Robert le diable, Royal Opera, 21 December 2012

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Robert – Bryan Hymel

Bertram – John Relyea
Raimbaut – Jean-François Borras
Alice – Marina Poplavskaya
Isabelle – Sofia Fomina
Alberti – Nicolas Courjal
Master of Ceremonies/First Chevalier – David Butt Philip
Herald/Second Chevalier – Pablo Bemsch
Prince of Granada/Third Chevalier – Ashley Riches
Priest/Fourth Chevalier – Jihoon Kim
Isabelle’s Lady-in-waiting – Dušica Bijelic

Laurent Pelly (director, costumes)

Chantal Thomas (set designs)
Jean-Jacques Delmotte (costumes)
Duane Schuler (lighting)
Claudio Cavallari (video)
Lionel Hoche (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Daniel Oren (conductor)

 

Having been out of London for almost the entire run of Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable, the only possibility was for me to catch the final performance. For once, I was very glad to have cast a fulsome number of pennies the way of the Royal Opera House. This was by any standards an important yet neglected work, by a crucially important yet all-but-ignored composer: just the sort of thing of which we should be seeing more on the Covent Garden stage. Frankly anything would be better than yet another outing for La triviata. (The cancellation of Oberon last season in favour of extending still further the number of performances of that most nauseating of operas still rankles almost beyond words.) I was vaguely aware of the criticism Robert received whilst I was away, and was unsurprised to discover how uninformed most of it was. A typical example, from a journalist I recently had the misfortune to hear mindlessly yet tirelessly haranguing the Artistic Director of the Salzburg Festival for having programmed Gawain rather than a Britten opera (as a ‘contemporary’ work!), may be read here. (Given the critical acuity with which that writer approached the most recent staging of Gawain at Covent Garden, one can understand why he might have wished to spare himself such undue challenge once again. One can certainly only continue to marvel that anyone is willing to pay him for writing such drivel.) People are perfectly at liberty not to like this work, indeed to criticise it as harshly as they feel necessary, but one would hope for a little more intelligence in the act.

 

No one – one hopes, even at that lowly critical level – would deny Robert its historical importance, staged one hundred times at the Paris Opéra within three years of its 1831 premiere and by 1835 seen at seventy-seven houses in ten countries. Meyerbeer’s influence on Wagner, to name but the most important example, runs deeper than most suspect; it was certainly not difficult, especially as the score progressed, to hear presentiments of The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin, as well as the more obvious Rienzi (‘Meyerbeer’s greatest opera’, in Hans von Bülow’s truthful quip.) Echoes of Der Freischütz are increasingly evident too, and not just in the more overtly ‘demonic’ third act, Weber himself of course heavily influenced by French and Italian music. Originality might not always be Meyerbeer’s strongest suit – what seemed either to be a quotation or direct plagiarism from Beethoven’s Symphony in the final act made me smile, though if one is going to steal, doing so from Beethoven shows good taste – yet claims of incompetence seemed to me wildly clear of the mark. Even in cut form – would it really have hurt to have retained an extra half-hour’s worth of music? – there are at the very least competent pacing and structure. (Contrast that with many works that bafflingly continue to hold the stage!)  And that despite the undeniable dramaturgical weakness of Raimbaut’s disappearance from the plot, a consequence of the move from originally-planned opéra-comique, in which his relationship with Alice loomed considerably larger, to grand opéra.

 

However, what struck me most of all was how untrue all the claims about alleged ‘unmemorability’ were. If tunes were your thing, you could hear a good few, and there was much more to nourish too, not least a good deal of attractive woodwind writing. The cello line highlighting the self-serving nature of Bertram’s apparent gallantry towards Alice in their third act duet struck me as a revealing dramatic touch, and that is but one example. Yes, there are examples of music that tend towards inconsequentiality or straightforward inappropriateness, but for me at least, they were surprisingly few. If the treatment of religion in the fifth act reduces it to little more than vaguely exotic ‘colour’, than Meyerbeer and Scribe are not alone in that failing; we suffer far worse from Gounod much more regularly. The theme of damnation, moreover, seems to me more interestingly handled than in many treatments; with Robert, one feels a true conflict in his choice between Heaven and Hell, their causes pleaded by Bertram and Alice respectively. There is no need to exaggerate; this is no Damnation de Faust; nor does Meyerbeer approach the compositional interest of Berlioz, let alone Wagner. Yet he pens a far more interesting, if uneven, score than anything by Verdi or Donizetti, whom houses inflict upon us with mind-numbing frequency. I doubt, however, that anything could redeem the third-act ballet: one of the most preposterous things I have ever seen, a cloister bacchanale for nuns risen from their tombs. Even if it had been handled more convincingly than here, Lionel Hoche’s embarrassing choreography, replete with strange noises, presumably intended as ‘erotic’, very much hailing from the school of Andrew George (as witnessed most recently in the dreadful McVicar Troyens.) If only we had had Calixto Bieito, perhaps the scene might have stood a chance. Perhaps, I repeat.

