Orfeo (Rossi), Royal Opera, 23 October 2015

Photographs by Stephen Cummiskey; copyright: Royal Opera and Shakespeare's Globe.

 

 

Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

(sung in English, as Orpheus)

Orfeo – Mary Bevan/Siobhan Stagg

Euridice – Louise Alder
Aristeo – Caitlin Hulcup
Endimione/Caronte – Philip Smith
Venere – Sky Ingram
Amore – Keri Fuge
Satyr/Pluto – Graeme Broadbent
Giove/Aikippe/Momo – Mark Milhofer
Aegea – Verena Gunz
Talia/Himeneo/Clotho – Lauren Fagan
Euphrosyne/Lachesis – Jennifer Davis
Aeglea/Atropos/Bacco – Emily Edmonds

Keith Warner (director)

Nicky Shaw (designs)
Karl Alfred Schreiner (choreography)

Orchestra of the Early Opera Company

Christian Curnyn (conductor)

 

 

 

Romain Rolland crops up in all manner of musical situations. His appearance here is owed to his discovery in 1888, in Rome, of the music for Luigi Rossi’s Orfeo; it would subsequently feature in his doctoral thesis, ‘Les Origines du théâtre lyrique moderne. Histoire de l'opéra avant Lully et Scarlatti.’ As well it should, and thank goodness he did. For this opera, long regarded as ‘historically important’, is also – the two do not always go together – a very attractive, interesting work for modern audiences too. It is ‘historically important’ both musicologically – the first opera written for Paris, with all that entails – and more politically, as part of Cardinal Mazarin’s Italianisation of the French court, on the eve of the Frondes. Moreover, in its musical quality and variety too it questions some of what remain the more commonly held teleologies of musical history, which is all to the good.

 

Euridice (Louise Alder) and Aristeo (Caitlin Hulcup)

None of those matters is especially evident in Keith Warner’s production, which concentrates not upon the metatheatrical but upon the immediate theatricalities of presenting an entertaining and often surprising three hours in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse from Francesco Buti’s challengingly wide-ranging libretto. There will always be losses – at least in a work worth performing – in such an enterprise, but I suspect most of us can live, especially in a production not really concerned with such matters, with the loss of the Prologue and Epilogue. So out go the large-scale – twenty-four French solider – choruses of military victory, Mercury’s promise of immortality to the young Louis XIV, the god’s post hoc explanation that Orpheus’s lyre represents the fleur-de-lys, and so on. What we have is a non-pedantic, non-fetishistic period-ish look – not unreasonable, given the location – which concentrates upon creation of character, interaction of characters, and a good deal, perhaps too much, of unsuspected comedy. Christopher Cowell’s excellent English translation – if we must have one, it should be good – perhaps errs on the ‘humorous’ side too, but that is more a matter of taste than anything else. Warner and Cowell, along with Nicky Shaw’s sumptuous costume designs and, of course, the hard, often overlooked work of the costume makers from the Royal Opera House and Shakespeare’s Globe, bring alive a version and view of the work that may be partial – what is not? – but which, by the same token, and in far smaller surroundings than the Palais Royal gives a sense of its multi-faceted nature.

 

Satyr (Graeme Broadbent)

I have it on good authority that the Playhouse acoustic is a nightmare for singers. One would not have known, given committed performances from all concerned. Mary Bevan’s indisposition left her acting the title role with Siobhan Stagg singing from the gallery (with the orchestra). The ‘compromise’ did not come across as such at all, at least to my eyes and ears; it offered musico-theatrical commitment of a very high order and introduced – to me, at least – a soprano of considerable musical gifts, showing clarity and warmth to be anything but antithetical. The same could be said of Louise Alder’s Euridice, here allotted a larger role than one often encounters, not least because of the business involving Aristeus’s love for her and Venus’s attempts to further that forlorn prospect. Alder is, I hear, a Rosenkavalier Sophie, and, on the basis of this, is likely to prove more interesting in the part than many ‘whiter’ exponents. Caitlin Hulcup’s portrayal of Aristeus showed an artist apparently born for trouser roles (although doubtless not just for them), with a winning, convincing line in melancholy vulnerability. There was, crucially in an opera with so many duets and ensembles, a true sense of theatrical company from all concerned, with sensible doublings – and more – adopted. Standing out from the rest of the cast for me were Sky Ingram’s sexy, self-aware Venus, Keri Fuge's lively, mischievous Cupid, Graeme Broadbent’s earthy Satyr, and Mark Milhofer’s comedic, Cavalli-esque turn as Alkippe (Venus as crone).

