Hackney Empire Theatre
King Dodon – Grant Doyle
Prince Guidon – Thomas Elwin
Prince Aphron – Jerome Knox
General Polkan – Edward Hawkins
Amelfa – Amy J Payne
Golden Cockerel – Alys Mererid Roberts
Queen of Shemakha – Paula Sides
Astrologer – Robert Lewis
James Conway (director)
Neil Irish (set designs and costumes)
Rory Beaton (lighting)
Chorus and Orchestra of English Touring Opera
Gerry Cornelius (conductor)
No one could have known at the time of planning—a couple of years ago, I think—but in current circumstances it was eerie, even uncanny, to sit down to a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s final opera, The Golden Cockerel. Composed in the aftermath of the disastrous Russo-Japanese war and only premiered, following extended disputes with the censor, in 1909 after Rimsky’s death, it portrays a lazy king persuaded once again to defeat in war following claims, once again, of enemy incursions at the borders of his realm. King Dodon and his two sons are, to be blunt, idiots; their advisors, official and otherwise (the Golden Cockerel, brought as an Astrologer’s gift) are not necessarily any better. A foreign queen who conquers the realm through conquering the king’s heart stands a little close to home too. Situations differ, of course, but it would have been strange indeed not to draw contemporary parallels, if only in hope that a cockerel might come to peck Russia’s latest autocrat to death. ‘What will the new dawn bring? What shall we do without a tsar?’
I found it fascinating, if not entirely convincing. In Iain Farrington’s extremely skilful chamber reorchestration, one would often not have known—at least up in the gods—that one was not hearing a larger orchestra. Rimsky’s meeting-point between the folkloric and more modernist, Stravinskian tendencies, mediated as so often by darker, Wagnerian roots, both delighted in itself and posed intriguing dramatic questions of its own, not least in combination with Pushkin. Gerry Cornelius’s command of detail and sweep in the score impressed greatly, as did the playing of the English Touring Opera orchestra. If the referential motivic elements of the composer’s writing sometimes seemed a little obvious, that was hardly a fault of the performance. The English translation by Antál Dorati and James Gibson sounded very dated, making the opera sound unfortunately close to Gilbert and Sullivan. Thank goodness we have now gone beyond attention-seeking rhyming couplets.
Alas, the second act seemed considerably over-extended for its material. Whenever Rimsky comes closer to Verdi—as, for instance, in The Tsar’s Bride—his musical drama becomes less appealing to me, often bordering on the tedious. Overall proportions to a relatively brief work are a little odd, or felt so. That said, James Conway’s colourful yet darkening, subtly militarising staging offered a sense that knowing orientalism must by now offer its own self-critique—which may just offer us hope. The Astrologer, oddly uncredited in the cast list yet ultimately revealed in the biographies to be Robert Lewis, underwent a final revelation on stage as holy man Rasputin to the Queen’s Tsarina Alexandra. They were the only ones who had actually existed, the rest an illusion (as we had been warned, yet had probably forgotten). Make of that what you will.
Lewis certainly made the most
of his ritualistic appearances dramatically and vocally: a
memorable assumption. Grant Doyle offered a fine comedic performance, with rich
hints of something darker, to King Dodon, as verbally acute as it was centred
of tone. Thomas Elwin and Jerome Knox shone, insofar as the work permitted, as the king’s
useless, sailor-suited sons, contrasted and complementary. So too did Paula Sides’s Queen of Shemakha with bewitching
coloratura and beguiling lyricism. All roles were cast from strength, detailed
portrayals from the company at large contributing to a pervasive sense of
barbed merriment. Closer interpretation was largely and, I think, fruitfully
left to us.
