The Importance of Being Earnest, Royal Opera, 29 March 2016

Image: ROH/Stephen Cummiskey

 

Barbican Theatre

Lane/Merriman – Simon Wilding

Algernon Moncrieff – Benedict Nelson
John Worthing – Paul Curievici
Gwendolen Fairfax – Stephanie Marshall
Alan Ewing – Lady Bracknell
Miss Prism – Hilary Summers
Cecily Cardew – Claudia Boyle
The Revd Canon Chasuble, DD – Kevin West

Ramin Gray (director)

Ben Clark (associate set designs, ‘after an idea by Johannes Schütz’)
Christina Cunningham (costumes)
Franz Peter David (lighting)
Leon Baugh (movement)
 

Few comedies are less amusing than operatic comedies, few audiences less dramatically aware than conventional opera audiences. The slightest thing, regardless of intention (which otherwise matters to our reactionary ‘protectors’ of the form more than life itself), occasions riotous guffaws: even, God help us, ‘Contessa perdono’. Is there anything less amusing, more worthy of silent, awestruck listening than that moment in which forgiveness, both human and divine, is sought? The Countess’s response, of course, but that has already been ruined by such cretinous behaviour. The crime is enough to have one reconsider a lifetime’s opposition to capital punishment. Rossini’s comedies: well, they tend to be less tedious than his ‘serious’ operas, but about as funny. As for the ‘joke’ of, say, the interminable second act of Pfitzner’s Palestrina, ‘German humour’ is not sufficient mitigation. For the most part, many seem to forget that comedies need not be uproariously funny; they need not be ‘comic’ and indeed rarely are.

Gerald Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest is, then, that rare thing, at the very least approaching unique: a genuinely funny, even hilarious, opera. It even approaches something at least as rare, perhaps rare still: genuine musical surrealism. Oscar Wilde’s play needs no music; nor does Shakespeare. But Wilde can – more on account of a reverence for his wit that fails truly to relish it, to play with it – seem terribly dated, likewise his brand of æstheticism. I am not saying that they are, or are not; they are certainly done no favours by endless revival from callow, indeed dismayingly earnest, undergraduate stagings. Barry’s musico-dramatic sledgehammer not only liberates the witticisms – the play has become, like Shakespeare, too full of quotations – but liberates the wit, by doing something so completely, unthinkably monstrous to it that somehow it emerges stronger, both in its transformation and, at least in my case, how one might once again view the ‘original’. Kagel and indeed Ligeti come to mind intellectually, perhaps, and not only on account of the forty-eight dinner plates to be smashed. Yet it is difficult to think of this as anything but a thing-in-itself, as original, as it were, in the exaltation of its shameless, parodic derivations, as in its ‘originality’. Given the brevity of the compositional period, Barry’s method seems forged in the necessary white heat of inspiration (how æstheticist, even Erwartung-like!), driven and liberated by it.

 

One can take the first of the three short acts – hurrah, an opera that does not overstay its welcome! – as a Von heute auf morgen that raises more than an indulgent smile; or one can take it as a swipe at Schoenberg. One can take it as neither of those things. One can simply, or not so simply, enjoy it. Both tightly organised and anarchically free, one might even say that Webern lives again, with a twist: irrationality, rather than rationality, is both internalised and externalised. And if that sounds Romantic, in a sense it is. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and not just Schiller, is mysteriously parodied, many characters having a go: not just making it fun, but once again rendering it strange. It is not Furtwängler’s way, but it intrigued; it is certainly a great deal more interesting than pieties of Werktreue. (Having said, that perhaps a part for that great menace of musical life, the metronome, with shades of Ken Russell’s Lisztomania, might put in an appearance in a subsequent production?) French Revolutionary culture, aestheticism, Nazism, gender politics: all these and so many more are grist to Barry’s mill. What on earth is Auld Lang Syne doing? Ives with a sense of humour and without the Emerson? Who knows what it means? Is that the point? Is not caring the point? We doubtless talk too readily about deconstructing meaning and so on, but for once that, and perhaps even its reconstruction, seem actually to take place here – and crucially, in performance. Although the opera is less overt about its metatheatricality than some, or perhaps more because it is so genuinely funny, it does not come across didactically. But there is something both bleak and liberating here: if not quite Beckettian, not entirely un-Beckettian too. Wilde edges, or rather is pushed, closer to many of his greatest countrymen than ‘earnest’ light undergraduate comedy might ever conceive. As so often, fidelity lies in infidelity.  

