Carmen, English National Opera, 20 May 2015

Coliseum

(sung in English)

Carmen – Justina Gringyte

Don José – Eric Cutler

Escamillo – Leigh Melrose

Micaëla – Eleanor Dennis

Zuniga – Graeme Danby

Moralès – George Humphreys

Frasquita – Rhian Lois

Mercédès – Claire Presland

Dancairo – Geoffrey Dolton

Remendado – Alan Rhys-Jenkins

Lillas Pastia – Toussaint Meghie

Girl – Sophia Elton

Calixto Bieito (director)

Joan Antonio Recchi (revival director)

Alfons Flores (set designs)

Mercè Paloma (costumes)

Bruno Poet (lighting)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Fitzpatrick)

Sir Richard Armstrong (conductor)

 

When I saw this production open in 2012, I opened by writing, ‘A triumph for ENO! I suspected that Carmen would prove eminently suited to Calixto Bieito’s talents, and so it proved. Shorn of any ‘picturesque’ pandering – remember Francesco Zambello and her donkey? – what we saw here is perfectly attuned to Bizet’s resolutely unsentimental score.’ And so it still very much seems, under the able revival direction of Bieito’s then assistant, Joan Anton Rechi. The updating to the tawdry end of the vicious Franco regime continues to resonate; violence is in the air and more than in the air. At any point, it can and will claim its victims, many of whom we see on display here. We too live in a militarised society, although one that remains slightly more bashful about proclaiming itself to be such; we can draw parallels without their in any sense being forced upon us. We certainly know poverty, racism, misogyny, and the other forces we see depicted on stage; we also know, increasingly well, child abuse – and the figure of the small girl, both loved and abandoned by her mother, looks to an uncertain future most likely to be cyclical, or worse.

But above all, Bieito’s mastery of his craft as director and storyteller comes through. Characters who can sometimes seem romanticised, caricatured, even one-dimensional are more complex than we generally see. Carmen stands out less than is often the case; her vulnerability is as much social as personal, and all the more credible for that placing. Likewise Micaëla’s greater capacity for agency, her deviousness – no mere ‘angel’ on this occasion – make her a far more interesting character. Has she even invented the story about Don José’s mother? She certainly expresses triumph upon prizing him away from Carmen, harking back to the first scene in which she cannot prevent herself from kissing him – and clearly feels no shame in having done so. ‘Franco or his successors?’ I asked last time. ‘Is there that much of a difference, especially under the present regime?’ We may make substitutions across history, across the world, whilst at the same time remaining plausible specificity, indeed ruthless realism.

Ryan Wigglesworth conducted an excellent account last time; I am not sure that Sir Richard Armstrong was not finer still. Each act had its own colour, its own pace, but the ineluctable calling of Fate drove, in the best sense, the action forward. The ENO Orchestra was on top form, its woodwind solos full of character, fresh and subtle as a fine manzanilla. The strings dazzled in as impressive an orchestral performance as I have heard in the Coliseum all year. Likewise, the chorus, of which the director asks a great deal, was its typical excellent self. These were individuals but they were also a threatening and threatened mass.

Justina Gringyte was somewhat more aloof than Ruxandra Donose, but equally convincing as a character. Hauteur, relatively speaking, worked well here, and she could certainly turn on the charm when required. Her lines were clean, and her slightly accented English equally clear. Don José is a difficult role; in the beginning, Eric Cutler seemed a little too generalised, too lacking in charisma. However, he seemed, especially in the context of a strong company, to grow into the role. Leigh Melrose’s reprise of Escamillo offered an uncommonly subtle reading, in which the relationship between vulnerability and machismo – ever a ‘Spanish’ theme, even for a Frenchman such as Bizet – was intriguingly explored. Eleanor Dennis’s revisionist Micäela did not lack for sweetness of tone, especially during her third-act aria. Rhian Lois and Clare Presland offered vividly characterised readings of Frasquita and Mercédès. Special mention should be offered to Sophia Elton as that frightened, yet strong, little girl.

Those who have yet to see Bieito’s Carmen should hasten to the Coliseum; those who have done so before will need no encouragement from me. Let us hope, as I concluded in 2012, for more Bieito from ENO – and, indeed, for the Royal Opera to enlist his services too. The former enfant terrible is now widely recognised as one of the most thoughtful, provocative opera directors at work today; we need to see more of him in London. More from Armstrong would be no bad thing too. 
 

Wozzeck, English National Opera, 11 May 2013

The Coliseum

(sung in English)

Wozzeck – Leigh Melrose
Marie – Sara Jakubiak
Captain – Tom Randle
Doctor – James Morris
Drum Major – Bryan Register
Andres – Adrian Dwyer
Margret – Claire Presland
First Apprentice – Andrew Greenan
Second Apprentice – James Cleverton
Madman – Peter van Hulle
Marie’s Child – Harry Polden

Carrie Cracknell (director)
Ann Yee (choreography)
Tom Scutt (set designs)
Oliver Townsend, Naomi Wilkinson (costumes)
Jon Clarke (lighting)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Handley)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Edward Gardner (conductor)

 

If a production, and I include musical as well as staging elements here, has one more strongly confirmed in one’s judgement that Wozzeck is not only the greatest opera of the twentieth century but one of the greatest from any century, then it has accomplished its principal goal admirably. The first night of ENO’s new production unquestionably achieved that, reminding one yet again how paltry most operas, whenever they were written, seem when placed anywhere near Berg’s shattering drama. Tears certainly came to this reviewer’s eyes more than once during the third act, only to be superseded by a numb sense of utter horror at the child’s future prospects, or rather lack thereof, in the final scene as music and drama so chillingly came to their celebrated halt: no conclusion, simply the most abject desolation.

