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July 15 2006
Royal Albert Hall, London
Prom 2
Mozart the Dramatist
Anna Leese (soprano)
Rebecca Nash (soprano)
Ailish Tynan (soprano)
Ian Bostridge (tenor)
Benjamin Hulett (tenor)
Simon Keenlyside (baritone)
Kyle Ketelsen (bass-baritone)
Mikhail Petrenko (bass. Replacing an indisposed Brindley Sherratt)
BBC Singers men's voices
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Sir Roger Norrington conductor
Broadcast live (and repeated) on BBC Radio 3 and televised on BBC 1. See Broadcast schedule for details
Idomeneo - Ballet music
Mitridate - 'Se viver non degg'io'
Sifari: Rebecca Nash
Aspasia: Aylish Tynan
Zaide - 'Nur mutig, mein Herze'
Allazim: Simon Keenlyside
Lucio Silla - 'Fra i pensier'
Giunia: Anna Leese
The Abduction from the Seraglio - Act 2 Finale
Konstanze: Rebecca Nash
Blonde: Ailish Tynan
Belmonte: Ian Bostridge
Pedrillo: Benjamin Hulett
Interval
La clemenza di Tito - Overture
Don Giovanni - 'Dalla sua pace'
Don Ottavio: Ian Bostridge
The Marriage of Figaro - 'Hai già vinta la causa!'
Count Almaviva: Simon Keenlyside
The Marriage of Figaro -Scene 5 from Act 3
Count Almaviva: Simon Keenlyside
Figaro: Kyle Ketelsen
Susanna: Ailish Tynan
Marcellina: Rebecca Nash
Dr Bartolo: Mikhail Petrenko
Don Curzio: Benjamin Hulett
The Magic Flute - 'Ach, ich fühl's'
Pamina: Ailish Tynan
Don Giovanni - Act 2 Finale
Don Giovanni: Simon Keenlyside
Leporello: Kyle Ketelsen
Donna Elvira: Anna Leese
Commendatore / Masetto: Mikhail Petrenko
Donna Anna: Rebecca Nash
Don Ottavio: Ian Bostridge
Zerlina: Ailish Tynan
Radio Times, 15 July schedule, BBC Radio 3
Martin Handley presents a whistle-stop tour of most of Mozart’s major operas with a superb cast of soloists and a conductor with a real flair for this music. Roger Norrington delights in “Mozart’s unerring sense of character, and an ability to put those characters into his music, so we get such wonderful things”. Tonight’s concert culminates in the hellfire finale of Don Giovanni.
What the critics say
Dominic McHugh for Music.com
http://www.musicomh.com/proms/2006-2_0706.htm
“Next up was the star of the show, Simon Keenlyside, to sing Allazim's aria 'Nur mutig, mein Herze' from Zaide… Keenlyside's rendition had a glorious golden tone, clear phrasing and excellent precision in the runs.
“Two meaty extracts closed the event. First up was the Count's aria and the sextet from Act 3 of Le nozze di Figaro. The riveting performance was dominated by Keenlyside's sexy, aristocratic Count and Kyle Ketelsen's superlative, big-voiced Figaro. That the latter can more than stand up to a star of Keenlyside's international renown shows his calibre, which indicates a star in the making. Hulett was an amusing Don Curzio, Nash returned as a witty Marcellina and Tynan was in her element as Susanna (she should stick to the soubrette roles for the time being).”
Russian bass Mikhail Petrenko took over from an indisposed Brindley Sherratt as Bartolo in the Figaro extract, his voice carrying well towards the audience. He returned as the Commendatore and Masetto in the complete finale of Don Giovanni, which was the highpoint of the night. With Keenlyside as the Don and Ketelsen in brilliant form as his sidekick Leporello, what could go wrong? The answer is, very little apart from a minor coordination problem in the final sextet. Otherwise, the refined singing and acting of all concerned made it a superb end to a memorable evening.”
Annette Morreau, The Independent, 19 July 2006
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/reviews/article1185850.ece
The evening concert, entitled "Mozart the Dramatist", offered a whistle-stop tour through nine of Mozart's 22 operas that could not demonstrate Mozart's dramatic genius because there was no dramatic context. Sir Roger Norrington is no slouch at getting the most out of his players in normal circumstances, but this was far from normal. Ensemble was frequently scuppered by TV cameras demanding one direction, alas not the same as the conductor's. And why the whole affair was bathed in lurid brothel lighting was anybody's guess. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra played manfully without vibrato, only to be kiboshed by a set of singers for whom wobble meant no fear. Most guilty was Rebecca Nash, who, with Ailish Tynan, scaled (from cold) Mozart's perilous heights in a duet from Mitridate. Act II Finale of Seraglio began to liven things up, with Ian Bostridge splendidly coy as a worried lover, but Simon Keenlyside showed himself as the only true actor of the evening as Don Giovanni in the Act II Finale.
Tim Ashley for The Guardian, July 17, 2006
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/critic/review/0,,1822290,00.html
"Who was it who said that the best things in life were sex and the 18th century?" Roger Norrington asked, between items in his Prom with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. The concert was entitled Mozart the Dramatist, and consisted of arias and ensembles from the composer's operas, with the emphasis placed on the dividing line - thin, yet vast in Mozart's work - between sex and love.
Norrington was contrasting Don Ottavio's gentlemanly regard for Donna Anna with Count Almaviva's rapacious desire for Figaro's fiancee Susanna. Earlier in the evening, the classical posturings of characters from Mitridate and Lucio Silla were juxtaposed with the second-act finale of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, in which two pairs of long-separated lovers are reunited only to find their relationships coming apart. The concert closed with Pamina's outpouring of tragic disappointment from Die Zauberflöte, and the finale of Don Giovanni, with its tentative restoration of moral order after the cataclysm of erotic damnation.
