Prima Donna, Manchester International Festival (Palace Theatre, Manchester, 12/7/09)

Prima Donna is this year's big ticket commission by the Manchester International Festival. The first opera written by Canadian singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright, it follows in the footsteps of another 'pop' meets 'classical' venture: Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett's visually attractive but musically and dramatically unsatisfying 'Monkey: Journey to the West' which headlined the 2007 Festival (later showing at the Royal Opera House before transferring to the O2).

Both Prima Donna and Monkey reflect a noble attempt to break down the barriers between musical genres and their respective audiences. But there is a problem in offering talented musicians from outside the classical tradition the opportunity to try their hand at opera. Most opera composers spend years developing the craft of writing opera - often testing out ideas on a small scale before being given a major platform to show off their work. And yet we expect the likes of Wainwright to stage a major piece of music theatre at an international festival with little or no previous experience of writing music for the stage. This in itself isn’t the issue, for it is an approach that has the potential to freshen up not only the musical language of opera, but also the discourse surrounding it. The real problem is that because they are called and marketed as ‘operas’ they are always already within the tradition and will be therefore judged according to an established set of criteria.

Prima Donna is a deeply flawed work, rather superficial, and often derivative. Yet it remains an engaging piece of music theatre. This is testament to Wainwright’s songcraft and gift for melody. Its arias are finely wrought and pack considerable emotional punch. The musical idiom is unashamedly romantic - lush orchestral textures, soaring melodies and Puccini-esque leitmotifs are its lifeblood. But there is an undercurrent of dissonance - something not quite able to commit to the romantic extremes to which it aspires. Which is why, for all its aping of late nineteenth century opera, I think it rises above, say, Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera or indeed Sunset Boulevard (with both of which parallels can be drawn).

The plot is slim and told from the perspective of the eponymous Prima Donna - Regine (sung magnificently by Janis Kelly), a fading opera singer who, following a romantic betrayal, has not performed for six years. As she prepares to revive her career, she falls in love with a journalist, who turns out already to have a fiance. Rejected once again, she resolves to end her operatic career. It is a shame that little opportunity has been taken to explore the other characters - Regine’s household staff comprises a grumpy bisexual butler (robustly played by Jonathan Summers), his camp, be-uniformed companion Francois (Steve Kirkham), and a hyperactive chambermaid of indeterminate sexuality (Rebecca Bottone). At the very least a minor subplot would have been welcome. This said, the drama is generally well shaped and, although the characters have limited depth, the vocal writing is highly individual.

Janis Kelly deserved her standing ovation with a sympathetic portrayal of the waning diva. Rebecca Bottone’s performance was also notable for her dazzling vocal dexterity.

The Palace Theatre wasn’t full - but it was a young audience, many, I would guess, experiencing ‘opera’ for the first time. Perhaps this is precisely the kind of unchallenging but attractive and by no means inconsequential work to engage new audiences for opera. But the evidence of both Prima Donna and Monkey would suggest that even the most versatile and innovative of pop musicians will struggle, at least on a first attempt, to write music with enough originality, impulse and integrity to hold its own on the operatic stage, to keep the genre fresh and take it to new places. It would be great to see Wainwright develop the work he has started and clearly has a huge passion for. Now’s the time to make it edgy...

Parthenogenesis (Royal Opera House Linbury Studio, 11 June 2009)

I attended the first night of this new production, directed by Katie Mitchell, of James MacMillan's small-scale opera Parthenogenesis. It's a problematic work - unsatisfactory musically or dramatically, mainly through its lack of narrative trajectory. It tells the 'true' story of a young woman caught in an explosion in Hanover in 1944. The shock, it is claimed, induced 'parthenogenesis' - a virgin birth. The story is told from the daughter's point of view - in hospital dying from cancer twenty-four years later, she imagines an angel visiting her mother (Kristel, played by Amy Freston) with a prophecy.

The angel, named Bruno (perhaps not the most angelic of names, but never mind) is played by Stephan Loges and dresses in a trilby and trenchcoat. He is a nervous figure - addressing Kristel like a furtive lover. Both singers tackled the difficult score with aplomb but their diction often suffered amidst bombastic orchestral accompaniment and hysterical vocal lines.

