Brian Dickie

Milton Keynes

Oh dear this is a really grim place by any measure, even for someone who has visited Tulsa, OK or Merrillville, IN.  However it has the advantage for me of having a rail connection from the obscure station of West Brompton just up the road from home.  And so I decided to go there this afternoon to see Glyndebourne's production of the Yellow Sofa in a charming space called The Stables, some fifteen minutes by cab from MK central.

But the real treat was to find myself on the train with Anne Mason - a most distinguished English mezzo who had been in the Glyndebourne company when I was there and remains, after 30 years in the business, much in demand.  She was on her way to MK to sing in the production of Rusalka in the theatre in the "city" - back in the concrete jungle.......We had a really great chat and many a laugh, and she led me by the hand to get me to the theatre for my meeting up with the Glyndebourne top brass with whom I went in a cab to the Stables.

The Yellow Sofa was just 75 minutes long - a chamber piece in the manner of Leonard Bernstein, and a great vehicle for singing actors, and acting singers......and there are plenty of those around these days.  This production had two fine leading ladies in Lauren Easton and Gabriela Istoc, each providing star power.  Gabriela had been a finalist in Neue Stimmen in 2011.  It is great to see her doing so well in her fledgeling career.  She took every opportunity provided to produce some ravishing singing.

I am off to Gütersloh in the morning.  Tomorrow evening we will be celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Neue Stimmen.  It should be an occasion for pride as well as a good party!

2007 - a day late again!

I am sorry, my trip to Somerset put off my weekly review of my 13 years in Chicago.  But here goes - and I should be back on track for 2008 on Wednesday next week.

Beatrice and Benedict - Sandra Piques Eddy and Joseph Kaiser - COT 2007

So in 2007 we had a season of Berlioz, Bartok, Monteverdi, and Schoenberg.  Quite a line up! This was really a classic COT season as one might have envisioned it.  We put together four little known masterpieces and gathered together some mighty fine casts.  Very satisfying.

Béatrice et Benedict is a perfect jewel and Nicola Raab did a very beautiful job in revealing the literary and musical magic of the piece, with the considerable help of the conductor, Jan Latham-Koenig.  It was a very happy production with a delicious young cast including Rinnat Moriah, Jurgita Adamonaytė, Matthew Worth and Joshua Bloom, in addition to the protagonists pictured above.

Samuel Ramey and Krisztina Szabo - Bluebeard's Castle COT 2007

The double bill of Bluebeard's Castle and Erwartung was hardly new for me.  This was the combo that I invited Robert LePage to undertake as his first venture into opera.  It was a huge success in the Canadian Opera Company's 2002-2003 season.  We took it to BAM as well as to the Edinburgh Festival in 2003 where is scooped the awards.  So it made sense to bring it to COT.  Erwartung had never been staged in Chicago, and Bluebeard not for more than 40 years.

Ken Cazan returned to COT to direct powerful productions of these two fascinating pieces, Alexander Platt presided over an unprecedentedly large (for us) orchestra, and we had three extremely fine singers in Sam Ramey, Krisztina Szabo and Nancy Gustafson.

Nancy Gustafson - Erwartung COT 2007

At last we completed our trilogy of Monteverdi's full length operas - with Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria.  The Paulus and Glover team returned of course, and with a new designer, the distinguished architect and passionate musician Rafael Viñoly.  

Jane Glover and Rafael Viñoly

What fun we had with this - another huge cast of extremely gifted singers, and the revelation of an extraordinary moving piece quite unknown to our audience.  This was what we were about and we did it, if I may say so, with great distinction.  It was a wonderful year.  But it was expensive in spite of all the invisible and inaudible surgery we applied to the budgets.  We were about to enter a dark financial future as the world fell apart the following year.  But for now we were delighted that we had accomplished so much so well. Next week 2008 and a controversy!

Marie le Normand (Penelope) and Marc LeBrocq (Ulisse) - Il ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria COT 2007

A day in Somerset

 

Church of St Mary Magdalene, Ditcheat

My elder daughter lives in Westbury-sub-Mendip, between Wells and Cheddar.  The nearest station is in Castle Cary, some dozen miles away - not more than a halt on the main line from London to South Devon.  But all the fast trains stop there - they go every couple of hours from Paddington and it takes just 90 minutes.  So I thought that I would just pop down for lunch not having seen her and her family since I returned from Chicago at the end of August. 

