Candide (English National Opera)

The English National Opera have a knack for producing shows that look great on paper but turn out to be thoroughly disappointing. Sadly Candide falls into that group. It's not a bad production and it's quite well sung, but ultimately it just doesn't amount to much. I'm not convinced I particularly like the original musical, good tunes but overlong, however Robert Carsen's updating is so heavy handed it's almost impossible to describe as satire. Where Bernstein and his many contributors created a period piece that clearly echoed problems of the age, Carsen uses a sledgehammer to make them so obvious the impact vanishes, Tony Blair and other world leaders floating on an oil slick sea!!! How much more trite can you get. The dancing Klu Klux Klan members is a been there, done that joke (Jerry Springer got there first), not in the slightest bit shocking anymore. His updating also provides some narrative inconsistancies, setting sail for the "New World" when you start in the USA is difficult, and overall the production just adds a few simple jokes about gay waiters. It's passably amusing but carries no real impact.

There's much to enjoy however, albeit largely glossy pleasures. The sets are spectacular, attractive, endlessly inventive and witty. Michael Levine's designs just shift from one coup to another, the show's almost worth seeing for just a few fleeting moments (the ship at the end of Act I is very clever) he creates. The choreography by Rob Ashford is also hugely exciting and effective, mixing styles as the music flows. From a visual standpoint it's pretty hard to fault the sheer imagery, it doesn't amount to much, a superficial pleasure.

The singing is mostly solid but is a little more variable than you'd expect of this cast. Toby Spence is perfectly cast as Candide, his schoolboy looks easily matching the character, but he picks an accent that simply destroys his diction. The word, "world", caused particular difficulties (the vowel sound in the middle just vanished) and he's forced to say it repeatedly. Otherwise it was a very decent performance albeit unremarkable. Anna Christy is not nearly so solid. She fudged her coloratura aria and generally lacked the kind of vocal finesse I expected (especially considering her excellent Lucia, which has to be a far harder role). The real performances came from the non-opera singers, Alex Jennings and Beverley Klein. Neither have the pipes of the rest of the cast, but they sung their numbers like they meant them and seemed to be enjoying themselves as well. Indeed this would have been a good deal less strong without Jennings's exceptional turn as Voltaire (and a few other characters), he just held it all together. Klein stole every scene she was in, simply a masterclass in true stage acting. The small roles were all filled well by a large number of supporting singers, with Bonaventura Bottone a particular standout.

This is a hollow production that fails in anyway to make the audience think. The Royal Opera's period production of Don Carlo managed to say more about the world we live in than this sham of dancing world leaders and other grotesques. The continuous scattergun approach also detracts from the music which becomes almost second fiddle to the pictures. It's a decent night out but has zero impact, there are better (and cheaper) ways to enjoy yourself.

Ariadne auf Naxos (Royal Opera)

When I saw this production a few weeks ago I had some major reservations (you can read all about them here) with Act II. Act I was stellar then and is if anything even better now. Thomas Allen and Kristine Jepson are true stars, the complete package of acting and singing. To add to them I was especially impressed by Alan Oke the second time around, a winning blend of comic performance and decent singing. The opening is still excessively extravagant but it's solidly directed and everyone pulls their weight to produce a true piece of music theatre.

Early in the run Act II had some problems, mainly centring on Voigt. Since I last heard this she's warmed into the role a little more. I still have serious misgivings about her upper register which I find hard on the ear, harsh and cold, and she managed one abysmal entry exposed even more so by the rock solid tenor of Robert Dean Smith. Yet for all that, at the point where the production almost died when I first saw it, about when Zerbinetta leaves with Harlequin, this time it built and built to a terrific finale. If her voice still waivered at times it still carried immense power and her overall performance was just on a different level from before. All of a sudden Dean Smith too managed to make a serious impression, he'd been effectively playing against a brick wall before, and the entire Act gained a cohesiveness that just wasn't apparent previously. Disappointingly Gillian Keith wasn't nearly as strong in her big Act II number, cutting short a high note and generally lacking the flair that she'd had before. Her undressing in the prologue had a similar impact on the elderly male audience as it had on the youthful one at the matinee, which was a touch amusing although considering her legs, understandable.