 

Performance and staging seem indissoluble from the work, although who knows? They might, and surely will, prove not to be so; such is the nature of performing art. Ramin Gray’s production has transferred very well from the Linbury Theatre, where it was first seen in 2013, to the larger space of the Barbican Theatre. (The Linbury will re-open in 2018; in the meantime, Royal Opera ‘Linbury productions’ will be seen elsewhere. Next stop: the Hammersmith Lyric, for Mark Simpson’s eagerly-awaited first opera, Pleasure.) It seems to me to do something similar to, and with, the opera that the opera does to, and with, the play. Not having seen the score, I do not know how much is prescribed; I am told that, ironically, and doubtless dialectically, quite a deal has been. As musical figures repeat, a parody of themselves, of something else, or perhaps just for the hell of it, they might do on stage or they might not. A moment of tenderness might be undercut, or might not. Yet there is never, except in a sense I am tempted to think of as æstheticist, or perhaps neo-æstheticist (think of Ligeti’s anti-anti-opera, Le grand macabre), a sense of the merely arbitrary. Arbitrariness is far too important for that. Above all,though, and in case you have not already despatched me to Pseud’s Corner, it is funny.

 

What I have said about the work, about the staging, I shall – you guessed correctly – say also of the musical performances. The Britten Sinfonia were their usual superb selves ‘straight men’ (and women) crucial to the comedy. Whether playing Stravinskian motoric rhythms, seemingly to the power n, or shouting ‘Where is that baby?’ they were an integral part of and commentary upon the drama. Tim Murray’s conducting was at least as impressive as last time too. Score in the head rather than head in the score, he and his band seemed as liberated as Wilde. Benedict Nelson’s Algernon knew and projected the difference, whilst simultaneously rejecting it, between life and art. He and Paul Curievici as Jack offered indissoluble comic and musical timing – and a good line in dance too. The tenderness of certain of Jack’s moments – blink and you might miss them, or imagine them – was not the least of Curievici’s performing achievements. Stephanie Marshall’s alluring Gwendolen and Claudia Boyle’s stratospheric Cecily were excellent foils, but far more than that. Alan Ewing’s pinstriped tour de force Lady Bracknell lost nothing in repetition, not even, indeed particularly not, his post-Chaplin metamorphosis of Schiller into Hitler. Hilary Summers’s voice is ideal for the ‘depth’ of Miss Prism; this wonderful singer proved just as excellent in the ‘lighter’ comedy too. Work, staging, and performances alike came together in their tearing each other apart. Or, alternatively, I have never laughed so much at an opera.

 

King Roger, Royal Opera, 1 May 2015



Images: ROH/Bill Cooper

Royal Opera House

Archbishop – Alan Ewing

Deaconess – Agnes Zwierko
King Roger – Mariusz Kwiecień
Edrisi – Kim Begley
Roxana – Georgia Jarman
Shepherd – Saimir Pirgu

Kasper Holten (director)

Steffen Aarfing (designs)
Jon Clark (lighting)
Luke Halls (video)
Cathy Marston (choreography)
John Lloyd Davies (dramaturgy)
 
Royal Opera Chorus and Extra Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor)


At last, Szymanowski’s masterpiece, King Roger, has reached Covent Garden. With one, sadly predictable, exception, it receives excellent treatment too. What a joy it is to see staged here a work, which, like Janáček’s bizarrely ignored operas, is no longer than it need be, and so handsomely repays attention in every minute of its mere ninety. (Incidentally, placing an interval after the second act was surely a mistake; this is a work considerably shorter than Salome or Elektra, and nothing was gained by having to step outside for half an hour.)

