Linbury Theatre
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| Artemis (Patrick Terry), Hippolyt (Filipe Manu), Phaedra (Hongni Wu), Aphrodite (Jacquelyn Stucker) Images (C) ROH 2019, by Bill Cooper |
Phaedra – Hongni Wu
Hippolyt – Filipe Manu
Aphrodite – Jacquelyn Stucker
Artemis – Patrick Terry
Minotaurus – Michael Mofidian
Noa Naamat (director)
Southbank Sinfonia
Edmund Whitehead (conductor)
Hans Werner Henze’s penultimate
opera, Phaedra has been fortunate indeed
in London since its 2007 Berlin premiere. Astonishingly, this was the third
time I had seen the work in London: first a Barbican concert performance; then the Guildhall’s excellent double-bill, coupled with the early radio opera, Ein Landarzt; now a staging at the Royal Opera’s Linbury Theatre, from
members and one soon-to-be-member of its Jette Parker Young Artists Programme
and the Southbank Sinfonia.
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| Hippolyt and Phaedra |
I continue to find it an elusive,
even enigmatic work, difficult to pin down – as often with Henze. There is nothing
wrong with that, quite the contrary. Immediately obvious works that have little
to reveal on subsequent encounters – Tosca,
for instance, whatever its qualities – are not the most interesting. Layering
of its libretto, by Christian Lehnert, is, for me at least, a little too self-conscious,
indeed in that sense itself obvious; that of the score, however, continues to
fascinate, both in itself and with respect to Henze’s lengthy career and
well-nigh unmanageable œuvre. Conductor Edward Whitehead and the Southbank
Sinfonia proved strong in their communication of the score’s textural layering,
Schoenberg, Berg, Mahler, and Wagner lying behind or, perhaps better, beneath
it, the orchestra’s lines seemingly summoned up like a refined Götterdämmerung oracle. I was put in
mind of a remark by Henze from four decades earlier, from an interview with Die Welt given to coincide with the
premiere of The Bassarids: ‘The road
from Tristan to Mahler and Schoenberg is far from finished, and … I have
tried to go further along it.’
Henze’s way was always, or
usually, though, then to take up another path thereafter, perhaps resuming that
earlier path some time later. We perhaps view his way with greater clarity now,
or kid ourselves that we do. At any rate, other tendencies shone through too: Weill-like
(Hindemith too?) wind and percussion; mesmerising saxophone lines that lured
one seemingly to nowhere (a remimaging of Natascha
Ungeheuer?); magical forest colours (König
Hirsch); and, perhaps most tellingly, towards the close, when Hippolyt
surprisingly, disconcertingly returns as Virbius, the transformational magic of
Ariadne auf Naxos, Straussian
reference clear, but kinship to Hofmannsthal’s ideas (perhaps via Elegy for Young Lovers) ultimately more
meaningful. At its best, Noa Naamat’s staging seemed to take its leave from
these circles, lines, interactions of musical and aesthetic meaning, a sense of
eastern ritual (perhaps a little Robert Wilson, but less formulaic than his
work has come) coming into contact and conflict with turning of the wheel.
Comparison and contrast with the work of Birtwistle came to mind, as they had
on my previous encounters with the work.
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| Artemis |
The singers all proved
excellent. Though the work is called Phaedra,
I do wonder whether Henze would have been better lending Hippolyt(us)’s name to
it. (But then, arguably, Rameau’s Hippolyte
et Aricie is similarly misnamed.) Filipe Manu, due to join the JPYAP next
year, proved compelling indeed in the would-be title role, as vulnerable an
object of contemplation and, later, as equivocal a vehicle of reinvention as
Henze’s earlier Prince of Homburg. Was Hongni Wu’s Phaedra presented too
vampishly in this production (not necessarily in performance)? Perhaps, but the
deepening of her range of vocal colour throughout the evening offered
compensation. Jacquelyn Stucker and Patrick Terry (the programme’s first
countertenor) offered strong, detailed performances as Aphrodite and Artemis,
whilst Michael Mofidian’s Minotaurus, richly sonorous yet equally careful of
detail, left one wishing greedily that he had had more to sing, his persistent
stage presence notwithstanding.
Why, then, did I emerge feeling
slightly dissatisfied – or perhaps wondering whether I should have done? It may
just have been a matter of how I was feeling on the day: it happens to us all.
I do not think, though, that it was just that. Did the decision to introduce an
interval get in the way? I think it did, making the work seem longer, more
drawn out, more sectional than it is. I am not sure that the parameters within
which Naamat’s staging had to operate helped in that respect. Though necessarily
simple in scenic terms, it paradoxically seemed to dart around somewhat from
scene to scene, perhaps through no fault of its own somewhat blunting the underlying
ritual power of the score. Perhaps, alternatively, that was actually a
reflection of the fragmentary qualities of the opera, of Hippolyt’s partial,
flawed regaining of consciousness under his new identity. If I continue to find
Phaedra enigmatic, Henze’s genre
designation of ‘concert opera’ included, then that will doubtless say something
about it, me, the performance, the production, or about any combination of the
above. Such, after all, is opera.
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| Minotaurus (Michael Mofidian), Hippolyt |
