichord (Xiaowen Shang) whispering down the centuries and meeting the present. Dean’s Approach (Prelude to a Canon), written to lead straight into Brandenburg Concerto No 6, is a busily disputatious exchange between soloists out of which Bach’s music suddenly emerges, liberated. Dean and Power also showed their virtuosity (Dean used to play in the Berlin Philharmonic) in George Benjamin’s Viola, Viola (1997), a succinct invention described by the composer as a “truly wild and ecstatic ride”. It truly was.
The second chamber concert, at Milton Court, featured Anthony McGill, principal clarinettist of the New York Philharmonic and a Barbican artist in residence. A consummate player who can turn a blizzard of notes into a long, poetic, lyrical line, McGill was joined by Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective for Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet and Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps. Neither work, though full of rewards, felt quite bedded in, with some slippage in ensemble, but McGill’s playing was a model of poise, freedom and imagination. The clarinet movement in the Messiaen, Abîme des Oiseaux, was a masterclass in the expressive range of a single line of music.
And so to the Proms. Both Power and McGill will play concertos this year – Cassandra Miller’s for viola, Mozart’s for clarinet. The backbone of the season, on a headline perusal of the 73 concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, is centenary Bruckner and epic Mahler. You can write that off as conservative or you can hope that, as with last year, the appeal of orchestral and choral extravaganzas will draw the crowds. They show off the best of the Albert Hall, and of the Proms. For the quirky and original, look to the wider UK concerts in Gateshead, Nottingham and Bristol.
Visiting orchestras include the Czech Philharmonic and the West-Eastern Divan. The must-see heavyweights, each giving two concerts, will be the Berlin Philharmonic with Kirill Petrenko, and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra with their new chief conductor, Simon Rattle. The Last Night, after perennial head-scratching, will include Rule, Britannia! The further Britain gets from ruling the waves, the idea fantastical, the less it seems to matter if Thomas Arne’s great tune turns into an audience sing-song. But sensitivities run high and questions are rightly asked. The soprano Angel Blue and pianist Stephen Hough are the Last Night celebrity soloists. Sakari Oramo will conduct.
The Proms announcement came days after the death of Andrew Davis, 80, a long-serving, musically open-minded and popular chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He was due to conduct at this’s year Proms. Let’s dedicate the entire 2024 season to Davis’s witty and brilliant memory. If someone can do the decent thing and reprise his unforgettable Last Night modern-major-general parody, he could rest in peace, his spirit honoured.
Star ratings (out of five)
Lucia di Lammermoor ★★★★
Nash Ensemble ★★★★★
Anthony McGill and Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective ★★★★
Fiona Maddocks’s pick of the 2024 Proms
In chronological order. Be sure to book early; tickets go on sale at 9am on Saturday 18 May.
Prom 4
Hallé/Mark Elder (21 July)
Mahler Symphony No 5
Prom 6
BBC National Orchestra & Chorus of Wales, Crouch End Festival Chorus/Ryan Bancroft (23 July)
Verdi Requiem
Prom 15
The Swingles, BBC Philharmonic/ Nicholas Collon (30 July)
Messiaen: Turangalîla Symphony
Prom 21
Sinfonia of London/ John Wilson (4 August)
John Adams: Harmonielehre
Prom 31
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra/ Daniel Barenboim (11 August)
Schubert “Great” C major Symphony No 9
Prom 37
London Symphony Orchestra and choruses/Antonio Pappano (17 August)
Britten War Requiem
Prom 42
Aurora Orchestra/Nicholas Collon (21 August)
Beethoven’s Ninth by Heart
Proms 55 & 56
Berlin Philharmonic/Kirill Petrenko (31 August & 1 September)
Smetana: Má vlast/Bruckner Symphony No 5
Proms 61 & 62
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Simon Rattle (5 & 6 September)
Bruckner Symphony No 4/Mahler Symphony No 6