 

Kasper Holten’s production is relatively straightforward, but none the worse for that. Save for gentle costume updating to the time of composition, it is difficult to imagine self-styled ‘traditionalists’ having anything much to worry about. A gigantic King Roger’s head, in different states, inhabits the centre of the stage. Are we to understand that the conflict between Apollo and Dionysus is entirely within his head? Probably not; surely there remains some important element of the social. However, a reminder that this is, amongst other things, his conflict is no bad thing. Oppressive, patriarchal Orthodoxy surrounds the realm of the personal in the first act.

 

In the second, the head turns around so as to reveal, if  not strictly speaking, the inner palace courtyard of the libretto, then something pretty close: royal quarters, in which books – is that, ultimately, whence these dangerous ideas come? Nietzsche, perhaps? – are prominent. In the basement are writhing bodies, refugees from Tannhäuser’s Venusberg – which, in terms of the work, musically as well as conceptually, is very much what they should be. Cathy Marston’s choreography did little for me, I am afraid, but having recently endured again the absurdly excessive dance of Sasha Waltz’s Tannhäuser, there was relief for me to be had in lesser intrusion.

The third act, rightly, presents ruins, both social and personal. The head has been destroyed under whatever new dispensation it is the Dionysian Shepherd offers. Not for the first time, I thought of Henze’s The Bassarids in Christof Loy’s Munich production. The dangers of this brave new world are clear, for, not only have the erstwhile faithful blindly followed their new master, they blithely throw a few surviving books upon the pyre. To destroy culture is cheap, as inconoclasts from Alexandria to Rupert Murdoch to ISIS have known all too well; the cost is crippling. Mere hedonism is not the way forward; the blinding light at the end – here as simple and as striking as in Mariusz Treliński’s production, which I saw in Edinburgh in 2008 – shows that another path for Roger, and for us, will not be easy; it may not even be right. We need, however, to try. If, sadly, as in Treliński’s staging, Szymanowski’s overt homoeroticism is played down, then there are other ideas well worth pondering: not hammered home, for such tends not to be Holten’s way of operating, but more open-ended, which seems quite apt for the work and, in particular, for its unresolved, perhaps irresolvable, conclusion. After all, the final C major chord is no more convincing as affirmation than that in Elektra; the Shepherd’s strains remain.

Antonio Pappano’s conducting proved somewhat disappointing, although he certainly seemed aware of the difficulties of balance within the orchestra and for the most part steered a judicious enough path in that respect. However, if not so bedevilled by stopping and starting as his Wagner, Pappano’s account nevertheless seemed incapable for the most part of rising above the indifference of mezzo piano, to misquote Pierre Monteux. The orchestra here is defiantly post-Wagnerian, at least as much a character as anything we see on stage; here, despite some truly excellent playing, Pappano reduced it to mere accompaniment. There was too much of a tendency to meander, too: a hostage to fortune to those who would claim Szymanowski’s world amorphous. It is not, but it requires a more comprehending conductor to present to full advantage its golden tapestry in motion.

 

Choral singing, however, was excellent, from, to quote Stephen Downes’s excellent programme note, that ‘majestic, awe-inspiring chorus’ onwards. Indeed, in that’ Byzantine Sanctus sung in harmonies that evoke archaic primitivism and power,’ the basses – a sizable extra chorus had been enlisted – offered a highly convincing impression of their Eastern European confrères. Weight and sensitive diction were, throughout, shown to be anything but opposing tendencies. Renato Balsadonna and his singers deserve great credit, not least for discretely posing the question of to what extent we might consider this work a staged oratorio. It is a tendency rather than an identity, but a worthwhile tendency to raise, especially given the subject matter.

