Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House
King Priam – Roderick Earle
Hecuba – Laure Meloy
Hector – Grant Doyle
Andromache – Camilla Roberts
Paris – Nicholas Sharratt
Helen – Niamh Kelly
Hermes – Adrian Dwyer
Achilles – Charne Rochford
Patroclus – Piotr Lempa
Old Man – Andrew Slater
Nurse – Clarissa Meek
Young Guard – Adam Tunnicliffe
Paris (boy) – Thomas
Delgado-Little
Hunters – Stuart Haycock,
Johnny Herford, Henry Manning
James Conway (director)
Anna Fleischle (designs)
Guy Hoare (lighting)
Orchestra of English Touring Opera
Chorus of English Touring Opera
Michael Rosewell (conductor)
Sir Michael Tippett’s music
has suffered a fate typical, though by no means always the case, for composers
following their deaths. However, there are signs that a period of relative
neglect, despite the continued advocacy of musicians such as the late Sir Colin
Davis, might now be giving way to a reassessment. For instance, the Wigmore
Hall has been putting on a Tippett retrospective, laudable for far more than
its courage in breaking away from the annual anniversary grind. I speak from a
position of considerable ignorance myself, the only other Tippett opera I have
seen in the theatre being The Midsummer
Marriage (Royal Opera, 2005); my concert and recorded music exposure has
not been particularly great either. I am delighted to report, though, that the
ever-valiant English Touring Opera’s new staging of King Priam proved a triumphant success, making me keen to hear
more, despite having been somewhat nonplussed by what I experienced as the
blandness of The Midsummer Marriage, not to mention its problematical dramaturgy.
(It seems more often than not to be audiences’ favourite Tippett opera, but I
doubt that it will ever be mine.)
King
Priam is perhaps, above
all, an opera of great ambition, often fulfilled. The interiority of much of
the dramatic conflict in some senses recalls A Child of Our Time, but whereas it proves, for some of us, near
fatal in that oratorio, here, at least for the most part, it offers an
alternative standpoint from which to consider the workings of fate and
politics. Interestingly, director, James Conway views the material very
differently, remarking in his programme note, ‘It has been commented that Priam is not an opera about war, but about
choice. I am not so sure that this says what is needful. … Choice, it seems to
me right now, is not a theme, any more than Fate is a theme. War and beauty are
themes.’ Beauty, yes, I thought – but less so war, even in Conway’s own
production. Perhaps that simply goes to show that staging and work alike offer
the possibility for different understandings, irrespective to an extent of ‘intention’.
Certainly Tippett’s score, in
Iain Farrington’s excellent reduced orchestration, came across with visceral
power and beauty alike, for which great credit must go both to ETO’s orchestra
and Michael Rosewell’s wise direction. There were a few occasions when ensemble
faltered, but they were quickly rectified and frankly of marginal importance.
More than once, I was put in mind of some of Henze’s roughly contemporary
writing, for instance in Der Prinz von
Homburg, though I suspect the similarity in timbres may arise more from
shared Stravinskian roots as ‘influence’ in either direction. And yet, whilst
some music might occasionally put one in mind of other composers, the dramatic
use to which it is put seemed to me very much Tippett’s own – and certainly did
in what seemed to me an estimably idiomatic performance. I was heartened after
the event to read David Clarke’s New
Grove article upon the composer, which said much the same thing with
specific reference to Priam’s encounter with his
second son, Paris, whom he had ordered slain as a baby and does not yet
recognise:
The instantaneous – almost cinematic – shift of subject from Priam to Paris
in the first bar of the example is articulated by the division of orchestral
forces and the abrupt switch of pitch collections. Yet while the vertical
conflation of tonic, dominant and subdominant triads of E-flat in the initial, defining sonority of Paris’s music could be seen as a
further Stravinskian touch, the disposition behind it – to intensify the
expressive potential of tonal resources rather than interpose an ironizing
distance – is entirely Tippett’s.
