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Opéra de Lyon  

Concert for the 25th anniversary of the orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon First appearance of new Principal Conductor Kazushi Ono.

Leonard Bernstein - Chichester Psalms
Christopher Ainslie, contre-ténor
Igor Stravinsky - Symphonie de psaumes
Manuel De Falla - Le Tricorne
Renata Pokupic, mezzo-soprano  

Extra: Johannes Brahms - first Hungarian Dance
The program is available for download here.  

The concert

Obviously, Kazushi Ono and I differ a great deal when it comes to music. His program, representative of his taste, was build around XXth century composers, among which only Bernstein has any kind of attraction on me.

I don't know why people love Stravinsky, I find his music utterly boring and unimaginative. The analysis of this particular piece on the program emphasized the last pages of the score as "one of the most beautiful piece ever written by Stravinsky: the pianos, the harp and the kettledrums slowly wave with three notes (E flat, B flat and F - mi bémol, si bémol et fa)". To me, this succession of notes is not musical at all, and definitely is not a highlight in any composer's career. So basically, I stopped listening carefully to this piece after a short while and waited for the intermission.

As for the Falla piece, amid the Spanish popular music influence, I noticed that violins can really make very ugly sounds - and furthermore do it on purpose.

The Bernstein piece was fascinating at times (beginning and end) - and the chorus was extraordinary (fantastic work as usual of Chorus Master Alan Woodbridge that we are so lucky to have since 1995 - and whose humility/shyness is very touching).

Ono conducted by heart the whole concert - for the Falla piece, the score wasn't even in front of him (but he did not open either of the Bernstein and Stravinsky scores). Whether this pratice adds anything to a performance and can be repeated with longer pieces (such as Prokofiev's The Player he will conduct later in the season) is highly questionable and frankly not really of any interest.

In an interview he gave to a local paper, Le Progrès, he said a conductor should be about sharing with the musicians and the public, rather than being authoritarian. I don't know what the orchestra thinks about him, and that opinion being just two weeks old, it may change in time, but one thing is sure: he did share quite a lot with the orchestra, musically speaking.

They played brilliantly yesterday (the only error I caught was a lack of synchronicity between the altos and the woodwinds on one bar in the middle of the Falla's piece, so that's clearly impressive) and, truth be told, I've never heard them play better.
The chorus here in Lyon always tends to surpass (by far) the orchestra; that's really the only time the musicians rose to the level of the singers. Their execution was inspired, focused (which can sometime be an issue with this orchestra), attentive to Ono's directions and extremely responsive.

Ono's conduction brought life, energy and that organic feel a orchestra can sometime achieve that drives me almost hysterical. There's truly nothing more beautiful than music breathing, with an internal rythm, an inner life that transcends the execution and the conduction. Well, Ono did just that, for his first performance as Lyon's Principal Conductor.

So even if I don't like his musical choices, the orchestra can only grow and learn from him - and that should benefit all their performances, whatever the score will be. So welcome to Lyon, maestro. May you always be as inspired as yesterday evening.
 
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The cake
 

To celebrate the orchestra, every musician got a flower at the end of the concert, and a birthday macarons cake was brought on stage (from Lyon's best, Sébastien Bouillet although I myself prefer his chocolates) as the chorus sang "Bon anniversaire".

Each spectator also got a macaron. Nice touch, as well as the cotillons part (a bad day to be sitting in the parterre).

I guess GM Serge Dorny had to make a speech at the beginning of the concert to mark the occasion and present Kazushhi Ono, but I can't get pass his lack of communication skills.

Anyway, the evening was the closest thing to an actual Opening Night at the Opera (although technically, due to the Biennale de Danse happening all over town, the season has already begun since a couple of weeks). So my question is: why not go the extra mile and promote the evening such as? It would have been nice, for instance, if the mayor of Lyon, Gérard Collomb, had made the effort of coming, as well as the major artistic actors of the city...