 

Where the Royal Opera performance truly fell down was in both the stage direction and the conducting: a very real problem for a work so little known and so easy to consign once again to the dustbin of history. Laurent Pelly’s production would doubtless have apologists praising its ‘whimsy’, most likely irritatingly prefaced by the offensive stereotype ‘Gallic’. It hovers uncertainly between sending up the work – not, I think, a course that would work, but it should at least be pursued with consistency – and attempting to take it a little more seriously. The multi-coloured, cartoon-like designs (Chantal Thomas) of the first two acts give way to something a little more plausible, though nowhere near the grand opéra spectacle one probably needs here. Either that, it seems, or a thorough-going deconstruction. Most insulting however was the unbridled kitsch of cardboard cut-out jaws of Hell and angelic heavenly clouds in the final act; if a director cannot manage better than that, then he ought to leave the work to someone who can.

 

Daniel Oren’s conducting served Meyerbeer equally badly. Entirely lacking in direction, let alone fire, this was listlessness to a degree so advanced that one almost suspected deliberate sabotage. (Alas the result was not interesting enough to justify the charge.) The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House often sounded, reasonably enough, uninspired, though there were many passages in which the musicians rose above the confines of such deathly conducting. What I suspect this music really needs is either the theatrical fire and brimstone of a Riccardo Muti or an approach that would bring to the fore its German roots and implications; in that case, the likes of Christian Thielemann or even Daniel Barenboim would perfectly fit the bill. (Thielemann is about to conduct Rienzi, so it is perhaps not an entirely absurd suggestion.) A third-rate Kapellmeister is unlikely to attract many converts.

 

The singing was often very good indeed, though, imparting more of a sense of the work’s potentialities than one might have expected. Bryan Hymel was not the strongest of links, alas, but his Robert at least benefited from stamina. Unfortunately, a combination of painful French and still more a lack of French style, singing his lines as if they were Puccini, severely compromised the title role. Otherwise, Marina Poplavskaya turned in by far the strongest performance I have heard from her. Intonational difficulties seemed to have been banished. Her coloratura put Hymel to shame. And she did her best, pretty successfully on the whole, to present Alice as a convincing character rather than the cardboard cut-out to which the production attempted to reduce her (and everyone else). Sofia Fomina, a singer entirely new to me, offered a ravishing performance as Isabelle, the Sicilian princess. Tone and line were impeccable throughout. John Relyea was at least equally impressive as Bertram, devilish darkness very much his thing. His French was a distinct improvement upon most of the cast too. (Do language coaches not instruct their charges that there is a great deal more to the admittedly difficult task of singing in French than just about mustering school-boy pronunciation?) Choral singing was as excellent as one has come to expect from Renato Balsadonna’s Royal Opera Chorus.

 

Where, then does Meyerbeer stand? Lower than he ought to, I think. Even Wagner, for all the ungrateful abuse he hurled Meyerbeer’s way, would sometimes acknowledge his stronger points. This is not a great work, but nor does it deserve the abuse heaped upon it by people of rather lesser standing than Wagner. I certainly cannot begin to understand how they can endure, even praise, nineteenth-century operas twenty times more trivial and yet react in the way they have to Robert le diable. Is this a mere case of me faire avocat du diable? If so, not to a great extent; I was genuinely interested by what I heard. Whatever Meyerbeer deserves, and I think he deserves considerably more than we grant him, he deserves neither Oren nor Pelly. Nor, I am sad to report, does he deserve a truly horrendous audience, spluttering, chattering, dropping things, laughing uproariously at nothing whatsoever. Who are these people, why do they bother attending at all, and whither might we return them?