The cast was excellent too. At its heart stood Mariusz Kwiecień’s Roger. Although an ailing Kwiecień sounded – if only relatively – a little tired at the end of the second and third acts, that in no way detracted from the thoughtful heroism of his portrayal. It is a role with which, of course, he has a lengthy association; indeed, on this occasion, it seemed made for him, so close were his identification and projection of the King’s conflicting voices. This was certainly not a Roger, even when unwell, who stood in need of Pappano’s quenching the fires of Szymanowski’s orchestra. The rest of the cast seemed no more in need of that. Saimir Pirgu offered an alluring, properly dangerous, ultimately yet prematurely triumphant Shepherd, whom many would have followed. The alterity of his Lydian-inflected music, deliberately non-developmental, ‘an enclosed, complete and self-referential musical system’ (Downes), made its dramatic point strongly, even without the overwhelming orchestral contribution that might have been present. Georgia Jarman’s Roxana certainly seemed clear why she was doing so, yet not without affection for her consort; one sensed that she would like to have included him. Her second-act aria was as ravishingly sensual as anyone might decently – or indecently – have hoped. Alan Ewing, Agnes Zwierko, and Kim Begley all distinguished themselves in the smaller roles. Old Szymanowski hands and newcomers alike should hasten to the Royal Opera House.

 

The Importance of Being Earnest, Royal Opera, 17 June 2013

Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House

John Worthing – Paul Curievici

Revd Canon Chasuble – Geoffrey Dolton
Lady Bracknell – Alan Ewing
Gwendolen Fairfax – Stephanie Marshall
Algernon Moncrieff – Benedict Nelson
Miss Prism – Hilary Summers
Lane/Merriman – Simon Wilding
Cecily – Ida Falk Winland

Ramin Gary (director)

Ben Clark (associate designer, after an idea by Johannes Schütze)
Franz Peter David (lighting)
Christina Cunningham (costumes)

Britten Sinfonia

Tim Murray (conductor)

 
The Importance of Being Earnest, Gerald Barry’s fifth opera, was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Barbican, and was first performed in concert, Thomas Adès conducting the London premiere. This production marks the first London staging, though the honour of the first staging went to Nancy’s Opéra national de Lorraine. It may be considered a resounding success, perhaps all the more surprising given the paucity of worthwhile comic operas. (The inability of stage directors to distinguish between the comic and comedy as a form is one of the greatest banes of an opera-goer’s life, but let us leave that on one side for the moment.)

 

Barry may have studied with Stockhausen but it is his study with Mauricio Kagel that comes to mind here, in the work’s anarchic – though, in its compositional control decidedly not anarchistic – irreverence. An almost Dadaistic sensibility perhaps also brings to mind the Ligeti of Aventures  and Nouvelles aventures; smashing of plates, forty of them, must surely offer a reference, perhaps even an hommage.  Humour arises not just from Wilde’s play and what Barry does with or to it, but also from the interaction of ‘action’ and music, seemingly autonomous, until one has decided that it is definitely is, at which point it tempts one to think that it might have something in common with the text after all. Parody, for instance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, whether its opening or the ‘Ode to Joy’, and of Auld Lang Syne, almost inevitably recalls Peter Maxwell Davies, but I am not sure that the method is actually so very similar. For one thing, it seems more to be the tunes themselves that in some strange sense are forming the drama; words at times follow Auld Lang Syne rather than vice versa, resulting in a cyclical process one might – or might not – consider to be a parody of serialism. (I did, but I have no idea whether that were intended.) Stravinskian motor-rhythms power the music along, until it stops – or are they still doing so? And just occasionally, the poster-paint aggression – or is it an affectionate parody thereof? – seems to melt into something more tender. But is that merely wish-fulfilment on the spectator’s part? Is the joke on the audience?

 

Ramin Gray’s production seems to operate in a similar or at least parallel fashion. There are interactions, for instance when the loudspeaker music plays from Algernon’s iPhone. And the action is cut, stopped, made to continue according to some ticking imperative. Moments impress, stick in the memory, for instance the case of co-ordinated tea-drinking. One begins to ask what they ‘mean’, but already knows or at least fears that one is asking the wrong question. Surrealism, or something like it, becomes genuinely funny. Or is it that the funny becomes genuinely surreal? Modern dress works well, banishing any thought that period ‘absurdity’ might heighten the farce, if that be what it is. For disjuncture, by its very nature, continues to bring us up short. Alienation, in work and in staging, both distances and yet brings us tantalisingly close. For, despite or even on account of the artificiality, one senses a deep humanity lying somewhere beneath. (Perhaps like Wilde; perhaps not.)