The entire production has bedded in nicely, the comic quartet much funnier in their choreography and the three nymphs even more delicious on the ear. I'm never going to believe Voigt is a great soprano, her voice just doesn't do it for me, but paired with the mighty Dean Smith it didn't matter. An excellent revival of an excellent production.

Divas

In the pantheon of absolute rubbish I've seen since I started writing, there are some real turds. From the punishingly pretentious "Lost Highway" to the mind numbing boredom of "Fram", I've sat through some of the worst theatre imaginable. Today I feel, may out do them all. The latest work, "Divas", from Peter Schaufuss is so abysmal I cannot quite work out how it ever reached the West End. The programme gives no clues. These days a half dozen producers credited in the programme is not unusual. "Divas" has not a single one. No one seems willing to own up to actually producing this excuse for "A Dance Spectacular". Last year Schaufuss brought a similar piece entitled "Satisfaction". This was terribly mediocre but could at least be passed off as a mis-hit from a reasonable choreographer. looking at "Divas" now, I'd say "Satisfaction" must be Schaufuss's greatest hit. Few choregraphers are quite so good at making their dancers look quite so bad.

The evening divided into three chunks, each devoted to a different singer. No plot as such, just random dances with a certain singer providing the soundtrack to each and a solo female dancer sort of embodying them. The first was Edith Piaf. The soundtrack was very fine, an actual recording of Piaf. That's the last compliment Act One will be getting. It's otherwise a mishmash of poor group work and peculiar solos. Schaufuss has a physically attractive squad of dancers but his steps serve to make them look ungainly. Quite a feat really. The chair work is mildly interesting, but he uses it over and over again (kind of a motif throughout all the parts) and it rapidly becomes very dull. Schaufuss does literally everything on this production and his set design is not well thought through. A large raised central platform for the soloists, whilst the corps do all their work on a narrow strip at the front. It makes the solos look exposed and the group stuff look cramped. I'd have left at the end of Act One I was so bored but one carrot had me staying. Irina Kolesnikova was dancing Judy Garland in part three. She's a very fine dancer and all that stuff about great artists transcending poor choreography, well I kind of buy it.

Roll on Act Two. This one is devoted to Marlene Dietrich. The soundtrack is excellent taken from recordings of Dietrich herself. Last compliment for Act Two I'm afraid. Similar load of codswallop but with added Nazis. Ballet and Nazis never sit in my mind as great bedfellows (Hamlet almost managed it) but here it hardly matters, few in the audience even blinked as these prancing Nazis arrived, somehow they felt right at home in this frankly diabolic piece of theatre. I gamely sat on attempting to ignore the almost insulting dance with silver tombstones, awaiting Act Three and the joys of a proper classical dancer.

Act Three arrived, Judy Garland was the star. The lights came up, the dancer was not Kolesnikova. Indeed having reached this late jucture it transpired an understudy was dancing. Nobody actually infomed the audience of this, but last time I checked Kolesnikova wasn't Malaysian and could perform a single fouetté without wobbling. I'd have walked then and there had I not been trapped in the middle of the row. The soundtrack was of course impeccable for the reason mentioned in the previous two paragraphs. Last compliment...blah blah blah. Of particular note in this Act was just how little rhythm the dancers seemed to have in the song, "I've Got Rhythm". Schaufuss might define this as post-modern irony, or something of that nature (possibly, post-post-modern, because he's just that clever), but ultimately it was just sloppy dancing.

A show of zero merit. Where often one could pass the blame around the various creatives, this show has just the one, Peter Schaufuss, who according to the programme did the "Choreography & Production, Direction, Set, Costumes & Lighting Design". Impressive, if only anything here was any good at all. I got my ticket on the cheap, the house was still half full and the show only has a very short run. For once the public seems to have the right idea, it barely garnered the applause to make the first curtain call. I've said before don't bother. In this case I'd suggest you actually make an effort to ensure you don't see this show.

Strictly Gershwin (English National Ballet)

Some might view this as a pretty blatant momey grabbing operation. Outrageously expensive tickets, and a show that's high on spectacle and low on emotion. I actually think it's more than that, and some thought has clearly gone into it's construction. Unfortunately that doesn't really prevent it being a dud show.

