The Coliseum
Gustav von Aschenbach – John Graham-Hall
Traveller, Elderly fop, Old gondolier,
Hotel manager, Hotel barber, Leader of the players, Voice of Dionysus – Andrew Shore
Voice of Apollo – Tim Mead
Polish Mother – Lauda Caldow
Tadzio – Sam Zaldivar
Tadzio’s sisters – Mia Anglian
Mather, Zhuliana Shehu
Governess – Joyce Henderson
Jaschiu – Marcio Teixeira
Hotel porter – Peter van
Hulle
Strawberry-seller, Strolling
player – Anna Dennis
Strolling player – Adrian Dwyer
Guide – Charles Johnston
English clerk – Marcus Farnsworth
Glass-maker – Richard Edgar-Wilson
Lace-seller – Constance Novis
Beggar woman – Madeleine Shaw
Restaurant waiter – Jonathan McGovern
Lido boatman. Gondolier,
Priest in St Mark’s – Paul Napier-Burrows
Hotel waiter – David Newman
Newspaper-seller – Lyn Cook
Gondoliers – Philip Daggett, Anton
Rich
Ship’s steward – Gary Coward
Hotel guests from many
countries – Allan Adams, Deborah Davison, Natalie Herman, Suzanne Joyce, Graeme
Lauren, Lydia Marchione, Claire Mitcher, Ronald Nairne, Emily Rowley Jones,
Paul Sheehan, Andrew Tinkler, Susanna Tudor-Thomas
Deborah Warner (director)
Tom Pye (set designs)
Chloe Obolensky (costumes)
Jean Kalman (lighting)
Kim Brandstrup (choreography)
Finn Ross (video)
Paul Brough (chorus master)
Orchestra of the English
National Opera
Edward Gardner (conductor)
ENO is on fine form at the
moment. Its recent Wozzeck
deservedly received well-nigh universal acclaim. If Death in Venice did not have anything like the same dramatic
impact, then that is more to be ascribed to the work than to the performances,
which were generally excellent. In certain quarters, it is heresy to question
Britten’s standing; for those with a greater sense of discrimination, it is patently
obvious that his output is highly variable. The overrating of Peter Grimes offers an especially
extreme example: a great story, with some memorable music, interspersed with some
that is really rather dull. The Turn of
the Screw stands head and shoulders above the rest of Britten’s operas, not
least since it suffers less from the formal problems that so often beset his
work. ENO, however, has served Britten very well, Christopher Alden’s riveting
production, for instance, having elevated the slight, often tedious Midsummer Night’s Dream far above the intrinsic qualities of the work. Death in Venice is a better work than that,
but it is not without tedium; an idea, at least as converted into this opera, which
might have been better suited to a short one-act work, is drawn out far too
long, seeming to take about as long as it would to read Thomas Mann’s novella.
And if Britten’s display of his workings helps impart unity, that display,
whether in terms of sonorities – the all too ready resort to gamelan echoes –
or twelve-note process often sounds too obvious. It is difficult not to conclude
that the opera would have benefited from wholesale revision, perhaps from a
good editor.
Edward Gardner necessarily
conducted the score as if he believed in every note of it; there is every
reason to think that he did. If there were a few occasions when greater
tightness might have been achieved, that is a minor criticism of a performance
as dramatic as orchestral writing that is sometimes more thin than spare would
permit. The ENO Orchestra was an estimable collaborator without, fully playing
as if this were a repertory work inside the composer’s idiom. If the
percussionists inevitably deserve special mention, that is no reflection upon
the standard of performance elsewhere in the pit, from which sinewy woodwind
lines and dark brass punctuation emerged with equal conviction.
John Graham-Hall’s voice is
not especially beautiful; nor does it need to be. Whatever claims one might
make for Peter Pears’s artistry, that would be an eccentric place to start, and
Gustav von Aschenbach is a Pears role par
excellence. Graham-Hall offered something far more telling: elusive yet
unmistakeable dramatic truth. One felt that this was Aschenbach’s story; one
both saw it through his eyes and saw him through the eyes of the story, if that
makes any sense. It is a strenuous role indeed, but Graham-Hall used its very
difficulty to great effect. Beauty, after all, is to be espied from afar, as it
was here, not only in the guise of Sam Zaldivar’s gracefully nonchalant
assumption of Tadzio, not only even in the æsthetic contemplation and
temptation of the Games of Apollo, but in the society as a whole of which
Aschenbach both is and is not a part. Tim Mead’s beautifully sung – and acted –
Apollo seemingly tilted the dramatic scales further, though of course it would
be the Voice of Dionysus that would eventually, tragically capture him. (That tragedy
is perhaps one of the weaker aspects of the opera, pushing it too far in the
direction of melodrama; but again, that is not the performers’ fault.) Andrew
Shore managed a serious of roles with equal facility, as convincing as the
oleaginous Hotel Manager as the ludicrous Leader of the Players (his heightened
absurdity perhaps a consequence of Aschenbach’s condition?) A plethora of small
roles – is the cast not excessive, especially for an opera concentrating so
heavily upon a single protagonist? – emerged with similar qualities of
observance.
Deborah Warner’s production
is perhaps the best I have seen from her. The action takes place when and where
it ‘should’, but unlike, for instance her dull Eugene Onegin, that provides a frame for imaginative performance. The first,
dark scene in Munich, Tom Pye’s excellent set weighed down by the writer’s
words, gives way to a plausible journey to illusory, indeed deadly light. For Jean
Kalman’s lighting – the initial view from the hotel a fine coup de théâtre – stands as central as Chloe Obolensky’s
beautifully-designed period costumes to the often spellbinding success of the
staging. Graham-Hall of course deserves the lion share of the credit for the
dramatic truth of his descent, but Warner’s direction of him onstage, for
instance in the tentativeness of his approaches to Tadzio, must also have
played an important role. Kim Brandstrup’s choreography highlights the boys’ natural
athleticism, highly successful in conveying its crucial non-reflective quality.
Reflection, after all, is Aschenbach’s lot.
