So impressed have I been by the tenor Ian Bostridge’s investigative study of Schubert’s Winterreise that I have gone back to his earlier book, A Singer's Notebook, which I somehow missed when it was published a few years ago.
Its piece de resistance is the Edinburgh Festival lecture which Sir Brian McMaster invited him to give around the time of Baz Luhrmann’s sensational Australian production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which Roderick Brydon conducted at the Festival Theatre and in which Bostridge, in the process of developing his career, played a part - those were the days when opera was still worth seeing in Edinburgh.
Bostridge’s lecture, drawing on his experience as a historian as well as a singer, makes a somewhat protracted read, but it’s the shorter pieces - mostly essays and commentaries on favourite composers - that really grip the attention. His enthusiasms extend far beyond Schubert to include Monteverdi, Mozart, Hugo Wolf, Kurt Weill, Noel Coward, Stravinsky, Bob Dylan and, above all, Britten. His notes on these figures have been judiciously selected, his essay on Mozart’s tenor roles being particularly rewarding. In writing it he fell foul of that touchy opera director David McVicar, who pinpointed his failure to champion the role of Ferrando in Cosi Fan Tutte, every modern director’s favourite Mozart opera.
McVicar’s belief that Bostridge failed to rate Ferrando because it was not a role that suited him may well be true, but equally right is Bostridge's own belief that Idomeneo was Mozart’s greatest tenor role and the centrepiece of what Mozart himself considered to be his greatest opera. Not for nothing have such tenors of the calibre of Pavarotti and Vickers been attracted to it in their time.
Compared with Idomeneo, claims Bostridge, Mozart’s other tenor roles seem pallid. In The Marriage of Figaro there is scarcely a tenor to speak of. In Don Giovanni there is only the insufficient Don Ottavio (though one of the best Ottavios I have seen was the one who, in Graham Vick’s fascinating Scottish Opera production, kicked over a wastepaper basket in his frustration). Belmonte in Die Entfuhrung suffers from a surfeit of arias at least one of which seems expendable in comparison with what is sung by his beloved Constanza - and, to be blunt, something the same can be said of Ferrando in Cosi.
Such essays, coming from an intelligent singer rather than a critic, are worth encountering, but Bostridge’s preference for Weill over Brecht in The Threepenny Opera is equally sharp. as is his passionate championing of Britten’s War Requiem, a work more about death than about war, as one of Britten’s two most crucial masterpieces - the other being The Turn of the Screw.
11 March 2015
Its piece de resistance is the Edinburgh Festival lecture which Sir Brian McMaster invited him to give around the time of Baz Luhrmann’s sensational Australian production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which Roderick Brydon conducted at the Festival Theatre and in which Bostridge, in the process of developing his career, played a part - those were the days when opera was still worth seeing in Edinburgh.
Bostridge’s lecture, drawing on his experience as a historian as well as a singer, makes a somewhat protracted read, but it’s the shorter pieces - mostly essays and commentaries on favourite composers - that really grip the attention. His enthusiasms extend far beyond Schubert to include Monteverdi, Mozart, Hugo Wolf, Kurt Weill, Noel Coward, Stravinsky, Bob Dylan and, above all, Britten. His notes on these figures have been judiciously selected, his essay on Mozart’s tenor roles being particularly rewarding. In writing it he fell foul of that touchy opera director David McVicar, who pinpointed his failure to champion the role of Ferrando in Cosi Fan Tutte, every modern director’s favourite Mozart opera.
McVicar’s belief that Bostridge failed to rate Ferrando because it was not a role that suited him may well be true, but equally right is Bostridge's own belief that Idomeneo was Mozart’s greatest tenor role and the centrepiece of what Mozart himself considered to be his greatest opera. Not for nothing have such tenors of the calibre of Pavarotti and Vickers been attracted to it in their time.
Compared with Idomeneo, claims Bostridge, Mozart’s other tenor roles seem pallid. In The Marriage of Figaro there is scarcely a tenor to speak of. In Don Giovanni there is only the insufficient Don Ottavio (though one of the best Ottavios I have seen was the one who, in Graham Vick’s fascinating Scottish Opera production, kicked over a wastepaper basket in his frustration). Belmonte in Die Entfuhrung suffers from a surfeit of arias at least one of which seems expendable in comparison with what is sung by his beloved Constanza - and, to be blunt, something the same can be said of Ferrando in Cosi.
Such essays, coming from an intelligent singer rather than a critic, are worth encountering, but Bostridge’s preference for Weill over Brecht in The Threepenny Opera is equally sharp. as is his passionate championing of Britten’s War Requiem, a work more about death than about war, as one of Britten’s two most crucial masterpieces - the other being The Turn of the Screw.
11 March 2015
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