by T-shirts with “Save Our Wno” are now a standard concert uniform for the orchestra of the Welsh National Opera, a quiet protest in the pit while playing with the usual highest professionalism. Called onto the stage with their instruments Peter GrimesPresent The applause in Cardiff’s Millennium Center was deafening. This dress code began last summer, when the financing cuts were announced at WNO, referred to this column several times. I will continue to the risk of continuing. Industrial measures are continued after a new block last month. We saw how a burning English National Opera has seen. Wno’s position is dangerous, without a rescue rope in sight.
Local solidarity increased the intensity in Melly Still’s new staging of Grimes, Preservedly carried out by the admired music director of the company, Tomáš Hanus. In Chiara Stephensons designs (Malcolm Rippeth lighting), the composer Benjamin Britten’s suffolk coast and George Crabbe, poet of the original history, has disappeared into a generic, semi-Banic no-man country. The focus is now on psychology and character. An almost empty stage and a black backdrop offer simplicity for tours, but also reflect a need for economy. The wooden boat, which is hung over the stage and slowly turns, pours shadow, gives us a foretaste of the sea, now a frame for a starry sky, now a mandorla to keep the WAN figure of Grimes’ Dead Apprentice, which becomes an almost holy figure.
Nicky Spence, a powerful actor and good singer, orders the stage without dominating
The tenor Nicky Spence made his debut in the title role of the Fisher Outcast and led an impressive ensemble, with Sarah Connolly luxury as a Lycra-suitable, spiky aunt, taller, but hard and David Kempster as morally conflicting Balsstrod Casting. All supportive roles have been strongly characterized: Catherine Wyn-Rogers as neighborhood afternoon Sedley; Fflur wyn and ery price as aunt’s cute girl naves; Dominic Sedgwick as a Seidglacher pharmacist, among the many.
Spence, but Leonine in Ginger wig, Spence, powerful actor and fine singer, orders the stage without dominating. From his first, floating words, his grimes is revealed as a figure of visionary intentions to lovingly, impetuously, but also to flicker quickly, but also to flicker quickly. As a tension, Spence turns his fidget and shrugs into a terrible boogie of fear and obsession. Four young acrobats who wobble in Breakdance movements add the resonance, if not necessarily relevance. Exhausted in permanent numbers, but here the choir swells with freelance singers and sang their lungs.
As a new co-director of WNO and Sarah Crabtree, stood out of the stage in a rally address, Peter Grimes Was written in 1945, a year before WNO gave his first performance. Britten’s opera has never been in better artistic health. This company, which achieves work with the highest standards, is on life preservation. Nicholas Serota, Chairman of Arts Council England, is said to have been in the audience last week. I wonder if it was beaten and the Millennium Center entered through the irony of the huge hoard who sell a new, enlarged gift shop that sells treasures, “inspired by the magic of Wales”. There is nothing wrong with that, but a memory that money can be found when the will is there.
Still in matters in which Cambrians or almost almost go out, they may escape that Parsifal, knight of the Holy Grail, was Welsh. Chrétien de Troyes, who brought Arthurian Legend to the letter for the first time in the 12th century, called him “Le Gallois” – the Welsh. Conversely or perverted Wagner the idea that the name was Arabic and means “perfect fool”. It fit for its purpose for its final opera, Parsifal (1882). Full of Christian symbolism, but also pagan – a long and nodular topic – the work with Easter is associated. Last week, Act 3 was staged on two evenings in the Temple Church, which goes back to the time of Chrétien.
The simple action was held on a platform along the nave in a clever new orchestration by Matthew King directed by Julia Burbach. These experts soloists Orpheus Sinfonia and a small elite choir led by Peter Selwyn were able to fill the entire conviction to fill this old room with Wagner’s confusing religiosity and probably its greatest score. How this event came about is almost as mysterious as the meaning of the opera itself, but the performances were sold out and the Wagner-hungry audience cheered.
The 21-year-old South Korean pianist spoken as the next big star of the next half century Yunchan Lim Has traveled around the world in the past few weeks to carry out Bach’s Goldberg variations. For a player who is known for the romantic repertoire of Van Cliburn competition from Rachmaninov’s piano concerto No. Lim, who hurries directly to the piano stool and is hidden by long dark fringes, never conjures up any kind of effect and never frightened to maximize the potential of a modern piano. Leading voices fall out of the counterpoint, as in variant 10, Fughetta with eccentric, intentional energy. It makes fearful jumps in the runs and ornaments of variation 28. Every mood shift is a discovery.
This is an intelligent game of fascinating virtuosity. Lim will refine it, distill, find more inner voices, as he did in the introverted variation 25, the so -called “black pearl”. You may be with Glenn Gould or András Schiff or Igor Levit or on harpsichord, Mahan Esfahani: Whoever delivers brook as you want. For the time being, enjoy the exuberance of this brilliant young player in all his Coltish Glory.
Star reviews (from five)
Peter Grimes ★★★★
Parsifal ★★★★
Yunchan Lim ★★★★
