Simone Trovai Jonathan Summers Violanta Janice Cairns Alfonso Hans Aschenbach Giovanni Bracca Stuart Kale Bice Elena Ferrari Barbara Liane Keegan Matteo Jeffrey Stuart Conductor Paul Daniel English Northern Philharmonia Chorus of Opera North This Proms performance was a concert version of this year's Opera North production. It was sung in German -- I'm not sure whether the staged version was, as some of the singers didn't seem quite on top of the German. It was part of the Korngold centenary celebrations, but unlike Die Verschworenen, performed last Saturday, it will probably stay at least on the edges of the repertoire for a while. I've always loved Korngold's film music, but (apart from the excepts played in the Radio 3 Composer of the week slot a few weeks ago) I've never heard any of his mainstream works. Violanta could be said to be Korngold's Idomeneo -- his first mature work, allegedly surprising in its dramatic treatment of adult themes, and fiendishly difficult for the singers. Though The Adventures of Robin Hood isn't quite Don Gionvanni, and I wasn't sure what to expect. In the event, I found it a thoroughly enjoyable musical blast. I started the evening feeling pretty grouchy (stuff at work) and got increasingly fractious during the first-half performance of Petrushka, which I'd expected to enjoy. Paul Daniel and the orchestra might have been trying to emphasise the brutal and chaotic aspects of the score, or they might not have been totally on top of it (I'd guess the former). But they were perfectly on top of Korngold's Straussian schlock. The singers were also at home with the music, though not all of them were always heard over the orchestra in the brass-and-percussion friendly Albert Hall. In particular, from where I was, Janice Cairns didn't always come over, though what I heard was stunning. The lower voices did better, in particular Liane Keegan as the maternal nurse Barbara, Jonathan Summers as the uptight captain Trovai and Hans Aschenbach (from Idaho) as the swine Alfonso. Elena Ferrari was very cute in the small role of the maid Bice. I would have said the acting was impressive as well, since most of the singers delivered powerful characterizations. But much as I enjoyed hearing Violanta, I didn't think this performance had decided what it was about. People usually say that the libretto is a bit of grand Viennese schlock (like, say, Salome) and that it's amazing that a seventeen year old could set it so effectively. But the climactic scene involves the repressed Violanta discovering desire and the libertine Alfonso discovering pure love -- a thoroughly adolescent opposition of ideas. It's true that the erotic aspect of the music is pretty powerful, but Korngold had plenty of models. What is amazing is that he had the composition skills at that age to emulate them. The pure love bit, which first appears when Alfonso tells Violanta his sad story of a dead mother and distant father, and his meaningless search for love, seems to me to be less well done. Alfonso's narrative seemed so understated musically that I thought that it was meant to be simply a chat-up line, and that he was going to turn out to be full of it. The stage direction at the end in the programme implies differently, but I'm not sure whether this is the librettist's or the director's. Alfonso has almost no music after Trovai kills Violanta (instead of him), so it's difficult to tell either way. What was thoroughly effective was the relentless hysterical atmosphere of the Venetian carnival, splendidly evoked by the orchestra and chorus, and the associated sense of doom, embodied in the carnival song about the dead leaping out of their graves and dancing cheek to cheek. Thinking about it, I can see King's Row, with its small town repression, coming in the distance.