 

Venere (Sky Ingram)

 

 

The acoustic also seemed to favour the Orchestra of the Early Opera Company, warmer and far less variable in intonation than it had been for the Royal Opera’s Monteverdi Orfeo at the Roundhouse. Players and conductor, Christian Curnyn, seemed in their element, the continuo group rich and varied, and the strings sounding lighter of foot and considerably less parsimonious of expression than one generally hears with ‘period groups’. Curnyn’s tempi seemed both sensible and dramatically quickening (perhaps in more than one sense). The orchestra was very small: not remotely on the scale of the French court’s Vingt-quatre Violons du Roi, but then the performing space was not the Palais Royal either. The authenticke lobby makes it up as it goes along, of course. There is nothing especially wrong with that, except if the claim of ‘authenticity’, be made, overtly or covertly. However, imagine the outcry from the period ayatollahs if a modern-instrument performance were so flagrantly to disregard antiquarian circumstances. There would certainly be calls to send a latter-day Raymond Leppard to The Hague (‘crimes evincing a semblance of humanity’ perhaps). Except there would not, since the chances of our being permitted to hear such a performance are – well: choose your own absurdist simile.

Amore (Keri Fuge)

 

 

This was, all in all, an excellent evening, yet I could not help but wonder what delights a larger-scale, arguably more ‘authentic’ performance and production – sets of parks, gardens, caves, Hades made quite an impression in 1647 – might have brought on the Royal Opera’s main stage itself. (Not that I resented the opportunity to spend an evening in this beautifully reimagined playhouse.) Perhaps with a newly-commissioned reorchestration. Berio would once have been the man for it; there are many composers who would surely relish the opportunity. Such dreams aside, however, three cheers to the Royal Opera for expanding its repertoire in such a stimulating direction.

Médée, English National Opera, 15 February 2013

The Coliseum

(sung in English, as Medea)

Médée – Sarah Connolly

Jason – Jeffrey Francis
Créon – Brindley Sherratt
Créuse – Katherine Manley
Oronte – Roderick Williams
Nérine – Rhian Lois
Cléone – Aolfe O’Sullivan
Arcas – Oliver Dunn
Corinthian/Jealousy – John McMunn
Italian Woman/Phantom II – Sophie Junker
Corinthian/Argive – Jeremy Budd
Cupid’s captives – Aolfe O’Sullivan, Sophie Junker, John McMunn
Sons of Médée and Jason – Ewan Guthrie, Harry Collins

Sir David McVicar (director)

Bunny Christie (designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Lynne Page (choreography)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Jörn Andresen)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Christian Curnyn (conductor)

 

Médée was Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s sole work written for the Académie Royale de Musique, the legacy of Lully’s operatic monopoly having died hard. Though not a popular hit, unlike, say, Alcide and Didon, the theme of Thomas Corneille’s libretto and Charpentier’s response thereto almost certainly proving too much, too ‘immoral’ for many Parisian sensibilities, the opera certainly proved a critical success upon its first performances in December 1693. Sébastien de Brossard, priest, music theorist, and composer, went so far as to describe it as ‘the one opera without exception in which one can learn those things most essential to good composition.’ Louis XIV, erstwhile avid Lulliste, was impressed, complimenting Charpentier personally upon the opera, whilst the king’s brother, Philippe, Duke of Orléans, ‘Monsieur’, and eldest son, Louis, the Grand Dauphin, both attended several performances. Though hailed by the critics on its first outing, Médée seems to have received no further performances at the Paris Opéra after 1694.

 

Does it deserve better this time? Yes, I have no doubt that, even if Rameau were unaware of it – the evidence seems tantalisingly unclear – that it is nevertheless not only a fine tragedy in its own right but, in retrospect, a crucial stepping stone on the teleological path that takes us not only to Rameau but to Gluck, and thence of course to Mozart, Berlioz, and Wagner. Alas, the cast was left to shoulder the burden on its own on this occasions, receiving scant support from either the pit or the staging. So whilst some excellent singing will doubtless have won a few welcome converts to the cause of tragédie lyrique, much of what was seen and a typically perverse conception of so-called ‘period style’ from the conductor – do conductor and director ever stop to consider how irreconcilable their stances are with each other? – will also have had many wonder what the fuss was about. My enthusiasm for the work was certainly not shared by a couple of friends to whom I later spoke; given the circumstances, I cannot say that I blame them.

