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Stanley Stewart
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« Reply #45 on: 01:19:37, 09-06-2007 » |
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# 45 Thank you, Jonathan Swain. You've confirmed my suspicions about the central performance. I. too. saw the original production in 1973 and Peter Pears left an indelible impression. Subsequently, I've enjoyed other performances of Aschenbach but I've always had problems with Ian Bostridge's presence; perhaps he isn't a stage animal!
However, I regret that the production hasn't been recorded for DVD as the lighting and design have drawn unanimous praise. As far as I'm aware the R3 recording is due to be broadcast on Saturday, 30 June.
I've also recorded Thursday's broadcast of "Owen Wingrave" but the fine weather made the garden more attractive mettle but I did hear the last scene and sensed rich pickings for this neglected work. I'm confident that the intimacy of The Linbury Studio is the right setting, too.
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #46 on: 10:11:07, 09-06-2007 » |
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Jonathan and Stanley, I am so jealous. Why did I not abandon my small children and go to see Pears in this? It must have been a very moving experience.
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George Garnett
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« Reply #47 on: 10:26:44, 09-06-2007 » |
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I arranged it so that my small children arrived later, but don't tell them that  I would certainly agree with Jonathan that Bostridge's Aschenbach was much less sympathetic that Pears'. With Pears' Aschenbach there was a genuine and necessary struggle to reconcile the Apollonian and the Dionysiac and (or so it seemed to me) it was the impossibility of this reconciliation that tore him apart and finally destroyed him. His Aschenbach nonetheless retained a level of moral nobility and moral engagement until the end. With Bostridge (I felt anyway) we were watching more a study of a man in mental, physical and moral decline. His redeeming feature was not so much an ethical one, still less the nobility of his struggle, but at least a level of self knowledge and self-awareness about the nature of his descent, a self knowledge which led to that most painful and unattractive of states, self-loathing and self-destruction. A very different reading but, or so it seemed to me, a legitimate one which was of a piece with Deborah Warner's approach to the production. Never fear, Stanley! Nothing will ever take away from the memory of the Pears performances (I managed to see him once in Edinburgh, once in London) but I do think Warner/Bostridge were deliberately doing something slightly different, and something which can also be found in the work. Does anyone think, incidentally, that there was something just slightly cruel in some of the things Britten required Pears to do in this final great work he wrote for him? It must have taken courage to perform it, I always felt and, even now, it feels such an emotionally raw and private piece that it sometimes feels almost intrusive to be witnessing it. |
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« Last Edit: 12:33:12, 09-06-2007 by George Garnett »
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #48 on: 15:43:05, 09-06-2007 » |
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I don't think Pears would have done anything he didn't want to.The opera was written in close consultation with him (the idea of having Apollo sung by a counter-tenor was his), and he seems to have loved the part. I think Bostridge's boyish looks didn't help. He looks younger than his age (42, I think) however hard he tries not to. When I first saw him he was about 30, looked sixteen.  Pears, as well as being much older, had a naturally somewhat patrician air, even offstage. It was nearer to Aschenbach, I feel.  (Here with John Shirley-Quirk) |
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #49 on: 09:37:44, 10-06-2007 » |
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Maybe there's one point in which Bostridge could have the advantage.
Pears was a strikingly handsome man all his life. He could just be in with a chance with Tadzio.
Despite his other talents, Bostridge is not a looker. He can easily come across as a weedy loser, (until he sings). His cadaverous face could be just right for the part. I thought I could make out a silly toothbrush moustache, for a Germanic academic look. His hair should have been made grey with powder or dye to age him further. Then the makeover at the barber's could have been more obvious.
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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Il Grande Inquisitor
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« Reply #50 on: 09:41:24, 10-06-2007 » |
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Just a 'heads up' that the works of Britten and Mann both appear in tonight's 'Words and Music' which is on the theme of Venice. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/wordsandmusic/pip/dpkmg/ |
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Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #51 on: 11:43:17, 11-06-2007 » |
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Many thanks for that link. It was past my bedtime, but I've thought I'd found it on Listen Again. However, I'm a bit baffled as I only seem to be able to get the last half hour or so.
Has anyone been, or is anyone going to the Aldeburgh production of D in V? It has an excellent review in this morning's Guardian, with a photo of Aschenbach (Alan Oke) looking just as he ought to look.
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« Last Edit: 12:21:01, 11-06-2007 by Mary Chambers »
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #52 on: 13:22:39, 11-06-2007 » |
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Guardian online: http://music.guardian.co.uk/classical/operalivereviews/story/0,,2099857,00.htmlbut no photo. I get the impression that the reviewer is less enthusiastic about the work per se than posters here. |
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« Last Edit: 13:24:24, 11-06-2007 by Don Basilio »
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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DracoM
Posts: 72
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« Reply #53 on: 22:18:56, 11-06-2007 » |
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New reviews of the Aldeburgh 'Venice' are worth reading. Guadian thinks it knocks Bostridge's 'Venice' into a cocked hat. Alan Oke is the man. Anyone seen it?