The venue is partly to blame. The Royal Albert Hall is a dangeously large venue for anything other than grandiose performance. Any pas de deux is going to look exposed trying to fill this enormous space, and there are a great many in this show. The acoustics are unsurprisingly awful (nothing new there) but tap dancing comes off spectacularly badly, the reverb from the roof effectively drowning the rhythms. However, whilst the small scale stuff comes off badly a couple of the larger pieces are visually exciting if entirely shallow.

The opening number, a sort of ballet class performed to racing Gershwin tunes seems ill judged. it doesn't fit the music at all and worst of all it's pretty boring. The subtle, balletic movements look silly to this upbeat, exciting music and the sequence feels like it's an age long. The lighting was effective when it worked but several couples weren't lined up properly so danced in near darkness.

What followed was the kind of piece that would probably look magnificent in the right context but was just too intimate for the occasion. Agnes Oaks and Thomas Edur are a fabulous couple but even their majestic lifts failed to rise to much. They weren't helped by their costumes which were far too dark, Edur looking far too much like Dracula. Something I'd love to see on a smaller stage, but wasted here.

Barbara Cook then emerged to much applause. Here was a star who had the wattage to ignite the crowd. She has perhaps a slightly rough voice, especially in the higher sections but she produces a constantly melifluous sound. Her phrasing is immaculate, she lives the music and as a listener you feel like you're living it with her. Quite an experience.

The tappers then emerged. I really wanted to like this pair. Douglas Mills and Paul Robinson looked like they were having a great time and I willed them to blow me away, but it all just fell a little flat. A moment on top of the piano had a sort of verve that was missing from most of the rest, but otherwise it was another average performance.

Some respite came in the form of Darren Bennett and Lilia Kopylova (them off of the TV) who were simply brilliant. Of course they had absolutely nothing to do with ballet as such, but it was the first bit of dancing in the evening that seemed utterly in sync with the music. An absolute joy to watch, they just had a level of flair that was effectively matchless.

Elena Glurdjidze and Friedemann Vogel danced another pas de deux, but supported by several other couples it came over much stronger. Glurdjidze looked good enough to eat in a stunning dress and Vogel was every bit the gentleman. Despite this it still failed to hit any particular high notes. None of Derek Deane's choreography seemed to be able to match the music, ultimately the straight ballet seemed completely out of place, and the ballroom dancers only highlighted this. The projections didn't help either, distracting because what they were showing was more interesting than anything on stage.

The first half closed with a big number choreographed to "An American in Paris", this at least had some wit (and some amusingly unPC French mimes), and Guillaume Côté danced very well. It was the best bit of ballet in the entire evening but I still can't see it existing beyond this show.

The second half more or less paralleled the first, a series of pas de deux with strong ballroom interludes and less strong tap ones. Begoña Cao and Arionel Vargas made a decent fist of one of the pas de deux but otherwise it was same old, same old. The big piece of the second half was "Rhapsody in Blue" which had some nice formation work that could have been choreographed to any old bit of music.

As an evening it was neither terrible nor anything more than mediocre. The ballet choreography just seemed to bear no relationship to the music. Ultimately ballet dancers don't ballroom dance well, the lithe female ballet dancers out of place next to the more fulsome Kopylova. It had some fun elements, mostly the ballroom dancers and Barbara Cook (neither of which have anything to do with the English National Ballet) but it's a flat a evening overall with an overriding sense of averageness. Whether it was purely designed to or not, I'm sure it's filled the company coffers, but it hasn't managed much else.

Power Her Face (Royal Opera)

This is a wonderfully imaginative production of a problematic Opera. From start to finish each of the four singers gives it their all, the performances stunning, but as an evening it still fails to satisfy. I found it impossible to empathise with the Duchess (the Opera is purely devoted to her) and struggled to muster much sympathy either. The music is both brilliant and overly manufactured. Layered with sounds, it comes across as more clinical that it probably should, impressively crafted but lifeless.

The four singers are great to listen to although diction problems trouble a few. As the Duchess, Joan Rodgers' sultry voice is perfectly attuned to the role but she struggles to be heard over the orchestra. Huge tracts of the libretto are lost to the aether. Rebecca Bottone is also largely unintelligible but this comes down more to the fact that her music lies in a register closer to the hearing of dogs than our own. It's great fun to listen to but words hardly come into the equation. Alan Ewing is simply magnificent, as the hotel manager, incredibly creepy, his voice resonates throughout the auditorium. Iain Paton looks like he's having a great time and it rubs off on the audience. He's given a whole raft of different vocal styles over the course of the piece (a brilliant song pastiche was my highlight) and handles them all with great aplomb.

