Vaughan Williams Sir John in Love

 Opera 16

Vaughan Williams Sir John in Love

Soloists

Northern Sinfonia

Richard Hickox

I’ve never quite got on with Vaughan Williams. There are some very special moments across his wide output (the first few bars of the Sea Symphony and the end of the fifth symphony are two that come to mind) but otherwise find that he falls into cliched patterns too often and that after a while all of his music starts to pick the same (heretical view I know).

Vaughan Williams wrote six operas over his long lifetime but none of them have ever held a place in the repertory. This one waited over 20 years for its first professional performance after being first performed by amateurs and performances since then have been very rare. I can understand why. Some of it seems very quaint and old fashioned with a fair bit of ‘hey, nonny no!and it tended to meander along pleasantly but unmemorably for much of the time. You would find some interesting dramatic moments but then these would fall back into the folksong mode which to me quickly becomes cloying. 

Although one can understand why an English composer wanted to write a full length opera featuring Falstaff it was always going to be an uphill struggle when Verdi had already worked miracles with his own opera. 

So that concludes this little series of Falstaffian operas. The two by English composers didn’t really appeal. I enjoyed the others - perhaps the Nicolai most of all. You can see why it is the only one which has retained a place in the repertoire.

Holst: At the Boar's Head

Opera 15

Holst: At the Boar's Head

Soloists

Liverpool Philharmonic Choir

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

David Atherton

This is a curious piece. It is largely based on melodies from English hill tunes - mainly Playford’s English Dancing Master. Only three of the tunes are by Holst, although all of them are adapted into the musical texture - this is not just a series of popular songs like the Beggar’s opera.  I found it an unsatisfactory piece and I never really found my way into it. It is actually quite congested - there is a lot going on, almost as if Holst wanted to draw attention away from the folk melodies and show that there was more to the piece that those tunes.  There were, as you would expect from a composer of Holst’s distinction, some attractive passages but in the main I felt that the work just rather meandered along. 

Not one for me I think. 

Balfe: Falstaff

 Opera 14

Balfe: Falstaff

Soloists

RTE concert orchestra

Mario Zambelli

Balfe came off badly in my 365 project year. I condemned the Bohemian Girl to the list of pieces I never wanted to hear againhttps://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/06/balfe-bohemian-girl.html.  So I didn't have high expectation for this. It turned out however to be an impressive piece. It is an Italian opera very much in the tradition of Donizetti and could easily pass for an early Verdi opera (it is a near contemporary of Oberto). It has all of the vigour one expects from an Italian opera of this period together with some attractive ensembles. The individual arias themselves are perhaps less appealing - they are obvious display pieces with some, what now seems, distracting coloratura and ornamental writing. The big tenor aria, written for Rubini, was completely over the top, obviously to show off the star tenor's agility in the highest register. At the time he would have sung the high notes in a semi-falsetto. The 'ut de poitrine' ie. the top C with the full chest voice was for the next generation of singers.  The singer here, Barry Banks, made a decent shot of it but it really is quite a challenge to listen to.

The scene of Falstaff being teased and pinched came off well here (as it has in all of the operas in this little series) and similar the Windsor forest atmosphere was atmospherically created.  How strange it is that The Bohemian Girl, which I thought was a pretty tawdry piece, held the stage for at least 100 years whereas this opera was performed precisely six times and then completely forgotten until it was revived for this performance.  There's no accounting for taste. 

Nicolai: The Merry Wives of Windsor

Opera 13

Nicolai: The Merry Wives of Windsor

Soloists

Bavarian State Opera

Robert Heger

In the days when concerts regularly started with overtures the overture to this opera was one of the most regularly performed pieces. But these days overtures are much less commonly played and so this has rather fallen from familiarity. I'll return to it later.

The opera, which dates from 1849, was Nicolai's last - he died aged 38 only a couple of months after the premiere. I thought that it was a delightful work -it is infused with the spirit of Weber and, especially, Mendelssohn. Some of the pieces in the opera could have passed for additional numbers in the incidental music to A midsummer night's dream and I am sure that Mendelssohn would not have disowned them.

This is very much an opera about the merry wives themselves - the role of Falstaff is surprisingly small, though I suspect that with the spoken dialogue taken into consideration it is a much more expansive role on stage than it is on disc. The ensembles are a real joy and there is great good humour throughout - even when Falstaff is being pinched!  Some of the solo arias are a little cloying and there is too much old-fashioned ornamentation but that it a minor drawback in what is otherwise an impressive score. Who knows what Nicolai might have written had lived another 30 years.