 

The lion’s share of the responsibility should be lain at the door of Sir David McVicar. Taking up the recent tendencies in his stagings and extending them, at times to the point of absurdity, what we witnessed was a camp monstrosity, relocated to the 1940s for no apparent reason, save to permit an endless display of military uniforms, secretarial staff, and the dancing boys and girls within them. A point might well have been made about war and wartime exigency, but it was not; the updating seemed merely a matter of arbitrary ‘colour’. The nadir was perhaps reached with the arrival on stage of a large pink aeroplane at the end of the second act, whilst Cupid darted around as a nightclub singer, an unfortunate reminiscence, even if unintentional, of the recent ENO Giulio Cesare.

 

Spectacle could perfectly well have been harnessed to dramatic effect, just as it might have been in late seventeenth-century France; however, it was not. I was put in mind of Wagner’s furious accusation in Opera and Drama against Meyerbeer; opera had degenerated into an ‘outrageously coloured, historico-romantic, devilish-religious, sanctimonious-lascivious, risqué-sacred, saucy-mysterious, sentimental-swindling, dramatic farrago’. The only moments of real drama emerged as if by default, the endless comings and goings on stage thinning out for a while, and Charpentier’s music just about emerging on its own terms. When that happened, however, it did not last for long, the brief moment of concentration upon Médée in the third act giving way to the bizarre appearance of hellish creatures who, in a non-mythological context, seemed more like writhing refugees from a second-rate episode of Dr Who than tragic figures of dread. The dance routines, however well executed, seemed tone-deaf to Charpentier’s music and quite unaware of the dramatic role that dance should play in this repertoire. Some time immersed in a seventeenth-century manual, if only to reject its prescriptions, might have been well spent.

 

If opera is held to be mere ‘entertainment’ – and not very entertaining entertainment at that – then there seems little case for public subsidy at all; if treated more seriously, more daringly, more provocatively, more shockingly, then it justifies itself handsomely as public discourse. German houses tend to understand that. Our London houses show some understanding of that from time to time; if only McVicar, undoubtedly a master of his craft in terms of having singers and actors do what he would, might shed the disturbing anti-intellectualism that has pervaded so much of his recent work and go beyond mere crowd-pleasing spectacle. Rightly or wrongly, the Prologue was omitted entirely.

 

Christian Curnyn’s conducting will doubtless be lauded in certain quarters. There was a far from unimpressive ebb and flow to it, the boundaries between air, chorus, and recitative properly brought into question, even dissolved. That undoubted achievement could readily have formed the basis of a fine performance. The great pity, however, just as in Giulio Cesare last autumn, was ‘period’ obsession: puritanical elimination of vibrato, refusal to allow the strings to sing, indeed to sound like orchestral sings as opposed to members of a village folk band, and what sounded very much to me – I could not see the pit – like employment of different, so-called ‘Baroque’ bows. There were moments, especially solo moments, when the ENO strings seemed to regain control, but they really should not have to play with both hands metaphorically tied behind their backs. If we are to have the rare, priceless advantage of modern strings, then for goodness sake let them be used. The blend with recorders was often problematic, as it always tends to be; modern flutes would have been a far better choice. Trumpets and a variety of drums alleviated the worst of the vibrato-less tyranny.

 

What of the singers? The Mercure galant enthused of Marie Le Rochois, a veteran of Lully’s 1686 Armide, to which score and libretto make reference and allusion on numerous occasions:
 

The passions are so vivid, particularly in Médée, that when this role was but declaimed it did not fail to make a great impression on the listeners. Mlle Rochois, one of the best singers in the world and who performs with warmth, finesse and intelligence, shone in this role and made the most of its beauties. All of Paris is enchanted...

How would Sarah Connolly match up? Very well indeed. There were moments earlier on when I wondered whether the role was quite suited to her voice, some of its richness lost on account of the range. However, from the point of her summoning the spirits onwards, such doubts were triumphantly banished. The part became Connolly’s, in dramatic and musical terms equally; there was no doubt about where one’s sympathies lay, however horrific her crime. Katherine Manley’s Créuse offered an excellent foil, necessarily a poor second to Médée, yet beautifully sung and acted, and capable of eliciting a degree or two of sympathy herself. Likewise Roderick Williams’s typically subtle, intelligent portrayal of Oronte, though as in every case, one could not help but wonder what he might have sounded like in French, Christopher Cowell’s English translation making a good stab at an impossible task. Brindley Sherratt’s Créon offered a well-judged blend of hubris and haplessness. Many of the singers in smaller roles shone too, for instance Rhian Lois and Aoife O’Sullivan as the confidantes of Médee and Créuse. Choral singing was excellent too. The sole fly in the ointment was Jeffrey Francis’s quite unheroic Jason. There may be a good case for deconstruction of heroism in this case, but there needs to be a degree of construction in the first place. The role sat unhelpfully for his voice, but stage presence was lacking too.

