Mark Stone / Recenzje

Dieter Dorn and Jürgen Rose , in keeping with the exact continuity of the previous episodes, give Le Crépuscule a fairly traditional vision, very attentive, but wise and less developed than for the previous episodes. Only the palace of Gibichungs where King Gunther reigns with his sister Gutrune and his half-brother Hagen, son of Alberich and absolute traitor, comes naturally to mark a certain break in the subject: an immaculate white parallelepiped shelters the courtyard while masks of the ancient gods delimit the surroundings. The baritone Mark Stone plays a solid and very musical Gunther and Agneta Eichenholz , after Freia in L'Or du Rhin , a vocally pleasant Gutrune but with a little light means however. Polina Pastirchak , Carine Séchaye and Ahlima Mhamdi reunite with the Daughters of the Rhine, much more capable than in the first opus of the Tetralogy . The three Norns are absolutely impeccable and of a beautiful expressive power: Wiebke Lehmkuhl after having interpreted Erda and with deep bass, Roswitha Christina Müller , a well-timbred mezzo voice and Karen Foster with a radiant soprano. Georg Fritzsch further broadens and intensifies his musical direction for Le Crépuscule , notably during Siegfried's famous Voyage on the Rhine, which he translates with opulence and energy. The same goes for the final scene where he powerfully assists Petra Lang, a little reserved at first, then completely freeing herself, carried by an Orchester de la Suisse Romande which takes on all its colors. The Chœur du Grand Théâtre , directed by Alan Woodbridge , excels in rising to the challenges of this repertoire.

Last part of the famous Wagnerian tetralogy, The Twilight of the Gods offers the pleasure of the synthesis of this titanic musical journey. From the outset the Orchester de la Suisse Romande , under the attentive direction of Georg Fritzsch , distills a continuous pleasure in a proportionate way: ceaseless flow of the strings, winds of a superlative quality, gleaming brass instruments. The conductor's reading is entirely focused on the song, supporting the protagonists with an energetic baton that manages to preserve the balance between pit and stage in an optimal way. Apart from the two central characters, the quality of Agneta Eichenholz 's Gutrune should be underlined, who, in her magnificent red royal toga, offers the splendor of a golden timbre with very beautiful high notes. Another striking character of this Twilight , Jeremy Milner 's black Hagen , whose stature amazes in the incarnation of brute force. Three heads taller than the various actors, he thrills with his cavernous voice and his thrifty acting makes a muted savagery palpable. Finally, let's salute Mark Stone 's superb Gunther who offers a very beautiful baritone voice to his character. During the final trio of the second act, the evocation of revenge, associated with the roar of the brass, is admirable.

The whole raison d’être of the Longborough Festival was always the performance of its founder Martin Graham’s beloved Wagner. So it’s perfectly natural that the twelfth anniversary of the start of the festival’s original Ring cycle should be marked by the inauguration of a completely new cycle, under, so to speak, new management: the Grahams’ daughter Polly, who took over as artistic director last year, and the Royal Opera’s Amy Lane, directing The Ring itself. Negus’s cast mostly copes admirably with the challenge. The unquestionable star of the show is Mark Le Brocq’s Loge (pictured below), a kind of fin de siècle Mephistopheles, with frock coat and cane, pirouetting round the stage in a way that openly ridicules the stolid, bewildered, humourless bourgeoisie of mount Valhalla, and even runs rings (non-golden) round the crafty tenants of Nibelheim. He also sings - the most lyrical music in the opera - with elegance and eloquence. But there are excellent things elsewhere. Mark Stone’s Alberich, though inertly directed, has moments of real vocal splendour, Adrian Dwyer is a lively if too likeable Mime, and the giants, Fasolt (Pauls Putnins) and Fafner (Simon Wilding), are cleverly differentiated both vocally and professionally (chauffeur and bookmaker perhaps). I like very much Amy Lane’s idea of a hypersensitive, lovelorn Fasolt and a tender Freia (Marie Arnet) who would almost elope with him if it weren’t for her duties in the Valhalla orchard. And did I detect a parallel moment of sympathy between Wotan and Alberich at the moment when Wotan seizes the ring? Honour among thieves, or some deeper vibration?