Back to the overture. As I listened to the opera I mentally ticked off the appearance of all of the themes from the overture except the most famous one - the C major tune that forms the second subject. But it never appeared.  What confidence to reserve that lovely tune just for the overture and keep the audience waiting for its (non) appearance. 

Salieri: Falstaff

Opera 12

Salieri: Falstaff

Soloists

The madrigalists of Milan

Alberto Veronesi

For the next few operas I am going to look at works inspired by Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor.  I won’t be including Verdi’s Falstaff because that is an opera that I know so well (and besides I have already included Verdi in this project) but there are quite a few others to go at.

I wasn’t aware, until I acquired this CD in a second-hand sale, that Salieri had written an opera based on the play so I was intrigued to hear what it might be like.  It is of course almost impossible not to think of Salieri without remembering the play/film Amadeus and I am afraid that that is exactly what occurred to me at the start of this piece. The overture started off with some very trivial, cliched, material which irresistibly reminded me of the scene in the film where Mozart played a march by Salieri in a mocking style and transmuted it into something from Figaro. I found most of the first Act very weak and it was hard to get engaged with it. Things did improve after that - there were some spirited ensembles and some more attractive numbers but overall I do think that this opera is a lost cause. Cecilia Bartoli recorded a CD of extracts from Salieri operas some years ago and there are some interesting things there, but I suspect she had to wade though a lot of ordinarily material before finding enough worth recording.

Amadeus is fiction and the portrayal of Mozart there is highly contrived and unlikely. But it does have a deep dramatic truth. The gulf between talent and genius is at once wafer thin and absolutely enormous.

Bartók: Duke Bluebeard’s castle

 Opera 11

Bartók: Duke Bluebeard’s Castleloists

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

Anja Bihlmaier

This was a live performance at the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham.  I had heard the opera years ago but didn't remember much about it.

Hearing it live really brought out the extraordinary power of the orchestral writing. Bartók uses a large orchestra, including organ, 2 harps and offstage brass. The effect when they are playing - such as when the fifth door opens - is highly impressive. With all of the orchestra on stage the singers here did struggle a bit to be heard over the weight of the orchestra, 

The vocal writing here does seem secondary to the orchestra. Indeed I can’t imagine that is a particularly satisfying work to perform as a singer. These is very little in the way of extended arias - much of the vocal writing consists of small fragments of arioso often with phrases repeated several times over. I suppose that Pelleas was an important influence here, though the music is a long way away from Debussy. Indeed it didn’t seem entirely characteristic of Bartók either - I think of him mainly in terms of complexity of rhythm and folk-based melodic inspiration and neither of these were I think particularly apparent in this work.

I certainly was glad to hear it again after a very long gap. I didn’t get the sense that Bartók was a natural opera composer and it is perhaps significant that he never returned to opera. 

Haydn: L'incontro improvisso

 Opera 10

Haydn: L'incontro improvisso

Soloists

Lausanne chamber orchestra

Antal Dorati

This is Haydn's version of the same text as set but Gluck in my previous post. Haydn's libretto expands the text as set by Gluck and in particular includes a number of ensemble.  It is a much longer work than Gluck's taking up 2 1/2  CDs.

Although I am great Haydn enthusiast his operas are virtually unknown territory as far as I am concerned. I did see La Fedeltà premiata years ago but I don't really remember much about it. Other than that I will probably have heard the odd aria or two but that is about it.

The biggest issue with Haydn's operas is that they are not Mozart! By that I meant that although the musical substance is very similar Mozart's mastery of the stage and of dramatic development is not something that Haydn can match. But of course that is an unfair comparison because Haydn wasn't really trying to do that. His conception of opera was much more of individual numbers in their own right rather than as part of a dramatic sequence. But taken in its own right there is some wonderful music here and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it.  Yes there are some passages of rather stilted coloratura for the soprano and the tenor but these are more than outweighed by music of great humour and lyricism. The highlight was probably the extraordinary trio in Act 1 for three female voices. In purely dramatic terms it is probably overlong but in musical terms it is full of wonderful touches, with some remarkable moments of chromatic inflection.