 

The Britten Sinfonia under Tim Murray proves at least an equal partner to the madness. Brashly rhythmic, lovingly precise, this is an estimable performance throughout from an ensemble whose versatility seems yet to extend itself with every year. That the players are called upon to shout and to stamp their feet almost seems expected. Paul Curievici impresses with great musicality as Jack Worthing, or whatever we want to call him, Benedict Nelson a bluff foil as Algie. Hilary Summers, surely as versatile an artist as the Britten Sinfonia, makes excellent use of her contralto range and tone as Miss Prism, with a splendidly complementary stage gawkiness. Stephanie Marshall’s Gwendolen and Ida Falk Winland’s Cecily shine on the mezzo and soprano fronts, the former often warmly lyrical, the latter seemingly effortless in the aggressively higher reaches of her range. Simon Wilding’s Lane and Merriman offer a nice hint of rebellion, nevertheless handsomely despatched. Meanwhile, Lady Bracknell is played by a bass, not in drag but in a suitably ghastly barrister pinstripe; Alan Ewing rises to the occasion, and somehow seems more real than much of the chaos around him. The cast, as the cliché has it, proves more than the sum of its parts, as is the performance as a whole, however awkward that fitting together or clashing of those parts may be.      

Judith Weir, Miss Fortune, Royal Opera, 12 March 2012 (British premiere)

A member of Soul Mavericks
Images: Royal Opera/Bill Cooper

Royal Opera House

Tina (Miss Fortune) – Emma Bell

Lord Fortune – Alan Ewing

Lady Fortune – Kathryn Harries

Fate – Andrew Watts

Hassan – Noah Stewart
Donna – Anne-Marie Owens
Simon – Jacques Imbrailo

Chen Shi-Zheng (director)
Tom Pye (set designs)
Han Feng (costumes)
Leigh Sachwitz (video)
Ran Arthur Braun (movement)

Soul Mavericks (breakdancers)
Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Paul Daniel (conductor)


Let me try first to ‘accentuate the positive’ (as the libretto might have it). Judith Weir’s Miss Fortune, in a co-production with the Bregenz Festival, where last year it received its world premiere (as Achterbahn), is arrestingly staged by Chen Shi-Zheng. Tom Pye’s colourful designs capture the eye throughout, whether in the initial relative abstraction of the opening scene or the sight – though is it really necessary? – of having a kebab van lowered from the stage. (Could it not just have been wheeled on, at what would surely have been less expense?) The garment factory looks like a factory, and its workers look like factory fodder. Han Feng’s costumes for the most part do the trick, the sharp suit allotted to rich boy Simon for instance presenting an immediate contrast with those around him. Video (Leigh Sachwitz) is put to good use, swift falls in share prices immediately apparent.

Simon (Jacques Imbrailo), Fate (Andrew Watts),
and Tina (Emma Bell)

The Royal Opera fields an impressive cast. Emma Bell could not really be said to inhabit the role of Tina, for there is no character really to inhabit, but she sang with spirit, handling the occasional piece of coloratura with aplomb. Alan Ewing and Kathryn Harries did likewise in the caricatured roles of her parents. Noah Stewart made an impressive house debut as Hassan, the sincerity of his delivery nicely counterpointed by Jacques Imbrailo’s beautifully sung Simon. Andrew Watts did what he could with the sketchily observed role of Fate, and Anne-Marie Owens attended nicely enough to her job as ‘laundromat’ owner, Donna. They all sang well, and Imbrailo in the second act came as close as anyone could reasonably be asked to stealing the show. The breakdancers of Soul Mavericks do a splendid job in their own terms, though whether their inclusion was anything other than a desperate bid to make a dull, inconsequential work more diverting remains at best an open question.

