Less than a fortnight since the latest edict about English National Opera – the shortlisted destinations for the company’s enforced move out of London are now officially Birmingham, Bristol, Greater Manchester, Liverpool and Nottingham – the crowds spilled across the pavement outside the Grand Theatre in Leeds. Concerns that the north is somehow already opera-saturated have been aired repeatedly amid the grim wranglings of recent months. Greater Manchester and Nottingham are both Opera North turf. What’s more, lest we forget, the company started life as English National Opera North. But the opening night of its new production of Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers looked very much like business as usual – and good business too, if the mostly packed stalls were anything to go by.
Directed by Matthew Eberhardt and conducted by Matthew Kofi Waldren, The Pearl Fishers is the latest in Opera North’s decade-long series of concert stagings. While Leeds town hall is closed for refurbishment, they’re at the Grand – a little less concert, a little more staging. Or so you’d hope. Last year, Wagner’s Parsifal was Opera North at its best, musically exhilarating and dramatically powerful in a semi-staging by Sam Brown in which the chorus and orchestra shared the spotlight.
In Pearl Fishers, the orchestra is back in the pit and the curtain rises on what I can only describe as a load of balls. Available in a wide range of sizes – bowling ball, yoga ball, XL boulder – these are the title’s pearls. The rest of Joanna Parker’s set is a knot of thick ropes cascading from the flies and a few items of furniture. Video projections designed by Parker and Peter Mumford suggest we are underwater, in a gloomy world illuminated only by scattered shafts of spotlight in Mumford’s striking designs. If you can make your peace with such a mingling of the literal-minded and the physics-defying, it’s genuinely atmospheric.
The Ceylon of the opera as premiered in 1863, geared to an exoticism-obsessed Paris, is nowhere to be seen. Sensible, certainly, but it does raise the question of why you’d revive this particular orientalist relic today. Yes, the story of two close friends, Zurga and Nadir, who fall in love with the same woman, Leïla, is built to last, and the streamlined cast of four soloists plus chorus must appeal. The programme’s description of the opera as “Bizet’s first masterpiece” is nonetheless a tough sell: even with the intense commitment of these performers, the score is oddly proportioned and suggests a composer (aged 24, a decade before Carmen) still learning the tricks of the dramatic trade.
Waldren did what he could to drive a musical line through the periodic hits and halts. Opera North’s strings sounded consistently luxuriant, their hushed opening to Nadir and Zurga’s famous duet enough to make an audience hold its breath. As sung by Nico Darmanin (Nadir) and Quirijn de Lang (Zurga), what followed was less bromance with vocal fireworks, more understated man-to-man chat. Making her company debut, Sophia Theodorides was a dark-hued, hard-edged Leïla, while James Creswell was deluxe casting as the high priest Nourabad – in stentorian voice and clad like a seaweed-stained Charlie Chaplin. Not for the first time, the Opera North chorus deserves plaudits: dressed simply in concert blacks, they supplied generous infusions of vocal energy and much-needed momentum.
Back in London, there was energy to burn in the Takács Quartet’s latest appearance at Wigmore Hall. They were the venue’s first ever associate artists back in 2012, the same year they were ushered into Gramophone’s Hall of Fame. Almost half a century after they were established in Budapest by four conservatoire students – founding cellist András Fejér is still a member – describing them as one of the world’s best string quartets is unavoidable.
It’s a delight when such an esteemed ensemble (now based in Boulder, Colorado) not only measures up to but exceeds its reputation in performance. Haydn’s late String Quartet in F, Op 77 No 2 set the tone: quicksilver articulation with a biting front on every note, making for ultra-transparent textures and a lean, dry sound. The minuet was almost picked off the page, so short were the quartet’s bow strokes, while the corresponding trio was its inverse, all smooth lines and whispered velvet. Call the approach period-performance inflected or call it boldly modern. Either way, the results were deliciously, achingly stylish.
The same absence of weightiness made even more sense in Fanny Mendelssohn’s String Quartet – a work where the influence of bel canto lyricism and Beethovenian musical thought mingle compellingly. It is finally beginning to receive the airtime it merits. The exquisite balance of power between the quartet’s members – in a word, equal – came into its own here. In the stunning third movement, generously spooling lines emerged and receded in turn, the melody at one astonishing moment passing from first violin (Edward Dusinberre) to viola (Richard O’Neill) without any perceptible shift in tone.
And then there was Schubert. His String Quartet in G, D887 is constructed on a larger scale than either the Haydn or the Mendelssohn and is harmonically beguiling throughout. At times, in fact, it’s downright weird. From its limpid opening to the sinewy silver of the second violin (Harumi Rhodes) towards the end of the finale, the Takács gave the piece the full 50 shades of pianissimo treatment, drawing the audience in by force of quietness. There wasn’t a cough to be heard. There were fleeting moments of full-bowed Technicolor in the first movement and the scherzo, as if someone had briefly switched on the lights, but for the most part this was an exercise in delayed gratification.
The payoff came, finally, in the full-bodied vitality of the finale’s final cadence – and then again, almost miraculously, in the second movement of Ravel’s quartet, an encore that fizzed with wild, almost carnivalesque abandon. Classical music doesn’t get much more life-enhancing than this.
Star ratings (out of five)
The Pearl Fishers ★★★
Takács Quartet ★★★★★
The Pearl Fishers is at Leeds Grand theatre until 2 June, then tours until 1 July
