Brian Dickie

Sunny (somewhat) Garsington

The blighted English weather has contrived to make last evening the very first occasion on which I have visited the new Garsington over the last two years on which there was neither rain nor menacing clouds.  It was not exactly a perfect English early summer evening but the lovely place was at its near best - and the performance of Die Entführing was hugely enjoyable.

The dominating singer of the evening was, without question, Matthew Rose. This superb English bass, who spent his post graduate years at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, completely commanded the proceedings in a way that I have rarely seen in an Osmin - a performance to relish in all its dimensions and a great feather in Garsington's cap.

He was accompanied by an excellently chosen cast who entered into the innovative spirit of Daniel Slater's splendid production showing exceptional accomplishment as actorsa and singers.  If I were to single out one of them it would have to be the hilarious performance of the cheeky chappy Pedrillo Mark Wilde whose singing in addition to the rest of his performance left absolutely nothing to be desired.  He is a gem.

It was good to see William Lacey in charge musically - he is an Englishman who is something of a globetrotter but for the last three years has been solidly based in Germany. 

Daniel Slater has done great work at Garsington.  And his Entführung is another substantial achievement.  He has taken some liberties with the musical text (in cahoots with William Lacey I assume) - and devised a brilliant polyglot new libretto which completely adheres to the spirit of the story, and provided wonderful entertainment, as well as unprecedented acting opportunities, for the talented cast.  Having seen dozens of different approaches to this glorious underappreciated opera, I welcomed and enjoyed his decisions.  To hell with the controversy - this is a true man of the theatre who is clearly also an intensely musical man.

The designer Francis O'Connor used the Garsington space with wit and skill - clever stuff!

If you get to Garsington early a pause in the garden with a glass of whatever refreshes you is a good preparation for the performance - assuming you have a lovely evening.  Yesterday was one of those both on and off stage.

Cardiff concert 3 result

The competitors this evening were from Lithuania, Portugal, Wales, Ukraine and Belarus.  And the winner was the beautiful Ukrainian Olena Tokar, only 27 yet already a seasoned young professional.  She seems destined for the final whatever happens tomorrow evening. 

It is midnight and I am just home from Garsington.  I will comment on that, and further on Cardiff, tomorrow morning.

Pause for Garsington

This evening I will be at Garsington Opera (now at beautiful Wormsley Park) for Danny Slater's much appreciated production of Die Entführung aus dem Serail.  And dinner is provided by Jamie Oliver's Fabulous Feasts (at a price....).  I am hoping for better weather than last year when I took the picture of the opera pavilion you see above, all covered in gloomy clouds.  This is a fabulous location and a real summer opera going treat.  I will be back there on Sunday for the opening of their Hansel and Gretel - and next week I will spend two days at Glyndebourne.

And when I get home afterwards (at around midnight I guess) I may have news of the next "round" of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the world.....for those of you not wired up to Twitter, Facebook etc..........

Meanwhile how nice it would be to see the gardens at Wormsley in full sunlight.

Jamie's knock out blew them away.........

I will be writing this week about the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition.  It is advertised as being a kind of Olympic games for singers with the winner to be called "The world's greatest opera singer".  This of course is nonsense - but it is a great competition nevertheless and in the concert yesterday five of the 20 candidates performed. Jamie Barton, about whom I wrote here on Saturday, delivered a stunning performance and has won round one - whatever that means. Anyway Jamie was fantastic and sets the bar very high indeed.

There is another concert this evening with a further 5 singers, and this will continue with another 5  tomorrow and Thursday.  I gather that the "winner" of each of the concerts goes into the final - and I assume that the best runner up joins them.  If this is the case it does not deal very satisfactorily with the possibility that the three best singers of the twenty appeared in the same concert......maybe last night?

I have no idea whether iPlayer works around the world - but if it does then you can watch the whole splendid enterprise wherever you are, the climax coming on Sunday evening.

I will report back on the result of this evening's group around 11pm UK time.  The participants are Maria Celeng, Luthando Qave, Loriana Castellano, the wonderful Gala el Hadidi from Egypt and Yale, and Alexey Bogdanchikov.

This is all fun stuff!

PS - I understand that it is NOT necessarily the winner in each group that goes through, but the five overall best.  That is good, and right of course.......

PPS - it seems that the second concert is only available to those of you in Wales - sorry!  I will catch up tomorrow!

PPPS - thanks to Twitter - news is that our dear Maria Celeng, a Neue Stimmen prizewinner in 2011, was the winner of concert 2. 

A London day......