I was to have gone on Sunday but the weather has been brutal and the floods devastating for parts of the county of Somerset.  But the train ran on time and I had a good uncrowded quiet trip down there.

We all went off from Castle Cary to a pub in the delightful village of Ditcheat.  Here was yet another undiscovered gem of which there are so many in England. And of course it had a great pub - the Manor House Inn.  Wednesday lunch is not the busiest time so we had the kitchen to ourselves!

I am now back in London for the evening.

Manor House Inn, Ditcheat, Somerset 2pm November 28 2012

RCM Poppea

I had a lovely evening at the Royal College of Music yesterday.  What a great pleasure it is to see young singers getting to grips with pre-Handel repertoire, especially the Venetian stuff.  An excellent production by English Touring Opera's James Conway provided a frame for some first class performance by a number of young members of the RCM's International Opera School.

Notable standouts were a hugely interesting young Swedish soprano Annie Fredriksson as Nero, Hannah Sandison as Drusilla, and Katherine Crompton as Poppea.  These are all to be watched - they are going places I feel!

I have been delighted during the last two weeks to see the new stars emerging from the two Royal "conservatories" in London.  Opera is alive and well at this level and great work is being accomplished. London continues to be great cradle of advanced training and development of opera singers.  Very encouraging.

I am spending today in Somerset visiting my elder daughter and her family.  I have to run for the train!

The other cast

I was at the Royal Academy of Music again for the last performance of La vera costanza last night - with the "other" cast.  There is really not much to add.  The impression of the piece remains the same - and the RAM showed again what a wide range of singers it is able to muster - all accomplished.

This evening I am at the "other place" - the Royal College of Music - for something completely different.  This is Monteverdi's masterpiece - L'incoronazione di Poppea, an opera close to my heart and an indispensable exercise for young singers emerging into professional careers.  This should be a major pleasure, as is always the experience of attending a performance in the RCM's beautiful Britten Theatre.  I can not believe that it is already 26 years old......one of Hugh Casson's very great achievements.

And as it happens Hugh Casson was the designer of the famous production of Poppea which opened the eyes and ears of so much of the opera world to the greatness of Monteverdi when it was produced at Glyndebourne in 1962. 

Next generation

I was delighted to hear yesterday that my great-niece Charlotte was one of the young people chosen from a field of many hundreds to be a Royal Opera House Student Ambassador.  She is in this group above, proudly lined up in the ROH after the announcement of the appointments earlier this month.  I only heard about this from my brother-in-law, her grandfather, yesterday evening.

She is an undergraduate at the University of York which has a superb music department.  She is in love with opera - must be the genes!  Anyway I am delighted and proud of her.  She is a singer and a violinist - just like her great-uncle at the same age........but better!

Weekend off in London

Richmond - 11.30 am Sunday November 25

Yesterday was a rotten cold and rainy one - but today things perked up and I took the opportunity to pop down to Richmond, one of the many places unknown to your average tourist.  This remains in London and I can get there from my place in around 25 minutes, all for free with my "Freedom pass"!

It is a delightful outer London neighbourhood, and has the advantages of being on the Thames and extremely close to Heathrow.  But the landing aircraft float over completely silently so they have the convenience of proximity without the noise.

The River Thames with Richmond Bridge

I walked down to the river from Richmond Station, a scant ten minutes, and then walked upstream along the river path.  As you can see it was a glorious morning but being November somewhat chilly and fortunately underpopulated.  It is not that I do not like people - but too many is too many, and today there was just an agreeable sprinkling.

A walk through the Terrace Gardens up to Richmond Hill was the turning point in the short 60 minute excursion - and the view from up there is lovely, and protected in perpetuity by legislation in 1902.

The prospect from Richmond Hill 11:45 am Sunday November 25 2012

My yesterday was an under-8 football match in which my 7 year old grandson was involved, a delightful lunch with Anthony Whitworth-Jones before he went off to Canterbury to see the Figaro with Glyndebourne on Tour, and then a welcome quiet evening at home.  Outside was hostile - and I now see that we are reverting to that this afternoon.  So I have had the best of the day.

Tomorrow I will be back at the Royal Academy of Music for the alternative cast of the Vera costanza that I saw last Monday.  I have no doubt that more new talent will reveal itself.

