Serse, English National Opera, 15 September 2014

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.

 

There will be a broadcast on BBC Radio 3, on 4 October.

Don Giovanni, English Touring Opera, 2 May 2008

Cambridge Arts Theatre

Don Giovanni – Roland Wood
Leporello – Jonathan Gunthorpe
Il Commendatore – Andrew Slater
Donna Anna – Julia Sporsén
Don Ottavio – Eyjólfur Eyjólfsson
Donna Elvira – Laura Parfitt
Zerlina – Ilona Domnich
Masetto – Adrian Powter

Orchestra and Chorus of English Touring Opera
Michael Rosewell (conductor)

Jonathan Munby (director)
Barnaby Rayfield (associate director)
Soutra Gilmour (designs)
Guy Hoare (lighting)

The raison d’être of English Touring Opera is a good one, indeed a very good one: performing opera across England, largely in venues untouched by larger companies. On the last occasion that I had heard the company, also in Cambridge, it had been in Ariadne auf Naxos. I had not attended with great expectations and had therefore been pleasantly surprised with a perfectly respectable, often witty presentation of Strauss’s opera. If only I were able to say the same about this Don Giovanni, which really did not pass muster. This was a slightly cut version that conformed more to Prague than to Vienna in terms of versions, although not quite to either. That, however, was the least of its problems.

One expects a reduced, even somewhat hard-pressed orchestra in such situations and, if one is reasonable, one does not expect the tonal quality of the Vienna Philharmonic. But I think one has a right to expect more than the scrawniness with which the strings, especially the violins, presented Mozart’s score on this occasion. The woodwind, however, sounded unexceptionable but perfectly acceptable, as did the brass, even though the latter sounded strangely subdued; for instance, it would have been good to have heard more from the trombones in the ‘Stone Guest’ scene. I assume that the failing woodwind during the first number of the Tafelmusik was deliberate; if not, then Leporello’s reaction to it was quickly improvised. However, I could not understand what was the point of transforming the aria from Vicente Martin y Soler’s Una cosa rara into an intimation of Siegfried’s hapless attempts to communicate with the animals of the forest. Michael Rosewell kept things going on, and if there was no especial insight from his interpretation and there was certainly a lack of loving phrasing, there were no true horrors, such as one may often be faced with in Mozart.

So far, then, not quite so bad, but I am afraid there was little good news elsewhere. The updating to the fascist era might have worked, but did not really come off. Perhaps budgetary constraints were involved here; I suspect they must have lain behind the unimaginative trellis-set that formed the backdrop for almost everything. Don Giovanni’s transformation into what seemed to be a local police or military commander at least had the merit of preserving some element of social differentiation, so crucial to this work’s success. This was utterly squandered, however, by the inexplicable decision to have the nobleman act as the coarsest of peasants at table. Such was not reckless abandon; it was, again, merely embarrassing. Moreover, the fascist salutes at various junctures were more embarrassing than chilling, not least at what should be that most terrifying prospect of social collapse, the extended cries of ‘Viva la libertà’ (here, ‘Freedom for one and all’) in the Act I finale. Balanced against that, I thought the exchange of clothes between Giovanni and Leporello during the second act worked better than I have often seen, partly on account of the physical similarity between Roland Wood and Jonathan Gunthorpe. It was when the drama demanded something more than comedy – which, I should argue, is almost all of the time – that the production failed to deliver. There was no sense of the metaphysical, no sense of Giovanni’s almost Faustian heroism, but rather a reversion to the world of burlesque – and it seemed more a case of faute de mieux than a challenging reversion. Many members of the audience seemed to find the arrival of the Stone Guest amusing rather than terrifying; I found it neither.

The English translation did not help at all. I find it difficult at the best of times to endure a work I know so well in anything other than Lorenzo da Ponte’s skilful original libretto. Since ETO was performing Bellini’s Anna Bolena in Italian, I do not understand why it could not have done so with a far better-known work. If translated it must be, though, it would benefit from something considerably superior to the strange mixture of vaguely archaic forced rhyming and free association of an ‘only slightly after da Ponte’ variety.

It was with the singing, however, that the gravest of problems lay. First, the good news: Adrian Powter was a winning, musical Masetto, far more sympathetic than one often finds him, not without his violent side but also torn between differing impulses. I should unhesitatingly describe his performance as a true success. Ilona Domnich also made an attractive Zerlina, although her stage persona was often in advance of her vocal quality. The rest of the cast ranged from adequate to disastrous. Wood and Gunthorpe’s Giovanni and Leporello were largely wooden and/or caricatured. There was a great deal of dissociation of pit and stage, most egregiously during the ‘Champagne Aria’, in which at one point singer and orchestra found themselves a bar apart. Laura Parfitt just about managed the notes as Elvira, albeit with little insight and a far from attractive voice. Andrew Slater was underpowered as the Commendatore, usually a gift of a role to a stentorian bass. As for the seria couple, Don Ottavio and Donna Anna, Julia Sporsén coped with her coloratura, but seemed hopelessly at sea when it came to acting; she lacked dignity, let alone characterisation. Eyjólfur Eyjólfsson was not too bad at acting on stage, but could barely sing the role. In fact, he could not sing the role, although this minor handicap did not prevent irritating applause after 'Il mio tesoro'. He emphatically did not cope with his coloratura; he was often startlingly out of tune, and produced an unpleasant nasal tone throughout.

I wish I could have been more positive, and have tried to point to relatively more promising aspects of the performance. Don Giovanni, however, is an extremely difficult work to pull off, even in the most favoured of circumstances. ETO needs to consider whether it would be better advised to bring smaller, more practicable, perhaps more unusual works to the stage. Should it decide against, then it really must do better than this in mainstream repertoire.