 

Three cheers are certainly due to ENO for this foray into pre-Ramellian tragédie lyrique. Would it not be a wonderful thing to hear some Lully next? Or indeed, to move forward to Gluck? Let such further explorations, however, be the province of a director who would take form and drama with but a modicum of greater seriousness.

Giulio Cesare in Egitto, English National Opera, 1 October 2012

The Coliseum

(sung in English, as Julius Caesar)

Giulio Cesare – Lawrence Zazzo

Curio – George Humphreys
Cornelia – Patricia Bardon
Sesto – Daniela Mack
Cleopatra – Anna Christy
Tolomeo – Tim Mead
Achilla – Andrew Craig Brown
Nireno – James Laing

Fabulous Dance Theatre – Saju Hari, Karolina Kraczkowska, Johannes Langholf, Louise Mochia, Erik Nevin, Emmanuel Obeya, Keir Patrick, Rachel Poirier, Raquel Gulatero Soriano, Louise Tanoto

Michael Keegan-Dolan (director, choreography)

Andrew Lieberman (set designs)
Doey Luthi (costumes)
Adam Silverman (lighting)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Christian Curnyn (conductor)

Julius Caesar returns to the Coliseum for its second production, succeeding that by John Copley, conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras, with Dame Janet Baker in the title role. (It remains available in both CD and DVD.) There is much to enjoy, especially vocally, and though Michael Keegan-Dolan’s production is in some respects baffling, I doubt that it would prove unduly off-putting to anyone. Keegan-Dolan ultimately seems far more of a choreographer than a dancer. Opinions will doubtless differ on whether ‘interpretative’ dance of pretty much every number adds something or becomes wearisome. Some instances work better than others; though the work of Keegan-Dolan’s Fabulous Dance Theatre is very good on its own terms, some of the movement can nevertheless tend towards silliness. My concern is more that it tends to be a substitute for presenting a more fully-formed production, though doubtless the practice’s advocates would claim that dance in itself is a perfectly acceptable form of operatic direction. Likewise images such as dead crocodiles and giraffes do not compensate for a clearer vision of what the opera might be about, or even what is happening. Too often, especially during the first act, the concern seems more to be to show off the bodies of dancers and singers – white vests and tight-fitting trousers do the trick – rather than to present a credible or even involving drama. Gun shots here and there are not really an adequate substitute for a Baroque sense of the fantastic.   

That brings us to a more general problem involving Handelian opera seria. As Jonathan Keates put it in his programme note, ‘At the heart of Baroque opera lies an unresolved tension between past and present. On the one hand its preferred subject-matter offers us an idealised vision of classical antiquity ... On the other lies a timeless world of intimate personal relationships, a private, confessional universe where ordinary emotions – rage, desire, jealousy, remorse – expose these very same heroes and heroines to our scrutiny as ordinary men and women.’ In a sense, that approaches the problem many of us continue to experience with Handel’s operas at least. There seems little real interest in the ‘antique’ setting, but also little that enables us to relate to the characters as flesh and blood. Presumably that brings part of the motivation for a ‘different’, dance-based approach, but I cannot help but think that a more thorough-going reimagination – call it Regietheater, if you will, but there is no especial need to confine oneself with the implications that may present – might have enabled us to care more about what was happening on stage.

Christian Curnyn’s resolutely vibrato-free approach will doubtless find many supporters; so does hanging. To me, it seemed a pity to spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar, since thin string tone detracted from what was for the most part a sensibly, attractively paced reading. Recitatives did not outstay their welcome, partly a matter of considerable pruning – a few arias had to go too – but more a matter of keen dramatic handling (pun unintentional). Recorders do not blend very well with modern strings, even when the latter are played so as to sound as close as possible to their forebears, but there was a great deal to relish in the splendid performance of the ENO Orchestra’s woodwind section. Some delicious oboe and bassoon playing brought to mind the instrumentation of Handel’s dramatic oratorios, Saul – the Witch of Endor scene – in particular. (If only we might see that staged – and of course benefit from the inspired choral writing, absent from Handel’s operas.)  