It is pretty nice to be back in London and coping with a slightly les frantic schedule.  Today was a combination of postponed, not urgent, medical appointments, and a couple of really delightful encounters with colleagues. And in addition dealing with the rather large bunch of mail stuffed into my mailbox over the last nearly three weeks.  It seems to be a complete waste of effort to say "please no junk mail"..........

Christoph Meyer, Generalintendant of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein joined me for a drink at the Garrick.  He  has been here today to meet with colleagues - something that opera company directors have to do, and in which they largely take pleasure.  He is also here to see The Perfect American at the English National Opera.

And then there was the real delight of seeing Diane Paulus, fresh from her Tony triumph.  We had a lovely dinner with a good deal of sentimental reminiscences from our joint pasts, going back a good 15 years I suppose. And as is usual at the Garrick we bumped into colleagues from other branches of the theatre.  Diane did 7 productions for us at COT during my time - and to an extent they defined out achievement over those 13 years. It was a real treat to see her...........we are most fortunate in our colleagues.

I will return to Neue Stimmen issues over the next 24 hours.  Meanwhile it is late and time to sleep.

Father's Day.......

This means that I was on duty with family stuff and ignoring completely the world of opera.  Normal service will resume tomorrow.

Europe is done!

We finished the Europe auditions in Düsseldorf this afternoon.  All that is left is South America and Mexico, and that will wait until the end of July.  Meanwhile we can finalise a list of those who will go on to Gütersloh for the final rounds in October. 

We did not add to the tally in Düsseldorf although there were some nice additions to the waiting list.  I want to leave space for the anticipated candidtes from Latin America - there will be five to eight I guess based on past form.  But São Paulo is a new destination so there may be surprises there.....

And now, this coming week, the opera world's attention will be focussed on the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World contest.  I am glad to see three former successful Neue Stimmen contestants taking part - Luthando Qave,  Mária Celeng, and Kihwan Sim.  And in addition the lovely Jamie Barton who was a Met Grand Prize winner when I was on the final round jury in 2007.  So I will be watching with extra interest - and comments no doubt!!

I will be leaving for the airport within the hour and will be safely home in London by 8pm.

Well.........

Frankly it has not been a stellar day.  But tomorrow is another one.  We start at 10 am and finish in time for me to leave for a 6:25 pm flight to London.  So we live in hope.  Meanwhile the waiting list has increased by a few, so all is not lost, certainly not for tenors and mezzos.

The evening has been rounded off with dinner at a delightful restaurant in Andreas Strasse in the old part of Düsseldorf.  This was Tante Anna.  It is the Spargel season - and this is as good as it gets. In Michelin speak - worth a detour.

I have little else to report - but over the weekend when I return to London I hope to do a thorough review of Neue Stimmen 2013 up to this point. But now I have to prepare for tomorrow with a rare 8 hours of sleep.

On a break!

We have a little pause in the middle of the afternoon...........and we always need that!  It gives me the opportunity to show you the view from the room.  This is a rehearsal room on the top floor of the opera house here in Düsseldorf - and from here you can see the new Daniel Liebeskind building still under construction opposite the Park Hotel. We will restart in a few minutes.........

Düsseldorf day 1

It was a mere 6 hours yesterday in Düsseldorf - this compared to two days of 11 hours each in Berlin.  And it is the same today.  We start at 1pm and shoud be out of there by 7pm. Yesterday was pretty average - today may or may not yield some finalists.  But it is getting tight and we are just waiting for another  knock out singer to blow us away.......to add to the splendid group now approaching 30 who are through to the finals.

This morning I have spent more than two hours tidying up the results from Warsaew, Kiev, Vilnius and Berlin. I thought I would have a few hours off - but no!  Now it is 12:45 so I will miss lunch.

Look here again around 10 pm German time.

Onward to Düsseldorf

Soprano Saltanat Akhmetova from Kazakhstan (with Sebastian Stoermer) auditioning June 12 2013

We had another hard day yesterday with our stalwart pianists, Sebastian Stoermer and Jonathan Alder, playing for no less than 65 singers with all of whom they rehearsed as well. So it was another hard day bringing the total in Berlin to 125 over the two days and yielding three finalists for October, plus a handful of outstanding singers who will have to be on the waitlist.

We remain short of tenors and mezzos so these are the likely candidates for Düsseldorf and the remaining cities of Buenos Aires, São Paulo and Mexico City where I will be in late July and early August.  However it remains the case that it is quality rather than voice type that determines the successful ones, but voice type can be a tie breaker.  Typically this will be the case when dealing with the waiting list.

So I am off to Düsseldorf on the 10:15 flight from here this morning and then in auditions from 1:00 to 8:00 pm.  There will be a similar session tomorrow, and a 10:00 am start on Saturday after which I fly back home to London.  In Düsseldorf we will be joined by Christoph Meyer, Intendant of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, who was also with me in Cluj two long weeks ago.