This is Longborough Festival Opera’s Das Rheingold and the first instalment of the complete Ring-cycle up until 2022. It's also Polly Graham’s second season as Artistic Director of the festival established by her parents in 1991 - a founding year that was to bring an operatic dream of a British Bayreuth to reality. A first Cotswold Rheingold in 1998 heralded a Wagnerian Eden. It’s not been a smooth ride - early on a critic considered ‘Mr Graham will give more pleasure by being less ambitious’ - but history has proved otherwise and the intimate space of Longborough’s 500-seat theatre (salvaged from Covent Garden) is no barrier to artistic enterprise or a composer’s gargantuan vision. If anything, Longborough’s limited dimensions admirably suits Rheingold’s text-laden outlines where its creative energies (unfettered by the absence of technical wizardry) can be distilled through depth of characterisation and powerful musicianship. Designs and costumes aside, what really lifted this Rheingold into something almost revelatory was the standard of acting and singing - albeit not uniformly excellent, but with enough definition to repeatedly draw the ear and eye towards several outstanding performances. Chief amongst these was Mark Le Brocq’s dodgy dealer Loge, whose crimson frockcoat and twirling cane brought a whiff of a Victorian music hall MC. His ease of movement and vocal projection were outstanding, his perfectly caught ambivalence tailor-made for this role. His pirouetting laid bare Darren Jeffrey’s stolid and authoritatively sung Wotan whose lumbering gait worked against his impressive build, otherwise ideal as a ruler of the gods. More convincing was the nimble and dishevelled Mark Stone as Alberich, utterly persuasive in voice and single-minded ambition. His brother, Mime, was sung by a clarion-voiced Adrian Dwyer who brought considerable energy to his ensemble scenes.

Over the last few years I have found Madam Butterfly the most intriguing of Puccini’s operas. It displays very powerfully his superb judgement of dramatic tension and pace and his mastery as a manipulator of an audience’s emotions. In addition it is, in both formal and stylistic terms, especially ambitious, even if doesn’t always fulfil those ambitions. The cast was somewhat patchy. Mark Stone’s Sharpless was admirable – well sung and acted, a convincing portrait of an honest and decent man, appalled by the behaviour and attitude of his compatriot Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton and genuinely respectful of the Japanese way of life. As Pinkerton, Leonardo Caimi proved to have an attractive voice but, not surprisingly, made little of this psychologically and emotionally shallow character. I struggle to recall any tenor who has ever really convinced me that Pinkerton is genuinely filled with remorse even at the close of the opera, so it would be unkind to complain that Caimi failed to do so. The Suzuki of Anna Harvey was quietly impressive, encompassing well a real range of emotions; she was a clear and firm, almost choric, presence, whether identifying emotionally with Cio-Cio-San or frustrated by her mistress’s refusal to see or acknowledge the truth. The Yamadori of Neil Balfour made relatively little impression and was somewhat on the light side in vocal terms. Tom Randle’s Goro was suitably oleaginous. As The Bonze, Keel Watson was an impressive stage presence with a powerful voice, but with the absence, in this production, of his Japanese context, he struggled to find a meaningful role in the narrative.

Joyce El-Khoury and Leonardo Caimi in Madam Butterfly at Wales Millennium Centre. Lindy Hume sets Puccini’s empathetic tragedy in a dystopian future with mixed results. Anna Harvey’s Suzuki and Mark Stone’s Sharpless are in the top league.

SANTA FE, U.S. -- Flashes of lightning lit the vast sky behind the Crosby Theater as the two protagonists sing of the stars twinkling in the beautiful night: "East can meet West/Two souls in the dark/Each seeing the other/As the other yearns to be seen." Stunning performances by Mark Stone as Rene Gallimard and Kangmin Justin Kim as Song Liling (as the Peking opera performer and the spy) capture the moral ambiguity and emotional complexity of two otherwise unappealing protagonists. This is particularly true of Song's aria "Awoke as a Butterfly" in Act Three, when, 10 years after Gallimard's departure from China, Song is ordered to demonstrate a continuing commitment to the revolution by moving to Paris to spy on him. As Song ruminates "I am a human who dreamt of being a butterfly. Then I awoke as a butterfly who dreams of being, of being human," the melody and harmony have gone far beyond where they started, and so has the audience's understanding of Song's sexual, political and emotional intentions.