Robbins Landon singles this trio out for special praise in what are otherwise a fairly perfunctory few pages about the opera in his masterful five volume biography of the composer. I get the sense that he didn't really engage with the operas and was far happier discussing the string quartets, symphonies and particular the late choral music. Perhaps he was right. I can't see Haydn's operas ever becoming part of the repertory  - they just aren't Mozartian enough - but now that I have heard this I am keen to explore more of Haydn't operatic output.

Gluck: les Pèlerins de la Mecque ou La Rencontre imprévue

Opera 9

Gluck: les Pèlerins de la Mecque ou La Rencontre imprévue

Soloists

Orchestre de L'Opéra de Lyon

John Eliot Gardiner

When I think of Gluck the words that come to mine are austere, classical, restrained. But those are the characteristics of his late reform operas. This recording reminds us that there is another side to his character. The opera is a very light hearted piece something between an opéra comique and a singspiel. It has a large number of comparatively short pieces, some of which are really little more than songs. There are lots of examples of Turkish music (i.e. drums cymbals and triangle) and generally the opera is high spirited and lots of fun. It is about as far removed from an opera like Iphigenia en Tauride as can be imagined.

There were a couple of familiar numbers in the score. Mozart wrote a set of variations on an Aria from the first act under the German title Unser dummer Pöbel meint, and there is a marvelous recording by Lucien Fugere of C’est un Torrent, which he recorded in 1929 at the age of 81. It is one of the best examples of a solid vocal training enabling superb singing, including wonderful breath control, to continue into old age.

Haydn wrote an opera based  more or less on an Italian version of this libretto. It will be the next opera in this project.

Rimsky-Korsakov: The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh

Opera 8

Rimsky-Korsakov: The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh

Soloists

Kirov Opera 

Valery Gergiev

I'm gradually getting to know the Rimsky-Korsakov operas. In my project last year I was very impressed with The Maid of Pskov https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/03/rimsky-korsakov-maid-of-pskov.html and I enjoyed this opera even more. It has all of the ingredients you expect from Russian opera of this period. Big ceremonial scenes, dramatic choruses, ritual, impressive bass roles and folk-music inspired passages. The Invisible City is sometimes considered to be Rimsky's Parsifal because of the ritual and especially the evocation of the bells - here they represent the lost city. There was some astonishing orchestration here to evoke the sound of the bells, showing Rimsky to be one of the most innovate orchestrators of the late 19th century.  There are also constant reminders that The Firebird was just round the corner. The more you hear of Rimsky's music the more Stravinsky's debt to his teacher becomes more apparent. 

Perhaps the one think lacking in this piece is a really outstanding melody. Rimsky's melodic writing is quite cautious - this is not one of those operas where you go away humming a big tune which stays as an ear worm. But there is so much else in this score that this doesn't really matter. It is compelling music from start to finish.

Mozart: Lucio Silla

Opera 7

Mozart: Lucio Silla

The mature operas of Mozart have been part of my musical life for as long as I remember. Playing in the orchestra for a production of Cosí fan Tutte when I was still at school was a formative experience. But I have never explored the earlier operas, so this was a good opportunity to start to put that right.

Lucio Silla is as astonishing work for a 15 year old. He had already mastered all the techniques of Italian opera seria and was writing music of real power. Indeed there are many places in the score where you get a real foretaste of what was to come.

But of course this is an opera seria. So instead of the dramatic narrative that we get in the mature works we are still in the world of long arias interspersed by recitatives. There are a few ensemble numbers but those are perhaps the less striking parts of the score. There is also significant amounts of coloratura passages. Those are of course still present in the mature operas but here they really do seem there simply to show off the singers’ abilities. There is more for the chorus to do than one expects in an opera of this type but the chorus is still rather peripheral. It is the soloists who, as individuals, are at the heart of this opera  It is a score dominated by women’s voices - there is inevitably a trouser role and the tenor only has two full arias - there was a problem with the original production which meant that he could manage the four operas he was originally going to be allocated. 

Perhaps the highlight of the score is the long arias near the end of Act 3 for Cecilia. This has astonishing maturity and the slow section, in particularly, wouldn’t be out of place in any of the more famous operas.

This recording has had mixed reviews. It does have some small cuts and Harnoncourt’s conducting has been criticised as over interventionist and over emphasising the rhetorical gestures. I didn’t hear it that way - in fact I thought that it was extremely expressive and made the most of what was a fascinating score.

