Royal Opera House
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| Dorabella (Serena Malfia) Images: ROH 2019/Stephen Cummiskey |
Ferrando – Paolo Fanale
Guglielmo – Gyula Orendt
Don Alfonso – Thomas Allen
Fiordiligi – Salome Jicia
Dorabella – Serena Malfi
Despina – Serena Gamberoni
Jan Philipp Gloger (director)
Julia Burbach (revival
director)
Ben Baur (set designs)
Karin Jud (costumes)
Bernd Purkrabek (lighting)
Katharina John (dramaturgy)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Royal Opera Chorus (chorus director: William Spaulding)
Stefano Montanari (conductor)
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| Ensemble |
First the good news. With one
partial exception, there was much splendid singing, and stage performance more
generally, to enjoy from an entirely new cast for the first revival of Jan
Philipp Gloger’s Così fan tutte
(reviewed here
first time around). Our pairs of male and female lovers were nicely
differentiated, whilst blending with equal skill and pleasure – crucial in an
opera with so much ensemble writing, endlessly varied, endlessly revised and
renewed. (There is dramaturgical genius in that, of course, not that sceptics
and outright decriers – believe it or not, there remain a few – bother to think
about that before regaling us with their ‘thoughts’ on the work.) Salome Jicia
and Serena Malfia made for a sparkling pairing of ladies from Ferrara, linear
clarity matched by complementary contrast such as one might enjoy in a fine
wind ensemble. Much the same, perhaps still more so, might be said of Paolo
Fanale’s Ferrando and Gyula Orendt’s Guglielmo, the former’s arias as sweetly
sung, tenderly phrased as anyone might reasonably ask. Serena Gamberoni’s keenly
sung Despina was properly knowing without lapsing into the unduly arch. Thomas
Allen’s Don Alfonso had its moments, but it was difficult to avoid the
conclusion that this, a role he long made his own, is now a vocal challenge too
far, whatever his continued enthusiasm on stage. Hand on heart, I cannot say
that any of these performances surpassed those at Holland
Park last year, but I doubt that anyone would have had serious grounds for
disappointment either.
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| Dorabella and Guglielmo (Gyula Orendt) |
There were, alas, grounds
aplenty for disappointment in both the conducting and the production:
concerning the former, rather more than mere disappointment. Described in the
programme as ‘charismatic’, Stefano Montanari certainly made his presence felt
Charisma, however, entails a gift, not a curse, be it divine or otherwise. It
is difficult to think of anyone more deserving of the claim than Mozart. If
only we had heard a little more of his work and a little less of Montanari’s
extraordinary – extraordinarily ignorant, too – arrogance. Arrogating to
himself the fortepiano continuo too, Montanari went on to show us that he has
little ability at conducting but considerable ability at obscuring scores with
his own, allegedly witty, yet in truth tediously predictable, sonic vandalism. To
begin with, his ‘contributions’ remained within the realm of the unnecessary,
if still highly irritating. The level of premature ejaculation soon, however,
reached the level of medical emergency, at times entirely taking leave of
Mozart’s bass line and harmony so as simply to present some ‘songs from the
shows’. It was the sort of thing a bumptious first-year organ scholar might
have done over late-night drinks, albeit more cleverly; here, the results were
quite unforgivable. Occasionally hard-driven, Montanari’s conducting was more
often merely flaccid: nothing to do with speed, everything to do with a lack of
harmonic and formal understanding; it was as if the performance were led by the
lovechild of René Jacobs and Marc Minkowski. For a performance of Così fan tutte drag so much is an
achievement of sorts, not one I wish to hear repeated. To hear it in the house
that was once Sir Colin Davis’s was little short of scandalous.
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| Dorabella and Ferrando (Paolo Fanale) |
Some changes have been made to
Gloger’s production since its first outing, presumably by revival director,
Julia Burbach. In the first act in particular, they are to its benefit,
tightening and clarifying, although the second act fizzles out much as it had
done before (if slightly differently). It is, perhaps, indicative of the state
of British opera audiences that anyone would see something remotely adventurous
in the hamfisted attempt at metatheatricality on show – ‘show’ being the thing –
here. Clichés abound, without apparent awareness that clichés they are, and
therefore might be played with. The more promising moment remains the
substitution of applauding members of the real cast, initially seated in an
audience box, for the cast in eighteenth-century garb on stage. There is
nothing wrong with the idea that the characters might learn from a performance
of the work; it has much to commend it. There is everything wrong, however,
with the confusion – somewhat mitigated now, yet only somewhat – with which
that is allegedly accomplished. Identities, acts, characters are not ambiguous;
they appear simply not to have been thought through, rather as if this were an
early sketch for a production rather than the finished article.
As for Gloger’s preposterous claim, allegedly justifying such
confusion, namely that to be ‘realisable in realistic terms’, the female
characters must ‘know from the beginning of the second act that the “foreign
men” are really their own boyfriends,’ it is difficult to think of a graver
admission of incompetence. By all means play with such an idea, should it prove
dramatically fruitful. The idea, however, that such banal realism has anything
to do with the work, that ‘we decided to explain…’ signifies anything other
than a catastrophic misunderstanding of the opera’s artificiality and its
dramatic consequences, is both saddening and infuriating. Perhaps there is
scope for further revisions; I certainly appreciate the attempt. I cannot,
however, claim to be hopeful. Like Montanari's conducting, if less so, the production thinks itself far cleverer than it is. More seriously, neither seems remotely to appreciate not only the intelligence but the profundity of this most ravishing of operas.