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #54 on: 22:36:43, 11-06-2007 » |
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Alan Oke looks wonderful in that Guardian photo that isn't on the web. He's not a singer I know much about, but he certainly looks right.
Very irritatingly, I shall be in East Anglia next week - too late.
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harpy128
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« Reply #55 on: 23:38:39, 11-06-2007 » |
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Alan Oke was an excellent Gandhi in "Satyagraha" - I should think he would make a dignified, and not too overwrought, Aschenbach.
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Chichivache
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The artiste formerly known as Gabrielle d’Estrées
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« Reply #56 on: 11:50:19, 14-06-2007 » |
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I was there last night - never seen or heard DiV before, so a fresh impression on this all-too-blank canvas. Visually superb - I wish I'd paid more and sat lower down rather than up with the paupers in front balcony. I supsect the staging would have been even more evocative. "Am I alone" in seeing some influence of Jack Vettriano?  Such a beautiful production, staging, acting, movement. Was in La Serenissima myself in March, and I thought it did a great job of capturing the feel and atmosphere - especially the distant vista. I was astonished by the opera itself. It is virtually a monologue, a soliloquy by von Aschenbach + piano and percussion. Never seen/heard anything like it. I really found it quite unsettling, to the extent that I was so busy getting my head round the concept that I missed half the content. I really think it would have helped if I'd heard it before on disc - such a surprise, and I think it will take a few more run-throughs for me to be able to appreciate it. I'm afraid I found some of the lyrics brought to mind a public lecture rather than speech or even musings. The multi-purpose fop/barber etc was excellent, as were the rumbustious kids (much better than the film!). Bostridge - brilliant singing, such a demanding part. The chap is much too youthful - but having seen Dirk Bogarde several times, it's hard not to make the comparison. Staggering round like a stringless puppet was not my idea of someone in the clutches of encroaching death, but it's churlish really to criticise on these grounds. In ten years' time he will be the complete article. All in all, the best thing by far that I've seen at the Coli for years, and worth getting to bed at 2 a.m. for. Well done! You can do it again if you like. p.s. I can't make the picture work, so here's the link: http://www.vettriano-art.com/maddogs.html |
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« Last Edit: 11:52:13, 14-06-2007 by Chichivache »
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wotthehell toujours gai archy
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #57 on: 14:56:45, 14-06-2007 » |
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It's really good to hear a "blank canvas" (I'm sure you're not) reaction. It was, as you've probably gathered, a sort of Peter Pears concerto, and he was very good at delivering a lot of words! (Even if he sometimes re-wrote them, as Bostridge did from time to time.) I'm glad you found it interesting and worth the effort. I had to make a 400-mile round trip to see it, and I thought it was worth it, too.
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A
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« Reply #58 on: 15:13:10, 14-06-2007 » |
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"Am I alone" in seeing some influence of Jack Vettriano? No, I felt exactly the same. I think it was the backdrop that made me think of his paintings, but also the slow movement of some of the singers as they drifted across the set, it seemed 'still' in action... if you see what I mean. The colours also seemed so right, and the drifting of the long curtains were evocative of the drifting material on the dancers' clothes in Vettriano paintings. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience ( but I am , as already admitted, a complete Bostridge fan!!) A |
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Well, there you are.
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George Garnett
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« Reply #59 on: 12:22:47, 17-06-2007 » |
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Yet more high praise for the Aldeburgh Death in Venice, this time from the Observer: The Aldeburgh festival, by contrast, can be relied on for high seriousness - too high at times, perhaps, under the leadership of Thomas Ades, but spot-on in the case of its founder Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice. If the National Geographic naturalism of Deborah Warner's recent production reduced the ENO audience to embarrassed voyeurs, the Japanese-style simplicity and elegance of Yoshi Oida's staging turns the work into the dialectical dispute between Apollo and Dionysus that Britten had in mind.
A couple of slats across a flooded stage, the rippling water reflected on the backdrop - that's all it takes, along with a few striped-shirt gondoliers, to create the doom-laden Venetian backdrop to von Aschenbach's tragedy. This is a work that needs to be thus stylised to avoid the familiar charges made against it, to elevate its subject matter from literalistic tabloid fodder to the artistic and human agonies Britten chose to address in such boldly personal terms.
It also requires an Aschenbach of high dignity, with whom we can identify, even empathise, whatever our sexuality. Alan Oke carried it off superbly, with powerful support from Peter Sidhom in the multiple baritone roles, hovering at the edge of the stage throughout as the personification of death intended by the composer. With the meticulous Paul Daniel wringing mature playing from the Britten-Pears Orchestra, this was as fine an account of this fascinating work as I have seen; how tragic that one of the most distinguished productions of the year is already history after only a handful of performances. No hope at all of a revival, I suppose? Anyone here with inside knowledge of these things? |
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