Prom 11: Les Troyens - Royal Opera/Pappano, 22 July 2012

Royal Albert Hall

Cassandre – Anna Caterina Antonacci

Chorèbe – Fabio Capitanucci
Enée – Bryan Hymel
Didon – Eva-Maria Westbroek
Narbal – Brindley Sherratt
Anna – Hanna Hipp
Ascagne – Barbara Senator
Priam – Robert Lloyd
Hécube – Pamela Helen Stephen
Ghost of Hector – Jihoon Kim
Panthée – Ashley Holland
Hélénus – Ji Hyun Kim
Greek Captain – Lukas Jakobski
Trojan Soldier/Mercure – Daniel Grice
Iopas – Ji-Min Park
First Soldier – Adrian Clarke
Second Soldier – Jeremy White
Hylas – Ed Lyon

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor)

Image: BBC/Chris Christodoulou

Hearing The Trojans in concert at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the Proms was, for me at least, a much happier experience than when it laboured under the crowd-pleasing would-be-musical-comedy served up by David McVicar’s production for the Royal Opera. (I wrote about my experience of the latter here, so shall try to restrain myself from rehearsing my criticisms. For a very different standpoint, from one who admired McVicar’s staging, read Anne Ozorio’s review for Opera Today.)

Speaking to a few members of the audience who had also attended both, I was clearly not the only person to have found conductor and soloists liberated by the concert hall. Sir Antonio Pappano’s conducting still has its problems, but he makes Berlioz sound less like Verdi than he does Wagner, and, as at Covent Garden, his reading gathered strength as it went on. Even the first act, where sometimes he appeared to think that he was conducting Aida, had stronger, more idiomatic moments.  The very opening was far too fast, breathless rather than jubilant, the Trojans opening ‘Ha! Ha!’ sounding as if they were hyper-ventilating. However, the transformation of mood signalling the arrival of Cassandre was very well handled, doubtless informed by plenty of theatrical experience yet without the encumbrance of inadequate scenic presentation. The disquieting weirdness of the orchestra throughout her recitative and aria painted a thousand words. Likewise, the terrible, ominous tread of the march and choral hymn, ‘Dieux protecteurs de la ville éternelle’  - the irony of the words properly telling – was compellingly presented, far more in touch with the inheritance of Gluck’s obsequies than had previously been the case. It was a pity, then, that the ensuing Wrestlers’ Dance reverted to Verdian type. Cassandre’s aria, ‘Non, je ne verrai pas la deplorable fête’ was conducted as if Pappano had a bus to catch, but thereafter things settled down, off-stage – or rather arena – brass sounding utterly resplendent in the act finale. One might have had quibbles here and there, but save for an unfortunate lapse of tension towards the end of the fourth act – it really must be maintained here, lest the Berlioz nay-sayers have their day in court over alleged ‘longueurs’ – there was much to enjoy, not least a vividly pictorial Royal Hunt and Storm, suffused also with erotic longing.

Of course, those of us who have heard Sir Colin Davis conduct the opera will never forget the experience: a performance far more alert to Berlioz’s formal imperatives, in which never, not once, did the dramatic, Gluckian tensian sag, but sadly, it is not logistically possible for every performance one hears to emanate from the hands of the world’s greatest Berlioz interpreter. The best stomachs, to misquote Voltaire, are not necessarily those that reject all food. Pappano more often than not did a good job, considerably better than at the staged performance I saw. And the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House played magnificently throughout, even on the occasions when its direction proved a little misguided.