The production highlights both the strengths and the weaknesses of the piece. Filled with a fantastic sense of fun and a yearning for a lost age the action is propelled forward by the rapid costume changes and simple but effective set (a very classy staircase). However the staging is overly static (the cast do a good job of navigating the steps but it's not ideal) and it only serves to highlight the detached, overly episodic nature of the piece. There are moments of great flair, the fellatio scene is staged with a naked actor rising from the crotch of Paton, certainly a novelty, and the first appearance of the Duchess from a giant compact, but they are fleeting moments in an evening with a few too many longeurs.

Ultimately the show fails to fly because emotional connections are hard to find. It's witty, fun and exuberant but empty. Adès' music is effective but contrived. A worthwhile evening though, even if just for the performances which are top notch.

Ariadne auf Naxos (Royal Opera)

I attended the School's Matinee of this production, I'll be seeing it again in a few weeks, so some leeway can perhaps be given to the singers (although why should they be giving anything other than their best to a filled auditorium of I suspect largely first time Operagoers) but regardless, barring a miracle, I can't imagine Deborah Voigt's iffy upper register getting any better. It's a pity because this is otherwise a very solid production with some very decent singing.

The piece divides into two very different halves and here the first is served exceptionally. The split-level set is perhaps a touch excessive but then I suspect that's the point. Highlighting the situation that we find our various characters in, the full cast (surprisingly the Dryads as well) mill about below the grand (empty) hallway above. Masterful characterisation from all. Thomas Allen is perfectly at home as the Music Master and he's so comfortable with the vocals that (as always) he's impossibly pleasant to listen to. Kristine Jepson might be getting on a little to be playing the young, naive composer but it hardly matters. She drives the first act along, stealing the stage from all others. Another singer who sounds like she was born singing the role, a constant delight, and a surprisingly emotive one at that. Voigt is strongest here boldly portraying the Prima Donna, but then she doesn't do much singing so that might be why. I worried at this point that Gillian Keith wasn't going to manage her Act II fireworks, she just wasn't loud enough, almost silent in the ensembles. She took most of her clothes off admirably (It perked up the young audience more than a little), and played the coquette with great verve. In the tiny role of the Wigmaker, Jacques Imbrailo was hysterical, a stereotype he might have been, but a very funny one.

Act II is staged with much less panache and suffered without a potent Ariadne. The staging seemed to bare no resemblance to the first Act (requiring a forty minute interval) which was a pity since the first was so brilliant. This is a more muddled affair, no specific period or setting. To be honest I was confused by the whole thing. Keith however had no problems with her difficult coloratura, sounding fantastic, and I don't think she missed any notes out either. A really impressive performance that won the entire audience over, albeit with less volume than I would have liked. With the departure of Keith and her entourage, a split bunch with Markus Werba and Jeremy White superb; Ji-Min Park and Haoyin Xue much less so, the final third of the piece dragged. Robert Dean Smith is a potent Heldentenor but he had a pretty miserable Ariadne to play against. He handled the off-stage singing particularly well though. In Voigt we have a disappointing Ariadne. She's robust enough in the mid range but stretching to the top it all just sounds hollow. Ignoring her subpar vocals, it wasn't that interesting a performance either. I never really got a sense of who Ariadne is, and if there's meant to be any remnant of the Prima Donna creeping through that definately didn't appear.

Despite my lack of enthiusiam over Act II, the staging and performances of Act I are worth the price of entry alone. The orchestra are on sterling form under Mark Elder and Jepson and Allen are absolute magic. Perhaps this was just a jittery afternoon for Voigt and by opening night she'll be fantastic but I doubt it. With a stronger performance from her this could really be quite an evening, sadly without, it really isn't.

