Verdi - Aida

Giuseppe Verdi - Aida

Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Firenze 2011

Zubin Mehta, Ferzan Ozpetek, Hui He, Marco Berti, Luciana D’Intino, Roberto Tagliavini, Giacomo Prestia, Ambrogio Maestri, Saverio Fiore, Catarina di Tonno

Arthaus Musik

Aida is a tricky opera to stage effectively. It doesn’t hold up to modernisation or revisionism, demanding a very specific mood and setting that one messes with at one’s peril. I’ve seen it done before in a Risorgimento updating to Verdi’s time and in Robert Wilson’s particular minimalist style, both of which were interesting, but neither were entirely successful. On the other hand, a traditional approach to Aida requires both a big stage to match the grandeur of Verdi’s compositions of ceremonial marches through ancient monuments, and not everyone has the budget to go for the Full Zeffirelli. Even then however, the lack of dramatic incident and the demands placed on the singers mean that even a traditional setting can be rather static. Directed by Turkish-Italian filmmaker Ferzan Ozpetek, the Florence production of Aida, recorded here in 2011, tends towards the traditional and looks marvellous, but in how it approaches those other considerable challenges that a staging of the opera presents, it unfortunately falls well short of the mark.

That’s disappointing from a musical point of view, particularly as we have as distinguished a musical director as Zubin Metha conducting the orchestra, for if there’s at least one thing you would hope to count on from any production of Aida, it’s that it presents a vigorous account of Verdi’s dynamic score. Aida is one of the most melodic and memorable of late Verdi operas, with hints of grand opera influence, but it’s also one that is attuned to the emotional content of the drama with an exotic flavour for its Egyptian setting. The performance initially feels somewhat perfunctory, for the first Act at least, a run-through with no real commitment on the part of the musicians or the conductor. It improves in subsequent acts, warming to the characters and their situation, but there’s never a sense that Metha is able to get the orchestra to do full justice to the dynamic theatricality of Verdi’s majestic score.

If that’s the case – and it’s only my opinion – it’s at least in step with the lack of dynamism elsewhere in the production. The stage sets, designed by Dante Ferretti, look marvellous – grand statues and monuments bathed in golden light, with colourful sunsets and deep blue moonlit night scenes – and the costumes are traditional and exotic. Stage director Ferzan Ozpetek however is unable to find anything for the singers do on stage but stand and project out to an audience, while priests and choruses stand grouped or march in solemn procession. There’s no question of their being any acting involved. Only once is there a suggestion of anything with imagination and that occurs briefly when the traditional pomp and patriotic fervour of the Triumphal March is initially undercut by the appearance on the stage of a young bloodstained child, looking bewildered by the celebration of the slaughter that has occurred. It’s a throwaway touch however, soon forgotten under the more traditional, but not particularly imaginatively choreographed battle ballet that follows.

Again, a lack of drama or ideas on the stage wouldn’t be much of a problem – it’s one of the issues with Aida – if only the singers were capable of making up for the slack elsewhere. Unfortunately, there’s not much in the way of strong singing to sufficiently redeem this production. Marco Berti has a fine tone of voice as Radamès, but his technique is all off and his ‘Celeste Aida’ is a struggle. He comes through however in Act IV where it counts. Luciana D’Intino is a weak Amneris, her singing shrill and unpleasant, without sufficient force or personality to carry the role – an unfortunate drawback, since it’s this character who has perhaps the most important central role in the opera. Hui He’s Aida is about the best there is here, her Act III duets coming over well, particularly her duet with a fine Ambrogio Maestri as Amanasro. Without a strong enough Amneris however to hammer home Act IV after the rallying that comes through from the cast and orchestra in Act III, it’s all to little avail.

There are no extra features on the Blu-ray, so the single-layer BD25 is generally fine for the two-and-a-half hour opera. The image quality is excellent throughout, 1080i full-HD, with only a little sign of compression artefacts during a couple of faster pans of the camera. The audio tracks are the customary PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 and there’s a decent tone and clarity to both. Subtitles are in Italian, English, German, French, Spanish and Korean. The disc is All Region.

Britten - The Turn of the Screw

Benjamin Britten - The Turn of the Screw

NI Opera, 2012

Nicholas Chalmers, Oliver Mears, Fiona Murphy, Andrew Tortise, Giselle Allen, Yvonne Howard, Lucia Vernon, Thomas Copeland

Theatre at the Mill, Newtownabbey, 2 March 2012

There was nothing too clever attempted in NI Opera’s new production of The Turn of the Screw, certainly nothing as ambitious as their award-winning production ofTosca on the walls of Derry City, but Britten’s atmospheric little chamber piece doesn’t really need anything more than an intimate environment to achieve optimum effect, and that was certainly achieved with the choice of venue at the Theatre at the Mill in Newtownabbey. The attention to detail then was in letting the music and libretto of this powerful little piece speak for itself, and with the benefit of an excellent cast of fine singers that was admirably achieved.

