Tony Fitzpatrick, UK. blog@tonyfitz.uk

Armonico Consort and Baroque Players, featuring the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble, conducted by Christoper Monks. Geoffrey Webber - Organ. Monteverdi: Vespro della Beata Vergine.

Beautifully atmospheric performance of the Monteverdi Vespers in my church, St Mary's Warwick. This is wonderful repertoire for this semi-professional choral choir based in the UK Midlands, and the church surroundings enhance the properties of what fundamentally is music to accompany an act of worship. The choir incorporated young people from their junior "AC Academy" ranks, who did an excellent job in the Sonata Sopra "Sancta Maria". The soloists, drawn from the choir ranks were all first class. Hot evening in Warwick, but filled with lovely music.

A new "Rivers of London novella". A novella in that the usual suspects - Peter Grant, Thomas Nightingale etc. don't appear (expect in a short phone call). Instead we are in the US, in the company of FBI Agent Kimberley Reynolds, who after her experiences working in London is part of an FBI unit looking at mysterious things. Last time Aaronovitch wrote a story like this we were in Germany, and I remarked then how wedded to stereotypes he seemed to be with Teutonic bureaucracy and efficiency to the fore. Subtitled "they do things differently across the pond", here we get lots of Yankee cliches - including religion, guns and the frontier spirit. Kimberley is investigating, via a message from a retired colleague, strange events in a very cold Northern Wisconsin township. Lots of good material here, including disturbed native American spirits, and the practicalities in living in a northern US state in the winter. Kimberley isn't actually a magic "practitioner" which makes the book a little dry on the action front, but it is otherwise a good read, although maybe the narrative was strung out for more pages than it needed. I am impatiently awaiting the next real "Rivers of London" story.

Published June 2023.

My improving pre-work ahead of an Armonico Concert performance later this week. Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 or Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers for the Blessed Virgin), SV 206, or more properly Sanctissimae Virgini Missa senis vocibus ac Vesperae pluribus decantandae, cum nonnullis sacris concentibus, ad Sacella sive Principum Cubicula accommodata ("Mass for the Most Holy Virgin for six voices, and Vespers for several voices with some sacred songs, suitable for chapels and ducal chambers"). A gift for Pope Paul V, and composed shortly after L'Orfeo. CD released October 2018. Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643). Collegium Vocale Gent, Philippe Herreweghe.

18th century choral works presented by the amateur adult choir associated with my Church, St Mary's Warwick. They sing three concerts a year and occasionally deputise in services. Music from the Beauchamp Sinfonietta, a fine chamber orchestra based in Leamington Spa. Nice programme and supported by some excellent soloists. Mozart's Coronation Mass, written supposedly for Easter Sunday 1792, was the main substantive work after the interval. Originally just the Mass in C, it got it's name when used at the coronation of Francis I of Austria later that year. The first half consisted of the audience pleasing Coronation Anthem of GF Handel, Zadock the Priest, and the second of Vivaldi's three known settings of the Dixit Dominus (the third only discovered as recently as 2005).

A computer-generated "photo" of Mozart’s face extrapolated by averaging several paintings (via Royal Opera House).

The music of French-Caribbean musician Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799) is remarkable. Not so much that it is in itself outstanding for the 18th century, but that it was created by the son of an enslaved woman from Guadeloupe, who had been raped by a slave owning father. Moved to France by his father aged seven, he was educated in France. Joseph was an outstanding violinist, swordsman, a poet, and his music would (had it not been for his skin colour) given him the prize of conductor of the Paris Opera under Louis XVI. Caught up in the revolution he served as a colonel of the Légion St.-Georges, established in 1792 which comprised "citizens of colour". He was imprisoned during the "reign of terror" and died in relative poverty in Paris in 1799. Lost to obscurity for many years after Napoleon's reinstatement of slavery in the French colonies in 1802, his music has undergone a 21st century revival. I have recently listened to a selection of St George's music, and it has been performed at the Proms, and elsewhere.

This 2023 film is a biopic of Joseph's life from age seven until just before the Revolution. It is very light on historical accuracy, and equally scant in the extracts used of his music. The Queen, Marie Antoinette, features heavily, as does his politically active friend, Louis Philippe, later Duke of Orléans, and his patron Madame de Montesson. Mozart even gets a walk on part in the first few scenes of the film, with a cringe making "battle of the violins". St Georges comes across as an ego big enough to rival even Mozart's. Obviously we get many examples of bullying and racism, plus rather heavy handed tactics from the Marquis de Montalembert, whose wife Joseph was supposed to have seduced. The end of the film, as the mob starts to get agitated and the revolution kicks off, was a little contrived. It gave St Georges a central role in promoting the "rights of man", and he also insulted the Queen directly, whilst drunk, for which in reality he would have lost his head. The film was however good fun, and the scenes of 18th century Paris (although rather clean and tidy!) looked splendid.

Enjoyable concert from our local amateur Symphony Orchestra, showcasing in the first half some Verdi arias beautifully sung and presented by soprano Nadine Benjamin. Benjamin made her ROH debut in 2020, and has also appeared at the BBC Proms. The second half was a spirited performance of Brahms Symphony No. 3 in F major (Op. 90). Innovative and interesting programme and enthusiastically delivered.