The most satisfactory element of the production was undoubtedly the set - exquisitely detailed and evocative. Both the drab bedroom and the clinical hospital ward that bisected the stage had a geniunely chilling air.

Britten Sinfonia were on great form under MacMillan's own baton. The score offered plenty of technical challenges and MacMillan's characterful combination of romantic lyricism and incisive dissonance, although there was an occasional vulgarity that jarred. As I emerged blinking into the foyer after an intense 50 minutes, I'm not sure I'd fully grasped the questions being asked by this perplexing piece. But I wanted to experience it again.

For more comment on Parthenogensis, see George Hall in The Guardian, Kieron Quirke in the Evening Standard and Anna Picard in The Independent on Sunday.

CBSO/Norfolk and Norwich Festival Chorus/Parry (St Andrews Hall, Norwich, 2/5/09)

Last night saw the world premiere of a major new work by Jonathan Dove at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. Titled 'There Was a Child', the piece commemorates the life of a teenager who drowned in Thailand ten years ago. It sets a variety of texts - including poems by Traherne, Wordsworth, Keats and Whitman - and unfolds over almost an hour. There are moments of contemplation, nostalgia, rapture, fun and sadness, but it's fundamentally an expression of joy - joy in life, joy in music making, joy in poetry and sound; an incredibly moving experience.

Dove's music is immediate and accessible - sharing a shimmering, pulsating soundworld with John Adams, but also channelling Britten in occasional moments of austerity with simple, almost naive melodic phrases. For me, 'There Was a Child' had strong resonances of Gerald Finzi's gorgeous works 'Dies Natalis' and 'Intimations of Immortality' (not least through the choice of pastoral/mystical texts expressing the wonder of childhood and nostalgia for its passing). Although the idiom is unashamedly tonal, the piece bordered just the right side of sentimentality and neo-romantic indulgence; totally committed to the text and to the ideals of communal music making, Dove has created a work that should endure in the repertoire. It's not difficult, but it is contemporary.

The CBSO were on good form, having warmed up to Mendelssohn's third symphony in the first half. The chorus sadly felt a little underprepared and underpowered - the lush orchestration needed bigger choral forces to contend with. But it was a valiant effort - particularly on the part of the children's choir, who tackled some tricky passages with laudable dexterity. Soloists Toby Spence and Mary Plazas gave committed performances; Spence in particular was radiant and gripped the audience with every utterance.

Of course classical music is still alive.

After Dido (Young Vic, 16/4/09)

I think the critics are going to be hedging their bets with this one (see Barry Millington in the Evening Standard for example). The emotional force delivered by a combination of Purcell's music and powerful acting has to be weighed against the wilful complexity of a production which offers multi-layered realities but only a one-dimensional narrative.

After Dido is English National Opera's latest collaboration with the Young Vic and director Katie Mitchell. Very little of the nature of the production had been given away in advance - even the programme leaflet was sparse - so one was not quite sure what to expect. This certainly isn't a production of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. The opera in many ways acts only as mood music to a series of tableaux, filmed in real time on stage and projected above the stage, depicting a set of contemporary Londoners dealing individually with unspoken tales of grief and loss.

It took some while to work out what to focus on - the big screen, the singers, the actors on stage or the process of filming them and the devious trickery involved (one could probably have spent an enjoyable evening watching how all the sound effects were created). In the end the screen won, but the activity on stage was always vying for attention. In this piece, Mitchell heightens the unreality of theatre (and indeed film) several times over. Is this the future of theatre? I don't think so - it's not even trying to be theatre. It's an exploration of what can happen when different media, and different art forms, collide and boundaries blur. An intriguing experiment that by its nature is never going to fully satisfy anyone, but by virtue of some outstanding performances (Susan Bickley's Dido and Sandy McDade's grieving widow in particular) it possesses considerable expressive power.

See Mark Berry's more substantial review here. A contrasting view from The Teenage Theatre Critic here. And an interview with Katie Mitchell here.

Update 20/4/09: the weekend reviews are in, and while the consensus is a positive one, it's by no means unanimous - five stars in the Indy, four from The Times, three from The Telegraph, and two from the Guardian, which in a rather bizarre two-header, missed the point by getting Michael Billington to comment on the theatrical aspects and Tim Ashley to write about the operatic performance. Just found a rather brilliant commentary on the commentary here.