This is the third production from the recently formed NI Opera that I’ve seen at the Theatre at the Mill (with only one production so far, Hansel and Gretel, at the more traditional venue of the Grand Opera House in Belfast), and while one of those productions was a scaled-down romp through Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld (in conjunction with Scottish Opera), the venue has been particularly well-suited to the theatrical intimacy of something like Menotti’s The Medium and now with Britten’s The Turn of the Screw. The smaller-scale staging of course makes the works suitable for touring – an important remit of the opera company to attract new audiences from traditionally neglected parts of the province – but it’s also the best way to introduce an audience to the close relationship between a music score and a theatrical performance that takes expression to another level, and in that respect The Turn of the Screw is perhaps the most challenging of the NI Opera productions thus far.

Henry James’s novella is well-enough known, adapted numerous times for TV and cinema, and highly influential in the field of Victorian ghost stories because of the dark ambiguities that lie at the heart of the work. The story of a Governess who is engaged to look after two children, Flora and Miles, on a country estate, there are disturbing hints of child abuse or at least bad influence in the children’s relationship with two former servants, Quint and Miss Jessel, who had been engaged there previously. The Governess, half in love with the guardian of the children but forbidden from disturbing from his work in the city on any pretext, seems to conjure the spirits of the malevolent former servants – both now dead – partly out of concern for strange behaviour she witnesses in the children, partly from her own repressed urges at the suggestion of Quint and Miss Jessel’s scandalous behaviour, and partly as an excuse to get in touch with the children’s guardian.

Nothing however can be pinned-down to simple cause and effect in The Turn of the Screw and there’s no easy separation of rational and supernatural. All of what happens could be caused by the projections of the mind of the Governess, her behaviour, repression, suspicion and hysteria (heighted by stories told to her by housekeeper Mrs Grose) and her desire to protect the innocence of the children from baser adult desires (that she herself is subject to), in turn creating its own pernicious stifling repressive atmosphere. Or it could indeed be that she and the children do indeed operate under the influence of past events instigated by Quint and Miss Jessel, who are shown as ghosts and apparitions who appear throughout the work and seem to interact with the children, awakening troubling memories.

The Turn of the Screw is by no means then an easy work on a narrative or musical level, particularly for a newer audience in a non-traditional venue for an opera, but the power of the work and its ability to provoke and unsettle can surely be felt by anyone. It’s not just about creating effects with half-glimpsed apparitions in dark rooms, but it’s rather in the haunting motifs of the score and the singing that other ambiguities and unsettling ideas are suggested. If the set designed by Annemarie Woods for the NI Opera production tended towards functional minimalism, and the direction of Oliver Mears didn’t seem to attempt to add any new conceptual spin to the story, it was all the more to allow the score to speak of these ambiguities itself and not point the listener towards any safe or easy conclusion.

The sets in fact, were highly effective, not only suggesting mood and location with the shifting of walls, doors and windows, but in their arrangement being capable of opening up space or closing it down with suffocating angles. Mears directorial touches did emphasise some unnatural closeness developing in the physical contact between the Governess and Miles, but this relationship with the younger boy is undoubtedly a crucial aspect of the work, certainly in as far as it concerns Britten and his own inclinations (or indeed those of Henry James), and it shouldn’t be overlooked. At the same time, it didn’t attempt to impose a definitive reading, and it’s left – as it should be – to each member of the audience to draw their own conclusions. The Turn of the Screw can indeed be just a ghost story if that’s all you want to see in it, and Britten’s music can be seen as purely spectrally unsettling as well as being suggestive of other abstract notions and concepts.

While the score – brilliantly performed by the orchestra under the direction of Nicholas Chalmers – and the setting for the drama provided much to consider in its own terms, they were most successful in the relationship it formed with the singers. Really, the singing in all the principal roles was beyond reproach, with Fiona Murphy pushing all the ambiguities of the role of the Governess with some fine singing, Andrew Tortise a seductively dangerous Quint, and Giselle Allen reprising the role of Miss Jessel that she performed last year to such powerful effect at Glyndebourne. Yvonne Howard however deserves special mention for Mrs Grose, one of the best singers I’ve heard in the role. The children also, critical to the whole ambiguity between innocence and experience in the opera were, were played well by Lucia Vernon and particularly young Thomas Copeland, who sang Miles wonderfully, his refrain of ‘Malo’ simultaneously wistful, regretful and sinister, and his famous condemnation of Quint at the finale was powerfully effective.