The major problem with a number of the sung performances remained the level not only of French pronunciation, but French style. The latter is not monolithic of course, and it is no bad thing to have preconceptions challenged, but singing Berlioz as if he were Verdi simply does not pass muster, especially if pronunciation is all over the place. (Incidentally, the lack of comment by many writers on this crucial aspect should really be a matter for concern. If English-language critics simply cannot hear when the French language is being distorted, even butchered, they should probably leave Berlioz well alone.) There was a broad spectrum, of course: two singers who again covered themselves in glory were Ed Lyon as Hylas, his song deceptively simple and touching, and Anna Caterina Antonacci as Cassandre. If there were times when the orchestra threatened to overwhelm the latter’s voice, it never did, and that struggle is surely expressive of the drama. Relieved of McVicarisms, Antonacci channelled all of her musico-dramatic energies into a searing portrayal of the doomed prophetess. Even as a little boy reading the ancient legends, Cassandra was for me a figure of empathy; here, her predicament and nobility of spirit were searingly portrayed in a performance that would have nothing whatsoever to fear from comparison with Davis’s Petra Lang. Ironically, Eva-Maria Westbroek’s Didon, if hardly an epitome of French style, came alive far more dramatically than on stage. There was now a proper sense of a woman scorned, of righteous fury. Bryan Hymel’s Enée, however, continues to lack not only correct, or even feasible, pronunciation, but also refulgence of tone. If only, Jonas Kaufmann had been fit to sing. At times, alas, Hymel sounded like a parody of Jon Vickers Perhaps others can more readily overlook the odd mispronunciations, also a characteristic of Fabio Capitanucci’s Chorèbe, but they surely ought at least to have difficulties with the strangulated tone and the crude, Verdi-like delivery. Vignettes were often well taken. Ji-Min Park’s Iopas was sung beautifully, if one could ignore the lack of ease with the language. And small though the part may be, Pamela Helen Stephen’s Hécube somehow managed blood-curdlingly to capture the attention, as she and others recoiled at the death of Laocoön.

Aside from the second act finale, when the women experienced slight intonational problems, the choral singing was excellent too. Not quite a match, perhaps for Davis’s London Symphony Chorus – is there a chorus anywhere that has sung more Berlioz? – but impressive nevertheless.  As an introduction to Berlioz’s extraordinary opera, this could hardly have failed to impress. Even for those of us who have known Les Troyens for a while, it remained an inspiring, if in some respects flawed, experience. Both the Proms and the Royal Opera should be congratulated for their efforts in bringing the work to a wider audience.

Les Troyens, Royal Opera, 8 July 2012

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Cassandre – Anna Caterina Antonacci

Chorèbe – Fabio Capitanucci
Enée – Bryan Hymel
Didon – Eva-Maria Westbroek
Narbal – Brindley Sherratt
Anna – Hanna Hipp
Ascagne – Barbara Senator
Priam – Robert Lloyd
Hécube – Pamela Helen Stephen
Ghost of Hector – Jihoon Kim
Panthée – Ashley Holland
Hélénus – Ji Hyun Kim
Greek Captain – Lukas Jakobski
Trojan Soldier – Daniel Grice
Iopas – Ji-Min Park
First Soldier – Adrian Clarke
Second Soldier – Jeremy White
Hylas – Ed Lyon

Sir David McVicar (director)

Leah Hausman (associate director)
Es Devlin (set designs)
Moritz Junge (costumes)
Wolfgang Göbbel (lighting)
Andrew George (choreography and movement)

Royal Opera Chorus and Extra Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor)

It would be difficult not even to feel a little grateful for one’s first opportunity to see The Trojans in the theatre. By the same token, save for the very fact of that experience, it would be difficult to come up with a single instance in which Sir Colin Davis’s 2003 Proms performances were not superior. The Royal Opera’s new production is alleged to have some connection to the Olympic Games; the only connection I can think of is of large sums of money being ill-advisedly spent.

The chief villain here, for the performances are certainly not without merit, is the director, Sir David McVicar. Whether the knighthood has gone to his head, whether he is overworked, or whether he simply has no interest in Berlioz’s opera, something has gone terribly wrong here. Or perhaps better, nothing has gone right. Some of McVicar’s earlier work was very good indeed – I think especially of his Turn of the Screw for ENO – but more recently, it has been difficult to discern much beyond bread and circuses, an alleged theatrical imperative ‘to put on a show’, ‘to entertain’, taking precedence over any tedious requirements to have an idea or two. (In an opera of the scope and length of The Trojans, a dizzying three might be thought advisable.)