Lawrence Zazzo offered a dazzling performance in the title role, tender moments every bit as impressive as quick-fire coloratura. Zazzo showed quite how far we have come from the days of counter-tenor hooting, even though I retain an heretical liking for transposition (remember Fischer-Dieskau), if only for the sake of vocal variety. Tim Mead’s venomously spitting Tolomeo proved an impressive foil. I am afraid I could not relate to the vocal character of Anna Christy’s Cleopatra; though well enough sung in abstract term,; the role seems to demand something richer than a soubrette. (Valerie Masterson on the Mackerras recording and still more so the wonderful Tatiana Troyanos for Karl Richter show how it can be done.) Daniela Mack’s Sesto was inexplicably portrayed as a girl – the programme actually has: ‘Sesto, daughter of Pompey and Cornelia’ – but Mack overcame that weird directorial handicap as impressively as one could have reason to expect. The situation was rendered all the more confusing by the counter-tenor-like voice of Patricia Bardon’s Cornelia. Following some unattractive scooping in her first aria, she recovered well, but I had to check the programme to assure myself that this was not a falsettist who looked uncommonly convincing in women’s clothes. It was a pity, if understandable for reasons of timing, that Andrew Craig Brown’s Achillas lost two out of his three arias, for in his first, he revealed a dark, dangerous voice eminently suited to the role, and of which I should be keen to hear more.

Brian Trowell’s 1978 English translation is a model of its kind. Leaving aside arguments as to whether translation might be necessary or even desirable in an age of surtitles, this vernacular version presents the words clearly, musically, and without drawing undue attention to itself. If the truth be told, translating Handel’s operas into English does relatively little harm; Handel writes similarly whether setting Italian or English, and this is not, to put it diplomatically, Mozart setting Da Ponte. As I mentioned above, however, I wonder whether ENO might consider staging the odd dramatic oratorio – by which, however, I certainly do not mean a revival of Deborah Warner’s misguided Messiah production.

Castor et Pollux, English National Opera, 24 October 2011

The Coliseum

(sung in English, as Castor and Pollux)

Telaïre (Sophie Bevan) and Castor (Allan Clayton)
Image: Charlotte van Berckel

Telaïre – Sophie Bevan
Phébé – Laura Tatulescu
Castor – Allan Clayton
Pollux – Roderick Williams
Jupiter – Henry Waddington
High Priest of Jupiter – Andrew Rupp
Mercury/Athlete – Ed Lyon

Barrie Kosky (director)
Katrin Lea Tag (designs)
Franck Evin (lighting)
Ulrich Lenz (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Merry)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Christian Curnyn (conductor)

My first Rameau opera in the theatre – and certainly not out of indifference: even Gluck, Rameau’s great and scandalously-neglected successor, fares better than the composer of Castor et Pollux. In recent years, I have enthusiastically – at least, I hope so – spoken to undergraduates of works such as Hippolyte et Aricie and Le Temple de la gloire, yet have never previously been able to point to actually, existing performance they might attend. ENO has never previously performed an opera by Rameau; the Royal Opera has staged Platée, once. The problem is not England's alone: German houses are little better, and as for Italy, let alone further afield... France, as one might expect, does a little better, though Rameau has been well and truly captured in his homeland by those Pierre Boulez so memorably dubbed ‘specialists in nullity’. There once were exceptions, whether French or foreign: for instance, Roger Désormière, Hans Rosbaud, Sir Antony Lewis, and Raymond Leppard (who conducted Monteverdi but not Rameau at Sadler’s Wells and Glyndebourne, yet led a memorable Dardanus in Paris). Boulez himself conducted Hippolyte et Aricie in concert in 1964. But those days are long distant. Where the music has more recently been performed, it has largely been confined either to those who inclined to unpleasant-sounding pseudo-archaeology, or to those who would trivialise the French Baroque by treating it as merely fanciful spectacle, perhaps to be ‘updated’, but hardly to be taken seriously as drama. I was intrigued, then, to see what Barry Kosky, whose Abu Ghraib-style Iphigénie en Tauride I so greatly admired in Berlin, would make of Castor et Pollux, and also how the ENO Orchestra, ‘Baroque’ bows and flutes notwithstanding, would fare.