Haydn - Lo Speziale

Franz Joseph Haydn - Lo Speziale

L’Orchestra-Studio de Cergy Pontoise, 2012

Andrée-Claude Brayer, Anne-Marie Lazarini, Jean-François Chiama, Karine Godefroy, Laurent Herbaut, Xavier Mauconduit

Théâtre Artistic Athévains, Paris, 29 February 2012

It isn’t often that you get the chance to see a rarity like Haydn’s Lo Speziale performed. Haydn’s thirteen Italian operas, completed during his term as court composer to Prince Eszterházy at Einsenstadt, were eclipsed in their own time by the brilliance and inventiveness of Mozart’s comic operas, and that sadly remains the case today. Who is going to put on a production of an obscurity like Lo Speziale for a few hundred people when you can draw the crowds with another Marriage of Figaro?

Well, how about a small French theatre company in Paris’s 11th Arrondissement? The Théâtre Artistic Athévains has previous experience in this field with a production of Cimarosa’s Secret Wedding and Haydn’s Lo Speziale offers not only an opportunity to put on a lively work of 18th century comic music-theatre, but it also comes with a libretto written by the great Venetian dramatist of the time, Carlo Goldoni. A dramma giocoso per musica, Lo Speziale is not a particularly complex drama, and it has to be said, not a particularly witty one either, but, as with the recent Opéra Liège production of another rare Haydn work, La Vera Costanza, there’s a lot that can be brought out through performers who are able to find the necessary comic rhythm of the piece.

It makes it slightly easier to do this and do it moreover in a small theatre, when there are only four characters in the opera, a consequence of Goldoni’s libretto being trimmed, probably by the original tenor Carl Friberth who played the role of Sempronio, cutting back any serious content in the work to make it a purely comic piece. Essentially then, the drama revolves around the battle for the hand of Grilletta, a young woman under the tutelage of Sempronio, a Venetian speziale, a homoeopathist specialising in the production of medicinal herbs and spices, but also perfumes, tinctures for paints, wax for candles, paper and inks. Grilletta has a number of admirers, among them (as far as this version is concerned), Sempronio’s young apprentice Mengone - who is secretly engaged to the young woman - and Volpino, one of his customers. The master speziale however has designs on marrying Grilletta himself.

The comic content inevitably involves lots of trickery and donning of disguises as each of the suitor seeks to gain the upper hand, regardless seemingly of Grilletta having any choice in the matter. Mengone and Volpino turn up disguised as notaries with high-pitched voices at one point and put their own names on the certificate of marriage instead of Sempronio, but their ruse is soon discovered. Eventually Volpino tricks Sempronio with the offer of a commission in Turkey, donning another disguise and making another play for the hand of Grilletta, but having made up their differences, Mengone and Grilletta take advantage of Volpino’s plan, dressing as Turks and getting Sempronio to give his blessing to their union.

Much of the success of making this farce work is down to the performers and the musicians entering into the lively spirit of it all, and that’s achieved here wonderfully through Anne-Marie Lazarini’s stage direction working hand-in-hand with the musical direction of Andrée-Claude Brayer. The six musicians of the Orchestre-Studio de Cergy-Pontoise are placed on a Venetian bridge that overlooks the small piazza of the speziale’s shop, the stage simply decorated but brilliantly evocative of the colours and light of Venice. The musicians interact with the performers in small but entertaining ways, making it look like their rehearsals and playing forms part of the everyday life in the little district. It’s a simple touch, but effective in allowing a rhythm to develop between the music and the singers.

And it’s all about the rhythm. It may seem like a simple farce, but the pace and rhythm are essential to make a dramma giocosa like Lo Speziale work well and that was delightfully evident in the production. The singers - Jean-François Chiama as Sempronio, Karine Godefroy as Grilletta, Laurent Herbaut as Volpino (the role changed from a trouser-part down to baritone for this production) and Xavier Mauconduit as Mengone - also clearly recognised that this is by no means an opera seria and accordingly not a work for high-flown individual expression (arias are relatively restrained and shorn of repetition), but one that works collectively, and the interaction between them was perfect. Appropriately handled then as a light and refreshing entertainment in a lovely intimate environment away from the big Parisian opera houses, Lo Speziale is a rare opportunity to see a little-known Haydn work in a delightful production. Performed in Italian with French surtitles that catch the spirit of the original language, it runs at Théâtre Artistic Athévains (www.artistic-athevains.com) until 29th March 2012.