So it is all go with not a lot of time to relax or get to performances.......but I have a nice next week in prospect with my first visit of the year to Garsington on Wednesday, as well as a dinner date with our old friend Diane Paulus who is in London briefly, fresh from her triumphant Tony award win last weekend!

Now I must pack for my last leg of this trip..........

Berlin Day 2......

It was another long one - but some good success!  But it is now midnight so we will have to wait until the morning for the fun stuff!  Patience.......

And I will then be off to Düsseldorf for another tthree killer days.  I am not sure that I am up to five 12 hour days on the trot!

Off we go - Berlin day 2

Yesterday was hard - today can only be better.  We got one superb finalist yesterday.  I hope we do as well today.  There is no wifi in the audition room - a rehearsal room for the Staatsoper at the Schiller Theate, so you will have to wait for an update until after 10 pm Berlin time.

Berlin day 1

Well.......of the 99 I think that more than 60 made it.  So we were there from 10 am to 8:50 pm.  Enough said I guess.  Tomorrow we will have the same......

There is no time for leisure, of nice pictures of this city, anything really. But we all had a nice dinner in an Italian restaurant near the Schiller Theater and were joined by Jurgen Flimm.  So it was a jolly end to a rough day!

Just a little weird note - Flimm is 5 days older than me - Riccardo Muti is 5 days younger than me.......trivia!  Our birthdays come up next month!

Horror days in Berlin!

We have 99 singers scheduled for today, and the same tomorrow.  A good many will not show up if previous patterns are repeated......and the Elbe is so high that many will not get here because of transport problems.  But whatever happens we are going to be locked up in the Schiller Theatre (temporary home of the Berlin Staatsoper) for 11 hours each day!

I will keep you posted!

Maurice Sendak immortality confirmed

The Wielki

Teatr Wielki 1pm June 9 2013

Wielki is Polish for Bolshoi, or just plain big and grand........and they were our generous hosts for the Neue Stimmen auditions yesterday.  Beata Klatka, who is coordinator of the Opera Academy as well as being director of the Moniuszko Competition, provided her expertise and tireless energy once again.  We are indeed blessed to have Beata devoting some of her precious time to Neue Stimen. And I am delighted to say that we have a finalist from Warsaw, one that, as so often happens, came later in the day.  Next stop is Berlin.

There was no opera on unfortunately.  But there was ballet, Cinderella, and we went on a nice tour of the theatre after the auditions.  Apparently thiswas the biggest stage in the world until the recent construction of an even bigger one in China......it is indeed huge, larger than the Met or the Bastille.  The theatre was flattened, like most of Warsaw, in World War 2, as was the Philharmonic Hall.  But both buildings were rebuilt, the Teatr Wielki opening in 1965. We went on a little tour of the backstage area after the auditions, then to the front of house with its undreamt of marble halls. 

Cinderella's coach!

You can get some idea of the grandness of the Wielki from this splendid panoramic shot below.

Photo: Marcin Białek

Bruno Bartoletti 1926-2013

Chicago, and indeed the whole opera world, grieves at the passing yesterday of Bruno Bartoletti. 

This was a man who commanded not only respect and admiration, but huge affection from all with all whom he came into contact.  He was a kind and gentle friend and mentor to generations of artists.  His contribution over half a century to the service of Chicago's Lyric opera, in collaboration with Carol Fox, Ardis Krainik, Bill Mason, Andrew Davis and Anthony Freud, was selfless - a model of love for and commitment to an institution.

But that was the man, a rare creature indeed. 

The artist was no less thoughtful and all embracing.  We British are particularly grateful to him for his championing of the works of Benjamin Britten over many decades.  His exploration of all avenues of 20th century opera was unique amongst Italian opera conductors of his generation.

Chicago will miss this dear brave sweet man, his generosity and his friendship.

Warsaw

It is always good to be back in Warsaw where I came for the first time in 1972 when it was a bleak Soviet dominated city.  It was also in the middle of winter which added to the gloom.  I have been here many times since and seen the amazing transformation of this place into a throughly modern old European city.

I am staying, as always, at the Bristol which has had a further rehab in the last year - I am not quite sure why it needed it.  It was always extremely comfortable.  But the main thing is it is just a few minutes walk from the Teatr Wielki, home for Neue Stimmen auditions.  We begin at 11 am and should finish by 6 pm. 

My musical excitement of yesterday was hearing the Warsaw Philharmonic playing Lutosławski 1 and Beethoven 9 under Stanisłav Skrowaczewski at the grand age of 89 full of fire and benign energy - amazing! He is well known to my American friends for his long association with the Minneapolis (now Minnesota) Orchestra, and of course he was with the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester for seven years in the 1980s.