This is a very well received (and prize winning) novel from 2005, given to me as a gift. I have just got round to reading it. It is described by some reviews as comedy, however I found it desperately sad, with none of the characters (bar a few incidental ones) having any redeeming features. Basically an impoverished widowed elderly Ukrainian immigrant to the UK, Nikolai, gets conned into a sham marriage to allow a much younger divorced Ukrainian, Valentina, and her son to settle in the UK. He however believes it is love, and is transfixed by the size of her breasts (which he has also paid to enlarge). She is obviously convinced he is rich and can secure her a better life in the West, but is having affairs with other English men on the side and sees Nikolai as purely a cash machine. His daughters, Nadezhda and Vera, estranged from each other over a row about their mother's will, put aside their differences, and fight to secure Valentina's deportation and divorce from their father. The novel goes through the ups and downs of the sisters relationship, Nikolai and his late wife's backstory, the scheming of Valentina to stay in the UK, and various run ins with the medical, immigration, legal and social services of Peterborough. In the background Nikolai is writing his magnum opus about the engineering of tractor design, hence the title. Nobody comes out of it very well. Nikolai did some dreadful things involving his family before moving to the UK, his daughters seem obsessed with the potential loss of their small inheritance (although neither need the money), and Valentina exploits them all mercilessly. Only Mike, the level headed husband of Nadezhda seems to have any common sense, and even he gets sucked in with trying to repair a old Rolls Royce car bought to improve Valentina's status in Peterborough. In the end, divorce happens, Valentina goes back to the Ukraine with her former ex-husband, and Nikolai moves into sheltered accommodation. Whilst it has funny scenes and lines, and I suppose it was readable, I didn't really enjoy it.

My deep dive into Wozzeck concluded with the onstage performance of the opera at Covent Garden. It did not disappoint. I had seen Deborah Warner's brutal portrayal of Peter Grimes last year, and this had many of the same hallmarks. Indeed the opening scene was of a set of latrines in the military barracks, with Franz Wozzeck the cleaner working the floor with a mop, ridiculed by a succession of urinating soldiers. The collection of squaddies, with shaved heads, smoking, and engaged in casual violence, reappeared at various points as the day to day background to the misery of Wozzeck's existence. Christian Herhaher as the lead was excellent, with a much more convincing depiction of a man suffering deep psychological problems than in the Met production I saw via a stream. The scene breaks were accomplished via a simple partial curtain being briefly lowered to allow set changes, which at least gave the impression of the passing of time. The tavern scenes were possibly the weakest, with little context to suggest either the barbarous community in which Wozzeck lived and worked, or the impact of his "wife's" affair with the drum major being common knowledge and hence a source of further ridicule. The scenes just came over as a meet up of a bunch of nasty drunks and thugs. All very well sung and acted, and a powerfully presented story of one man's tragic inability to break out of the constraints of poverty and the social hierarchy in which he exists.

The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, was written by Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe in about 1593, shortly before his death. The tale of the frustrated German medic who sells his soul to the devil in return for 24 years of hedonism and the service of Mephistopheles has been adapted for modern audiences many times, in opera, play, novel and probably more. Faustus turns to the dark arts when law, logic, science, and theology fail to satisfy him, believing that they are worth eternity in hell. This BBC radio version sticks to the traditional time in which the story is set and the sweep of the Marlowe narrative, with just occasional audio insights into the future given to Faustus. These bizarrely include Helen of Troy imitating Marilyn Monroe's rendition of "Happy Birthday" to John F Kennedy in 1962 - maybe seen as an extreme form of female temptation across the ages! The performance was well done, and compelling. Cast included John Heffernan, Pearl Mackie, Frances Tomelty and Tim McMullan. Adapted and directed by Emma Harding. First broadcast September 2021.

Last of my three preparations for the ROH production of Alban Berg's Wozzeck next week (the Met production, the ROH insight film and this play). In 2011 BBC Radio Three presented George Büchner's unfinished play from 1837 detailing the life and death of Franz Woyzeck (Berg misread the original name), a soldier in a provincial German town, who, bullied and mistreated, suffers delusions, murdering Marie, his common law wife and mother of his son, and then drowns trying to hide the murder weapon. The play has more or less the same plot and details as the opera. Büchner (1813-1837) was a scientist, and wrote the play based partly on his research into mental health and the nervous system. It is a psycho-drama on suffering, with the common man, represented by Woyzeck, at the heart if it, and argues forcibly that our lives are determined by social circumstance. The play, which was not performed until the early twentieth century, is now recognised as a major work, and as well as Berg's operatic adaption it is also the subject of a 1979 film by Werner Herzog. Büchner died in Zurich of typhoid at the age of only 23, having had to flee Germany in 1834 on account of his revolutionary ideas. He was charged with treason when he published a pamphlet critical of social injustice in the Grand Duchy of Hesse. He managed to escape, although his collaborator, evangelical theologian Friedrich Ludwig Weidig, was arrested, tortured and died in prison.

First broadcast February 2011. Translated by Gregory Motton. Cast: Lee Ingleby, Deborah McAndrew, Derek Riddell, Gerard Fletcher, Becky Hindley, Rob Pickavance, Jonathan Keeble, and Perveen Hamilton. Original Music by Tom Lingard. Produced by Gary Brown.