Debussy - Pelléas et Mélisande

Claude Debussy - Pelléas et Mélisande

Opéra National de Paris, 2012

Philippe Jordan, Robert Wilson, Stéphane Degout, Vincent Le Texier, Franz Josef Selig, Elena Tsallagova, Anne Sofie Von Otter, Julie Mathevet, Jérôme Varnier

Opéra Bastille, 28 February 2012

The sheer perfection of the match of Debussy’s music to Maeterlinck’s symbolist drama Pelléas et Mélisande is unparalleled in the world of opera. It stands alone as a unique piece of music-theatre that is incomparable with any other opera - even Debussy was unable to repeat the experiment with unfinished attempts at some works by Edgar Allan Poe, and it remains the only opera he ever composed. It’s not possible to improve on perfection of course, but there is another element that is just as important when it comes to actually staging the work, and those are the choices made by the director. Robert Wilson’s production for the Paris Opéra, first seen in 1997 has been revived several times over the last 15 years, and is revived again in 2012 for good reason. Once seen, it’s hard to imagine Pelléas et Mélisande being staged in any other way. The match of Wilson’s unique vision to the opera is as close to perfection as Debussy’s music is to Maeterlinck’s drama.

Everything that has become familiar with Robert Wilson productions over the years is here in his production of Pelléas et Mélisande, but rarely has it been employed so evocatively, expressively, imaginatively and as a whole with the tone of the original opera work as it is here. Reflecting Debussy’s own Belle Epoque symbolist, oriental, ancient Greek and Egyptian influences in the arts (the subject of an exhibition in Paris at the same time as the opera is revived there), Wilson’s stylised imagery of hieroglyphics come to life is perfectly fitting. Placing angular figures in dramatic poses framed in silhouette against luminous pale blue backlit backdrops, with floating objects and geometric shapes placed prominently on a bare stage, subtle gradual shifts of light and the occasional flash of bold colour, the effect when matched with the moods of Pelléas et Mélisande is completely beguiling and utterly beautiful. What Robert Wilson brings to this particular opera however, more than just a bag of theatrical tricks that have been employed over the years to different effect in works as varied (and with varying levels of success it has to be said) as Aida, Madama Butterfly, Einstein on the Beach, Orfeo and Orphée et Eurydice, is a revelatory visual expression of the mystical haunted quality of the almost surreal fairytale.

The term haunted seems an appropriate way to describe the dreamlike experiences of the figures in Pelléas et Mélisande. Here in Wilson’s production, the characters seem to float or stand frozen in strange poses, as if they are ghosts compelled to reenact a series of actions that have been played-out time and time again, detached from their original context, their movements reduced to a series of mannerisms. They each inhabit their own space, crossing by each other without touching. So when Mélisande lets down her hair, it’s a mimed gesture, and when Pelléas wraps himself in it, he’s not even close to the tower where Mélisande is standing. Likewise, Golaud talks about lifting little Yniold to spy on his brother and his wife, but he doesn’t physically hold him, and nor does Yniold, reporting their actions, actually see them on the stage. When figures do actually touch, it’s at very specific moments and the impact is every bit as dramatic as the situations that the drama and the music describe.

Seen like this, much of the mystery that has surrounded Pelléas et Mélisande for over a century can suddenly be seen in a new light. It is indeed as if all the figures are merely spectres caught in a timeloop, doomed to continually play out their own part in the drama that has unfolded in an attempt to understand the mistakes they have made that has led to such a tragic conclusion. Nothing ever changes, they repeat empty gestures, coming no nearer to understanding the sequence of isolated events, and have no hope of averting the fate that is in store for them. Suddenly then the mystery of Mélisande’s strange appearance in the forest at the start of the opera and her cries of ‘Ne me touchez pas! Ne me touchez pas!‘ begins to make sense. She doesn’t know how she came to be there, but it’s as if she has a sense of the tragic destiny in store for her - the crown at the bottom of the water perhaps the one she later wears when she marries Golaud, the prince of Allemonde - and her words are a vain attempt to stop it before the train of events are set in motion once again. In Wilson’s production, Mélisande rises after she has been declared dead at the end of the final act, and the story seems to be about to recommence all over again.

One would think that a native French singer would be a prerequisite for the rhythms of the sung/spoke dialogue that Mélisande has to deliver (the dramatic singing qualities of Nathalie Dessay for example, who I’ve heard singing the part exceptionally well), but Elena Tsallagova is one of the more outstanding young Russian singers who have come to prominence through their association with the Paris Opera’s Atelier Lyrique. A magnetic, ethereal presence in her flowing, angular costume, she sang the role flawlessly - a perfect fit for the role. I can’t say I’ve ever seen characters actually smile in a Robert Wilson production, and one would think it even less likely in this melancholic work, but on the couple of occasions when such an expression came over Mélisande’s face, Tsallagova managed to make it seem quite unsettling. Stéphane Degout didn’t seem quite so comfortable striking poses as Pelléas, and his beautifully lyrical baritone seemed a little light for the role, but it complemented Tsallagova’s Mélisande well and suited the ethereal tone of the production.

