Scottish Opera, 06/05/2018
Rachmaninoff : Aleko
Rachmaninoff : Francesca da Rimini
Chorus of Aleko / Francesca da Rimini
Orchestra of Scottish Opera
Stuart Stratford
Scottish Opera brought this season's series of Sunday concerts, this year featuring Russian rarities, to a close with two of Rachmaninoff's three operas, Aleko and Francesca da Rimini. Again, the soloists were predominantly Russian, with two returning names, baritone Evez Abdulla, who featured in the outstanding Fiery Angel last December, and bass Alexei Tanovitski, appearing in both the Prokofiev, and in Iolanta, at the start of the season.
A little over a dozen years separate the two pieces, years which certainly see a distinct development in Rachmaninoff's techniques and language, and yet there are also distinct similarities between the two. Both feature a jealous husband and an unfaithful wife and her new lover, and both end badly for the adulterous pair. Aleko was Rachmaninoff's graduation composition, much admired at the time. Based on a Pushkin poem adapted by Nemirovich-Danchenko, who was co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre along with Stanislavsky, Aleko has fled his urban environment after killing, and fallen in with a tribe of gypsies, in particular Zemfira, whom he marries. Two years later, though, she has grown tired of him and of his jealousy, and takes up with a gypsy nearer her own age. Aleko discovers them preparing to run away together, and kills both, for which he is exiled from the tribe.
In some respects, you can tell it's still a student work. Rachmaninoff is showing off a large variety of orchestral and compositional techniques - there's notably a brief fugal passage in the last scene, which, to be frank, does seem a bit odd coming from a band of gypsies - but the work itself is very segmented, appearing as a string of distinct numbers, rather than through-composed. Although there is linking material between the scenes, it's not very obvious, save perhaps in the penultimate scene, where you can hear echoes of Aleko's famous Cavatina, as he confronts the lovers. In fact, the whole gypsy setting is not particularly convincing, folk-inspired music was never Rachmaninoff's strong suit, although the initial choral numbers and the two dances are attractive enough. However, something else happens in the last scene, the judgement and sentence of exile, where Rachmaninoff is clearly tapping into Orthodox music, and the chorus felt it, because the sound suddenly developed those dark, metallic glints, like candlelight on icons, and their music bloomed with solemn spirituality. In a performance that had been good, but no more than that, this flowering of expression lifted the whole exercise up onto another level.
Tanovitski sang the Old Gypsy; I still find his bass voice a little hollow-sounding for my liking, but he was very eloquent. Ekaterina Goncharova (who, rather appositely, shares the name of Pushkin's sister-in-law), though vocally very pleasing, lacked a bit of fire as Zemfira, I felt, her presence too reserved for this free-spirited precursor to Carmen. Oleg Dolgov, on the other hand, delivered a ringing Young Gypsy's Serenade, bright and ardent, while Abdulla, who had memorised his role from start to finish, was a strong Aleko, delivering the Cavatina with much expression, though perhaps not quite as much beauty of tone as I would have liked.
Francesca da Rimini, like Tchaikovsky's orchestral setting of the same tale, begins with Dante and the Spirit of Virgil entering Hell and descending to the circle in which they are to meet Francesca and Paolo. This first scene, which is echoed in the epilogue, has some remarkable music, swirling and unsettled, very much in the same kind of uneasily chromatic miasma as The Isle of the Dead, which was completed three years later. The damned spirits are a wordlessly wailing chorus, almost verging on the grand guignol, but Rachmaninoff just skates around that, skilfully. The two central sections, the actual tale of the damned lovers, are a little more conventional, but still absorbing, and the singing here was consistently outstanding. Tanovitski's Virgil was sombrely dignified, while Dolgov's Dante was subdued and anxious. His Paolo, on the other hand, was splendidly lyrical. Abdulla projected Lanciotto excellently, his dark, rich baritone well expressing both the proud warlord and the aggrieved and jealous husband. And here, Goncharova really came into her own, her initially cool presentation perfectly suited to Francesca's stilted conversation with her husband, while she melted beautifully into the love duet, and sang with a shining timbre.
Stratford's mining of these rarely heard operas was, as he has accustomed us to, highly effective, with the orchestra responding well to his direction, and playing with plenty of passionate sweep. One or two rough corners, certainly, but I think these are quite complex scores, and they obviously cannot devote the same time to rehearsal as they must to the main-stage operas running concurrently. It was, in any event, a highly persuasive introduction to a sorely neglected aspect of Rachmaninoff's music.
