Glyndebourne Opera House
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| Images: Richard Hubert Smith |
Faust – Allan Clayton
Méphistophélès – Christopher Purves
Brander – Ashley Riches
Marguerite – Julie Boulianne
Richard Jones (director)
Sarah Fahie (assistant
director, choreography)Hyemi Shin (set design)
Nicky Gillibrand (costumes)
Andreas Fuchs (lighting)
Dancers
Glyndebourne Chorus (chorus master: Aidan Oliver)
Glyndebourne Youth Opera
Trinity Boys Choir
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Robin Ticciati (conductor)
There may be a case for staging
Berlioz’s ‘dramatic legend’, The Damnation
of Faust; it was certainly not made on this occasion. To be fair, here are
arguments either way, not least with respect to Berlioz’s own wishes and
practice, and there probably always be. This new Glyndebourne production,
however, found itself stuck uncertainly, awkwardly, and most of all tediously, between
various poles and possibilities. It seemed to lack belief in the work, or at
least the wisdom of staging it as it stands, yet at the same time makes changes
so half-hearted, arbitrary, and silly that one wishes it had not. Some of Richard
Jones’s recent productions – for instance, anon-committal Bohème and a
weirdly unfinished Katya Kabanova, both for Covent Garden – have suggested running out of steam;
this did nothing to dispel the impression.
Much might have been salvaged
in the event of a stronger musical performance. Alas, the festival’s music
director, Robin Ticciati failed to provide it. I have yet to hear a performance
from him that was not at least disappointing. Here, Ticciati offered a
masterclass in the perverse art of rendering Berlioz bland and tedious to the
point of non-recognition; only the following evening, listening to Colin Davis’s
classic Philips LSO recording, did I feel reassured that, yes, I did know the
work after all. Such lack of orchestral colour and warmth – the LPO strings
sadly wasted through well-nigh absurdist lack of vibrato –married to inability
to marry harmony and pulse, on the rare occasion that the latter were
discerned, seemed to indicate not so much an æsthetic as mere incompetence.
Notes, bars, phrased, paragraphs, even numbers drifted interminably, until
suddenly an abrupt, stiff minor – very minor – eruption would occur: quite
arbitrary, yet doubtless considered ‘exciting’ by some. Many paths might be taken
to ignite the flame of Berlioz’s Romanticism, from Davis to Boulez, from Munch
to Markevitch; a prolonged damp squib leading nowhere at all was what we heard
here. When it could be heard, the LPO woodwind sounded gorgeous, not least in
solo work. Too much, however, was relegated to the status of a dull
backing-track to events on stage, such as they were.
Singing was better, if often unidiomatic.
French is a notoriously difficult language in which to sing, especially for
non-Francophone singers, but this was not straightforwardly a matter of
nationality. Many of Julie Boulianne’s words were indecipherable, for instance,
and she only really came into her own after the interval. Both Christopher
Purves and Allan Clayton enunciated far more clearly. If the latter were not
ideally cast, straining at the top, there was little doubting his commitment. A
few tricky French corners aside, Purves seemed most at home, a sorely needed
energising presence. The chorus had a few rocky moments, its female voices in
particular; many of the performance’s stronger musical virtues were nevertheless
to be found there.
What of Jones’s production? It
certainly acknowledged the difficulty in staging the work at all, incorporating
additional texts, ‘derived from Goethe’s Faust’,
by Agathé Mélinand. Derivation, however, was sometimes oblique – not only
because they were, oddly, delivered in French. (Surely English translation
would have made more sense in this context.) As with much else, I was left
feeling that less or (considerably) more would have been better. Having seen
Frank Castorf’s Faust (i.e. Goethe)
at the Berlin Volksbühne and heard of his work with Gounod’s version, I could
not help but find this both non-committal and unfinished. A half-hearted
rearrangement, trying to undercut Marguerite’s assumption by following it with ballet
music (the ‘Menuet des feux follets’) in which Faust and his devils rejoiced and
bared prosthetic genitalia seemed more to proclaim, ‘let us show our feminist
credentials’, than actually to do so. Otherwise, a strange domestication, speaking
more by default than of conviction, ruled. Presumably the idea was to show an
everyday life that might have been Faust’s and Marguerite’s, but never could
have been. By all means question, even negate Faust’s – and Berlioz’s – Romantic
questing, but it really needs doing with greater verve and belief. This was
often as tired as Ticciati’s conducting.
It is difficult to imagine any
Berlioz staging of this memorial year matching, let along surpassing, Dmitri
Tcherniakov’s magnificiently uncompromising Paris reassessment of The Trojans.
If one does, all the better. However, given the uncomprehending hostility with
which that met from many, the world seems likely to continue to receive more of
what it most likely deserves.