The Warsaw Philharmonic is a superb orchestra, and they fielded their National Philharmonic Chorus as well last night.  It was such a pleasure to hear these splendid unflinching sopranos and tenors in full unrelenting cry. A really marvellous sound!  I am really most fortunate to have these opportunities.

It looks sunny and warm out there - at least we will be able to enjoy that on the short walk over to the theatre for the 11 am start.

Ate Vilnius!

That is an informal farewell in Lithuanian.  Now off to Warsaw.  Will be happy to be back here at the lovely Narutis hotel!  See you in two years I hope......

Narutis Hotel Vilnius, 12 noon June 8 2013

A short afternoon in Vilnius

A nice quiet morning in Vilnius was a treat, and lunch on the sidewalk of the main street (above) in the old town was a leisurely pleasure.

I then had just two hours of auditions here with Latvians and Lithuanians making up the company apart from one Russian.  I think that I have one finalist from here, and one wait list candidate.  There were only a dozen so that is quite good......

The opera company were gracious hosts and provided the space.  And they provided outstanding pianists.  That is a bonus worth noticing and remarking on. My friends know how much I value that.

Cathedral Square, Vilnius June 7 2013

The opera is a 15 minute walk from my hotel through the wide open spaces of Cathedral Square. On my way back there were storm clouds brewing but I got back in good time before the thunder clapped and the heavens opened.

Storm brewing over Vilnius 5 pm June 7 2013

I am off to Warsaw tomorrow afternoon.  I will be at the Warsaw Philharmonic's season closer tomorrow evening.  This will be Lutosławski's first symphony and Beethoven's last. A good programme surely.  And conducted by Minneapolis's erstwhile beloved music director Stanisław Skrowaczewski, still going strong at the age of 89. That will be something!

A long day in Kiev

Yesterday was something of a trial, starting at 10 am and finishing 40 singers later at 5:45 - then a dash through Kiev rush hour traffic down the only road to the airport.  I flew to Vilnius via Riga - no direct flight.  And this was by Air Baltic, Eastern Europe's answer to Ryan Air.  Don't go there if you can avoid it.  It will cost you more that what it says on the label. Enough........

As before in Kiev there was a high level.  Our winner last time was from there, and Ukrainian singers are making waves around the world.  But as always it is the extra bit that counts.  And we got one of those in the morning, and two more later in the afternoon.  I hope that we have room for all three.  We will see what happens in Moscow.........

My host here was Victoria Ratsiuk, a conductor and teacher, and a most generous host.  She and Igor looked after me perfectly, meeting me at the airport and safely depositing me back there - and preparing a delicious Ukrainian supper on the evening of my arrival.  Bertelsmann is fortunate in having such partners in cities around the world.

Kiev itself is a far cry from Tbilisi in Georgia, a country like Ukraine that was part of the old USSR.  Georgia appears to have broken free - Ukraine feels under the Soviet thumb still.  The main progress appears to be in the creation of huge traffic jams, unheard of in Soviet times.  And also a spanking new airport terminal built to welcome visitors to the football World Cup last year.

But now I am in delightful Vilnius, in the best hotel of all on my current trip - the Narutis.  It is not part of any chain - just a perfectly managed small establishment with impeccable style and service.

It is a lovely morning and I have already been out briefly to test the air!  My auditions are not until 2:30 so I have a welcome respite after the last hectic 10 days.

Morning prep for the day's business - Old Vilnius 9:30 am June 7 2013

Vilnius......

Well I arrived after a long and tiresome journey.  It is now 1:20 am and I am off to sleep.  Report on Kiev will have to wait!

Ukraine

I am now in Kiev for a very short visit indeed. I start at 10 am tomorrow and have 60 singers scheduled.  Too many - but I am counting on them not all showing up.  Whatever happens I guess there will be time for no more than one aria in most cases.  I always think that this is a pity.  But time is time..........

I have a flight to Vilnius via Riga tomorrow evening at 8:30.  And the Kiev airport is almost an hour away.  So I must be done by 6.  There will hardly be time to get to see much of this former Soviet republic's capital.  I was here two years ago for longer.  It was somewhat grim then.......it is certainly a world apart from the charms of Georgia's capital Tbilisi.

I am in a small Radisson Blu - last time I was in Stalin's former Intourist hotel, the Dnipro - for 30 minutes. It was a real horror so I switched to here. It is just fine!

I will report on Kiev results when I get to Vilnius tomorrow.  It should be interesting.  Our winner last time, in 2011, was Olga Bezsmertna who auditioned for me here in Kiev.  So they have something to live up to!