The Revenger's Tragedy

There's not a lot that shocks me anymore. Between "Salome", "Lucia" and the "Minotaur" I thought I'd now more or less plumbed the depths of theatrical nastiness. "The Revenger's Tragedy" tops all those shows for sheer on stage graphic activity. Rape, incest and murder (lots and lots) all get a look in. Served up with throbbing bass and lots of hurtling around (being a National production that means the set as well as the actors), this is not for the conservative theatregoer. Yet for all the modern trappings, employing a "DJ" is usually the sign of a production desperate to appeal to the "youth" of London, this isn't a trivial production.

It's actually a rather an intelligent production of what I wouldn't consider a particularly great play. The staging is mostly modern dress but I wouldn't describe it as a contemporary production, it's really anachronistic. There are plenty of swords and the odd period costume. The acting is good quality, Royal Shakespeare Company style. Fine diction with plenty of regional accents tossed in (God only knows why Spurio has an Irish accent). Strip away the flashing lights and you've still got a solid bit of good old fashioned theatre. Yet the visual excitment actually complements the drama without ever overshadowing it. The projections of a skull having the fleshed peeled off and then laid back on are powerful beyond their mere shock value (everyone involved in "Fram" should be taking notes). The staging of the conclusion of Act I is seriously exciting without ever becoming a shallow spectacle of blood and gore (sadly the very end of the play is less well handled).

The cast are uniformly strong. Rory Kinnear is possibly the best young classical actor we've got and it's pretty clear why here. Never anything less than riveting to watch, he commands the stage. My only complaint would be that one of his accents is sufficiently gravelly as to make him virtually inaudible, thankfully he only uses that disguise briefly. Jamie Parker (forever to be prefaced with "one of the History Boys") turns in a well rounded performance, disappointingly without his rather fantastic west country accent that would have been so at home in this production. Ken Bones shows his infinite experience as the Duke, making him curiously sympathetic which enlivened the play as a whole. The one bum note for me came from Barbara Flynn who drifted dangerously into melodrama. It's a difficult role to pull off since the character makes several massive emotional shifts but she didn't quite manage it.

As a play I find it a little dull and it's a complicated one as well. So many characters are involved in so many subplots that it can be difficult to keep track of exactly what's happening. This production is about the finest I could ever imagine for a work that is powerful but also terribly wooly. The language is so well delivered you forget it's not contemporary English. Beautifully designed and performed, this is worth a look. Not for the easily offended, the rape at the start is not pretty (it's not actually in the script either), but go in with an open mind and you'll find a potent production that revels in the blackness without ever seccumbing to it.

Eugene Onegin (Glyndebourne Opera)

Glyndebourne's "Onegin" is one of those productions that is efficiently directed, mostly decently sung and well supported in the pit, yet fails almost entirely to make any impact. If Onegin's all about passionate love and misguided souls, leading to one lead dead and the other two doomed to suffer forever without love, you wouldn't have noticed here.

Ales Jenis in the title role must take a large part of the blame. Vocally underpowered, especially on the lower notes (some of which I'm not totally convinced he could manage so quietly did he push them out), and dramatically vague. For a cold, callous character he comes across as a remarkably nice chap which makes Lensky's jealousy seem false and his rejection of Tatyana just a bit polite. The emotional core of the work is missing and there's little anyone can do to save it. Maija Kovalevska has a decent bash at the letter scene, she phrases it all beautifully making a lovely radiant sound. Unfortunately when you actually look at her she represents nothing of what she's singing. I don't know if she was having a particularly strong night vocally because she looked unabashedly smug. A sexual awakening this was not, she looked downright flirtatious from the start. She thankfully matured well into the older Tatyana in the third act but it was all a little late by then. Massimo Giordano (a young singer who gave an exceptional performance in Manon) is a terrible Russian, he's an italian through and through, but made up for it with some of the finest singing and certainly the greatest amount of passion. His act two aria was the closest thing to real emotion I heard all night. The smaller roles were well filled especially Marie McLaughlin whose Madame Larina was well characterised and Mikhail Schelomianski who sounded a little forced at times but none the less pulled off Gremin's aria to great effect.