The singing in the other roles was immensely powerful to balance the lightness in tone of the two main protagonists. Vincent Le Texier was a terrific Golaud, commanding and a little frightening in his rage, jealousy and suspicions - you can understand exactly why Julie Mathevet’s Yniold quivers the line ‘J’ai terriblement peur‘ in his presence. Franz Josef Selig’s deep warm bass and beautiful enunciation gave genuine warmth to his Arkel and Anne Sofie Von Otter was a likewise solid presence as Geneviève.

One of the greatest and most enigmatic works ever composed for the stage, it’s the endless fascination of its mysteries and its inescapable tragedy, as well as the feeling that the answers are there somewhere within and the words and actions of the characters and might eventually yield some clue as to its meaning, that ensures the work’s enduring popularity. Always thought-provoking, illuminating works in a new way, Robert Wilson is particularly brilliant with a work that has particular significance and a special place in the repertoire of French music. Performed live, Pelléas et Mélisande is one of those works that take on an entirely new dimension, and in such a context with the cast assembled at the Bastille in Paris, and with the terrific orchestra of L’Opéra national de Paris conducted by Philippe Jordan working its way through the intricacies of Debussy’s score, the effect is incomparable.

Dvořák - Rusalka

Antonín Dvořák - Rusalka

Royal Opera House, London, 2012

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Jossi Wieler, Sergio Morabito, Camilla Nylund, Petra Lang, Byran Hymel, Agnes Zwierko, Alan Held, Daniel Grice, Gyula Orendt, Ilse Eerens, Anna Devin, Madeleine Pierard, Justina Gringyte

Covent Garden, 27 February 2012

It’s somewhat surprising that Dvořák’s gorgeous Lyric Fairytale opera Rusalka has never been performed before at Covent Garden. One hundred and eleven years after its composition, its February 2012 premiere at the Royal Opera House was therefore long overdue, but under conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin it was at least a fine introduction to the musical qualities of the work. The far from traditional stage production however - premiered at Salzburg in 2008 and revived here with many of the original cast - without necessarily detracting from the work, certainly confused the audience about the intentions of the piece, the directors attracting a fair share of booing on the opening night performance.

The intentions of the work and its source in European folklore - notably Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid‘ may not be easily apparent other than it being merely a fairytale, but even on that level there is a richness of imagery and some typical themes in such work on the corruption of innocence, particularly in the context of the destruction of the purity of nature by the actions of humanity. It’s also a tragic love story of a water nymph who falls in love with a prince in the woods and wants to become human. Escaping from the tyranny of the water goblin, with the help of a witch in the woods, she manages to grow legs and appears as a beautiful but mute vision before the prince hunting in the woods. Unable to cope with the complex and inconstant nature of human beings, Rusalka however finds herself banished from her sisters and home, unable to fit into the human world either, and ultimately cursed to live in a limbo state between them.

Quite how the production directed by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito came to be set in what looked like a brothel then and whatever intentions were behind this choice were unclear, but it’s not the first time that the opera has been subjected to a radical reworking. Martin Kušej’s 2010 production of Rusalka for the Bavarian State Opera managed to graft the story of young girls being held captive in a dank cellar and abused by a Josef Fritzl-like water goblin quite successfully onto the work’s theme of the corruption of innocence, finding in Rusalka’s dilemma a parallel to the profound psychological damage that abused women in captivity must endure for the rest of their lives. There would appear to be something similar attempted with this production, but its muddled intentions were far less coherent and nowhere near so successfully or powerfully seen through to the fullness of their dark intent.

The key to understanding the production’s concept comes perhaps in its treatment of the Rusalka’s three wood nymphs. Reflecting Rusalka’s innocence of the fact that she is growing up in a brothel - the set dressed with lurid colours and red curtains - in Act 1 the three semi-naked figures in transparent dresses writhe around like exotic creatures of a young girl’s imagination, but it’s only after leaving her home - losing her mermaid tail and literally learning to stand on her own two feet - and having been subjected herself to the acts and whims of men, that the young woman’s illusions are shattered. In Act 3 then, the three “nymphs” are seen more for what they really are, dressed far more conventionally (albeit still in theatrical fantasy terms in unbelievably skimpy outfits rather than with any sense of naturalism) as cheap prostitutes. The scales have fallen from Rusalka’s eyes and, no longer able to return to the world of childhood innocence, the idea of living in a world with this knowledge becomes intolerable.

