La répé générale
Friend Aurélien works front of house at the opera. Friend Katherine is singing the lead soprano Iphis in Jephtha. So it was that we had free tickets for the dress rehearsal last night.
Jephtha is an oratorio - I think Handel's last - but it worked as an opera last night, staged in puritan America. All was beautiful with the possible exception of the (fake) severed head gratuitously swung and I wasn't convinced by the rituals - neither the blood brothers knife stuff nor the Maurice Cerullo style twitching session. But it gave people something to do during the sinfonias.
Katherine was just perfect. A lovely blend of sweetness and vulnerability. Beautiful long notes.
Paul Agnew's Jephtha was wonderful. He sang with such calm, poise and delicacy that it made it all the more poignant. Proof that less is more.
Iestyn Davies and Anne Hallenberg and the rest of the cast were great, too.
The chorus I thought were OK. I might have liked the high voices to have been a bit brighter and less saggy. They sang with appropriate bang and slash, though ! At one entry I thought it sounded almost like a côr meibion (male voice choir). Normally French choral singing is like candy floss - very sweet and tasteful but not much body.
I was very impressed with Jane Glover's conducting. I bet she's great to work with - you could really tell what she was aiming at from the way she moved. She was also nursing the chorus well (she conducted it like an oratorio, basically...)
The staging was fine and worked basically very well, although it was obvious that the producer had little sympathy with the story really and went for paganism a bit more than was warranted. The ninja tree and stuff worked really well.
It was long ! And when I saw some of the audience yawning I thought how much stamina the cast need !
As for the music, two moments stood out for me. "Waft her", the tune, was beautifully done by Paul Agnew. High notes like dew on a spider's web. The "don't kill her" quartet was musically one of the most interesting numbers - not very baroque ! It was a great foretaste of what was coming with the later guys.
Oh, and nice trumpets.
Watching Jephtha it hit me that the story is about a Father who vows to give his only-begotten to bring peace and freedom - and of the agonising pain of his determination to fulfil that vow, promise, covenant.
Jephtha is an oratorio - I think Handel's last - but it worked as an opera last night, staged in puritan America. All was beautiful with the possible exception of the (fake) severed head gratuitously swung and I wasn't convinced by the rituals - neither the blood brothers knife stuff nor the Maurice Cerullo style twitching session. But it gave people something to do during the sinfonias.
Katherine was just perfect. A lovely blend of sweetness and vulnerability. Beautiful long notes.
Paul Agnew's Jephtha was wonderful. He sang with such calm, poise and delicacy that it made it all the more poignant. Proof that less is more.
Iestyn Davies and Anne Hallenberg and the rest of the cast were great, too.
The chorus I thought were OK. I might have liked the high voices to have been a bit brighter and less saggy. They sang with appropriate bang and slash, though ! At one entry I thought it sounded almost like a côr meibion (male voice choir). Normally French choral singing is like candy floss - very sweet and tasteful but not much body.
I was very impressed with Jane Glover's conducting. I bet she's great to work with - you could really tell what she was aiming at from the way she moved. She was also nursing the chorus well (she conducted it like an oratorio, basically...)
The staging was fine and worked basically very well, although it was obvious that the producer had little sympathy with the story really and went for paganism a bit more than was warranted. The ninja tree and stuff worked really well.
It was long ! And when I saw some of the audience yawning I thought how much stamina the cast need !
As for the music, two moments stood out for me. "Waft her", the tune, was beautifully done by Paul Agnew. High notes like dew on a spider's web. The "don't kill her" quartet was musically one of the most interesting numbers - not very baroque ! It was a great foretaste of what was coming with the later guys.
Oh, and nice trumpets.
Watching Jephtha it hit me that the story is about a Father who vows to give his only-begotten to bring peace and freedom - and of the agonising pain of his determination to fulfil that vow, promise, covenant.
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