There is, I suppose, a ‘concept’ of sorts, namely setting the work – though would one know, if one were not told? – at the time of the Crimean War. Yet that is it, and I cannot for the life of me work out what the mere setting – an old, increasingly tired McVicar updating to the time of composition – tells us about the work, nor even what The Trojans tells us about the Crimean War. The set for the first part looks like something designed for a West End musical, doubtless testament to a great deal of skill on the part of Es Devlin, but to what end? There is, of course, a great deal of ‘theatrical’ busy-ness, unnecessary extras all over the place, children in particular making an unpardonable noise over the score, as if the cast were not large enough already. As for the horse and the bizarre iron man at the end, there is something quite repellent about the resort to pointless and doubtless extremely costly ‘special effects’; the ghost of Francesca Zambello’s hapless Don Giovanni, which we had all believed put out of our misery for good, is summoned in the silly use of fire at the end of the second and fifth acts with respect to the two ‘machines’. McVicar seems to have far more in common with Meyerbeer’s ‘effect without cause’ – at least if one believes Wagner – than with Berlioz’s world of fantasy, let alone the nobility inherited from Gluck. Indeed, I cannot imagine an approach less suited to an heir of Gluck. As for the mismatch between pseudo-realism and the requirements of myth, it was well-nigh impossible so much as to discern that the problem had even registered with those responsible. Carthage is vaguely ‘ethnic’. Perhaps the intention – I am being charitable – was to criticise orientalism; what we see instead is as clear an instantiation of orientalism as one could imagine, ‘exotic’ pageantry a poor substitute for sympathy, let alone engagement. Even theatrical expertise is thrown out of the window in the fifth act, when, following the departure of Enée, Didon’s outpourings take place in front of a dismal curtain, to enable extensive scene-changing to take place. And then, there are the horrors of Andrew George’s choreography. I am not sure I have ever seen anything quite so catastrophically inept, certainly nothing so insultingly unfitted to a musico-dramatic masterpiece, as the all-purpose writhing on the floor to which the ladies – and we – were subjected. I can readily imagine greater dramatic tension in a ladies’ sewing circle than George and McVicar were able to summon up for the followers of Cassandre. It seemed of rather more interest to them, if hardly of any greater dramatic import to us, to ensure that comely male dancers would display more flesh with their every appearance.

Singing, may the gods be thanked, fared better. Pick of the bunch was for me Anna Caterina Antonacci’s Cassandre. I can imagine others thinking differently and thinking her portrayal over-acted. However, the wild intensity of her account, seemingly quite dissociated from the trivia elsewhere on stage, pointed to the possibilities another production might have brought. Had a director been serious about engagement with an Oriental ‘Other’ and its strange – to us – world of prophecies and rituals, Antonacci’s Cassandre would have been the perfect place to start. Eva-Maria Westbroek’s Didon was heartfelt, sympathetic, accomplished, if not quite on the level of some past assumptions of the role. Hanna Hipp, after a slightly uncertain part, grew in stature as Anna, the heroine’s sister; there are a voice and a stage presence here with great potential to go far. Ed Lyon has little to do as Hylas, but what he does, in that gorgeous fifth-act song, is delectable to a degree; there was also a sense of French style here far from ever-present elsewhere. Brindley Sherratt’s Narbal and Ji-Min Park’s Iopas made impressive contributions, the former an excellent demonstration of strength in a character role. Likewise, the stars of Pamela Helen Stephen and Robert Lloyd shine brightly if briefly as the royal pair of Hécube and Priam. Lloyd’s French, both linguistically and stylistically, put to shame the dismal efforts of Fabio Capitanucci as Chorèbe. (French is a notoriously difficult language to sing, but I cannot recall hearing worse than that.) Bryan Hymel’s Enée fared little better in that respect, sorry though one felt for him in a situation when everyone was doubtless ruing the absence of Jonas Kaufmann. His tone was often dry, often strangulated, but there were moments when something freer emerged, even if the style sounded far more appropriate to nineteenth-century Italian repertoire than to Berlioz.

For much of the first part, the same could have been said of Sir Antonio Pappano’s conducting, despite the magnificent efforts of the orchestra. Indeed, the emphasis on display, seemingly ignorant of or uninterested in the legacy of Gluck, fitted all too well with McVicar’s production, and was often mercilessly hard-driven. There was undeniable skill, yet it was misplaced. However, from the third act onwards, and particularly during the fourth, Pappano showed himself far more sensitive to the delicacy that is at least as much a hallmark of Berlioz’s orchestral writing as his grander statements. The enchanted love-music at the close of the fourth act was, if not a match for Sir Colin’s performances, ravishing on its own terms.  The chorus, if on occasion a little rough-hewn, was for the most part a powerful music and dramatic presence.

