(sung in English as The Barber of Seville)
The Coliseum
Fiorello – Alexander Robin
Baker
Count Almaviva – Andrew Kennedy
Figaro – Benedict Nelson
Rosina – Lucy Crowe
Doctor Bartolo – Andrew Shore
Don Basilio – David Soar
Berta – Katherine Broderick
Ambrogio – Geraint Hylton
An Official – Roger Begley
A Notary – Allan Adams
Jonathan Miller (director)
Peter Relton (revival
director)
Tanya McCallin (designs)
Chorus of the English
National Opera (chorus master: Genevieve Ellis)
Orchestra of the English
National Opera
Jaime Martin (conductor)
ENO’s advertising emphasises
the ‘25th anniversary year’ of Jonathan Miller’s staging of The Barber of Seville. It holds the
stage well enough without offering any especial insight – at least by now. The
programme book mentioned commedia dell’arte:
Tanya McCallin’s designs are of that world, certainly, even if there does not
seem to be a great deal in Miller’s production that goes beyond the general ‘look’
of that tradition. Unlike many endlessly revived productions, this, then, is
not in itself particularly tired, and one can readily imagine it offering the
opportunity for new casts to come in and assume their roles without a great
deal of stage rehearsal. By the same token, when compared with, for instance,
John Copley’s considerably more venerable Royal
Opera La bohème, which I happened
to see earlier in the month, the staging does not especially sparkle,
enlighten, or indeed charm either. It would do no harm to have a little Regietheater cast Rossini’s way. Either
that, or assemble a cast whose sparkle would lift the work above the merely
quotidian.
I say ‘the work’, but this
performance, unfortunately, put me in mind of Carl Dahlhaus’s ‘twin musical
cultures’ of the nineteenth century: too clear a distinction, no doubt, but
nevertheless heuristically useful. On the one hand, one has the culture of the
musical work, as understood in an emphatic sense, that of Beethoven and his
successors; on the other, one has ‘a Rossini score ... a mere recipe for
performance, and it is the performance which forms the crucial aesthetic arbiter
as the realisation of a draft rather than an exegesis of a text’. The problem
was that this performance, taken as a whole, simply did not sparkle as Rossini
must. One therefore became of the score as a decidedly inferior, indeed
well-nigh interminable work. Repetitions grated and a good part of the audience
was espied, furtively or less furtively, glancing at wristwatches. If Rossini’s
‘musical thought hinged on the performance as an event,’ then this was an
unhinged performance – and not, alas, in the expressionistic sense.
Jaime Martin’s conducting
started well enough. There was throughout a welcome clarity in the score; this
was not, at least, Rossini attempting and failing to be Mozart or Beethoven. Give
or take the odd orchestral slip, there might have been much to enjoy in the
contribution of the ENO Orchestra, considered in itself. However, impetus was soon lost, and any ‘purely
musical’ tension soon sagged. Whether the first act were actually as long as it
felt, I am not sure, but many during the interval opined that it seemed as
though it was never going to end. If Rossini’s repetitions as opposed to
development serve a dramatic purpose, one can readily forget them; here they were
apparent in unfortunately lonely fashion. I could not help but mentally
contrast the extraordinary use to which Beethoven, for instance in the Waldstein Sonata, puts simple tonic and
dominant harmony, to the tedium induced on this occasion. For some reason, the
fortepiano was employed as a continuo instrument: a strange fashion, which has
enslaved musicians who would never think of using it in solo repertoire. Performance,
then, failed to elevate the ‘work’. At least the English translation, by Amanda
and Anthony Holden was a cut above the average.
The greater fault in any case
lay elsewhere, above all in Andrew Kennedy’s Almaviva. His casting seemed
simply inexplicable. Almost entirely lacking in coloratura, let alone
Florez-like facility therewith, he resorted to mere crooning, a state of affairs
worsened by the application at seemingly random intervals of unnervingly thick
vibrato. His stage presence was of a part with his vocal performance. Benedict
Nelson’s Figaro started off in reasonably convincing fashion, but by the end
was somewhat hoarse and throughout lacked the pinpoint precision that might
have lifted the performance. By contrast, Lucy Crowe was an excellent Rosina.
Her coloratura was impeccable, her gracious stage presence no less so. Andrew
Shore reminded us of his skills as a comic actor in the role of Doctor Bartolo,
and Katherine Broderick also took the opportunity to shine as Berta. Sadly, the
increasingly lacklustre conducting and the embarrassing performance of Kennedy conspired
to negate those positive aspects of the performance, rendering one tired with
the ‘work’, however it were considered.