For the plot, let alone its mode of expression, really does not amount to anything much at all. Tina’s parents, Lord and Lady Fortune lose their money in a financial crisis, so Tina decides to make her way in ‘the world, the real world’. Working in a factory (destroyed) and left in charge of a kebab van (ditto), she finds herself at the mercy of Fate, before her luck changes. Fate gives her a lottery ticket. She is on the verge of winning, but, one number out – thirty-eight instead of thirty-nine, or is it the other way around? – she does not. Cue general disappointment. However, Tina is able to call upon Fate to repeat the last few seconds and she wins after all. Simon, however, has already told her it does not matter; he wants him to join her in any case. She therefore tosses her winning ticket into the crowd and leaves with him: it is better, you see, to take a chance oneself than to await a deus ex machina. Nothing, alas, is developed. We gain no insight into any of the characters; instead, we are left with the wisdom of the fortune cookie. This may have its basis in a Sicilian folk-tale (Sfortuna), but in its ‘contemporary’ retelling, Weir’s opera would appear to have lost any of its teeth.

Hassan (Noah Stewart)

Apparently stuck between vaguely neo-Romantic style and not-quite-minimalism, the score offers little to interest, even as orchestral music, let alone as word setting. (Though, as I mention below, the worst of Tippett sometimes sprang to mind, he always had an ear for setting the English language.) The passages when Weir sounds more minimalistic sometimes seem to offer a little more – and believe me, I am surprised to find myself longing for anything more akin to minimalism! – but they never quite seem to cohere into something more than sound-track. At times, I thought Paul Daniel could have offered more in the way of rhythmic precision, but without having seen the score, it is difficult to know for sure. Doubtless it is not the point that almost all of the harmony could have been offered by an unadventurous composer from a century ago. But when precious little goes ‘beyond’ Walton or Shostakovich, for instance, and the only hint of something a little more ‘advanced’ would seem to be the most occasional hint of second-hand Berg and the use of a few drums, then there is perhaps something of a problem. More seriously, though, and despite the use of different sound worlds and indeed different generative material, I found it impossible to discern anything of a particular compositional ‘voice’, let alone for any of the music to lodge itself in my memory. The score certainly does nothing to engage one’s sympathy with either the characters or the apparent ‘moral’.



Simon and Tina

 It is, though, Weir’s own libretto that presents the greatest problem. One could hardly imagine that anyone with the slightest ear for language, let alone verse, let alone verse to be set to music, would not have realised that, at the very least, radical revision was required. If the plot plumbs no depths, the language combines to equal degree banality of expression and concept. There were times when I was put momentarily in mind of Tippett’s late libretti, albeit without the weird eccentricity. Lord Fortune’s ‘You make your own destiny, no pain, no gain’ gives a taste: far from the worst, but typical, and without a hint of satire. References to the need to rid oneself of ‘negative energy’ are bad enough – I should like to say that I thought the phrase was used ironically, but I am not so sure – but a new low is hit by Simon’s entrance into Donna’s ‘laundromat’ to tell her that she had produced the most beautifully laundered shirt. The psychobabble was not even interesting or amusing – at least Tippett would try to explore potentially interesting ideas – but merely dull. For the most part, the language, though not alas the drama, resemble a poorly-scripted soap opera. ‘In the end, we’re all dead,’ we are informed at some point. Quite.

Miss Fortune will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 19 May at 6 p.m.

Powder her Face, Royal Opera, 26 April 2010

Linbury Studio Theatre

Duchess – Joan Rodgers
Hotel Manager, Duke, Judge – Alan Ewing
Electrician, Lounge Lizard, Waiter, Rubbernecker, Delivery Boy – Iain Paton
Maid, Confidante, Waitress, Mistress, Rubbernecker, Society Journalist – Rebecca Bottone
Actor – Tom Baert

Carlos Wagner (director)
Conor Murphy (designer)
Paul Keogan (lighting)
Tom Baert (choreography)

Members of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and Guest Artists
Timothy Redmond (conductor)

First performed in 1995 by Almeida Opera at the Cheltenham Music Festival, Thomas Adès’s Powder her Face has received a number of productions: a rare accolade for any ‘new’ opera. This production from Carlos Wagner was first seen at the Royal Opera in 2008, but is based on the director’s production for De Vlaamse Opera. That said, though I have heard much about it and have heard excerpts, this was my first full encounter.