Pollux (Roderick Williams) and actors
Image: Alastair Muir

Let us consider the production first. Kosky says many of the right things – and some more questionable things – in a programme interview. In the former camp we read ‘firstly – and as with all of my productions – I have to understand the architecture of the music,’ whilst in the latter, he claims, ‘what you have to do is “de-Frenchify”’ Rameau. The problem concerning the former remark is that, whatever the intent, the architecture rarely comes across in terms of what one sees on stage. Perhaps the greatest problem concerns the ballet music, of which there is a great deal, Rameau taking dance every bit as seriously as Tchaikovsky as a force for dramatic expression. Kosky’s handling works better when the dances are simply the background for something else taking place on stage. However, movement that veered closer to dance – why not collaborate with a ballet company? – tends to be merely embarrassing, the faux disco-dancing in the opening scene an apparent nadir, to be trumped by poor Télaïre’s running round and round the stage in a circle at the end. She even has to continue when the music had stopped, this far from the only instance in which noisy stage business threatens to drown out the music, a strange way of responding to the latter. That is a pity, since Katrin Lea Tag’s designs are stylish, at least, and ought to have provided a setting for the human drama upon which Kosky seems to have wished to focus. (Though here, of course, we come across a perennial problem: what, then, to make of the gods?) The creatures of Hades are weird and wonderful too, a fine example of how one might engender both Baroque fantasy in a modern yet not effete sense.

Image: Alastair Muir

Kosky seems keen to play up the role of the women, Télaïre and Phébé. He praises the 1754 version of the opera – essentially that which is used, though some numbers from Rameau’s earlier score are interpolated – for dealing more interestingly with them. Fair enough, but the extra emphasis placed upon them, that final scene for instance, tends to unbalance the drama, which should probably be more focused upon Castor and Pollux. Perhaps surprisingly, there is no hint of the homoerotic in their relationship – Kosky resolutely avoids that in his Iphigénie en Tauride too – but a great deal of sexual experience for the sisters, much of which comes across as merely silly. A hand emerging from Castor’s burial mound – consider that, Dr Freud – acts as a tool of pleasure for a while, until even the recipient tires of it. (We had done so quite some time before.) Underwear is a particular interest: a couple of actresses have an apparently endless supply, constantly shedding it, only to reveal more underneath. Many others end up walking around aimlessly with underwear around their ankles: at one point, the stage resembles a class for mature potty-training. One would have to be possessed by rather unusual tastes to find any of those goings-on erotic in the slightest. I was left longing either for a more ‘conventional’ production or for the likes of Calixto Bieito.



Castor and Telaïre on the burial mound
Image: Alastair Muir


Christian Curnyn led a lively, varied account of the score, despite a few lapses in ensemble. Dances were well pointed, the drum beat especially welcome. There was rightly no rigid distinction made between air and recitative: in that respect, Rameau is already close to Gluck, to the Mozart of Idomeneo, even to Berlioz. I longed for a little more warmth from the strings: is vibrato that abhorrent an instrument of expression? Eighteenth-century writers certainly did not think so. There was, however, much to enjoy from the woodwind contribution, not least the splendidly Gallic-sounding bassoons. A nod was made to the size of the Coliseum in raising the pit, but the music would have benefited further from a more sizeable band, one of the peculiarities of contemporary Rameau performance being a refusal – financially-motivated? – to recognise the size of orchestra he, let alone modern houses, expected. The singing was, with one exception, excellent, the finest aspect of the performance. That exception was the chorus, which time and time again fell glaringly out of sync with the pit. Whether this were the fault of conductor, chorus, unreasonable directorial demands, or a combination of the three, was difficult to tell, but it was a repeated blemish impossible to ignore.

Mercury (Ed Lyon) and Pollux
Image: Charlotte von Berckel

The soloists, though, managed to make as fine a case for Rameau in English as one has any right to expect, Amanda Holden’s sensitive translation happily assisting. It would be absurd to claim that there is no loss, just as it would be with performances of Racine, Corneille, and Molière, for the vocal writing is so tied not only to the sounds – and endings – of the French language but also to its very particular declamatory style. Yet not only did the cast deliver the words with conviction, we heard a real effort to nudge the English sounds in a way that blended with the notes on the page. Allan Clayton’s Castor sounded as if a true haute-contre, a remarkable achievement by any standards. Roderick Williams was outstanding as ever as Pollux, his tone as seamlessly adapted to the composer’s style as if he were a French bassoonist, his diction beyond reproach. Sophie Bevan and Laura Tatulescu portrayed the sisters as if they had been performing Rameau all their lives, natural ebb and flow hand in hand with dramatic commitment. Ed Lyon surmounted the weird limping handicap of Kosky’s direction to emerge an epitome of vocal style, neither precious nor overblown, but elegant and dramatically ambivalent. Henry Waddington and Andrew Rupp both impressed in their roles too. For once, there really was not a weak link in the cast.