The lack of emotion is also the result of the staging which with these singers seemed intellectually interesting but emotionally uninvolving. The parallel between Onegin's rejection of Tatyana and then her's of him at the end was staged cleverly from an analytical perspective but placing the singers so far apart weakened the drama. The dances are incredibly well staged, with shifting curtains revealing different groups all satirising Russian high society, but the strength of the active moments results in the quieter moments (the core of the piece) floundering in tedium. The largely bare staging also takes far too long to scene shift. The curtain descends and you're left waiting for a couple of minutes whilst apparently a single wall is shifted. It disrupts the flow needlessly. There are a couple of staging coups though. The staging of the fight offstage is very effective, I felt myself questioning who had died despite the fact I well knew.

A tidy production that's suffers from feeling clinical. Jenis's weak central performance renders most of the piece's impact mute. Giordano offers a little life support in the second act but is sadly then shot leaving only Kovalevska to maintain the decent vocals. Under Vladimir Jurowski, the London Philharmonic Orchestra sounded very fine with some especially strong horns. Indeed shutting one's eyes might have been the best course of action had that not ensured that you'd never be quite sure when Jenis was singing. It's a pity because I suspect with a stronger Onegin this might be a very strong production, sadly in the current revival it isn't.

Don Carlo (Royal Opera)

A complete triumph. Magnificent from start to finish. Few operatic evenings in my life have come even close. Nicholas Hytner, directing a stunning cast, has created a simply brilliant production and is excellently supported in the pit by Antonio Pappano. I'll be reaching for a thesaurus just to find enough superlatives.

The cast couldn't be better. Rolando Villazón, the megastar tenor, is perfectly cast in the title role. In act one he so brilliantly captures the young man in love, yet by act two he convinces as both political rebel and doomed lover. He caresses the notes so lovingly, never sounding anything other than completely comfortable (albeit with one minor crack), and this is a beast of a role. He doesn't leave the stage for the first hour and is seldom off it after that. He's not the only star on stage here. Simon Keenlyside, who is endlessly superb in everything he does, is completely in his element here. He generates such a buzz as he sings and his acting is faultless (despite some of the rather one dimensional rubbish he has to spout). As a pair Keenlyside and Villazón fuse beautifully, their act two duet "Dio, che nell'alma infondere" in which they swear an eternal bond of frienship to each other, brought the house down. The third male role, that of the king is perhaps the most complex and Ferruccio Furlanetto commanded throughout. He 's a dark, meaty bass who I could listen to all day. From his first aggressive entry there's a potentency to his voice that is impossible not to be impressed by. Yet for all his vocal qualities he somehow manages to make you watch him even when he's not singing. It's a villainous role but Furlanetto makes it much more than that. Wonderfully ambiguous, he's a much weaker man than he himself believes, unaware of his own faults until it's far too late. Marina Poplavskaya's soprano has a radiance that fills the auditorium. She has a plummy voice that lends her a well suited regal air (didn't work for Tatyana but works perfectly here), and she uses it to the fullest, bearing her soul as she gives up her opportunity of happiness in order to save her people from bloodshed. Sonia Ganassi contrasted strongly and effectively with Poplavskaya, portraying the kind of woman I really wouldn't want to cross. For me her "O don fatale" didn't entirely ring true but it was a faultless vocal performance. Eric Halfvarson is terrifying as the Grand Inquisitor and Robert Lloyd is entirely too brilliant to just be singing the tiny role of the Monk. Impeccable performances all round.

As a production it's effectively perfect. It's a very long work but in this form, it doesn't feel it. The designs by Bob Crowley are both spectacular and nicely restrained. When the front screen (an imposing wall) rises on the tomb of Carlos V, my heart skipped a beat. The atmospheric lighting combined with the large tomb adorned with angels creates quite the coup de thêatre. The staging throughout supports the drama without ever dominating it, providing gorgeous settings for the action to play out on. It's a heavily political work but, where the recent Simon Boccanegra sank beneath the endless prattling about politics, Hytner creates a character study out of it, the people driving the politics not the other way round. It's a period production yet I felt you could relate this more to the modern world than almost anything else I've seen, even those productions that make it considerably more explicit. The conflict between church and state is as relevant now as it has been in a long time.

How to do you review the near perfect? Well disappointingly all I've managed is to do is write a long love letter to Hytner is would seem. If you can get tickets to this you will not be disappointed (good luck though, they were gold dust yesterday and after all the reviews they'll be even more difficult to acquire). One of the finest lineups of singers you'll ever hear in a sterling production, gloriously supported in the pit. The event of the year.

