JIm Breen

In mid-2019, as I hurried to book tickets to the just-announced Ring Cycle in Brisbane in late 2020, I had no inkling that in fact the next Ring opera performance I was to attend would be in Melbourne in 2021. The Brisbane season. my fourth cycle (fingers crossed), has been postponed until late 2021, and it is by no means certain it will be able to proceed.

I must say I was a little surprised by the announcement last year that Melbourne Opera was embarking on a Ring Cycle to be spread over several years, culminating in a complete cycle in 2023. While the company has been doing great things in recent years, the Ring is a very high mountain to climb indeed. The resources required in terms of singers, orchestra, sets, etc. are formidable, and many larger companies simply avoid the challenge. Still, the company has established quite a tradition of successful Wagner productions, so why not climb that final mountain too?

So, to last night’s opening of Das Rheingold at the Regent Theatre. While it is inevitable that if you are doing a complete Ring Cycle you start with Rheingold, in many ways it is not a particularly suitable work to perform in isolation. It is rather static and lacks much in the way of a narrative thread. It is really setting the scene for what is to follow, and there are no outstanding characters to give it a human focus; the big roles such as Sieglinde, Siegmund, Siegfried and Brünnhilde come later. For good reason Wagner called it a “preliminary evening” to the three operas following.

Did Melbourne Opera rise to the challenge? Most certainly it did. It was a very satisfactory production on every level, and bodes well for a highly successful complete cycle.

The performances of the principals were generally excellent. I can’t help being most impressed by the quality of the singers the company is able to attract and deploy in these productions. For me, the stand-outs were Simon Meadows as Alberich and James Egglestone as Loge. Both are major and demanding roles and were performed at a very high standard. Like many, I had been looking forward to Warwick Fyfe playing Wotan, however, I understand quarantine restrictions prevented him coming to Melbourne. His alternate, Eddie Muliaumaseali’i took the role last night and carried it off very well, although at times his presence seemed a little light, and towards the end I felt he was tiring. Of the others I must single out Roxane Hislop’s brief and spine-tingling appearance as Erda in the final scene.

The orchestral part in the Ring always presents a challenge, as Wagner requires both a big string sound and a vast array of wind and percussion. I wondered how the Regent would cope, and I still don’t understand how over 45 string players and all that wind managed to fit in the pit. As with the singing, the orchestra, under the direction of the seasoned Anthony Negus, was very good indeed. Perhaps the strings could have been a little stronger, and there were the inevitable occasional wobbles in the brass, but overall it was carried off most satisfactorily.

So to the production itself, and it is here the challenges are found as directors and designers try to stamp their styles and extract life from an essentially static scenario. There have been many approaches over the years, not the least Patrice Chéreau’s hydro-electric dam and prostitute Rhinemaidens in the 1976 Bayreuth production. Director Suzanne Chaundy and set designer Andrew Bailey have taken a more conservative, albeit contemporary, approach in this production. The first scene with the Rhinemaidens and Alberich was relatively straightforward and the addition of silent Rhinemaidens on sway-poles in the background was most effective. The third scene in a semi-subterranean Nibelheim was almost a bit too dark at times to make out what was happening. The second and fourth scenes, which Wagner notionally set on a mountaintop, were on a flat stage with a circular opening to things below, and largely relied on the principals to give a sense of location and purpose. For the most part it worked well, although the closing minutes of the last scene, from where Donner clears the air with his thunderstorm-summoning “Heda! Hedo! Zu mir, du Gedift!” (possibly the closest thing to an aria in the whole opera) to the forming of the Rainbow Bridge to Valhalla, seemed a little aimless in spots. I suspect synchronising the music and set movements was a challenge. While the costuming was relatively subdued, I did wonder about the mixture of timeless robes for some of the cast and modern dress for others. Was having Loge dressed like someone from Guys and Dolls really that necessary to signal his role?

Minor quibbles aside, I felt this was a very satisfactory production of this major and quite challenging work. See it if you can, either in person or on the Melbourne Digital Concert Hall livestream. I’m certainly looking forward to the next three in the cycle.

Photo credit: Robin Halls

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Jim Breen reviewed the production of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” presented by Melbourne Opera at the Regent Theatre on Feb 3, 2021.