That’s one interpretation - the best I can come up with - but its manner of expression in the production is far from consistent, mixing this stylised theatrical realism with pantomime-like fairytale imagery, often to bizarre effect. Rusalka quite literally has a mermaid fish tail at the start, which is removed from her by the witch Jezibaba’s giant person-in-a-big-furry-costume black cat familiar. The revolving stage set with its red curtains is asked to stand-in for a variety of locations and the fit isn’t always good, the imagery and mix of concepts proving rather confusing. I’m not sure where the religious elements and use of neon crosses come into the work, although perhaps it views religious intolerance and hypocrisy as being antithetical to Rusalka’s pure and natural paganism.

Regardless of how it’s interpreted, the progression of the storyline and the impact of Rusalka’s dilemma still comes through, expressed principally and convincing by a strong performance from the Royal Opera House orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin. They captured the Wagnerian romanticism of the work rather more successfully however than the folk rhythms that Dvořák beautifully blends into the opera, coming across a little too aggressively in such places. It was the quality of the singing however that carried the work through in spite of the peculiarities of the production. Camilla Nylund’s performance and delivery were flawless, meeting not only the technical demands of the singing, but injecting the right note of wistful romanticism into Rusalka’s “Song to the Moon” aria, and a sense of distraught confusion at the harsh reality of being a human that leads to her tragic fate. Bryan Hymel was equally as emotive in his delivery of the rather more human failings of the Prince, his singing strong and resonant.

There were moreover no weak elements even in the secondary characters with Petra Lang a formidable foreign princess, Agnes Zwierko compelling as the witch Jezibaba and Alan Held a strong Water Goblin. Particularly impressive however were the Rhinemaiden-like figures of the three wood nymphs, Anna Devin, Madeleine Pierard and Justina Gringyte. This was consequently a solid performance of Rusalka, exceptionally well-sung by a strong cast, even if the production didn’t always capture the lyricism of this beautiful work in the orchestration or the stage direction.

Mozart - Don Giovanni

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Don Giovanni

Royal Opera House, London, 2012

Constantinos Carydis, Francesca Zambello, Erwin Schrott, Alex Esposito, Carmela Remigio, Ruxandra Donose, Pavol Breslik, Kate Lindsey, Matthew Rose, Reinhard Hagen

Covent Garden, 26 February 2012

It never ceases to amaze me how it is possible to play Don Giovanni in so many different ways, with subtle shifts of emphasis that can change one’s whole view of the work. That’s possible with most great operas in the hands of an imaginative director, but I find that it is particularly the case with Don Giovanni, a work that was brilliantly designed to be open and ambiguous, giving the appearance of moral rectitude where the villain is punished and his misdeeds reflected over in an epilogue, but in reality being much more complicated than that. I didn’t find that Francesca Zambello’s 2002 production, revived here at the Royal Opera House under director Barbara Lluch, had a whole lot to add to the various interpretations that have added different layers to the character of Don Giovanni, but the joy of the opera is that the Count is often defined by the other characters in the work and that leaves a lot of room for reinterpretation.

There was nothing new in the relationship between Don Giovanni and Leporello here then - the Don is a loveable rogue who can’t help himself when it comes to women, and Leporello is his admiring comedy sidekick, enjoying his adventures in seduction across Europe up until the moment that Don Giovanni’s wicked ways start to catch up with him. If there was a lack of imagination in how this is played out, it’s at least an enjoyable way to see the familiar pleasures of opera, and it may even have been an intentional decision on the part of the director Francesco Zambello, in order to place more emphasis on the female characters and allow them to take more of a central role. The women are by no means overlooked or underdeveloped by Mozart and Da Ponte, but they are often seen as secondary foils who are only there to unravel Don Giovanni’s schemes and bring him to justice for his crimes.

Under Francesca Zambello’s direction, the women are often positioned together, forming a kind of bond of sisterhood. In Donna Elvira’s Act II aria ‘Mi tradì quell’ alma ingrata‘, where she laments her inability to give up her unfaithful man, she is joined in silent sympathy by both Donna Anna and Zerlina, who both have their own problems not only with Don Giovanni, but with the other men in their life. Their bonding is celebrated again with hugs in the opera’s epilogue, but it’s not some kind of proto-feminist solidarity at their success in overthrowing the tyranny of male domination represented by the descent into hell of Don Giovanni - that would be inappropriate for the 18th century setting and contrary to the characterisation as it is defined in the libretto. Rather it’s an acknowledgement of the women of their nature - falling for good looks and charms of a man they know is no good for them, whose words can’t be trusted, who will seduce and abandon them, but who nonetheless makes them feel desired and special. Think how that would feel if he really meant it. That’s an irresistible prospect and the women just can’t help themselves and are powerless against their own impulses and these drives that Don Giovanni awakens in them.