Both play and opera were inspired by the notoriety surroundng the sexual relationship of a man working for the French diplomatic service in Beijing in the mid-1960s with a Chinese male actor who performed women’s roles in Chinese opera. The opera is a complex one, which moves backwards and forwards in time, but is always comprehensible and smooth-flowing. The story has three poles, around which sub-plots are centered – the Gallimard and Song Liling relationship, the Cultural Revolution’s operatives and the associated espionage they encourage, and the Parisian justice system. The historical background of play and opera are well-documented. Stone’s performance as Gallimard, among the longest operatic baritone roles ever performed, proved to a tour de force. From Gallimard’s first soliloquy in which he describes his lover as “the perfect woman”. Stone displays a firm grasp of his character’s demons, including a long-standing self-deception.

Santa Fe Opera took on steep challenges for the 2022 season. All five operas in the 38-performance summer schedule are new productions, including a world premiere. Several conductors and a long list of singers are making their house debuts. It’s a lot to put together, and this first week in August is the first opportunity to experience the five operas in a single week. M. Butterfly, composer Huang Ruo’s operatic version of the multiple-award-winning 1988 Broadway play by David Henry Hwang, was slated to debut in 2020 and delayed until now by COVID. It finally hit the stage on 30 July. Seen and heard in its second performance on Wednesday, the opera made an impact with dramatic sweep, terrific and sensitive characterizations and music that added more than just color to the story. London-based Baritone Mark Stone (who sang Sharpless in Welsh Opera’s Madama Butterfly in 2021), was indefatigable as Gallimard, singing in almost every scene through the three-hour opera. In the final scene, he reenacts Butterfly’s ritual suicide with aplomb and grace, the character finally acknowledging that in the relationship he was Butterfly not Pinkerton. As a musical coup de theatre, Song returns – too late – in a man’s suit singing ‘Butterfly! Butterfly!’, in a close adaption of the last notes of Puccini’s opera. Also impressive in supporting roles were Chinese mezzo-soprano Hongni Wu as Song’s spy handler and baritone Kevin Burdette as the French ambassador, both vivid creations of character and vocal flexibility. The company chorus distinguished itself as well, both as a snarky crowd amused by the scandal and as partygoers in the embassy receptions.

The Santa Fe Opera is back. After 2020, the first summer in its history without live opera, the company presented a shortened season of only thirty performances last year. This summer the company returns to its full five-opera slate, although without works by its founder’s favorites, Mozart and Strauss. Yet the mountaintop venue is looking once again like the nation’s premiere summer opera destination, beginning with the world premiere of a new opera, M. Butterfly, on Saturday night. If you thought Tosca was a “shabby little shocker,” as the late Joseph Kerman put it, this opera blasts far past it on its way over the top. Baritone Mark Stone crooned and howled with startling power as Gallimard, a punishing role featured in almost every scene in the opera. Even the level of sympathy he created by his sincere stage presence throughout the evening could not sustain the rather absurd ending. The character, putting on a kimono, makeup, and wig, recreated the death of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly by slitting his throat with a ceremonial sword. Korean-American countertenor Kangmin Justin Kim made an astounding Santa Fe debut as Song Liling. From his entrance, giving a passable rendition of Puccini’s “Un bel dì, vedremo,” Kim was utterly believable in his female persona. Kim’s vocal tone was sweet and feminine, and his acting courageous, concluding with a moment of full-frontal nudity when he revealed himself to Gallimard toward the end of Act III.

