Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music
Arkel – Michael Druiett
Geneviève – Helen JohnsonGolaud – Stephan Loges
Pelléas – Jonathan McGovern
Yniold – Lauren Zolezzi
Mélisande – Susanna Hurrell
Oliver Townsend (designs)
Mark Howland (lighting)Bernadette Iglich (movement)
Zakk Hein (video)
James Conway (director)
In a better world, or even the
same world with better audiences, the proportion of performances given by our
opera houses of Pelléas et Mélisande
and La traviata would at the very least
be reversed. As it is, we find ourselves forced to make a virtue out of the
relative rarity of performances of a work all consider to be a towering masterpiece.
We are grateful when they come, and perhaps treasure them all the more. We are,
or at least should be, especially grateful when a touring company with
financial resources far more limited than our great opera houses, stages Pelléas, all the more so when it does so
with such success. Once again, then: hats off to English Touring Opera!
Debussy’s opera is given in an
arrangement for chamber ensemble by Annelies van Parys. One could, if one
wished, spend the time wishing that one had the Berlin Philharmonic and Karajan,
but that would seem a pointless pursuit. What strikes, with respect
to a sound that is decidedly un-Karajan-like, although no closer, say, to
Abbado, Boulez, or, for that matter, Désormière, is how much it convinces on
its own terms. Balances are different, and perhaps not always at their optimum,
wind instruments inevitably coming more to the fore without the cushion of
massed strings. By the same token, however, solo strings sometimes evoke the
Debussy of his chamber music, not least the String Quartet. One hears lines
differently and yet, at some level, the same. Malevolence still stretches its fungal
tentacles; elegance that is never ‘just’ elegance remains (as so often, when
speaking about this work, one is tempted to lapse into French, and say demeure instead).
Two scenes are omitted entirely:
a pity, perhaps, although I missed them far less than I should have imagined.
Director James Conway takes the radical step of reintroducing words in spoken
form at the end of the first ‘act’ (part way through the third). Golaud’s
warning to Pelléas in some ways chills all the more for being spoken. Perhaps
that is founded on the knowledge of what we ‘should’ be hearing, perhaps not,
but I found it an elegant and dramatic solution.
In such circumstances, it is
very difficult, perhaps impossible, to distinguish too strongly between
instrumentation and performance. However, the playing of the Orchestra of
English Touring Opera seemed to me throughout as alert and as sensitive as
anyone could reasonably have expected, perhaps more so. What was being asked of
these solo musicians was no mean task, and they played with the excellence we
have come to expect. Jonathan Berman’s conducting was another strength. If I
say that, for the most part, I barely noticed it, I do not mean that
negatively. The ebb and flow of Debussy’s score rather seemed – and ‘seemed’ is
surely the operative word here – to take care of themselves, with only
occasional awkward corners, which may well be smoothed as the run progresses.
One would not expect such a performance to be a ‘conductor’s performance’ as
from those great names of the past I mentioned earlier; this was more a matter
of subtly enabling and, yes, leading a company effort. In that and much else,
it proved a great success.
Conway’s production emphasises,
especially in the designs of Oliver Townsend and lighting of Mark Howland, the
suffocation of the fin-de-siècle
environment from which Pelléas
springs. Light use of video (Zakk Hein) enhances rather than distracts. Characteristic
wallpaper and costumes remind us that the castle here is as important a ‘character’
as it would be some years later in Bluebeard’s
Castle, an opera which owes much to Debussy’s example. Longing for escape in
nature and, perhaps, Tristan-esque
oblivion may be vain but it is no more real for that. It is striking how much
can be done with a single set and clever, well-achieved shifts of lighting:
what will clearly be a necessity for touring here takes on unifying,
escape-denying, imaginative virtue of its own. There seems, moreover, a hint at
least of the road to the Poe opera Debussy would never complete.
I really have nothing but
praise for the singing. The cast worked very well together, more than the sum
of its parts, which in itself was considerable. At chronological extremes,
Michael Druiett and Lauren Zolezzi convinced as ancient Arkel and young Yniold.
Arkel’s ambiguity – what really is the nature of his fondness for Mélisande? Is
that even the right question to ask – came through very strongly; so too did
the boyishness of Zolezzi’s portrayal. Geneviève’s letter-reading generally
makes a fine impression; that is no reason not to praise it again when it does,
as it did with Helen Johnson. Susanna Hurrell’s Mélisande seemed to hark back
in its light, bright quality to early assumptions; she achieved, for me, just
the right balance between what might be self-assertion and discomfiting
willingness – inability to do anything else? – to act as a blank canvas for male
projections. In her first scene, I thought of Kundry; later, I found myself
thinking of Lulu. Jonathan McGovern’s
Pelléas initially came across with striking, almost but not quite child-like
naïveté, and developed into something that was perhaps no more grown-up, but
equally striking in its self-absorption: more pathological than one often sees,
and all the more intriguing for it. The wounded masculinity of Stephan Loges’s powerfully-sung
Golaud, quite contrasting in timbre, was a singular dramatic achievement both in
its vocal essence and its dramatic consequences. ‘Perhaps no events that are pointless occur,’ Arkel says.
If a production has succeeded, one’s reply will most likely be ‘perhaps’. And
indeed it was.
Pelléas
et Mélisande will be
performed again in London on 3 October, and will travel to Buxton, Malvern,
Durham, Harrogate, Cambridge, Bath, Snape, and Exeter. For more details from
ETO, click here.