 

Carrie Cracknell’s contemporary – to us – production may not encompass everything suggested by Berg’s work, but most sensible people would agree that a single interpretation need not; it is perfectly possible to concentrate upon certain ideas, and to leave others for another time. There may be losses entailed in that course of action – for me, the Doctor’s experiments sat somewhat oddly, some might even say nonsensically, with the rest of the action – but there will be gains too. We are in a barracks town, suffering from disorder both social and, in Wozzeck’s own case, post-traumatic. The wretched vision – is it only his? Or is it real? – of a coffin draped in the Union flag, its pallbearers, and a soldier in action hammers home the point (some might say a little too heavily, but I was won over). The squalor of Marie’s council flat tells its own tale, as does the centrality, somehow greater than one generally senses, of the tavern to this town’s horrible, hopeless life. Though not a barracks town, and Aldershot or somewhere might have been a better example, something about the portrayal suggested a certain, perhaps rather dated, view of a northern city such as Hull.

 

The odd thing about Wozzeck, set against such a backdrop, is that he seems less ill, more philosopher. There is of course an element of that in the opera in any case, but it is brought out more strongly here. Madness gives way to ‘Hamlet in Hull’, who eventually resolves, with a greater degree of calculation than one might expect, to kill Marie and then himself; we seem more to be in the realm of EastEnders perhaps, as Marie’s flat floods – there is no lake as such – and turns partly red. One also senses more strongly than usual that this is one level the story of a crime, explicable yes, but still a murder, one that led, of course, to a celebrated trial. (The city museum in Leipzig to this day has a fascinating section of its permanent exhibition on the original case as well as Büchner and Berg.) Violence hits home too, whether that of Wozzeck’s crime, that of the Drum-Major’s vile abuse of him, or that simply endemic to society both particular and general.  

 

Designs are properly ghastly, enhancing claustrophobia and the town’s desolate tackiness. The former quality hits home all the more strongly given the excellent decision to have all locations present on stage at once, sometimes used and/or lit, sometimes not; there is no escape from what becomes very much a community drama in the most negative sense.  There is perhaps a sense that this was conceived more as a piece of spoken theatre, or at least closer to that tradition than might in principle be ideal, but on those terms, it works very well, Richard Stokes’s exemplary translation contributing powerfully to the drama, without drawing undue attention to itself.

 

I was fascinated by Edward Gardner’s conducting of the score. Gardner’s method is certainly not what I have become accustomed to, nor what I am ultimately likely to favour, but the well-nigh neo-Classical bent imparted to Berg’s closed forms brought revelations of its own. Rarely if ever can the inner workings, the ‘constructed’ quality, of Berg’s score have been lain so bare. The ENO Orchestra, a very few, quite forgivable, slips aside, followed his direction admirably indeed. There was certainly hyper-Romantic, expressionistic loss, especially earlier on, yet the final Interlude retained most of its horrifying impact; at last, it seemed, there was opportunity properly to cut loose. As an additional standpoint, quite distinct from those offered by great interpreters such as Abbado, Boulez, Böhm, and Barenboim, this musical narrative of mechanisation briefly wrenched into human subjectivity, if only in death, had me thinking in various ways not only about the score but about the drama as a whole.

 

Leigh Melrose made a wonderfully human hero, as starkly opposed to such mechanisation as to the barbarity of his social conditions. The aforementioned ‘Hamlet’ quality of philosophising and indecision was at least as much his accomplishment as the production’s, not quite so ‘intellectual’ as Fischer-Dieskau’s controversial portrayal, but complex in a different and not entirely unrelated fashon. Marie is a very difficult role to bring off convincingly; ideally, one needs to be Waltraud Meier, but what to do if one is not? Too much of the whore and not enough of the angel, or the other way around? Sara Jakubiak managed the tricky balance very well, soaring moments of radiance pitted against the grime of quotidian existence. Tom Randle was, as usual, excellent beyond the call of duty as the Captain, he and James Morris as the Doctor offering exemplary clarity of line and diction, as well as fully inhabiting their flawed characters. (We should, of course, remember that their flaws are in large part also to be attributed to the viciousness of society; Wozzeck and Marie are not the only victims.) Bryan Register’s thuggish Drum Major horrified in the best sense, whilst Adrian Dwyer and Clare Presland offered finely-etched portrayals of the ‘other’, surviving couple, Andres (perhaps his wheelchair proved a cliché too far?) and Margret. Presland’s crazed, dramatically truthful moment in the tavern limelight proved a powerful moment in its own right, presaging Wozzeck’s deeds yet also offering an alternative. Peter van Hulle offered another example of truth in madness, the hallowed tradition of the Fool cast in new light. Harry Polden – how one felt for him, cowed under Marie’s kitchen table as she entertained the Drum Major in her off-stage bedroom! – and the other children had us shiver, shudder, turn in righteous anger against the wickedness of a society, our society, which we know will perpetrate the same horrors upon them. Who cares? Certainly not our political class; yet do we? Truly? Wir arme Leut’...