I was particularly looking forward to this concert in the “Faces of our Orchestras” series organized by Chris Howlett as part of the Melbourne Digital Concert Hall initiative. Here was the Mozart clarinet quintet, probably my favourite musical work, combined with Prokofiev’s rarely-heard Overture on Hebrew Themes. The performers were leading members of the MSO: David Thomas (clarinet), Tair Khisambeev and Freya Franzen (violins), Fiona Sargent (viola) and Rohan de Korte (cello), joined by Elyane Lassaude (piano) for the Prokofiev.

I did however wonder how on earth I was going to “review” the Mozart. It is a work I have known since my childhood (I see I bought my Eulenburg score of it in 1964); I have heard it countless times performed by all sorts of ensembles – would I be able to say anything interesting, useful, insightful? I was also aware of the issues discussed by Susan Tomes (of Domus fame) in her 2001 essay “A Puzzling Schubert Quintet” in which she is rather scathing about professional orchestral musicians getting together to play chamber music.

Then there is the quintet itself – what exactly is it? Is it a work for five musicians performing as equals, or is it, as Dr Floyd used to describe it in his radio program all those years ago, “a miniature clarionet (sic) concerto”? I used to be in the first camp but these days I feel that Mozart was responding to Anton Stadler’s commission by pushing it towards being a showpiece for the instrument, with the four strings being partners but often in the background.

The live-streamed performance from the Athenaeum Theatre was not without some issues, but was it was very much a “live” event with performers responding not just to the music itself but also to the circumstances of the concert. The overall outcome was very satisfying with strong and sensitive playing by all the players and a good sense of ensemble. Of course the clarinet (basset clarinet in this case) tended to dominate, but probably no more than Mozart intended. The strings shone on the occasions available to them – I always look forward to the prominent viola part in the third variation of the last movement, and I was not disappointed.

If I can be permitted a minor gripe; I had some concerns about the camera placement. In earlier concerts I had watched in the series the camera-work gave fairly equal treatment to the performers. In the Mozart one camera was fixed on David Thomas and much of the performance used just this camera, perhaps over-emphasizing that instrument’s role. It was particularly noticeable in the second theme of the slow movement, possibly one of the most moving passages in all music, in which the clarinet and violin engage in an extended and elegiac duet. The out-of-sight Tair’s part in the dialogue had the impression of being somewhat off-stage.

It was wonderful to hear the Prokofiev overture, for me probably the first time. The melodies he used are mostly familiar from other works, but his treatment of them was refreshingly deft and colourful. The performance was excellent, with the klezmer-like flavour Gordon Kerry mentioned in the program notes well to the fore. This time the networked audience had a better view of the performers, which was appropriate as each player had several highlighted passages. I hope we can hear this work again.

I was going conclude this review by putting on my retired network specialist hat and mentioning that the streamed broadcast suffered from several dropouts, including one that lost us the period from the closing passages of the Mozart through to the opening of the Prokofiev. To me it was a server synchronization issue, which is an inherent problem with live streaming. As I was writing the review an email arrived from Chris Howlett commenting on the problem and advising of the building of a new server. We all hope this fixes things.

Image supplied.

I think Emma Matthews summed up this concert very well when she described how Richard Mills asked her if she could come over from Perth and sing at “his party”. The event, in celebration of Mills’ 70th birthday, was really more of a party than what we have come to expect as a concert, and that indeed presents quite a challenge to your humble reviewer. How on earth do you review an event which has eleven musical items involving an orchestra (Orchestra Victoria), seventeen singers and six instrumentalists, as well as an MC (Phillip Sametz), lashings of speeches, interviews, banter, asides, etc., etc.? The usual po-faced analysis of performances is not appropriate for what was really a celebration of Mills’ work as a composer, and indeed to me the great value of the event was the way it showcased his works from the last two decades.

Before I get into the items themselves I need to mention the line-up of performers, which included an amazing who’s-who of Australia singers, who, as with all the performers, had donated their services for the concert. Some, like Warwick Fyfe and Brenton Spiteri, who sang in the closing Vaughan Williams, were squeezing it in between performances of The Barber of Seville on adjacent days.

Obviously the concert/event/party/whatever can be viewed from several angles. From the party perspective we had the lighter and whimsical Mills in the premiere of his cabaret-style “Three Songs for Buddy”, deftly handled by Robyn Archer with Richard at the piano, and his arrangements of popular songs with Greta Bradman singing “Every Day is a Rainbow Day for Me” with music by her grandfather.

