The Tempest released on EMI Classics
February 2007, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, UK: Simon Keenlyside/Cyndia Sieden/Ian Bostridge/Kate Royal/Toby Spence/Royal Opera Chorus and ROH Orchestra/Thomas Adès
EMI CLASSICS (EMI 6952342)
‘As the booklet reminds us, there are many precedents for setting The Tempest to music, from the masque attributed to Purcell to Berio’s Un re in ascolta. Many of my generation, which is also Thomas Adès’s (b. 1971), came to know the original through another British music-theatre work, but not one intended for the stage: Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books, likewise boasting a surreally high soprano as Ariel.
It is no everyday event that a new opera recording boasts quite such a distinguished cast. It revives memories of the singers Decca assembled for Punch and Judy or King Priam 30 years ago, but even those were for relatively established works more than a decade old.
...Adès’s command of orchestral colour is as secure as ever. The beginning is perhaps a rather polite storm by operatic standards: its textures pitting the brasses against quicker surgings in the winds and strings are reminiscent of another Tempest-inspired work, Vaughan Williams’s Sixth Symphony. The brief opening chorus (a mere seven words) leads directly into Miranda’s and Prospero’s opening dialogue – as in Shakespeare, Prospero tells the ‘story so far’ for Miranda’s benefit and ours.
...Ian Bostridge’s Caliban is musically, vocally and dramatically superb – Adès, after all, is no stranger to his voice. The libretto allots Caliban plenty of importance. As far as our sympathies go he perhaps gets the better of Prospero at first, and he, not Prospero, delivers the epilogue, echoed by Ariel’s offstage vocalise.
...Toby Spence makes light work of the soaring lines allotted to Ferdinand, his tessitura perfectly suited to the ardent lover’s role and his timbre remaining supple above the stave. The ‘minor’ parts are also luxuriously cast: David Cordier and Stephen Richardson are effective in their essentially comic roles, while the seemingly ageless Philip Langridge (veteran of those classic Decca castings 30 years ago) is almost too present in his cameo as the grieving King of Naples.
...Lovers of the extravagantly high soprano voice probably already know that the part of Ariel is one of the most vertiginous in operatic history, not merely paying visits high into the leger lines but staying there for bars on end, and indeed throughout the opera: even Zerbinetta or the Queen of the Night seem cameos by comparison. Such a tessitura ensures that more than a few syllables escape the listener’s comprehension: much of Ariel’s part seems to have been written with the surtitle in mind. Composers are often taken to task for writing for the future and neglecting the present; Adès may have done the contrary here. Cyndia Sieden’s performance defies belief, from her spiteful opening coloratura leapings to her final floated top E. Ariel’s Five fathoms deep is a show-stopper, drawing the best from her and Adès alike. It is also disarmingly simple: hardly more than a regular succession of string chords caressing the syllabic – and stratospheric – vocal line.
...much of it is beautiful and some of it is breathtaking.’
International Record Review (Carl Rosman), July/August 2009
DISC OF THE MONTH (Editor’s Choice)
‘Thomas Adès’s “ism”-defying output gains in variety all the time, but whatever he comes up with in the future it is likely that The Tempest will remain one of his most significant achievements.
Premiered at Covent Garden in 2004, and recorded here at the revival two years ago, Adès’s second opera succeeds where most Tempest adaptations have failed: in adding something to Shakespeare’s magical and inherently lyrical scenario. From the tornado-like prelude to Ariel’s stratospheric yet ethereal Five fathoms deep the music illuminates rather than merely illustrates the drama.
… it is one of the most viable and stageworthy of modern British operas’
Gramophone (John Allison), August 2009
'For a composer still in his 30s, Thomas Adès (born 1971) is well served on disc, loyally supported by EMI, who in the past decade have released six CDs embracing most of his output, including his early Living Toys and his sex'n'scandal first opera, Powder Her Face. This latest is the world premiere recording of his second opera, The Tempest (2004), an altogether richer and more lyrical affair, commissioned by the Royal Opera House and here taken live from Covent Garden's 2007 revival with help from Radio 3 and the Peter Moores Foundation.
Based on Shakespeare but reworked and condensed into three acts by librettist Meredith Oakes, the text is easily audible, with the sound balance slightly favouring the voices, but not detrimentally. Many of the outstanding cast created their roles in the original 2004 staging, including baritone Simon Keenlyside as a noble, perplexed Prospero, tenor Ian Bostridge as the strange, wretched Caliban and Cyndia Sieden as Ariel, leaping to her stratospheric high notes with ethereal agility. Her set pieces, such as "Five fathoms deep/ Your father lies" and "He and your brother/ Stare and shudder" beautifully capture the character's supernatural, asexual nature. The flourishes and ornaments in the vocal writing have the feel of Monteverdi through a prism of modernity.
