A recording from Aix-en-Provence turns up on Thursday afternoon's Ao3 of what PB claims will be his last opera, complete with a tenor as the Alyeya. Difficult to tell exactly what time it will start, but after 2 pm, certainly. Since this piece seems to be required listening for a sizeable contingent here, just making sure that everyone has fair warning to get timers set up....

From what I've read I don't think the tenor Alyeya is quite unsupported by evidence - I seem to recall reading that the surviving material only has a treble clef for him, as for all the other tenors, and that Mackerras has said he would also use a tenor from here on in. That's very hearsay though and I haven't been able to find anything solid. Over to Opilec, I think.

Thanks to Ron for drawing this broadcast to our attention. I mentioned the performances to one of the producers at Afternoon on 3 ages ago (at about the time of the Holland Festival performances), so am glad it's finally being given an airing over here.

I saw the production in Vienna in May, travelling out there just for the one night. It was an extraordinary piece of music theatre, an absolutely knockout evening. Huge ovations, an uncompromisingly hard-hitting, non-gimmicky production. I felt emotionally and physically drained afterwards. Then I was taken backstage to meet Boulez! (And also had a chat with Chéreau!) 

Concerning the tenor Alyeya, the head of the editorial office at Universal Edition (the work's publisher) advised me while I was in Vienna that, in the process of preparing the new edition used for these performances, it had emerged that it was now thought Janáček intended the part for a tenor. He cited the fact that only treble clefs are used for the tenor voices throughout (i.e. not a treble clef with an octava sign underneath). He told me that this was now John Tyrrell's view, and that Mackerras, no less, had declared that if he were to perform the work again (I do hope he will!), he would do it with a tenor Alyeya.

A few weeks later, I mentioned all this to John Tyrrell, who's actually editing the work for UE's new edition (he'd answered hundreds of queries from Boulez in the course of preparations for the production). He almost exploded! He says it's absolutely clear, both from the manuscripts and from supporting documentation, that Janáček intended Alyeya to be sung by a soprano, not a tenor. John knows the sources of this opera better than anyone, having worked on it in great detail for many years. So his word is good enough for me. (John's been so busy, both with the House of the Dead edition and with his Janáček biography, that he's one of the few members of the Janáček fraternity not to have seen the production!)

I suspect that my friend at UE might have been spinning a little in support of the Boulez/Chéreau production (which was very big indeed on the European festival scene this summer).

Having said all of which ... it worked with a tenor. Thanks partly to the extraordinary direction and acting, partly due to the fact that the tenor concerned (Eric Stoklossa) is young and not only looks it but sounds it (I mean that in the best sense). So it didn't feel like such a terrible jolt as all that. But, having consulted the Janáčkian oracle, I wouldn't want to hear it sung by a tenor every time. I'm glad I have though: performances are rare enough as it is!

Friends from Brno were, on the whole, in favour of a tenor. One of them, who's a Janáček authority in his own right, approved: his wife didn't!

Do try to tune in on Thursday if you can: it's stunning. But hopefully at some point a DVD will appaer (the Aix performance was filmed): audio alone can't really do it justice.

Cheers,
Opi

Hmmm, that didn't stop Universal Edition charging me $200 for selling me one last year   Our production is now laid-over until 2009, and I will be making sure that Aljeja is sung by a female voice    What next,  Cunning Little Vixen's mate sung by a baritone?

Quite right too, because Aljeja's the "thread" which holds it all together...  although that can (and should) be done with Goryanchikov too,  he's always the "outsider", the "gentleman" in a world of killers and thieves.  The rest of them are a kaleidoscope who come and go without any linear "story"... which is perfectly as it should be, there's no neat "beginning, middle and end" in a labour-camp. ("How many thousands of days like this lie before me? All of them like this one! All of them - the same!" - Dostoevsky).  But we owe it to the audience to keep at least some kind of "constant", and it's Aljeja.  Interestingly, of all the "main" characters, he's the only one who never says a thing about how he came to be in the prison.  Although that name looks "Russianised" it's clearly not - we wrestled with this a bit (during the "detective-work" one does to assemble every "known" or "deducable" about each character) and it's probable that Dostoevsky's character was named "Ali", which would be "Alej" in Russian, nicknamed to "Aljeja".

The main "liberty" will be the way it will be performed, which is something quite unique, I think, and part of the reason we've delayed for two years.  It will need a year to rehearse it, at minimum.  I hope you'll have a chance to see it?

BTW, not really "about that" whilst being completely "about it", have you ever read Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Tales?  Shalamov was a St P intellectual and poet, who served three separate terms in the gulag system - the last, which nearly killed him, in the infamous Kolyma gold-fields in the Russian Arctic Far-East,  whose inmates had only a 30% chance of survival. The "Tales" are a series of short stories, bizarrely similar to those told by Dostoevsky or Primo Levi, each concerned with just one "con". Probably the most frightening book one might ever pick up, the horror intensified by the laconic and emotionless style in which Shalamov writes.  Essential "backstory" to HOTD, I think?

Believe me, I am not planning to kill-off Goryanchikov   I am not sure where you got this idea?

I hope you'll find the Valamov rewarding, if hardly pleasant reading?  The Penguin translation (by John Glad) is extremely deft - he manages to convey the criminal argot in English without it sounding false or like a discarded script for Only Fools & Horses.  The second of the stories, which Glad titles "On Tick", is amongst the most finely-crafted pieces of horror imaginable... you're instantly in the world of Luka Kuzmich, in just seven pages. 

Here are a few pics from Act 2 of the Chéreau production:




Alyeya (foreground) and Goryanchikov (wearing the specs)

Of course changing voice-types and plotlines willy-nilly is something rather different from investigating a not completely groundless hypothesis... but I'm sure no one is seeking to imply otherwise

I believe the production was broadcast on TV by arte. If that's true then perhaps there's some grounds for hope for those of us who missed it.

Especially those who were frustratingly close to Aix (in Avignon to be precise) and could even have gone to the dress rehearsal if Sasha Waltz had known how big a Janacek fan they were and who looked at trying to get to a performance but what with having to reorganise transport and find accommodation it would have cost at least €300 just to be there not counting the ticket price.