Glyndebourne Opera House
Belmonte – Ben Bliss
Osmin – Clive Bayley
Pedrillo – James Kryshak
Pasha Selim – Franck Saurel
Konstanze – Ana Maria Labin
Blonde – Rebecca Nelsen
Sir David McVicar (director)
Ian Rutherford (revival director)
Vicki Mortimer (designs)
Andrew George, Colm Seery
(choreography)
Paule Constable, David Mannion
(lighting)
The Glyndebourne Chorus (chorus master: Jeremy Bines)
Glyndebourne Tour Orchestra
Christoph Altstaedt (conductor)
Strong musical values were in
evidence at Glyndebourne’s ready-to-tour Entführung
aus dem Serail. A generally young cast sang – and acted – well, giving rise
to the not unfamiliar thought from this company that these are names we shall
see and hear again. I found Ben Bliss’s Belmonte a little stiff to start with,
but he seemed more in his stage element as time went on, revealing a lyric
tenor of considerable beauty and sensitivity, both verbal and musical (a false
opposition, I know). His third-act duet with Ana Maria Labin’s Konstanze was
quite ravishing of tone. Labin’s performance was excellent throughout, Mozart’s
coloratura holding no fears for her, but just as important, put to musical and
dramatic use. Cleanness and keenness of delivery were as one.
The same could be said of their
servants, Pedrillo and Blonde. Blondes rarely disappoint; that, however, is no
reason not to acknowledge the spirited performance of Rebecca Nelsen, both in
vocal and stage terms. I certainly should not wish to get on the wrong side of
her. James Kryshak offered a splendidly eager, puppyish performance as
Pedrillo. Again, vocal beauty and dramatic purpose were not to be rent asunder.
The pair showed excellent chemistry too.
Clive Bayley trod Osmin’s line
between comedy and a touch of pathos with consummate skill, although the
production (more on which soon) did not necessarily help in that respect.
Franck Saurel seemed a good actor to me, especially during the rare moments at
which he toned things down; however, this Bassa Selim spent far too much of his
time shouting and screaming tones of near-hysteria. He may have been following
orders, since there was sensitivity to be seen and heard, especially at the
end. A pity, though.
The Glyndebourne Tour Orchestra
under Christoph Altstaedt offered warm, stylish playing: far rarer nowadays
than it should be in Mozart. There were no ‘period’ grotesqueries, although a
few more strings would not have gone amiss. (Karl Böhm’s Staatskapelle Dresden
will surely always remain the model here.) Still, Altstaedt’s tempi and
balances were well considered – well considered enough for one barely to notice
them. Mozart’s all-encompassing Shakespearean dramatic sympathies were much in
evidence, then, to the ears.
If you sensed a ‘but’ coming,
you were, I am afraid, right to do so. David McVicar’s production, here revived
by Ian Rutherford, proves a considerable disappointment. Rarely does it get in
the way of the musical performance – to be fair, something not necessarily to
be taken for granted – yet, by the same token, it seems to have little or nothing
to say. I should be tempted to say McVicar was still languishing in his
Zeffirelli period, save for the fact that it now seems too long to be a mere
period. Whatever has happened to him is a great pity, since he used to be
capable of interesting, theatrically alert productions, his ENO
Turn of the Screw a case in
point. Now it is ‘light entertainment’, at least for some, to the
near-exclusion of anything else, the Royal
Opera Trojans a particular low
point. Here there is a vague updating to the time of composition, perhaps to
underline the Pasha’s status as an Enlightened Despot, but ultimately to
precious little effect. One has the distinct impression that it might just have
been because the director liked eighteenth-century costumes better than those
from a somewhat earlier period.
At any rate, we seem to be firmly
in the realm of ‘costume drama’, as opposed to putting the history to dramatic work.
Orientalism, as in that Trojans
production, is reproduced, even heightened, rather than interrogated. If this
is not a gift of a work in which to do just that, then I really do not know what
is. What should we think of the ruler’s self-revelation as better than his
Western charges? And how is it compromised by the fact that he is, by origin, a
Christian himself, a ‘renegade’? What of the Janissary music; is it merely ‘pretty’,
local colour? If so, does that not in itself raise questions? And what of all
those darkly erotic, sado-masochistic suggestions arising from torture and the
eagerness with which it is suggested?
Nothing, so far as I could
discern, on any of those questions or many others. I could only long for what I
imagine Calixto Bieito must have made of the work in Berlin. Instead, we have
an extravagant barrage of extra actors, children included, and some jarring ‘low
humour’. The Mozart family’s correspondence had a celebrated scatological
element, but I am not sure that that translates into Osmin belching and
farting. One need not go so far as, and would clearly be unwise to imitate, Stefan
Herheim’s brilliant Salzburg production – the most recent I had seen, as long
ago as 2006, prior to this – in completely reimagining the work as a profound
meditation on sexual politics. If the Orientalism is going to remain, though, something needs saying about it – and to
it.