The final exchange between Ariel and the world-weary Prospero - "I'll drown my book, I'll break my stave" - is, properly, among the most affecting moments, preceded by Antonio's bleak farewell, in even metre with a choked, low, woodwind accompaniment, ("You've won, I've lost"). This kind of musical characterisation runs through the work, more in the subtle style of Britten than in any more heavy-handed Wagnerian sense.
All the orchestral writing, expertly played, comes across powerfully, notably the storm music which roars into life at the start. Textures are luminous and clear in the bewitching prelude to Act III before the earthy, drunken arrival of Caliban, Stefano and Trinculo. Kate Royal and Toby Spence as the lovers Miranda and Ferdinand, who have a rapturous love duet at the end of Act II, and Philip Langridge's cameo King of Naples are all luxury casting in this excellent recording.'
The Observer (Fiona Maddocks), 14 June 2009
‘Adès’ The Tempest is the most significant opera of recent years… From the turbulent prelude of storm and shipwreck, its tendrils of treachery and magic tighten inexorably to the sobering conclusion. The most striking aspects are the contrasts of register, especially between Simon Keenlyside’s majestic baritone Prospero and Cyndia Sieden’s stratospheric soprano Ariel, a darting, sprite-like presence: the “five fathoms deep” conclusion of scene six becomes a gossamer keening breath, arresting and mysterious.’
The Independent, June 2009
‘Thomas Adès’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, with its fine libretto by Meredith Oakes, has proved one of the most successful large-scale new operas of recent years. This vivid live recording is taken from performances conducted by the composer at the Royal Opera House in 2007, and it is magnificently sung and played: Simon Keenlyside makes an authoritative Prospero, Ian Bostridge’s Caliban tugs at the heartstrings in his radiant Act 2 aria and Cyndia Sieden is phenomenal as a stratospherically high coloratura soprano Ariel… the latter part of the opera is rich in sweetness and lyricism – notably a quintet of Straussian gorgeousness at the climax.’
The Financial Times (Rupert Christiansen), June 2009
'…this reworking of The Tempest by Thomas Adès was as astounding a critical and public success as Britten’s Peter Grimes was almost 50 years before. The 2007 revival is the version recorded here, and it confirms the beauty of Adès’s score and his apparently instinctive, natural feeling for the theatre. Meredith Oakes’s lucid, singable, near-rhymed libretto, after Shakespeare, is put across with admirable clarity by Simon Keenlyside’s nobly sung Prospero, Philip Langridge’s neurotic King of Naples, Toby Spence’s lyrical Ferdinand and Ian Bostridge’s malevolent Caliban, slightly less well by Kate Royal’s voluptuous-toned Miranda, and all but incomprehensibly by Cyndia Sieden, in the impossibly stratospheric, über-Queen of Night tessitura of Ariel’s part. In many ways, The Tempest is a traditional grand opera — Act II ends with a “romantic” love duet for Miranda and Ferdinand, and the musical climax of Act III is a canonic quintet — but it is the then 32-year-old composer’s dazzling orchestral palette, out-Brittening Britten’s Grimes storm music in the prelude, and the eerily beguiling tintinnabulations of the Magic Banquet music that make the recording so rewarding. Adès conducts his magnum opus with thrilling authority.'
The Times (Hugh Canning), 21 June 2009
‘This fine recording stems from the revival, and confirms that while The Tempest is certainly one of the more distinguished new British operas of recent years…
Adès's score creates precise musical worlds for each of the protagonists, whether it's the helium-high soprano writing for Ariel, the gruff, matter-of-fact assertiveness of Prospero (which perhaps undervalues the nobler, poetic side of the character), or the smoothly moving innocence of the music for the lovers Miranda and Ferdinand. He also creates moments of breathtaking beauty in set pieces such as Caliban's purely tonal (A major) aria in the second act, the love duet and quintet of reconciliation in the third, and the luminous passacaglia that steers the opera to its radiant end.
Performances are almost all first rate. It's a measure of the strength of the mostly British casting that singers of the quality of Stephen Richardson and Jonathan Summers take some of the smallest roles. Simon Keenlyside's no-nonsense Prospero, a force to be reckoned with from the very start of the opera, is outstanding, and it's hard to think of another singer who could manage the stratospheric writing for Ariel more effortlessly than Cyndia Sieden. Ian Bostridge's Caliban, Philip Langridge's King of Naples, Kate Royal's Miranda and Toby Spence's Ferdinand are excellent, too.’
The Guardian (Andrew Clements), 19 June 2009
