Coliseum
(sung in English as Xerxes)
Serse – Alice Coote
Arsamene – Andrew Watts
Amastre – Catherine Young
Ariodate – Neal Davies
Romilda – Sarah Tynan
Atalanta – Rhian Lois
Elviro – Adrian Powter
Nicholas Hytner (director)
Michael Walling (revival
director)
David Fielding (designs)
Paul Pyant, Martin Doone
(lighting)
Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Dominic Peckham)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Michael Hofstetter (conductor)
It was a delight to welcome Nicholas
Hytner’s charming, witty staging of Serse,
or Xerxes, intelligently revived by
Michael Wallingm back to the Coliseum. Some
of ENO’s so-called ‘classic revivals’ have stretched the term beyond
breaking-point; this, however, does seem to qualify both as a revival in more
than name and, in its own way, as a ‘classic’. Having won an Olivier award on
its first outing in the anniversary year of 1985, Hytner’s production lightly frames
an opera which, if we are honest, has nothing meaningful to do with ancient
Persia, in terms of a re-imagined eighteenth century. Images from something
akin to Georgian Vauxhall – topiary, newspapers, aristocratic finery – merge happily
and without the slightest pedantry with hints at the Enlightenment
archaeological imperialism of the British Museum, ‘anachronisms’ such as deck
chairs in the park, the anonymised ritual of white-faced courtiers, the
celebrated Handel statue in Westminster Abbey, and so forth, to enable our
minds and memories to play upon whatever associations they will, without damage
to the slight comedy that is the ‘drama’ of the piece and which is really more
of an excuse for a fine succession of Handelian melodies than anything else.
(That said, the sense of a different æsthetic, not just that of opera seria, but also of the
often-unacknowledged experimentalism of Vauxhall, is present too, perhaps
especially in the revival.)
Whilst, even in this, one of
the strongest of Handel’s operas, it is difficult and would probably be
perverse to care about the characters and their actions in the way one would in
the greatest of his dramatic oratorios, let alone in an opera by Monteverdi or
Mozart, the cast offered not only a generally strong set of vocal performances
but, for the most part, more than plausible acting too. Alice Coote seemed to
be an audience favourite but, for me, hers was a strikingly mixed performance:
at its best very good, especially rich in the lower range, but too often
resorting to downright shouting, and with decidedly mixed results when it came
to coloratura. Andrew Watts’s coloratura was often found wanting too; I had the
sense that he would have been happier in contemporary than Baroque opera.
Otherwise, there was little about which to cavil at all. Sarah Tynan’s Romilda
was beautifully sung throughout, with a fine sense indeed of how coloratura
can, even in Handel opera, strain towards true dramatic meaning. Rhian Lois
captured to a tee the character of her scheming yet ultimately insouciant
sister, Atalanta, and was just as impressive in vocal terms. Catherine Young
offered relative gravity and, again, equally excellent singing as the disguised
heiress, Amastre (Amastris here). Neal Davies and Adrian Powter were more than
serviceable in the smaller roles of Ariodate and Elviro. Direction of the
chorus was finely judged too.
I feared the worst at the
beginning of Michael Hofstetter’s account of the Overture. Vibrato-less strings
and a hard-driven tempo had me thinking we should be in for something akin to
typical English ‘Baroque’ – actually, nothing of the sort – puritanism. However, within the bounds of what is (sadly) nowadays
possible, Hofstetter’s conducting and the ENO Orchestra’s response showed
considerably flexibility and an enlightened approach towards musical expression
of which I had more or less given up hope. There was not, of course, the rich
tone of the old ‘live’ recording (in German) from Rafael Kubelík, with Fritz Wunderlich no less, but the
performance compared well with Charles Mackerras (this production, on DVD). Not
only was there genuine ‘life’ to be heard in the pit, it sounded like an
orchestra rather than a tired end-of-pier band, such as more recently suffered
here from so-called ‘specialists’. This work’s particular fluidity of
recitative and aria – perhaps harking back to one of Handel’s sources in
Cavalli’s version? – was well served, dramatic impetus not, at least after the
Overture, being mistaken for the tyranny of the bandmaster. If there were times
when a little more warmth would not have gone amiss from the strings, they were
fewer than one might have expected. Continuo playing was alert and, again, far
from inflexible. ENO could do far worse than ask Hofstetter back in such
repertoire – especially when one considers the alternatives.