The love duets in "Roméo & Juliette" at Malmö Opera are of the highest opera class. "They made an old habitué shudder with pleasure," writes Lars-Eriks Larsson, who reviews Saturday's premiere. It could have become a hotly topical post in the social debate. All the ingredients are in place: two migrant clans fighting for money and power, shady dealings, honor thinking, the parents' unlimited power over the children, especially the daughters, and gross physical violence including murder.

There was reason for the storm of jubilation that erupted after Malmö Opera's big premiere on Saturday evening: the new staging of Charles Gounod's powerful, sweet and sad "Roméo et Juliette" from 1867. Here we are talking about one of Malmö Opera's triumphs, vocally and musically. To a rather large percentage, that is what the art of opera is about, after all. But not only. It must already be said that Malmö's "Roméo" falls apart irremediably between what sounds classy and French - and can be followed in the subtitles in Swedish and English - and what happens more or less vaguely and tableau-like on stage. However, let me start in the grandeur this evening. Malmö Opera Orchestra has long impressed, but the sensually shining confidence that now rang out under Patrik Ringborg's conductorship transformed the gigantic Malmö stage and salon into a shell of roaring, clattering and, when required, thunderous sound. And out of the sea of ​​sounds, the many nuanced twists were lovingly highlighted by, for example, the clarinet and the harp.

Only after the intermission does the evil germinate: The black clothes of mezzo Christianne Stotijn (Humans) and baritone Mark Stone (Death) mark the mood. The latter impresses with an excellent pronunciation of the German vocal text. / Erst nach der Pause keimt das Böse auf: Die schwarze Kleidung von Mezzo Christianne Stotijn (Menschen) und Bariton Mark Stone (Tod) markiert die Stimmung. Letzterer besticht mit einer exzellenten Aussprache des deutschen Gesangstexts.

The climax, however, was still waiting, for Adès really hit the mark with the Totentanz setting. The theme is immediately touching and one is thrown somewhere into a tableau that feels as if it were right between Mahler's "Lied von der Erde" (in the farewell-death phase) and Bartók's "Bluebeard's Castle" (in the dialogue of death with a second person). But Adès finds his own dramaturgy and, above all, fantastic sound developments for the "unspeakable" that Death - in persona of the powerful baritone Mark Stone - serves us here. / Der Höhepunkt aber wartete ja noch, denn mit der Totentanz-Vertonung ist Adès tatsächlich ein Wurf gelungen. Die Thematik berührt unmittelbar und man ist irgendwo hineingeworfen in ein Tableau das sich anfühlt, als wäre es genau zwischen dem Mahlers „Lied von der Erde“ (in der Abschieds-Todes-Emphase) und Bartóks „Blaubarts Burg“ (im Dialog des Todes mit einer zweiten Person). Doch Adès findet eine eigene Dramaturgie und vor allem fantastische Klangentwicklungen für das „Unsägliche“, was der Tod – in persona des mächtigen Baritons Mark Stone – uns hier auftischt. (Mehrlicht)

Mark Stone is a powerful, flexible Wozzeck, the voice knows how to be humble, but also incisive, projected, voluntary. / Mark Stone est un Wozzeck puissant, souple, la voix sait se faire humble, mais aussi incisive, projetée, volontaire.

Harnessed like a beast of burden to an agricultural cart, Mark Stone in Wozzeck deploys the broad spectrum of his voice in his humiliated cry of despair ‘Wir arme Leut’, but this lament no longer has its character of resistance to the captain, who has left to get dressed. The pronunciation of the title role’s interpretation is intelligible and eloquent, snapping the dental and palatal consonants, lengthening the sibilant and hissing, rounding the vowels. / Harnaché comme une bête de somme à une carriole agricole, Mark Stone en Wozzeck déploie le large spectre de sa voix dans son cri de désespoir humilié ‘Wir arme Leut’ mais cette complainte n'a plus son caractère de résistance face au capitaine, celui-ci étant parti s'habiller. La prononciation de l'interprète du rôle-titre est intelligible et éloquente, faisant claquer les consonnes dentales et palatales, allongeant les sifflantes et chuintantes, arrondissant les voyelles.