Carrying on the discussion from the Battle for Music strand at the Battle of Ideas 2007, Culture Wars reviews contemporary music and publishes comment pieces on the socio-political role of sound.

The vow is inhuman

Idomeneo, ENO, Coliseum, London

Mitchell eschews spectacular, supernatural visuals, apart from some lightning in the darkening sky over the sea. The orchestra has a free rein to bring the storms, both emotional and meteorological, to life. But in some ways this makes it harder to accept that the supernatural element is a metaphor, or a dramatic device, to open up the emotional realities. Is Idomeneo deluded, suffering PTSD from the long war?

Notoriously popular Puccini

Tosca, ENO, Coliseum, London

This awareness of artistic conceit, the self-conscious construction of the characters to depict something real, and in turn their own play-acting and the overarching authority of the plot, the position in which this puts the audience - is both noticeable and starkly modern. As you watch and listen, you realise the characters- and by extension people in general - have really nowhere else to go but death if their grand plans fail.

As subtle as a Hollywood blockbuster

The Pearl Fishers, ENO, Coliseum, London

Or are we supposed to learn that local customs are right in a local context, when the laws of the gods have been transgressed? Or that it’s always the little people who suffer, and somebody should feel bad about that? The ending is deliberately unsettling, but I was left unsure what, exactly, I was being asked to be unsettled about.

From seductive charm to violent rage

Elegy for Young Lovers, Young Vic, London

The sparseness of the libretto, too, gives the music a sense of purpose and clarity. There’s no singing for the sake of singing, here. Like a well-written play, every line tells, works for that character at that moment. Old Frau Mack has folkish strings to accompany her, but virtuoso melodic lines for her mystical flights of vision and, later, emotion.

A large central void

Prima Donna, by Rufus Wainright, Sadler’s Wells, London

Several reviewers have criticised the banalities of the libretto, but, to a certain extent, this is the least of the problems. Even La Traviata opens with the line ‘You’re late. We’ve been playing cards’, but Wainwright’s words are genuinely lamentable throughout. Add to this the fact that there is no drama, no turmoil, no excitement, no arias (to speak of) and no coup de grace - and you are left with a large central void to act your way out of.

Theatre gig

Micro, The Gate, London

Its problem is/might be that it walks perilously close to that most damning of lines drawn by the British mind: the suspicion that it ‘might be a bit wanky’. Mostly it’s charming and playful enough to shrug off such charges, but there are definitely moments where you’re not sure whether it’s walked over the line into self-parody or even self-indulgently not-caring-about-being-wanky.

Janacek’s women

Katya Kabanova, English National Opera, London / The Cunning Little Vixen, Royal Opera House, London

If nature in Katya Kabanova is sweet freedom, always out of reach,  in The Cunning Little Vixen it is everywhere in all its amoral power. The eponymous little Vixen, caught by the sleepy Forester and taken home as a plaything for his children, never yields to domestication. Even when tied up for biting a tormenting child, her spirit is swinging on a trapeze beneath the moon.

The dark Clerkenwell mist

Avant! Noir, Toynbee Theatre, London

Avant! Noir happily managed a smooth equilibrium of media and styles, music and words and images all melting into each other, suggesting further shapes and colours, stretching the genre without straining it.

The comedy (and tragedy) of class

The Gambler, Royal Opera House, London

Alexei starts with unrequited love and a social situation that leaves him few options. Babulenka starts with gambling for (whisper it) sheer fun and then loses her fortune almost wilfully to spite her callous relatives. Are these stories not more interesting and more believable than broad-brush comparisons with zoo animals?

Unsettling, ambiguous, right

The Rake’s Progress, Royal Opera House, London

Between Mozartian recitative – complete with harpsichord – and lyrical duets and trios, passages that wouldn’t be out of place in a film noir score (or an atonal chamber concert) place the opera firmly in the 20th century. The folktale storyline is echoed by folksong-like tunes and lyrics, and at times the singers address the audience directly, somewhere between Brecht and music hall.

Why doesn’t listening to modern classical music matter any more?

A talk given at, 'A cultured ear: why does listening to music matter?', at the Battle of Ideas, London, Saturday 31 October 2009

Like every art form, music should continue to provoke and explore different ways of getting under our skin, but though I would hate to have a world without dissonance, I believe that rock music stole classical music’s thunder when it took over the role of providing society’s songs and dances, not least by absorbing the power of electricity to provide the level of energy that an increasingly sex and technology obsessed society needed.

Difference in sameness

Agon – Sphinx – Limen, Royal Opera House, London

When Eric Underwood lifts Sarah Lamb during a delicate duet, she gently accommodates her basket-shaped body in his curved arms, just like wine poured in a goblet would end up taking the shape of a tulip. An image bound to be memorable as the seal that only dance can put on beauty.

Live merrily in cheerfulness

Le Grand Macabre, ENO, London Coliseum

The performances are astonishingly physical, the singers making real contact with each other and performing both comedy and sensuality with confidence. Susanna Andersson, who sings both Venus and Gepopo, chief of the secret police, is outstanding in combining acrobatic movement, masterful comic timing and two coloratura soprano roles.

Common people

Jacko’s Hour, Bridewell Theatre, London

The pared-down simple scoring of Jacko’s Hour is not simply a matter of pastiche – a disjuncture of distinct styles – but a reminder that opera has always been a hybrid tradition brought alive in local contexts.

‘Adequate listening’ in Starbucks

The Eris Quartet, Starbucks, Edinburgh, 3 August 2009

While blender zuzzes unhappily punctuate a cerebral commission by Charlie Usher and some of the lighter textures are lost underneath the coffee chatter, Sarah Spence’s resonant cello solo opening the Borodin evolves seamlessly upwards into the first violin, and the quartet display a unique togetherness that captivates an unexpectant audience.