The Sunday Times - UK (2022-04-10)

POP & ROCK

CLASSICAL

ALBUM

OF THE

WEEK

Sounds of Hollywood

Father John Misty

Chloë and the Next 20th

Century HHHH

Bella Union

Achingly

beautiful

melodies,

sharply drawn

pen portraits

of flawed human beings

(most of them, predictably

and depressingly, women),

lyrics imbued with ennui

and romanticism, vocals of

extraordinary richness: yes,

it’s another Father John Misty

album, Josh Tillman’s fifth in

that adopted guise. His

reverence remains

as slippery as ever,

cryptic, cussed and

sometimes plain

maddening.

Hollywood is

conjured on every

Acclaimed for

her Salzburg

Salome, and a

riveting Jenufa

last autumn,

the Lithuanian soprano has

waited until the age of 40 to

release a disc with her name

above the title. This will

surely be the first of many

releases, so in her thrall are

orchestras and opera houses

around the world. Her

Rachmaninov

Dissonance HHHH

Asmik Grigorian (soprano),

Lukas Geniusas (piano)

Alpha

Jack White

Fear of the Dawn HH

Third Man

After the bracingly

experimental Boarding

House Reach, Fear of the

Dawn is Jack White redux.

There are glimpses of the

risk-taker of 2018 — the Cab

Calloway-sampling Hi De Ho,

the deeply odd Eosophobia,

a mash-up of the Who, the

Clash, pomp-rock and dub

— but far too few. DC

Camila Cabello

Familia HH

Columbia

A follow-up to the lacklustre

Romance, Familia features

the ubiquitous Ed Sheeran

on a song, Bam Bam,

whose bloodlessness is

characteristic of an album

full of breezy melodies, but

devoid of any depth. Telling

that two tracks supposedly

about lust (Quiet, No Doubt)

barely break a sweat. DC

track, the blowsy strings,

woodwind and brass on

Chloë and Kiss Me (I Loved

You) evoking the musicals

era, the Everybody’s

Talkin-indebted Goodbye

Mr Blue and the textures

and chord progressions

on the plangent Buddy’s

Rendezvous zooming you

back to a time when Harry

Nilsson was releasing

records of effortless

perfection and Elton John

was jetting in to conquer

the Strip. The wonderfully

bizarre The Next 20th

Century, with lyrics featuring

Val Kilmer, a Nazi wedding

band and more, brings

down the curtain

on an album that

is at once heart-

on-sleeve and

stubbornly opaque.

Dan Cairns

selection of Rachmaninov

songs, the majority of them

concerned with anguish,

heartache and regret, brings

out the visceral quality and

dramatic expressiveness of

her singing, most movingly

on How Fair This Spot and

a pin-drop Do Not Sing, My

Beauty. Beside her, Geniusas

is equally transported by this

most pianistic of composers.

Some have questioned

whether Grigorian is apt to

sacrifice purity of tone for

emotional attack, but that

seems overly nitpicky when

you witness the power she

displays here. DC

ON RECORD | OPERA

I

n an age when we are always con-

nected, the idea of a drama playing

out on a landline phone — with

crossed lines, calls being cut off

and arguments with the operator

— might feel old-fashioned. Yet

directors have a new fondness for the

idea. Last year Tilda Swinton won criti-

cal acclaim for Pedro Almodóvar’s film

adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s 1930 play

The Human Voice, about a woman mak-

ing a phone call to persuade her lover

not to leave her; Ruth Wilson took the

play to the West End only last month.

Now comes a third, operatic version:

La Voix Humaine, which was written by

Francis Poulenc in 1958, with the

soprano Danielle de Niese and the

Royal Opera House orchestra, con-

ducted by Antonio Pappano. It will be

shown on BBC2 on Good Friday.

De Niese, 42, plays Elle, a woman on

the verge of a nervous breakdown

sparked by a break-up. The drama

takes place in her claustrophobic Paris

apartment as she desperately pleads

with her former lover not to get mar-

ried the next day. Only Elle’s side of the

conversation is heard.

The idea for the show came from de

Niese’s mother, Beverly, who suggested

that a one-woman opera was lower risk

than a big-cast production during Covid.

“She told me, ‘Everyone’s saying you

should do La Voix Humaine,” de Niese

says. “You should film it [because] you

only need one person — you.’ I thought

that was a great idea.” Unlike many

operas on television, which are filmed

from the theatre with the star straining

to reach the back of the stalls, here the

camera is inches from de Niese and it

feels intimate and immediate.

The director James Kent says that La

Voix Humaine is “incredibly emo-

tional”. “What I hoped I could bring

was a rigour and determination to turn

opera into something that would be

palatable as a believable film,” he says.

“Elle’s story, she’s all of us. And I have

had that phone call, I made it about ten

years ago. I know what it feels like to be

desperate and fall into difficult times.”

A small budget and logistical obsta-

cles meant that the musicians could not

be on set. During lockdown the orches-

tra were socially distanced in one room

while de Niese was in Pappano’s Cov-

ent Garden office singing via a relay

into his ear as they played. “It was a bit

like he was on a phone call with me,

and we were feeling the music

together,” de Niese says. The music was

played on low-volume speakers, and

into her earpiece.

To prepare for the role, de Niese,

who is married to the Glyndebourne

boss Gus Christie, wrote dialogue for

the mysterious Monsieur on the other

end of the line. “I felt that I completely

understood who Elle was, and I just

had to understand, ‘Who is Monsieur?’

It would be very easy for Monsieur to

just be a jerk using Elle.” At one

moment they are fighting; the next Elle

sighs and calls him “mon amour”.

“They fell into an old pattern of

arguing, something you do with your

partner — even when you hate them

you love them — and it drives you

crazy,” she says. “He’s clearly con-

flicted, a person who’s getting married

the next day, who can’t get off the

phone with his ex and who rings back

even when they get disconnected.”

Not only does the technology in the

original feel anachronistic, but Kent

and de Niese wanted to change how the

female lead was characterised. “It’s

quite a challenging story for the pre-

sent age, in the sense that it was written

in the Fifties,” Kent says. “The position

of women in society today is a very dif-

ferent one than then. When I listened

to the opera I was quite shocked at the

hysteria of this woman on the phone,

and how submissive she was to this guy

you never hear.”

Most versions of the opera conclude

with Elle’s suicide, but this production

is deliberately more ambiguous. “It’s

like there’s been a death,” de Niese

says. “Not necessarily the death of her,

but the death of love.” c

La Voix Humaine is on BBC2 on Friday

When Covid closed the theatres,

the soprano Danielle de Niese

filmed a one-woman show. La Voix

Humaine will change how you think

about opera, says Liam Kelly

IT WAS MY

MUM’S IDEA

Curtain call

Danielle

de Niese

performs

La Voix

Humaine

18 10 April 2022