In a stark contrast there were several sets of very serious songs. The first was two “Songs after Judith Wright” performed impeccably by Elizabeth Campbell with Phoebe Briggs, which elegantly captured the pain and enigma of Wright’s poems. Another was the premiere of “Three Antiphons of Hildegard of Bingen” sung by Merlyn Quaife with the orchestra. Mills speculated in his introductory remarks that Hildegard and her fellow nuns may have been on magic mushrooms to have produced such works, but I found his settings to be almost too short to do justice to the texts, and the combination of rather chirpy orchestration with an austere and declamatory vocal part a little unsettling.

The third was also a premiere: “In Tempore Bello”; a set of five songs to texts by Judith Wright, Douglas Stewart, Siegfried Sassoon, Miroslav Holub and Kenneth Slessor. As Mills explained, he wrote the work in memory of his school-mate, John Fraser, who died heroically while serving in South Vietnam in 1968. The music, which is, as expected, sombre, dense and complex, was sung superbly by Simon Meadows who was a late replacement for an ailing Teddy Tahu Rhodes. As with the Judith Wright settings, much of the colour was in the orchestral writing, and not surprisingly given the nature of the texts there were the occasional echoes of martial music. I found the work profound and moving – for me it was possibly the high point of the evening.

Finally there was the “Songs of Fire and Iron” to a text by Michelangelo Buonarroti, sensitively sung by Carlos E Bárcenas.

All four of these sets of songs were dated 2008 but two received their premieres in this concert. Why? Why haven’t we heard them before? Australian orchestras should be performing such things instead of recycling the old and trusted repertoire. Is it because Mills is not quite contemporary enough for the cutting edge occasions such as the MSO’s Metropolis series, but too strong for the mainstream? Anyway, the fact that we had to wait a decade to hear these works is an indictment on us all.

Two non-vocal works were included in the program; two movements from Mills’ 4th String Quartet, performed by musicians from ANAM (not specifically named in printed program notes) and the slow movement (Canzona) from Mills’ 2018 Concerto for Two Violins, performed by Markiya Melnychenko and Aidan Filshie. I am afraid I don’t know the work, but this elegiac and subdued movement is particularly beautiful and I look forward to hearing the rest of it.

Then to the opera excerpts. I was delighted when the program for the event was announced to see that it included ensembles from The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, a work I particularly enjoyed in its first season in 1996, and have been wanting to hear again ever since. To me Mills’ particular strength is in opera – I even flew to Sydney to see his Batavia as I had been living in Tokyo at the time of its Melbourne performances in 2001. We were not disappointed by the night’s opera excerpts; the long and complex sextet that ends Act I of the Doll and the wistful quartet from Act II were movingly performed by an ensemble of leading singers: Rebecca Rashleigh, Kathryn Radcliffe, Roxane Hislop, Elizabeth Campbell, Timothy Reynolds and Stephen Marsh. I particularly enjoyed the restrained quartet – as with the instrumental Canzona it is a style of music in which Mills excels. The final opera excerpt was the “Nightingale’s Aria” from The Love of the Nightingale (2007). This was the party piece that Emma Matthews had flown from Perth to perform, and she did it proud. It is a beautiful wordless aria, complex and soaring. It should be heard much more often.

The evening ended with almost all the singers we had heard so far joining with Dimity Shepherd, Douglas Kelly, Brenton Spiteri, Douglas Kelly, Raphael Wong and Warwick Fyfe to perform Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music. Given the focus on vocal music in this celebration, and the quality of the performers, this setting of the famous passage from The Merchant of Venice, probably Vaughan Williams’ most approachable work, was an appropriate close to the party.

And thus we celebrated Richard Mills’ 70th birthday. All praise to the Victorian Opera for staging it. It was a fascinating event – perhaps a little too long – maybe too much talking – a bit under-rehearsed in spots, but a wonderful chance to hear a variety of his music performed with love by his friends and colleagues. Mills mentioned en passant that he had been commissioned to write an opera for Perth for 2023, “if I live that long”. I certainly hope he does, and if I’m still around I want to see and hear it.

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Jim Breen attended “Celebrating Richard Mills” presented by Victorian Opera at the Melbourne Recital Centre on December 13, 2019.