Moreover, the clearly Brechtian reworking – Oliver Soden’s
valuable note makes reference to Tippett’s recent encounter with the work of
the Berliner Ensemble – s of the Iliad
is again unmistakeably personal, and, one senses, a definite inspiration to
Conway’s staging. In that connection, it is worth mentioning the sense of
kinship I noted with Alexander Goehr’s Promised
End, given
its premiere by ETO (again with Conway directing). Anna Fleischle’s designs
and Guy Hoare’s lighting assisted greatly not only with the screwing up of dramatic
tension but also the differentiation of place between Troy and the Greek camp.
A real sense was conveyed of Tippett’s mediation between Homer and the present.
And the final scene brought a splendid reminiscence of – and indeed, Brechtian
distancing from – Boris Godunov,
again whether ‘intentional’ or otherwise.
Roderick Earle’s portrayal of the title role played
no mean part in accomplishing that, of course. Dignified, touching, and with
considerable power, this drew one in further and further as time went on:
Tippett vanquishing Brecht, as it were. Nicholas Sharratt was likewise splendid
as ‘playboy’ (Priam’s own term) Paris, narcissistic vainglory and compelling
attraction two sides of the same coin. Thomas
Delgado-Little did a truly excellent job as Paris’s younger self: one of the
most self-assured and dramatically convincing performances I have seen from a
boy treble. Grant Doyle offered a properly masculine foil as Hector: here, at
least, I could sense what Conway said about war. Charne Rochford’s Achilles
seemed strained (miscast?) earlier on, intonation wavering considerably, but
improved greatly, the scene between him and Priam moving and fatally – in more
than one sense – menacing. Laure Meloy and
Camilla Roberts both gave sterling performances, as Hecuba and Andromache
respectively, whilst Niamh Kelly succeeded to an excellent degree in portraying
the strange, chilling emptiness of Helen. (The kiss between her and Priam
certainly unsettled in the best way.) All other members of the cast impressed
in one way or another. Perhaps especially notable were Adrian Dwyer’s properly mercurial
(sorry!) Hermes, Andrew Slater’s stentorian Old Guard, Clarissa Week’s
knowingly wise Nurse, and Adam Tunnicliffe’s earnest, finely-sung Young Guard. As
in all the best company performances, the whole was greater, considerably
greater, than the sum of the parts.
I was delighted to see Kasper
Holten in the audience and trust that this will have made him consider the
possibilities on the main stage as well as in the Linbury for Tippett and other
post-war composers, be they British or not. As I wrote a little while ago, when sharing
clips from a BBC documentary about the Hamburg premiere of Alexander Goehr’s Arden Must Die, made in those dim-and-distant days,
inconceivable to most of us, when BBC television cared about such things: ‘Rolf Liebermann's words are especially instructive. As
Hamburg Intendant, he felt it artistically necessary to commision an opera from
Goehr; the composer's nationality was supremely irrelevant to him. Covent
Garden, kindly take note! Liebermann commissioned no fewer than twenty-six
operas during his Hamburg tenure; others include Henze's Der Prinz von Homburg and
Penderecki's The Devils. Opera
and art in general must never consign themselves to the museum. That way
they will succeed only in signing their death warrants.’ We need to hear Henze,
Goehr, Birtwistle, Zimmermann, Stockhausen, Dallapiccola, Nono, Lachenmann, Peter
Maxwell Davies, Messiaen, Sciarrino, Pascal Dusapin, et al., et al.: the list
is almost endless, and it is endless before we even begin to consider the fates
of Gluck, Rameau, Haydn, Weber, and so many other composers from earlier eras;
what we certainly do not need are any more Verdi, Donizetti, or Massenet, to
name but three current, bizarre obsessions of the Royal Opera and many other companies.
Three cheers, then, to ETO for both its enterprise and achievement!
ETO’ s current
season also includes Paul Bunyan and The Magic Flute. Not every work will be
performed in every venue, but the company will perform between now and the end
of May in London, Truro, Poole, Wolverhampton, Snape, Cheltenham, Leicester,
Sheffield, York, Canterbury, Norwich Crawley, Coventry, Exeter, Durham, Perth,
and Cambridge. To read more about ETO
and forthcoming performances, please click here.