Lully: Persée

Opera 6

Lully: Persée

Soloists

les Talens Lyriques

Christophe Rousset

It has taken me a long time to get round to listening to an opera by Lully. In some ways that is a surprise because Rameau is one of the composers who I most admire and in many ways he was Lully's successor. I had somehow formed the impression that Lully would be the 'penny plain' to Rameau's 'twopence coloured" - ie rather boring and dull.

Wherever I got this idea from I don't know, but it is clearly misconceived. This was really attractive music with lots of interesting colours, rhythmic invention, choral singing and attractive melodies. It is a long peice- 5 acts plus a prologue - but it held me attention throughout.  What perhaps surprised me most was how often it reminded me of Purcell. I suppose that that is not really unexpected. Purcell's operas are almost exactly contemporary with this piece and clearly there was a lot of musical cross-fertilisation going on across the channel. 

Perhaps Rameau still takes the crown - his invention is on another level, but I how have a better picture f Lully as a composer of real achievement and substance - I'll certainly see (and hear) him in a new light after this opera.   

Dvořák: The Devil and Kate

 Opera 5

Dvořák: The Devil and Kate

Soloists

Brno Janacek Opera Chorus and Orchestra

Jiří Pinkas

At university we gave the first UK performance of Dvořák's Dimitrij. It was a great experience but it didn't convince me that Dvořák was a natural opera composer. The only other of his operas that I have heard is Russalka.

I have mixed view about Dvořák. I love his music when he is being a native Czech composer: much less when he is trying to be Brahms. Fortunately this opera is very much on the Czech side of the divide - it has lots of really attractive folk-based music which is very reminiscent of the Slavonic Dances. There are some very tuneful arias and ensembles. The music associated with the devil is perhaps a little routine though I can imagine that it would work well on stage. I have seen the opera described as a Czech equivalent of Hansel und Gretel with the Devil taking the part of the wicked witch. Of course all ends happily ever after and there is plenty of opportunity for more Czech dancing.  Overall I enjoyed it a lot even if it didn't quite convince me that Dvořák was born to compose operas.

Verdi: Les Vêpres Siciliennes

Opera no 4

Verdi: Les Vêpres Siciliennes

Soloists

BBC chorus

BBC concert orchestra

Mario Rossi

Ashley Lawrence (ballet music)

This is a fascinating opera. I have listened to most of the Verdi operas over the years and have seen many of them on stage this one has always passed me by. I know the famous aria O tu, Palermo (in Italian) and I have heard the overture before, but other than that this was a blank canvas for me.

It was the work the followed the hugely successful trilogy of middle period operas which really made Verdi's international reputation: Rigoletto, La Traviata and Il Trovatore. Those are all fairly concise works written for the Italian stage. This by contrast is a French Opera on the grandest scale. Most major 19th century composers were drawn at one time or another to  Paris, where they had the huge resources of the Opéra at their disposal. But this also meant that they had to follow the conventions of French Grand Opera, including extensive use of the large chorus, five act and, most importantly a ballet. So this opera has a full length ballet sequence in Act 3 which lasts close to 25 mins.

There are some wonderfully dramatic episodes in this opera. I was particularly struck by the trio just before the final pages, where Verdi really ramps up the tension. But there are also many tender lyrical passages. A couple of isolated aria at the beginning of Act 5 for example and perhaps most notably a tenor-soprano duet in Act 3.  There are also it has to be said some passages of rum-ti-tum which would not be out of place in a light opera. That is just part and parcel of the style - Verdi didn't really get those out of his system completely until Otello and Falstaff which at this stage were decades away.

I followed the piece with the benefit of Julian Burden's indispensable book on Verdi's operas. He does a really good job of putting this music in its context, drawing out the parallels with operas both in the French and Italian repertory. Some of the composers he mentioned were only names to me when I first read his book as a student - since then I have become familiar with some of them and I am sure that they will be included in this project.

Would I rate this opera above my two favourite middle-late period Verdi operas, Simon Boccanegra and Don Carlos? Perhaps not quite. There is a consistency of invention in those scores which is perhaps not quite present here. But on any reckoning this is a fine opera and I am pleased to have got round to it at last (with perhaps an element of shame that it has taken me so long to get there!)