I wouldn’t however give too much credit to Francesca Zambello for bring out this aspect of the work - like so many other interpretations it’s all there in the brilliant libretto and the stunning musical arrangements of the original work and just waiting to be explored - particularly as in most other respects the production here is surprisingly lacking. The stage sets may be well designed to fluidly switch between all the complicated location arrangements that take place in two long acts of the opera, but they are ugly and clunky, the huge bulky woodwork not remaining in the background, but swinging out over the whole of the stage, the positioning of the actors within it meaning that depending where you are seated, they can be often hidden from view. At best the set is functional - it didn’t hamper the progression of the drama or detract from the enjoyment of the fine performances - but it’s unwieldy and unattractive.

If there is not a great deal that’s new to be gained from this particular production, the audience at least has the pleasure of seeing a great work well performed. The last time I saw Erwin Schrott in a production of Don Giovanni (a 2008 Salzburg production on Blu-ray), he was a wonderful twitchy Leporello, but he can do the role of the master just as effectively, making it look effortless. Don Giovanni may not have any arias in the opera, but it’s a difficult role to carry off convincingly. It’s not just that Schrott fulfils the necessary bari-hunk credentials that one needs for the role nowadays, rather gratuitously in this production having to strip down to the waist, (although as he demonstrated to a lady in the Stalls Circle Left at the Royal Opera House, he has no shortage of magnetic charm), but his singing was assured and in character. A little comic exaggeration doesn’t go amiss in Don Giovanni, but when required, Schrott could carry the necessary noble contemptuousness for others while giving the impression of being utterly irresistible in his charms. It wasn’t required here as much as in other productions, but I’m sure he could carry off the nasty and cruel streak in Don Giovanni if the emphasis in a production were in that direction.

The fact that it wasn’t a dark and dangerous Don Giovanni however is by no means a flaw, but a matter of interpretation, particularly when one wants to draw on other aspects of the work. In order to shift the balance over to the female perspective however, it needs very strong singers in the more challenging roles of Donna Anna and Donna Elvira. Carmela Remigio and Ruxandra Donose met the necessary criteria as far as the demands of the production required, the two of them together certainly representing a formidable force to challenge Don Giovanni, their singing strong and filled with character, even if they didn’t always hold up to the technical demands of the more difficult arias. Kate Lindsey was a little anonymous in the role of the flighty Zerlina, and her voice wasn’t the most delicate of tones, but her interaction with the excellent Matthew Rose as Masetto was fine.

If you could say there was a weakness in the female make-up that didn’t necessarily compromise their position as far as the aims of this production went, there was in comparison a general solidity to the all the male roles, with Pavol Breslik an earnest Don Ottavio and Reinhard Hagen a commanding Commendatore. Seen recently as Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, Alex Esposito clearly specialises in strong, comic Mozartian character parts and he fully entered into the spirit of Leporello, with all the comic exaggeration that the role often demands, singing well, as ever, with heartfelt passion. There was no lack of commitment or fire in any of the performances - the orchestra also in form under Constantinos Carydis - and if fire is what you like, there was plenty of that in the final scene of Don Giovanni’s descent into hell, where the heat of the flames could be certainly be felt in the front rows. If the stage directions were questionable elsewhere, the orchestration of the final scenes were well-judged for maximum impact, not least in the final postscript where Don Giovanni seems to be quite at home in the underworld.

Adams - The Death of Klinghoffer

John Adams - The Death of Klinghoffer

English National Opera, London, 2012

Baldur Brönnimann, Tom Morris, Alan Opie, Christopher Magiera, Michaela Martens, Edwin Vega, Sidney Outlaw, Richard Burkhard, Kathryn Harries, James Cleverton, Lucy Schaufer, Kate Miller-Heidke

The Coliseum, 25 February 2012

There wasn’t much evidence of anything too controversial in the English National Opera’s premiere of John Adams’s 1991 opera, The Death of Klinghoffer, nor any sign of anyone in the audience taking offense at its treatment of politically sensitive material relating to the situation in the Middle East, yet it’s an opera that no American company has risked producing since the furore it caused on its initial run there twenty years ago. But then there are influential groups with vested interests in that part of the world and there’s perhaps not much of an appetite in the post 9/11 America for anything that treats terrorists as real people and could be seen as giving a voice to their anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish sentiments.

Relating to the hijacking of the cruise liner the Achille Lauro by Palestinian terrorists in 1985 and the murder of an elderly disabled Jewish American passenger, Leon Klinghoffer, who was shot and thrown off the ship in his wheelchair by the terrorists, what should be evident to anyone who actually listens to the work - and it seemed to find an interested, considerate and attentive audience at its opening night at the Coliseum - is that the opera’s treatment of the subject is actually a sensitive and moving account of the meaningless of the killing of an elderly gentleman that ultimately furthered the agenda of no-one. That is certainly the overwhelming impression that is gained by a viewing of the opera, but inevitably with this particular subject, things are a little more complicated and the event cannot be considered in isolation.