Bieito Carmen at ENO

Yet another performance of Carmen?  This was the first opera I saw as a child.  So I have probably seen at least one a year for the last more than 60 years.  That first one had Constance Shacklock in the title role.  She later appeared in The Sound of Music in the West End - for ever it seemed! (Actually 6 years.......)

My first (and probably last) in 2012 was on Wednesday, and I had keenly looked forward to it, directed as it was by the remarkable Calixto Bieito.  And I was not disappointed, although I think that by Bieito standards it was quite conservative - about as radical as the most radical of productions that we might have done at COT.  And that by European standards might be considered not radical enough!

But Bieito is a serious theatre director who ultimately does NOT muck about with the text and meaning of what he is directing.  I am reminded that his infamous production of Ballo in maschera, which opened with a row of gentlemen seated on lavatories, being described to me by my Chicago friend and colleague Philip Gossett (an authoratative Verdian if ever there was one) as being as illuminating a production of the piece as he had ever seen.  So there!!!

And so we had a marvellous evening in the theatre on Wednesday.  It got better and better as the evening went on with Act 4 including a knockout drop dead tour de force from the remarkable ENO chorus.

It was conducted by the most interesting composer/conductor Ryan Wigglesworth.  He may have a big future. 

As is my habit I just wanted to draw your attention to two members of the large and excellent cast who struck me as special.  Two small roles - the Morales Duncan Rock - barihunk extraordinaire who can sing more than a bit as well, and the thrillingly voiced Mercédes (not to be confused with the 6 Mercedes cars on the stage from time to time) - Madeleine Shaw.

So it was a good evening at the office.

St Caecilia

Today we celebrate St Caecilia's Day.  And Benjamin Britten's 99th birthday.

I will be at a party this evening to do both these things hosted by the Britten-Pears Foundation - a kick off for the centenary celebrations.

I will write about the pleasures of the ENO Carmen tomorrow.  It all takes time!

2006 - the continuing story

By 2006 we had really settled into a great pattern of success at COT.  At the Box office it was the best year yet.  But it was also the most expensive and in a way it presaged the end of an era.  My board president, Dorothy Walton, stepped down after ten years on the job.  She had brought me to Chicago and we had a wonderful working relationship.  And that relationship between the board leader and the chief executive is as critical in an opera company as it is in business.  This had been demonstrated so clearly in my Glyndebourne years when for the whole time I was there George Christie had led the board; and in Canada where there was a rotation system of the board leader changing every two years.

So change at the top is difficult to manage and I do not think that it was successfully accomplished in September 2006.  But that was the immediate future.  The 2006 season is the thing!

Kyle Albertson (Kissinger) and Robert Orth (Nixon) COT 2006

We brought John Adams's Nixon in China to Chicago for the first time.  It was astonishing that this hugely successful and popular, not to say iconic, piece, had never been brought to Lyric. We teamed up, together with others, with the Opera Theatre of St Louis, and were thus able to produce something that wold have been unaffordable otherwise.  It became already the most expensive production ever mounted by COC.  But it was a huge success at the Box office so we came out of it even.  And the acclaim for the performance and the production was so encouraging.

Continuing our successful efforts with Mozart Justin Way directed a very beautiful production of Die Entführing aus dem Serail - Jane Glover conducted and we assembled a most handsome cast of Mozartian singers of great quality. This opera is under appreciated - it consistently does less well with the public that the da Pontes, and the Flute.  But it is a piece of great depth and seriousness about, in a word, commitment.  And Justin brought out its serious intent and humanity so vividly.  I think that for many it was a revelation.

Michael Colvin (Belmonte) Leah Partridge (Konstanze) Sarah Coburn (Blonde) Matthew Garrett (Pedrillo)

The third offering of the season was a curious English double bill of Charles Dibdin's The Padlock and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas.  The Dibdin was a fun curtain raiser for the meat of the evening - Purcell's masterpiece. Lillian Groag returned and really had a huge hit with Dido, as well as extracting the maximum value from the Dibdin.  With Raymond Leppard presiding in the pit musical values were guaranteed and once again we were able to assemble a distinguished cast, in the case of the Dido led by a magical and moving performance from Susanne Mentzer.

Susanne Mentzer as Dido COT 2006

And for those of you that saw this double bill you might like to be reminded what fun The Padlock was, however slight.

Leah Partridge, Dean Anthony, and Kate Mangiamelli  - The Padlock COT 2006

I am sorry for the lateness of this post.  It has been a busy week.