Song cycles come and go in popularity and fashion. One that has slipped from the schedules somewhat in recent years is Robert Schumann’s ‘Frauenliebe und Leben.’ In today’s climate the story of a love affair seen from a woman’s perspective, but channelled through an awkward and clumsy male poetic gaze, is problematic. But the co-directors of ‘Opera in song’ get around these difficulties by opening up the conceptual and performing perspectives to transforming effect.
Here the songs are delivered by both a man and a woman – Harriet Burns and Benjamin Appl – and the songs in the cycle are broken up with a range of other items from all periods that allow us to think intertextually about the place of the pains and pleasures of romantic love within the broader span of a whole life. This approach allowed for a lot of fresh and exciting connections to be made while not diminishing the power of Schumann’s originals in defining key moments of inspiration, ecstasy and despair. It is rare to find a programme that brings together Purcell, Schubert, Nico Muhly and Judith Weir, to name only a few; and it is a tribute to the organisers’ breadth of knowledge and intellectual flexibility that it all worked as well as it did.
Both singers treated the songs as miniature scenes that needed to be characterised and brought life as though they were on stage – once again demonstrating how closely the worlds of song and opera are related, and how the skills needed to succeed in each are mutually intertwined. There were several duets too that demonstrated their ability to connect with each other as much as enacting solitary emotions and moods. Both singers not only were good actors but also intervened to comment on and introduce particular songs with which they felt a particular affinity.
With such a huge range of songs included a short review can only focus on a few subjective highlights. It was particularly interesting to compare different composers’ settings of ‘Suleika’, just as it was revealing to hear Britten’s take on Purcell’s ‘Sweeter than Roses’, a canny tribute from one great opera composer to another. Intriguing repertory by women composers such as Libby Larsen and Rebecca Clarke more than earned its place in the roster; and the final sequence of songs by Schumann, Muhly and Copeland provided a grave intensification of mood that was exquistely calibrated by all concerned. The one inclusion that gave me slight pause was the remarkable lullaby by Ilse Weber, conceived in the excruciating circumstances of concentration and extermination camps, which seemed to belong to different, if equally important, programme.
The contribution of pianist Ian Tindale was also exceptional, both in the sensitivity of his accompaniments and in his tasteful dispatch of several crucial postludes, whether by Hugo Wolf or in the Coda of the Schumann song cycle, which really did get to sum up the ‘tears of things’. Just as the orchestra itself often becomes a character in operatic performance, so here the pianist demonstrated how he becomes a player in the action on equal terms with the singers.
Opera Holland Park
20 July 2024
Performers: Benjamin Appl, Harriet Burns & Ian Tindale