[Next : 12th April]
Rachmaninoff : Francesca da Rimini
Chorus of Aleko / Francesca da Rimini
Orchestra of Scottish Opera
Stuart Stratford
Scottish Opera brought this season's series of Sunday concerts, this year featuring Russian rarities, to a close with two of Rachmaninoff's three operas, Aleko and Francesca da Rimini. Again, the soloists were predominantly Russian, with two returning names, baritone Evez Abdulla, who featured in the outstanding Fiery Angel last December, and bass Alexei Tanovitski, appearing in both the Prokofiev, and in Iolanta, at the start of the season.
A little over a dozen years separate the two pieces, years which certainly see a distinct development in Rachmaninoff's techniques and language, and yet there are also distinct similarities between the two. Both feature a jealous husband and an unfaithful wife and her new lover, and both end badly for the adulterous pair. Aleko was Rachmaninoff's graduation composition, much admired at the time. Based on a Pushkin poem adapted by Nemirovich-Danchenko, who was co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre along with Stanislavsky, Aleko has fled his urban environment after killing, and fallen in with a tribe of gypsies, in particular Zemfira, whom he marries. Two years later, though, she has grown tired of him and of his jealousy, and takes up with a gypsy nearer her own age. Aleko discovers them preparing to run away together, and kills both, for which he is exiled from the tribe.
In some respects, you can tell it's still a student work. Rachmaninoff is showing off a large variety of orchestral and compositional techniques - there's notably a brief fugal passage in the last scene, which, to be frank, does seem a bit odd coming from a band of gypsies - but the work itself is very segmented, appearing as a string of distinct numbers, rather than through-composed. Although there is linking material between the scenes, it's not very obvious, save perhaps in the penultimate scene, where you can hear echoes of Aleko's famous Cavatina, as he confronts the lovers. In fact, the whole gypsy setting is not particularly convincing, folk-inspired music was never Rachmaninoff's strong suit, although the initial choral numbers and the two dances are attractive enough. However, something else happens in the last scene, the judgement and sentence of exile, where Rachmaninoff is clearly tapping into Orthodox music, and the chorus felt it, because the sound suddenly developed those dark, metallic glints, like candlelight on icons, and their music bloomed with solemn spirituality. In a performance that had been good, but no more than that, this flowering of expression lifted the whole exercise up onto another level.
Tanovitski sang the Old Gypsy; I still find his bass voice a little hollow-sounding for my liking, but he was very eloquent. Ekaterina Goncharova (who, rather appositely, shares the name of Pushkin's sister-in-law), though vocally very pleasing, lacked a bit of fire as Zemfira, I felt, her presence too reserved for this free-spirited precursor to Carmen. Oleg Dolgov, on the other hand, delivered a ringing Young Gypsy's Serenade, bright and ardent, while Abdulla, who had memorised his role from start to finish, was a strong Aleko, delivering the Cavatina with much expression, though perhaps not quite as much beauty of tone as I would have liked.
Francesca da Rimini, like Tchaikovsky's orchestral setting of the same tale, begins with Dante and the Spirit of Virgil entering Hell and descending to the circle in which they are to meet Francesca and Paolo. This first scene, which is echoed in the epilogue, has some remarkable music, swirling and unsettled, very much in the same kind of uneasily chromatic miasma as The Isle of the Dead, which was completed three years later. The damned spirits are a wordlessly wailing chorus, almost verging on the grand guignol, but Rachmaninoff just skates around that, skilfully. The two central sections, the actual tale of the damned lovers, are a little more conventional, but still absorbing, and the singing here was consistently outstanding. Tanovitski's Virgil was sombrely dignified, while Dolgov's Dante was subdued and anxious. His Paolo, on the other hand, was splendidly lyrical. Abdulla projected Lanciotto excellently, his dark, rich baritone well expressing both the proud warlord and the aggrieved and jealous husband. And here, Goncharova really came into her own, her initially cool presentation perfectly suited to Francesca's stilted conversation with her husband, while she melted beautifully into the love duet, and sang with a shining timbre.
Stratford's mining of these rarely heard operas was, as he has accustomed us to, highly effective, with the orchestra responding well to his direction, and playing with plenty of passionate sweep. One or two rough corners, certainly, but I think these are quite complex scores, and they obviously cannot devote the same time to rehearsal as they must to the main-stage operas running concurrently. It was, in any event, a highly persuasive introduction to a sorely neglected aspect of Rachmaninoff's music.
[Next : 12th April]