Phébé (Laura Tatulescu), Telaïre, and Pollux
Image: Alastair Muir

Whatever the shortcomings of Kosky’s production, it is a wonderful thing to see – and more importantly, to hear – Rameau at the Coliseum. One can but hope that this will prove a turning point, not only with respect to Rameau but also to predecessors such as Lully and Charpentier. Tragédie lyrique is in so many respects truer than high Baroque opera seria to modern dramatic sensibilities that the current prevalence of the latter, at least in Handelian guise, is mystifying. (It is not, of course, that Handel is not a great composer, but oratorio form generally permitted his musico-dramatic genius to blaze far more strongly.) It would nevertheless be gratifying if future stagings might take more seriously the particularity and ingenuity Ramellian musical construction. Boulez said in an interview prior to the aforementioned concert performance of Hippolyte et Aricie that what he found ‘most interesting’ in the work was ‘the tragic side (not the mythology), together with the choruses and great flexibility of the construction. I love composers who construct their music.’ Messiaen, also present, commented, in what must have sounded very much rather like the proverbial red rag to the bull, ‘Basically, you have very French tastes.’ Messiaen’s star pupil most likely erred in claiming ‘this style of opera’ to be ‘terribly dated’, but a sympathetic approach, both on stage and in the pit, remains vital – in every sense.

After Dido, English National Opera, 16 April 2009

Young Vic Theatre, London

Dido/Sorceress – Susan Bickley
Sailor/Stephen – Eyjólfur Eyjólfsson
Bass – James Gower
Aeneas - Adam Green
Helen (in the bedsit) – Amanda Hale
Second Witch/Jenny – Helen Jarmany
Nell (in the study) – Helena Lymbery
Dido’s Woman/Prologue soloist – Lina Markeby
Anna (in the kitchen) – Sandy McDade
Tenor – Eamonn Mulhall
Henry (in the study) – Dominic Rowan
First Witch – Madeleine Shaw

Katie Mitchell (director)
Vicki Mortimer (designer)
Leo Warner (director of photography)
Philip Gladwell (lighting designer)
Gareth Fry, Carolyn Downing (sound designers)
Pia Furtado (assistant director)
Helena Lymber (artistic associate)

Members of the Orchestra of English National Opera (Janice Graham, Matthew Ward (violins), Amelie Roussel (viola), David Newby (violoncello), Reiko Ichise (viola da gamba), David Miller (lute/baroque guitar))
Christian Curnyn (harpsichord/conductor)

It would be all too easy to fall into the trap of reviewing After Dido as if it were a production of Dido and Aeneas. Such would be a mistake, not least since any reservations one might voice could then be written off as a consequence of having failed to understand the nature of the beast: an opera critic at sea in the world of contemporary theatre. What, then, is After Dido? It is described as ‘a live music and film performance inspired by Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas’ and at its core, at least in one sense, stands a performance of Purcell’s masterpiece: ‘Tristan und Isolde in a pint pot,’ as Raymond Leppard so memorably once described it. However, Dido and Aeneas is not produced on stage; After Dido is. This tells, in the words of the publicity material, ‘three contemporary urban stories of grief, lost love, departure, and death,’ which unfold in self-contained locations on different sections of the Young Vic stage. But After Dido is also to be found in ‘the making of’ these stories.

