There are hits and there a misses across the art forms this week. Here is just a selection from opera, visual arts and classical music.
In The Arts Desk's opera reviews this week, Igor Toronyi-Lalic headed not to any of the grand opera houses, but to the Arcola Theatre in east London, for a rare staging of Viktor Ullmann's only opera, 'The Emperor of Atlantis'. This was not necessarily cause for celebration, however, as Toronyi-Lalic argued that Ullmann has been bestowed with a greater reputation than he deserves owing to his tragic death at Auschwitz. As noble as it seems, he says, to honour those who have suffered, it does not mean the music itself is any good. And such is the case here. Toronyi-Lalic found only pastiche of 1920s popular suites, with borrowings from Hindemith and Weill, too. The production was ill-served, also, by its overly fussy staging by director Max Hoehn. And with two such huge hindrances, Peter Kien's libretto, its strange, haunting story resonant with fear and nostalgia, was not strong enough to rescue the production. A tighter performance from conductor John Murton and Dioneo would not have been much help, though there was at least some strong singing from the women. A fairly damning assessment then, and yet, Toronyi-Lalic concedes, given the horrific circumstances in which Ullmann was writing, where creativity had no room to flourish, it seems wholly unsurprising that the music is forgettable.
Meanwhile in visual arts, far from the big London galleries, Fisun Güner from The Arts Desk was visiting Compton Verney, Warwickshire, to see the exhibition 'Stanley Spencer and the English Garden'. As its title suggests, the show focuses on Spencer's love of the English garden, the earthly paradise he found in his beloved village of Cookham where he became something of fixture, pushing his pram of paints around, painting both biblical scenes and glorious flowers. His garden paintings are the lesser known, but they are given pride of place here (along with the pram). After the horrors of the First World War, the gardens around Cookham seemed to Spencer a haven of peace and tranquillity. Güner argues that there is more to these pictures, though, reading them in two ways: both as nature tamed by man's cultivation, and also depicting a nature that is heady, intoxicating and abundant, that can barely be contained by man. One could even see the artist's own sexual frustration in these images. Admittedly there are a couple of images here that seem to have been made out of necessity rather than pleasure, but they are the minority. The biblical paintings make an appearance, too, famous for their part unsettling, part comic air, and with a complementary show about landscape architect Capability Brown only adding to the experience, Güner urges us to pay Compton Verney a visit.
Geoff Brown's trip to the BBC Proms took him to Cadogan Hall for a matinee classical concert of works by that inseparable pair of Modernists Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle. They may have shared yet another bill but their pieces couldn't have been more different. Birtwistle's 'Angel Fighter' (enjoying its British premier) was a fiery, dramatic, almost operatic cantata about Jacob wrestling with the angel. Its volcanic spirit infected the performers too, the London Sinfonietta playing with real élan and the BBC Singers, particularly Jeffery Lloyd-Roberts and Andrew Watts, relishing this bombastic outburst. Davies's unaccompanied motet 'Il rozzo martello', on the other hand, was an intellectual piece, contemplative and emotionally remote. Well sung by the BBC Singers under David Atherton, it still did not feel like an urgent, vital work. A bit of light relief came in the world premier of Georges Aperghis's 'Champ-Contrechamp', played by pianist Nicolas Hodges, conspicuously in full evening dress. A concerto-like ping pong game of a piece, inspired by the alternating viewpoints of the titular camera shot, it thankfully did not outstay its welcome, entertaining the audience for 15 short but sweet minutes.
Steve Alexander is an arts writer with a passion for grand opera in the capital. For detailed information on classical music and visual arts in London, as well as the latest overnight reviews, visit The Arts Desk.
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