The Peony Pavilion

London's been deprived of the full nine hours on a single day and as I don't have the time to see all three parts over three evenings I've seen just the first. Part One lasts comfortably over three hours and by the end, the young lovers have not actually met in the real world (and only once in a dream sequence). If you think Wagner's slow, this is something else. A nine hour epic of love, death and all the usual operatic conventions. That's pretty much where the similarities end. Aurally it's certainly a novelty and despite initially finding certain voices (possibly the curious overtones) headache inducing I slowly grew to enjoy the experience.

The plot of part one could be summarised very simply (so I'll try). Girl dreams about a guy in a garden, can't ever meet this "dream" guy so she dies. It's simple stuff but laden with vast amounts of symbolism that largely don't survive the translation. Every little detail of costume, prop, physicalisation, even eye movement I'm told, mean something. They didn't to me but I'm sure they do to someone. Like the Ring Cycle vast tomes could be written on every single moment of this work. However without any of this background knowledge it's totally impenetrable. I found I could in no way relate to the work, so stylised that I simply couldn't find even a shred of emotion. The structure doesn't help. Almost all the arias are solo (apparently this is true across all Kunqu Opera) and in Part One the majority fall to the Du Liniang (Sung by Shen Fengying), the Juliet in this Chinese "Romeo and Juliet". To be brutally honest I found her whiny, not vocally (I actually rather took to her vocal style) but she's a pretty stuck up individual and boy does she go on and on (for literally hours). Liu Mengmei (Sung by Yu Jiulin), the Romeo of this work, I rather liked, he actually decides to go after his dream girl rather than just moping around and then dying, sadly he hardly appears in Part One.

If it's impossible to really access the meaning of the work, there's still plenty to enjoy. The costumes are absolutely stunning (I rarely comment on costumes but these are astonishingly beautiful). Each character also seems to feel the need to change costume every scene so there's a lot of variety as well. The staging is simple but has a clean aesthetic that works well, and a couple of choice images, especially the final closing tableaux. The orchestral sound is wonderful (I was sat in the front row and watching them all was a show in itself). Being a complete novice when it comes to Chinese music I did find it rather repetitive, largely all sounding very similar. This may just have been because it was all so new to me but apart from one percussive section, a totally random war section that I suspect ties into later parts, it was all a kind of melifluous melange. The singer's movement is endlessly fascinating with all the singers apparently floating around the stage, only the part of the leg below the knee moving, giving a similar effect to a travelling bourrée in ballet. The very long sleeves (for the upper classes) just irritated me, a couple of nice images are produced but they spend the whole time dropping them and then slowly folding them up again, it just becomes infuriating.

This is one of those life tick boxes I feel. An entertaining evening but aside from the simple fact that "I was there" it was instantly forgettable. So stylised as to render any emotional response mute. If you speak mandarin (as a huge percentage of the audience seemed to) and are well versed in Chinese classical music then this is probably amazing, it just has too many difficulties to be accessible to those of us less experienced. I'd love to see more of this, with repetition it would grow on me (as most Opera does) I'm sure, but I don't have time on this current tour and I suspect the next might be a long way off.

Der Rosenkavalier (English National Opera)

I'm not quite sure how they've managed it, but this is one of the my biggest disappointments of the year. Looking down the cast and creatives, it's remarkable the English National Opera could have created anything other than a stunning show. David McVicar is possibly the most reliable director around and he's got a crack singing team working for him. It just doesn't work.

The singing if good if not great. Janice Watson can hit the notes well enough (although she doesn't vary her tone much) but her characterisation is limp. Is this a great woman slowly realising her youth is behind her? If she is, it didn't come across and she was more than a little vicious to Ochs towards the end of the piece, totally out of step with her previous moral balance. Sarah Connolly is ideal casting, with a virile, exciting voice, but doesn't fuse very well with Watson. Their voices are too similar and it robs act one of much of it's dramatic impact. She looks the part (albeit with horrific hair) and maintains her masculinity throughout (no small challenge) but it takes till her appearance in act two for any real impression to be made. John Tomlinson was made for this role and dominates the piece but sounded just a little gruff (perhaps "The Minotaur" has had an effect). He has great comic timing and looks like he's having a great time which rubs off on the audience, however after his departure in act three the show is left to muddle along to it's conclusion. So dominating is he that the true emotion of the piece is just crushed beneath. Sarah Tynan is both vocally and visually extremely attractive (again sadly with some unfortunate hair), the quality of her final duet with Connolly just about helped the piece limp to it's conclusion. Andrew Shore (fresh from his unbelievably powerful performance as Punch) gives a well judged Fanninal, never stealing the limelight but giving a very refined performance. The one big flop of the cast is Janice Cairns as Duenna. Good grief, she seems to be in another production, gurning and warbling throughout. Last minute appearance by Alfie Boe as the Singer, it's a tiny part but he delivered pure class.