Alas, the strengths of many of the musical performances could not distract one from the emptiness of the staging. Were it not for the half-hearted ‘updating’, the mindlessness of the production might have ‘Made for the Met’ stamped upon it. As it is, Vienna, Milan, and San Francisco will have to share the co-production woes of this crowd-pleasing extravaganza. (By the way, someone should inform McVicar that Mercury’s wings should be on his helmet or his shoes, not his back.) Is it not time perhaps for someone who has become almost a house director at Covent Garden to be used a little more sparingly? Imagine what a director – Stefan Herheim, for instance – more willing to engage with a work’s intellectual concerns and context might have done with The Trojans, and then ask whether this glorified pageant, with 'movement' that travelled so far beyond embarrassing that English vocabulary has yet to catch up, were more deserving of association with the vulgar, hubristic nonsense of the Olympics than with the fantastic subtlety of Berlioz.

Rusalka, Royal Opera, 27 February 2012

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Nymphs and Rusalka (Camilla Nylund)
Images: Royal Opera/Clive Barda

Rusalka – Camilla Nylund
Foreign Princess – Petra Lang
Prince – Bryan Hymel
Ježibaba – Agnes Zwierko
Vodník – Alan Held
Huntsman – Daniel Grice
Gamekeeper – Gyula Orendt
Kitchen Boy – Ilse Eerens
Wood Nymphs – Anna Devin, Justina Gringyte, Madeleine Pierard
Mourek – Claire Talbot

Jossi Wieler, Sergio Morabito (directors)
Samantha Seymour (revival director)
Barbara Ehnes (set designs)
Anja Rabes (costumes)
Olaf Freese (lighting)
Chris Kondek (video designs)
Altea Garrido (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Yannick Nézet-Seguin (conductor)


It is a truth universally acknowledged that an interesting opera production will be met with incomprehension and lazy, philistine hostility by vast swathes of the audience in many, perhaps most, of the world’s ‘major’ houses, a truth that renders one all the more grateful for the Royal Opera showing the courage to stage this new – to London – production of Rusalka. That is not to say that any production meeting with hostility qualifies as interesting; some, of course, are simply not very good, or worse. Yet, it seems that only the most vapid, unchallenging – and yes, I realise that the word ‘challenging’ is a red rag to self-appointed ‘traditionalist’ bulls – of productions will garner approval from the ranks of the petite bourgeoisie. The boorish behaviour of those who booed this Rusalka equates more or less precisely to the sort of antics they would condemn if they occurred on the street – the work of ‘hoodlums’, the ‘lower classes’, the ‘uneducated’, ‘rioters’, ‘immigrants’, et al. – yet somehow unwillingness or inability to think, the fascistic refusal to consider an alternative point of view, the threat of mob violence, becomes perfectly acceptable when one has paid the asking price for what they consider to be their rightful ‘entertainment’. They would no more bother to understand, to explore, to question, Rusalka were it depicted in the most ’traditional’ of fashions, of course, but they explode at the mere suggestion that a work and a performance might ask something of them. For, as John Stuart Mill famously noted, ‘Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.’ Wagner’s ‘emotionalisation of the intellect’ – ‘emotionalisation’, not abdication! – remains as foreign a country to them as it did to the Jockey Club thugs who prevented Tannhäuser from being performed in Paris; at least one might claim that the latter were having to deal with challenging ‘new music’, Zukunftsmuik, even. Here they were faced with an opera by Dvořák, first performed in 1901, in a staging that would barely raise an eyebrow in most German house or festivals. (The production, by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito, hails initially from the Salzburg Festival.) It would be interesting to know how many of those booing had selfishly, uncomprehendingly disrupted a recent Marriage of Figaro in the same house by erupting into laughter at the very moment Count Almaviva sought forgiveness from the Countess. (There was also, bizarrely, to be heard at the opening of the third act a shouted call from a member of the audience for a ‘free’ Quebec.)