The Doves (Cambridge Corn Exchange, 15/4/09)

The Doves' new album, Kingdom of Rust, already feels like an old friend. It doesn't tread much new ground but brings the band's sound, with its melancholic harmonies, repeating riffs and dreamlike, reverb-heavy textures, into funkier and sometimes more angular, electronic territory. Set opener 'Jetstream' and the title track were the highlights from the new material played in Cambridge this week. One or two of the new tracks didn't fly, but this was the first date of the Doves' UK tour so it's early days.

Despite a quiet crowd, the band launched into their music with fantastic energy, bringing old favourites (Pounding, Words, Here it Comes) back to life, slightly up tempo in some cases. There were few innovations in the presentation of the back catalogue - almost perfect recreations of the original recordings for the most part - but this is sumptuous music that should endure, and a stunning live act to boot.

BBC Symphony Orchestra/Storgards (Barbican, London, 3/4/09)

The highlight of this concert was the London premiere of Jukka Tiensuu's second clarinet concerto,  'Missa', performed by its dedicatee Kari Kriikku. This is a neurotic work, treating the soloist not as heroic protagonist but rather as a character trapped in an enclosed space - conversing on intimate terms with the orchestra, and often trying to take flight but struggling to summon the energy. The seven movements are named after sections of the Latin Mass but the music didn't feel devotional. There was some fabulous orchestration, with startlingly realistic echo-effects, while Kriikku's use of 'extended techniques' - multiphonics etc - was quite masterful.

The concert had opened with another London premiere - Tiensuu's Finnish compatriot Magnus Lindberg's 'Ottoni', utilising just the brass of the BBCSO. This extended fanfare wasn't executed brilliantly - stretching some of the players' stamina rather early in the concert. The piece itself didn't seem to offer much of substance on a first listen - a rather loose and sometimes vulgar collection of gestures, some of which were quite recognisable from other Lindberg works (notably his own clarinet concerto). This was followed by a rather lacklustre performance of Britten's Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. The orchestra was on much better form in the second half, however, with the Tiensuu followed by a rollicking account of Walton's Partita for Orchestra (bringing the full orchestra on stage for the first time all evening).

Doctor Atomic

Doctor Atomic is nearing the end of its run at English National Opera. I attended the performance on Wednesday 11 March. As a 'young person', I had an excellent seat in the dress circle at a knockdown price courtesy of ENO's 'Access All Arias' scheme - though judging by the number of emails ENO have sent me in recent weeks, they seem to have been almost giving seats away. A real shame - as this production had been hugely hyped (and even discussed on Newsnight Review - a rare event indeed to see contemporary music treated as a worthy topic for discussion on that programme).

Of course, hype usually leads to disappointment. I'm not sure disappointment is the word I'd use - I'd anticipated an ambitious and powerful production, and that's what I got. But while there are some fabulous moments, you walk away feeling unsatisfied. Peter Sellars's libretto is problematic in the extreme - crafted (some might say cobbled together) from other texts - verbatim transcripts, poetry etc. It's an interesting idea, but in practice the text was far too often distractingly clunky. I found the staging awkward too - it felt very static in comparison to the nervous energy emanating from the orchestra. The ending left me cold - it was ironic that a nuclear explosion, potentially the most dramatic ending to any opera, ended up having very little impact, despite the impressive surround sound and the pleading Japanese voice left hanging in the air as the lights faded. There was something missing; perhaps some real emotional depth. We got it at the end of the first act, but not really elsewhere.

The aria 'Batter My Heart' (a setting of John Donne) which closes the first act is undoubtedly a fine achievement (though it is open to question whether it is, in Fiona Maddocks's words, 'the finest aria written since Puccini'). I found Gerald Finley's bodily contortions slightly odd, but it was well sung, with breathtaking power and clarity. This was also one of the few glimpses in Doctor Atomic of that trademark pulsating John Adams minimalist texture - I wanted more of this ravishing music, but it's probably best kept rationed (as an aside - I love Tom Adès's adoption of this texture in some recent works: In Seven Days, Tevot, and the Violin Concerto for example)

So it was an 'almost, but not quite' evening for me. Still, I hope ENO will continue to take risks as exciting as this one. Meanwhile, Doctor Atomic is available on DVD in a different staging by the Netherlands Opera - YouTube clips look impressive so it's one for my wishlist.