At least, the arrival of Ono did energize the Japanese community. I've never seen so many at the Opera (and I'm pretty sure Mrs Ono was the only woman dressed in the traditional Japanese style). At the end of the concert, the audience was equally excited - how nice it must be for him to have such a response after only one evening.

The parterre after the battle

Ono's plans for Lyon

Via the Opéra de Lyon website.

The two Onos

La Fenice - Capodanno 2007 Rai Uno Broadcast Dimitra Theodossiou - soprano Giuseppe Filianoti - tenore Roberto Frontali - baritono Massimo Quarta - violino Orchestra e Coro del Teatro La Fenice Conductor - Kazushi Ono 1. Rossini, La Cenerentola: Sinfonia 2. Bellini, Norma: «Casta diva» 3. Mascagni, Cavalleria rusticana: Intermezzo 4. Verdi, La traviata: «Di Provenza il mare, il suol» 5. Verdi, Rigoletto: «Questa o quella per me pari sono» 6. Rossini, La danza. Tarantella napoletana 7. Rossini, Il barbiere di Siviglia: «Largo al factotum» 8. Paganini, Concerto per violino e orch n. 1 in mi bemolle maggiore 9. Verdi, Nabucco: «Va' pensiero sull'ali dorate» 10. Verdi, La traviata: «Libiam ne' lieti calici»

Marco Brescia, AP Scala, March 25 2008

Would I have watched this broadcast, hadn't it been for conductor Kazushi Ono, who will officially be introduced to us tomorrow night for his first concert as Lyon's Principal Conductor? Almost certainly not. But curiosity took the better of me, and I couldn't wait til tomorrow (especially since I'm not familiar with the program). As a result of this sneak peak, I am more perplexed than anything else (this basically is not useful at all). There were two concerts, really, in this broadcast. The first one consisted of the first 5 pieces, and it was awful. The conduction was stiff, emotionless, almost military at times, and desperately slow and laborious at other moments. At that point, I was in a total despair (thinking he's supposed to stick in Lyon for several years). And then, there was the second concert. The great one. Nuances and finesse started to emerge in Rossini's Tarantella Napoletana, but really exploded afterward. "Largo al factotum", conduction-wise, rose to the level of, let's say, James Levine; the Pagagnini piece was also a success, and the last two Verdi pieces were superb - full of subtlety, life and energy. So here it is people: I still have absolutely no clue as to what to expect from Kazushi Ono.

New Principal Conductor in Lyon

The years of vaccum at the position (since 2003) are over as Kazuschi Ono was appointed Principal Conductor of the Opéra National de Lyon last week, starting next season, i.e in September 2008 for at least 5 years.

Currently Musical Director of Le Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, he will join General Manager Serge Dorny as part of the Belgium Connection in Lyon.

Born in 1960 in Tokyo, Kazuschi Ono studied in Germany under Giuseppe Patane and won the 1987 3rd Toscanini International Conductors' Competition.
His career includes principal conductor of the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra from 1992 to 1999, General Music Director of the Baden State Opera, Karlsruhe from 1996 to 2002 and Musical Director of La Monnaie from August 2002.

His repertoire is almost exclusively dedicated to german, russian and contemporary operas such as Britten's Peter Grimes, Stravinsky's The Rake’s Progress, Toshio Hosokawa's Hanjo (that is scheduled this season in Lyon); Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel, Wagner (he conducted a complete Ring cycle at the Badisches Staatstheater of Karlsruhe), Mozart (tour in Japan in 2005 with Don Giovanni).

He made his debut in Paris in 2005 conducting The Bassarids by Henze at the Chatelet; in 2006, he appeared for the first time at La Scala with Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and at the BBC Proms in London with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

The deeper I dig to have a preview of what he can bring here, the scarier it gets: Lyon is indeed turning into an opera with a repertoire absolutely dreadful to me. This time of year is definitelly not one I will want to remember...