Rusalka, Prince (Bryan Hymel), and Foreign Princess (Petra Lang)

What, then, was it that incurred the wrath of the Tunbridge Wells beau monde? I can only assume that it was for the most part Barbara Ehnes’s sets, since the stage direction (presumably a good part of it from revival director, Samantha Seymour) was more often that not quite in harmony with the urgings and suggestions of Dvořák’s score. (The hostile rarely if ever listen to the music; at best, they follow the surtitles and bridle at deviations from what they imagine the stage directions might have been.) Even modern dress is mixed with a sense of the magical, the environment of Ježibaba the witch a case in point. There is even a cat, played both in giant form by Claire Talbot, and in real form, by – a cat, ‘Girlie’. What is real, and what is not? Collision between spirit and human worlds is compellingly brought to life, the devils and demons of a heathen past, including Slavonic river spirits (rusalki) come to tempt, to question, to lay bare the delusions of moralistic, bigoted modernity. Just as modern ‘love’ and marriage’ quickly boil down to money and power, so Vodník the water goblin finds his tawdry place of temptation whilst issuing his moralistic warnings. (Did the audience see itself reflected in the mirror? Perhaps, though I doubt that it even bothered to think that far.) Our ideas of Nature having been hopelessly compromised by what we have become, we ‘naturally’ see the world of rusalki from within the comforts of our hypocritical bordello. Who is exploiting whom, and who is ‘impure’? The souls of women who have committed suicide and of stillborn children – there are various accounts of who the rusalki actually are – or those who shun them in life and in death? Wieler and Morabito do not offer agitprop; rather they allow us to ask these questions of the work, and of ourselves. But equally importantly, they permit a sense of wonder to suffuse what remains very much a fairy tale, realism coexisting with, being corrected by, something older, more mysterious, more dangerous, and perhaps ultimately liberating. Chris Kondek’s video designs, not unlike the hydroelectric dam of Patrice Chéreau’s ‘Centenary’ Ring, both suggest Nature and through their necessary technological apparatus remind us of our distance from any supposed ‘Golden Age’, just as the opening scene will inevitably suggest to us Alberich, the Rhinemaidens, and the power of the erotic. (Wagner used the term liebesgelüste.)

Musical performances were equally strong, in many respects signalling a triumph for Covent Garden. First and foremost should be mentioned Yannick Nézet-Séguin, making his Royal Opera debut. The orchestra played for him as if for an old friend, offering a luscious, long-breathed Romanticism that made it sound a match – as, on its best days, it is – for any orchestra in the world. Magic was certainly to be heard: the sound of Dvořák’s harps again took me back to Das Rheingold – and to Bernard Haitink’s tenure at the house. Ominous fate was brought into being with similar conviction and communicative skill. Above all, Nézet-Séguin conveyed both a necessary sense of direction and a love for the score’s particular glories. If there are times when Dvořák might benefit from a little more, at least, of Janáček’s extraordinary dramatic concision, it would take a harder heart than mine to eschew the luxuriance on offer both in score and performance. Crucially, staging and performance interacted so that the contrast between worlds on stage intensified that in the pit, and vice versa.

Ježibaba (Agnes Zwierko)
and her cat, Mourek (Claire Talbot)

Camilla Nylund shone in the title role. At times, especially during the first act, one might have wondered whether her voice would prove to have the necessary heft, but it did, and Nylund proved herself an accomplished actress into the bargain. Bryan Hymel may not be the most exciting of singers; the voice is not especially variegated. However, he proved dependable, and often a great deal more, the final duet as moving as one could reasonably expect. Alan Held was everything a Vodník should be: baleful, threatening, sincere, and yet perhaps not quite. The Spirit of the Lake may well have his own agenda – and certainly did here. Agnes Zwierko played the witch Ježibaba with wit, menace, and a fine sense of hypocrisy that brought the closed environments of Janáček’s dramas to mind. The four Jette Parker Young Artists participating, nymphs Anna Devin, Madeleine Perard, and Justina Gringyte, and Huntsman Daniel Grice all acquitted themselves with glowing colours. Indeed, Grice’s solo, enveloped by miraculous Freischütz-like horns from the orchestra, movingly evoked a world of lost or never-existent woodland innocence. Last but not least, Petra Lang’s Foreign Princess emerged, like Wagner’s Ortrud, as in some respects the most truthful, as well as the most devious, character of all. Splendidly sung and acted, Lang’s was a performance truly to savour. But then, this was a performance as a whole that was far more than the sum of its parts, a triumphant return to form for Covent Garden with its first ever staging of the work.