Where however do you start trying to set the background of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict into context? How can you do it in a fair and impartial way, and particularly how can you represent it accurately in the difficult medium of music and theatre? The approach taken by John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman is naturally very different from the rather more satirical view they took with their previous work Nixon in China, but essentially, using choruses and individual testimonies from various passengers, they employ similar methods of poetic reflection mixed with everyday mundanity to allude to the difficult-to-define larger picture while reminding us that these are essentially ordinary people - yes, even terrorists are people - with their own backgrounds, personalities and human flaws.

The problem with this however, and where the controversy arises, is that not everyone believes that terrorists should be given a platform to express their views or that they should even be treated as human beings. It’s abhorrent - understandably for anyone involved since this is about a real-life incident - that the four Palestinian hijackers should be able to talk about being historically downtrodden, of having suffered hardship and deprivation in refugee camps, should be shown as having caring mothers, and of being capable of expressing future hopes and dreams. Yet, if one doesn’t take the time to consider where their grievances arise from, how can it ever be possible to do treat the subject truthfully? Haven’t recent events - and it’s here that the subject of the opera is shown to be even more relevant today - shown that demonisation simply breeds more terrorists?

Showing the Palestinian hijackers as humans, seeking to provide a balanced view of terrorists on one side and innocent captives on the other, and to do so on equal terms, is a difficult enough undertaking and a risky one for such a sensitive topic, but what makes The Death of Klinghoffer an even more complicated prospect is the medium of opera itself. Music is apolitical and one of the most human of arts - it doesn’t take sides. As if it’s not controversial enough to allow the terrorists to state their case, John Adams scores their situation here with some of the most beautiful music he has ever composed. The subject is an uncommon one for opera and Adams rises to the challenge of finding a inventive means of expression, far beyond the relatively more simple rhythms of his earlier minimalist works.

Music may be apolitical, but words are another matter. Alice Goodman’s libretto for The Death of Klinghoffer however seeks to find balance in allowing both sides to express their views. That’s not as simple as it sounds and the method is accordingly difficult to define, switching between rousing expressions of cultural and national identity in choruses of historical reflection, to dealing with the practicalities and horrible banality of being in the present-time of the hijacking, with reflective outlooks on the future that both the terrorists and the passengers hope to see beyond their current situation. As much as the individual viewpoints of the events are important, it’s the soaring choral arrangements that underpin the work however, taking the divisions beyond the merely political, the Chorus of the Exiled Palestinians and the Chorus of Exiled Jews that open the opera superseded by Chouses of Day and Night and the Ocean and the Desert - a larger perspective that takes the work to different levels.

Tom Morris’s set design has quite a challenge in reflecting all these varied viewpoints and grander concepts, but it manages relatively well. The importance of the imagery of land and sea means mixing the sand of the desert onto the desk of a ship, but as well as allowing for those theatrical shifts in location and between memory and present, it also succeeds in bringing them together. Extensive use is made of projections, just as successfully, allowing the complex musical and lyrical imagery and the concepts to be expressed in visual theatrical terms that are not strictly literal. The simple proof of the effectiveness of the production design is in how it supports the delicate equilibrium of the work itself. The human predicament of the Captain of the Achille Lauro, the shocking fate of Leon Klinghoffer, the nightmare endured by his wife and their fellow passangers all come across with immediacy, while around them, in the dancing, in the projections, and in the choruses, the wider significance of it all is brilliantly expressed.

Just as with the score itself, the outstanding contribution to the success of The Death of Klinghoffer and the solid foundation that it is built upon, comes though the chorus work, and the Chorus of the English National Opera were in magnificent voice on this first performance of the work at the Coliseum. The orchestra under Baldur Brönnimann captured the vast, complex lyrical sweep of Adams’ score just as effectively as some of the more discordant arrangements (I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard electric drums in an opera score and the effect is strangely and no doubt intentionally unsettling). With strong choreography for the dance, as well as stage arrangements for the scenes of on-board terrorism, the sensitive but impactful treatment over the actual on-stage killing of Leon Klinghoffer was only emphasised by the fine performances of the main cast, notably from Michaela Martens as Marilyn Klinghoffer and Alan Opie as Leon.

If anyone goes into The Death of Klinghoffer with any doubts or suspicions about where the sympathies of the work and the creators might lie, those apprehensions are quickly dispelled by the sensitive and moving portrayal that the work and these performances give to the figures of Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer. No-one viewing this production at the English National Opera will leave it unmoved at the beautiful manner in which The Death of Klinghoffer deals with such a terrible affair.