Britten: Owen Wingrave

Opera no 3

Britten: Owen Wingrave

Soloists

City of London Sinfonia

Richard Hickox

Britten’s Owen Wingrave was first broadcast when I was still at school. I have a vague memory of seeing a little bit of the opera but in those days there was only one television set in the house of course, and a full-length Britten opera would have been too much for the family. Since then I have listened to/seen all of the Britten operas except for this one. 

It is a late piece so, as is typical of the composer’s work of this period, the textures are often very thin with absence of the big ensemble pieces that feature in works like Peter Grimes and Billy Budd. Much of the music is in fact almost recitative like though there are some fully developed areas, especially Owen Wingrave’s set piece in Act 2. Britten’s later style fingerprints are all over the score. Distant trumpets, a boys chorus, plenty of isolated phrases in the percussion section and especially the gamelan-like sonorities  which Britten had grown more and more interested in since The Prince of the Pagodas. 

I’m not sure how the whole opera stands up. The libretto seems quite naive and some of the phraseology seems quaint and old fashioned. And some of Britten’s quirks become very tiresome., particularly word repetition. At one point the repetition of the word ‘scruples’ seems almost comic.

Yet for all of this there is some very hunting music in this score. Some of the ensemble writing for women’s voices is very haunting and brings to mind the Do we smile or do we weep ensemble in Peter Grimes. The end is genuinely moving.

The role of old Sir Philip Wingrave was written for Peter Pears. On this recording is was sung by Robin Leggate. He was not trying to imitate Pears but his performance had the unmistakable aura of Peter Pears. That is a sign of how at this stage Britten was so familiar with every nuance of Pear’s voice that he instinctively wrote music that fitted his his vocal personality like a glove.

Spohr: Faust

Opera no 2

Spohr: Faust

Soloists

Bielefeld Opera chorus and orchestra

Geoffrey Moull

Spohr didn’t make much of an impression when I listened to one of his double quartets in my 365 project (https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/search/label/Spohr) but this opera made a much more positive impression. It has quite a complex history. It was originally written in 1813 as a singspiel with spoken dialogue and went through various changes until 1851, when it was turned into a full-length opera. This means that it is stylistically quite varied. Some of it has classical routes but largely it belongs in the world of Mendelssohn and Schumann, though there are passages which could have been by Marschner. There are some very old-fashioned coloratura sections in a couple of the arias which do seem rather out of place. On the whole though the piece has a dynamic impetus and moves to a gripping climax. I was certainly pleased to have made its acquaintance 

Cherubini: Les deux journées

Opera no 1

Cherubini: Les deux journées

Soloists

chorus musicus köln

das neue orchester

Christoph Spering

This is my project for 2026. I want to listen to 100 operas by 100 different composers. I can’t guarantee to have the time to listen to a complete opera every day but should be able to manage roughly two a week, which would bring me up to 100.  As far as possible I am going to listen to pieces I have not heard before but there will be a few examples where the opera is not completely new but I don’t know it well and want to get more familiar with it. Where possible I will link in this blog to the relevant day in last year’s blog discussing the particular composer.

Cherubini’s operas have not completely disappeared from the repertoire, thanks mainly to Medea, which was one of Maria Callas’s most celebrated roles. Of course that Medea was a quite different Cherubini's to Cherubini's original Médée. It was sung in Italian and had recitatives by Lachner to replace the spoken dialogue. I saw the original version at Buxton years ago and it made a strong impression.

Les deux journées is also know as The Water Carrier - Beecham made a radio broadcast of it under that name. It is an opéra comique, that is it has spoken dialogue rather than recitative. The story is very simple. A politician is rescued from revolutionary soldiers by a humble water carrier. It turns out that the water carrier’s son was himself rescued as a child by that very same politician. All ends happily ever after when the queen offers all of the politicians involved a free pardon.

I had heard the overture before - it is a full-length piece with tremendous rhythmic energy - you can see why Beethoven so admired Cherubini.  What comes immediately after is rather an anti-climax: a very simple ballad for the water carrier himself. But gradually Cherubini winds up the dramatic tension and there are some impressive ensembles later in the work. THere are lots of pre-echoes of Fidelio here including some striking moments of melodrama with spoken dialogue against orchestral background.

All in all this was a strong start to the project. The more I heard of Cherubini the more I am impressed by him. I am getting to know his string quartets along side the operas and there is also plenty of sacred music to go at.