Mozart the Psychologist might have been a better title, since a programme of operatic snippets inevitably skews the emphasis away from character in action to moments of reflection that capture the inner workings of the mind. Norrington's conducting, however, was searchingly insightful, and the SCO's playing often glorious in its colour and buoyancy. The vocal honours were divided between eight variable singers. Best was Simon Keenlyside, condensing entire life histories into 15-minute chunks as Almaviva and Don Giovanni. Ian Bostridge was the scrupulous Don Ottavio, and a superbly uptight Belmonte in Entführung. The weak link was Rebecca Nash, tackling some of Mozart's most fearsome roles, including Konstanze, Marcellina in Figaro and Donna Anna - and not quite up to the demands of any of them.
Extract of a review by Richard Fairman for The Financial Times
Published: July 16 2006 18:56
“On Saturday, Roger Norrington did his best to drain the joy out of some of Mozart’s greatest operas by introducing each one with a lecture so patronising that it made one’s teeth grate. Fortunately, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra offered consolation with some sparkling playing and, out of the eight singers who appeared in the solos and ensembles, there were two who could make the drama catch fire in the most dampening circumstances: the baritones Simon Keenlyside and Kyle Ketelsen, who made Mozart’s music seem as alive now as on the day it was written.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Extracts from a review by Alexander Campbell for classicalsource.com
“…Following that we moved to a short episode from the incomplete singspiel “Zaide”, which was not performed in Mozart’s lifetime. This introduced us to Simon Keenlyside’s Allazim. Sir Roger told us he felt that composing music for ordinary characters rather than gods and patricians was more to Mozart’s taste, although this did not seem to be particularly borne out by the aria, attractively as Keenlyside sang it.”
“Simon Keenlyside, perhaps THE Count Almaviva of our day, sang his aria with his warm and focused baritone and his customary flair, and a keen matching of music and words.”
“Finally we had the finale of “Don Giovanni” – from the dinner scene to the end of the opera. Keenlyside reminded us that he is also a Don Giovanni of distinction, and Kyle Ketelsen was an attentive Leporello. Here the orchestra seemed to enjoy itself with the percussive knocking on the door of the Commendatore’s statue given at an amazing fortissimo, drowning the orchestra entirely. Mikhail Petrenko, standing in for an indisposed Brindley Sherratt, delivered a stentorian Commendatore and the male voices of the BBC singers sang the hellish demons. Again the pace was perhaps too frenetic for comfort and the ensemble thus suffered a little. The surviving characters subsequently were then allowed time to freely articulate their future hopes and aspirations and deliver the moral.”
Hilary Finch for The Times, 18 July 2006
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,14936-2273966,00.html
The flames of Hell engulfed the Albert Hall on Saturday, glinting off the brass, and flickering over the organ loft. Don Giovanni tossed a piece of pheasant to Leporello, then threw the scraps to the Prommers. It’s amazing what the presence of television cameras can do.
The fact that a programme of totally disjointed operatic extracts could nonetheless provide an evening of real theatre was a tribute to all the singers involved and, above all, to Mozart the Dramatist whose Prom this was. Even television viewers, though, could perhaps have done without the trite and patronising verbal commentary from the conductor, Roger Norrington.
The sole virtue of these otiose utterances was to set into relief the contrastingly dignified and focused presence of each soloist: of Ian Bostridge, who created a pool of silence around himself as he began Don Ottavio’s Dalla sua pace, exquisitely sung; or of the young soprano Anna Leese, who inhabited every dark second of Giunia’s grief in her aria Fra i pensieri from Lucio Silla. Leese is becoming a formidable Mozartian: her singing here, and as Donna Elvira in that sulphurous finale from Don Giovanni, was full of wonders and keen musical intelligence.
So, what else, and who else? Well, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, who played with period-style bite and clarity of phrasing, despite the often lazy pacing of Norrington, raised the curtain with the concluding ballet music from Idomeneo. Mozart wrote it with the virtuoso playing of Mannheim and Paris ringing in his ears — and the SCO’s soloists followed suite.
Simon Keenlyside warmed up his baritone with an aria from the fragmentary Zaide, and then excelled himself as an explosively angry Count from Figaro, his foot pawing the ground, his voice coiled like a spring. His Don Giovanni, too, was horribly gripping, his fierce refusal to repent and his writhing body language carrying him both to Hell, and with both efficiency and elan, back to his soloist’s seat.
The Act II finale from The Abduction from the Seraglio, and the Act III sextet from Figaro shone the spotlight on soprano Rebecca Nash’s high-flying Konstanze and Marcellina, on Ailish Tynan’s feisty Blonde and Susanna, and on Kyle Ketelsen’s resonant and spirited Figaro.
Extract from a review by Carole Woddis for The Herald, 18 July 2006
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/66065.html
“Just listening to the first aria from Mitridate - written by Mozart at the alarmingly early age of 14 - and sung by sopranos Rebecca Nash and Ailish Tynan with infinite purity, one realised all over again his appreciation of the human voice as the dramatic instrument. The feast that followed included Ian Bostridge in Come mai creder deggio from Don Giovanni singing with sublime, aching intensity and the glorious, ever popular finales to The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni.
The latter, with Simon Keenlyside as "The Don", was an example of how, when you get a singer of such quality who combines virtuoso musicality with physical expressiveness, drama automatically follows. Some sophisticates might have regarded this as "opera by numbers", or for beginners. But when you have a line-up of this calibre, wonderfully supported by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, only those with the most sated palate would have resisted. As Keenlyside was dragged down to hell, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.”