What to make of Powder her Face, then? It is certainly preferable to The Tempest, which I heard on its first night, sounding like imitation Britten, with a dash of greyest Hindemith tossed in to churn out the requisite number of bars. By contrast, the music here can be fun, even if, in its relentless parody, it soon wears thin. Peter Maxwell Davies did something superficially similar quite some time ago, albeit with more winning and, I suspect, more substantial results. There are all sorts of resemblances: Berg, Strauss, Weill, Britten, popular music, and so on. But they only ever seem to be resemblances, for what makes the ‘original’ sounds into music is absent; almost everything here is but skin deep. That may be the point; it certainly seems to be a suggestive starting point for Carlos Wagner’s excellent production. Is it, though, enough? Allusion not only veers perilously close to pastiche, but a heartless pastiche, whose real character seems to lie in the admittedly brilliant rummaging around in the ruins of tonality, the brittleness, the not-quite-disjunctures. More of those and less of the parody might ultimately have proved more productive. As a first opera, this would by any standards represent an auspicious debut, but is it more than that? I realise that I am falling into the trap intended, wishing for ‘profundity’ in worthy, Teutonic fashion, yet is the work as clever as it thinks it is? Adès’s music is clever enough, but Philip Hensher’s libretto is startlingly variable, sometimes far too attention-seeking for its own good. If the work is an indictment of celebrity, is it not straining at celebrity a little too much itself? Much of the final scene, especially the Duchess’s solo ‘mad scene’, acquires a surprising gravity, however, reminiscent in its broken chorale and its instrumentation of Busoni; one can see why it would be undercut – ‘Darling, nothing so vulgar as a tragedy,’ one can hear the creators saying – but, in a way, that is a pity, since what follows is once again too clever, too lengthy, and more tedious than anything else.

Performances, however, were of a high standard. Joan Rodgers threw her all into the role of the Duchess, dramatically and vocally, and even succeeded, in that final scene, in engaging one’s heart. The only kindness she has ever experienced, as she laments, is that for which she has paid. Alan Ewing, suffering from a throat infection, coped well with the muiltifarious demands of his roles; one could readily have heard much worse from someone in better health. Iain Paton likewise convinced in his considerably more varied roster of portrayals, lightness and agility of voice in evidence throughout. I find Rebecca Bottone’s high soprano a bit shrill and unvaried, but it chimes with what she is asked to do, and she can act too. Paton and Bottone make a truly grubby pair of rubberneckers, pleasuring themselves at their moral disapproval during the trial: how the Daily Mail would love them and the judge, who follows suit and goes still further. If the constant turnover of roles is confusing – I assume that Lulu is the model here, but there a clear point is being made – then that is no fault of the cast, though the production could sometimes have been more helpful in that respect. It surely does matter precisely who these people are. Diction, however, was not always what it might have been. Timothy Redmond conducted the orchestra with verve and precision, the players responding in kind, clearly relishing the dance rhythms and the array of soloistic colours. Again, if it all becomes a bit loud and unyielding, they are not the ones to blame.

Carlos Wagner’s production plays on the Duchess’s star quality, Conor Murphy’s stylish designs – and if the opera is anything, it is stylish – including outsize beauty products, the most striking of which is the neo-Botticelli compact from which the heroine emerges. The mimed fellatio scene from the electrician at the beginning neatly presages what is to come, though the real thing is actually a little puzzling. When the Duchess is at work on the waiter, a naked, more conventionally alluring man emerges in between them: presumably her fantasy, as opposed to reality, but I am not quite sure that such should be the point here. Her search, at least, does not seem to be for physical perfection. Elsewhere, however, production and performances did the work proud. As for the opera itself, though, celebrity seems more to have been more attained than deconstructed.