This ‘making of’ is not really a story in itself, after the manner of, say, Ariadne auf Naxos, yet it acquires a dramatic thrust of its own, not least since it is with these ‘workings’ that the piece opens, in the prologue – Dido’s own Prologue is, of course missing – to a radio broadcast, in which we hear recorded snatches of other items of Purcell’s theatre music. There were times when I wondered whether viewing of the technicians, moving cameras, actors other than the ‘principal’ actors performing the close up shots and sound effects, and so on, was all a little too much to follow. That, however, may partly have been the point, or at least one of the points, in that each viewer therefore had to decide at any point whether to watch part of ‘the making of,’ the actor(s) on stage, the actor chosen at that moment for display on the screen above the stage, or the musicians – or indeed, to flit between them, or to try to watch more than one aspect at once. To witness, for instance, one of the ensemble – I cannot now remember which it was – being filmed moving a light bulb over a window, whilst seeing this cleverly projected as the passing of car headlights in another ensemble member’s flashback, whilst also watching that second member reacting to the ‘live’ broadcast of Dido and Aeneas upon the three hundred and fiftieth year anniversary, without even considering the possibility that one might be at least partly watching one of the other stage events, presents multiple possibilities for the viewer, guided though he may be by the decision concerning which aspect is being shown on film at that time. I purposely use the word ensemble, since the boundaries between singers, actors, and ‘stagehands’ are fluid. Susan Bickley, having a little break from singing Dido and the Sorceress, is seen washing up at one point. This does not seem gratuitous, since a true sense of theatrical ensemble is thereby achieved. Sadly, this does not include the musical players; perhaps this would simply have been too difficult to integrate, but it is a thought. The work of the entire production team is throughout of an extremely high standard, Leo Warner of Fifty Nine Productions Ltd, working again with Mitchell, as he did for her National Theatre productions of Waves and Attempts on Her Life. Little is said, only‘BBC’ radio announcements and a few punctuating ‘readings’, but then it appears nothing need be said. Perhaps we ordinarily rely too much upon the spoken word, when music and visual stimulus can provide so much.

The ‘stories’ themselves relate to loss of one sort or another, just as Dido itself does, although there is none of the anticipation that characterises the opera’s opening scene. The time scale could hardly have accommodated that, given that the stories operate in ‘real time’. We witness a lonely girl, Helen (Amanda Hale), in her bedsit, play with her derisory ‘meal’, wind blowing in and traffic passing outside her window, as she moves towards her overdose. Henry (Dominic Rowan) contemplates the breakdown of his relationship, made utterly apparent when joined later on by Nell (Helena Lymbery). Clearly, the sooner a decisive break is made the better. Most moving for me was Sandy McDade’s superlatively well acted Anna, dealing in her kitchen – and outside in the garden, thanks to typically virtuosic camera work – with a bereavement. At one time, we actually see her dancing, both on stage and on screen, with whomever it is she has lost, but her facial expressions, her trembling hands, her tears, are perhaps more telling still.

What of Dido itself? It would be remiss not to comment upon the musical performance at all. A string quartet and continuo group, directed from the harpsichord by Christian Curnyn, provide the ‘orchestra’. If there were times when I should have preferred a fuller, warmer sound, what we heard was by the same token rarely unduly abrasive, although it veered somewhat between different styles of Purcell interpretation, the violins sometimes sounding more like old ‘fiddles’, sometimes more like members of a Classical quartet. I could not always discern why this should be so, but it did not worry me unduly. Tempi were generally on the brisk side but were not unyielding, which is more important. Purcell’s dissonances have been more searing; there was plenty of dissonance on stage, however.

Susan Bickley was excellent in her dual role. Everyone who knows Dido will have a favourite artist or favoured artists in the title role; it is that kind of piece. I for one can never forget Dame Janet Baker and also retain a great fondness for Victoria de los Angeles. Bickley has her own ideas, proves ever musical and ever attentive to the text, and certainly penetrates to the nub of the drama, though I sometimes found her voice a little lacking in refulgence. By the same token, however, one might wonder whether her Lament was unduly undercut by the amplified ticking of an alarm clock; I know this is not a production of the opera as such, but it seemed a pity. As the Sorceress, she did not opt for the overt pantomime vocalisation of the unforgettable Monica Sinclair (on the Baker/Antony Lewis recording), but there was a differentiation of voice, a certain ‘old Englishness’ to the differentiated portrayal. Adam Green’s Aeneas was sometimes less than ideally focussed, but the rest of the musical ensemble was of a consistently high quality.

Part of the reason for ENO’s collaboration with the Young Vic is to reach a different audience from that which typically visits the Coliseum. This is definitely to be applauded and I can imagine that the name of Katie Mitchell will do no harm in attracting curious theatre goers, as opposed to opera fans. After Dido is an intriguing piece, which is certainly to be preferred to a stale and vain attempt at reconstruction. It is a pity that no one seems especially interested in a more radical take upon Handel’s operas, in this shared anniversary year. Musical virtues notwithstanding, their theatrical weaknesses are rather more glaring than any in Purcell’s miniature, if incomplete, tragedy, so a rescue bid would doubtless be appreciated by those of us without the coterie of the at least slightly fanatical. Still, that problem is no fault of this production, which may well prove one of the more notable contributions to the anniversary celebrations.