Whilst the singing is decent if rarely superb, the staging is an absolute washout. I saw this recently in Vienna and there they have an (unsurprisingly) conservative staging, but at least it manages the basics (not very well though). McVicar's staging is just abysmal. This is not an Opera that can be pulled off with one large set. It smacks of budget constraints (it was first staged for Scottish Opera, who likely work with greater constraints than the London companies, but that's no excuse for the ENO, who must have spent a fortune on the cast). What works in act one is hopeless in act two. The Marschallin can live in a decrepid old villa but it makes zero sense for the newly wealthy Fanninal to do the same. Lowering massive gold "curtains" (nasty cheap looking blobs really) doesn't cover the fact that the massively wealthy character seems to have rotting walls. By act three I think we're supposed to ignore the larger set altogether and just observe the downstage action as there's no way the inn looks like this. For an Opera partially driven by class conflict it's a massively stupid way to stage it. It also tries for more laughs than it should (achieving only some of them) which leaves the romantic, meaningful sections floundering.

A complete disappointment. The production is terrible and the singing is not quite good enough to raise this to a decent concert performance. Full of bluster and noise but without even the semblance of emotion, how it all went so wrong I will never know.

Sutra

Sutra looks "interesting" on paper. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is a decent choreographer but tends towards the intangible, Anthony Gormley produces fantastic sculptures (all those eerie human models all over London's skyline) but is a relative newcomer to stage design (he produced two similar human figures for another of Cherkaoui's shows) and the Shaolin monks who are hugely impressive atheletes but whose other shows have become terribly commercial. But if it looks merely "interesting" on paper, it looks absolutely astonishing on stage.

I was absolutely entranced for the full seventy minutes. Gormley has provided twenty one boxes and a big white cube of a set and Cherkaoui and the monks use it to the fullest. It's hard to describe just how creatively the boxes are used. Conjuring up a vast range of imagery, a flower one minute, battlements the next, the entire show is one beautiful image after another. The music, written by Szymon Brzóska, is also much more subtle than I expected, emphasising the movements rather than punctuating them. If you came for spectacle, you'll be disappointed, the monks spend as much time standing (or lying) still as they do flying through the air (there's a fair bit of both though).

It's a plotless work although there are definate themes running throughout. It starts with Cherkaoui sitting at the side of the stage with the boy monk (a real crowd pleaser) manipulating tiny boxes whilst the monks maneuver the large ones into the same patterns. Is he controlling them? The puppet master so to speak? Just when it looks like he might be, one of the monks comes over and traps him in the silver box (all the boxes are wooden except for Cherkaoui's which is silver), not so in control now. Throughout there are elements of the group versus the individual. The outsider looking in. The boy monk provides Cherkaoui's guide in this unfamiliar world but within, what seems like the uniformity of the monk world, there are divisions too. A truly brilliant sequence (and also the closest to fighting you get all evening) occurs when three monks fight all the others, they with swords whilst the rest have poles. The three are defeated but only two of the pole monks survive. Suddenly the dead rise and fight the two living, regardless of prior affiliation. Only at the very end do all the figures, Cherkaoui included, come together in unison and it's an amazing moment of release. The strenth of the work is that it's packed with imagery that the audience can relate to (the above is only what I took from the piece and I suspect others related to it very differently) but none of it is nearly as elliptical as you might fear of a piece like this.

An evening of absolute wonderment. A genuine cultural exchange creating a piece that neither side could have produced on their own. Devoid of the campy spectacle you might expect, this is a profound, moving work that's just as impressive during the stillness, as when everyone's performing backflips.