Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (4) - Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride, 11 July 2024

Grand Théâtre de Provence

Images: Monika Rittershaus

Iphigénie – Corinne Winters
Agamemnon – Russell Braun
Clytemnestre – Véronique Gens
Achille – Alasdair Kent
Calchas – Nicolas Cavallier
Diane – Soula Parassidis
Patrocle – Lukáš Zeman
Arcas, Minister, Scythian – Tomasz Kumięga
Oreste – Florian Sempey
Pylade – Stanislas de Barbeyrac
Thoas – Alexandre Duhamel
Priestess – Laura Jarrell

Director, set designs – Dmitri Tcherniakov
Costumes – Elena Zaytseva
Lighting – Gleb Filtschinsky

Dramaturgy – Tatiana Werestchagina   

Le Choeur d’Astrée (chorus director: Richard Wilberforce)
Le Concert d’Astrée

Emmanuelle Haïm (conductor)

 

It is not every day one has opportunity to see Iphigénie en Aulide, let alone in tandem with Iphigénie en Tauride. Even I, fervent Gluckian that I be, had never seen the former staged. This is, of course, just what a major festival should be doing: something that cannot readily be replicated in a house season. Enlisting Dmitri Tcherniakov, one of today’s most sought-after opera directors, underlined the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence’s intent. It was, by any standards, a memorable occasion, even if Tcherniakov’s production proved a little more straightforward, even conventional – I cannot imagine why some booed the first opera – than one might have hoped for, and the period instruments of Emmanuelle Haïm’s Concert d’Astrée often lacked the dramatic commitment either of the more colourful period ensembles (such as Raphaël Pichon’s Pygmalion the following evening) or of modern orchestras. 

Tcherniakov’s Paris Troyens was a landmark staging, its twin presentation of war and therapeutic aftermath in the two parts of Berlioz’s opera cast a powerful, provocative spell that has yet to recede. Here, in a dramatic œuvre of great importance to Berlioz and Wagner, the uncharitable might say there was a little too much retreading of ground, if in near-reverse, war naturally coming second and announced as such at the close of Iphigénie en Aulide, the curtain starkly announcing ‘GUERRE’. To be fair, though, the Tcherniakov therapeutic turn, which after his fitful Ring seemed to many of us to have run its course, is only hinted at in the group of refugees among whom Iphigénie (en Tauride) stays behind. Trauma itself stands rightly, strongly in the foreground, from the second drama’s announcement of casualties over a generation of war (‘une vingtaine d’années plus tard’, we are informed as we re-enter the theatre after the sole, dinner interval). Oreste’s shellshock is horrifying throughout, rendering his emergent friendship – perhaps in this condition, it can be no more than that – with Pylade a necessary, if highly limited, solace. 

Tcherniakov, as usual, provides his own set design, a building outline that can serve, both intact and not, for a range of dramatic purposes—and to my mind did so very well. (It doubtless depended where one was in the theatre, but I heard complaints contrary to my experience, but undoubtedly genuine, from both visual and acoustic standpoints.) At any rate, the contrast on one level between the two dramas registers strongly, the ambiguities of sacrifice readily apparent at the close of Aulide. Iphigénie has been rescued for now, but at what cost, both personal (marriage) and societal (impending war)? A good few of those who had been initially happy, or at least compliant, to cooperate in her sacrifice must surely wish they had gone through with it. The struggle of Achille and his men to overcome Agamemnon and his path is well handled: one of the most convincing fight scenes I have seen on the operatic stage. Few are the opera productions today, or so it feels, that escape silly dancing, neither related to the music nor intelligent set in (non-musical) counterpoint to it. This, alas, proved no exception, but most of us are wearily accustomed to the practice by now; at least it is at a wedding, which one might say is a natural home to silly dancing. It remains a pity, though, that the expressive, dramatic role played by dance in so much eighteenth-century opera, especially that we may broadly consider to be French, once again goes ignored.   

The question of the deus ex machina, familiar to Wagner, who wrote a revised ending of his own (surprisingly adopted by Riccardo Muti at La Scala), is muddied, but that is probably the point. Having Diane speak through the sacrificed Iphigénie – seen at the beginning, in Agamemnon’s imagination – allows Iphigénie herself, in double, to witness that horror, as well as compound fear instilled amidst the similarly consecrated nuptials concerning Agamenon’s voyage. The scene is recalled at the end of Tauride, a nicely ambiguous close into which we can probably read what we will, though it would be difficult to feel wildly optimistic, given what we have seen. There are times when subverting or, more often, simply disregarding the lieto fine irritates, at best, but this is better thought through and without narrowing insistence. 

Haïm’s direction had its moments. The vigour of the Scythian choruses in particular evoked a properly barbaric, brutally war-torn atmosphere from percussion and the excellent chorus alike. In general, though, even for those who find it easier to take such ‘whiteness’ of strings than I do, the emotional range was limited, belying Gluck’s status as a master musical dramatist. Purely orchestral movements often seemed merely pretty or, worse, fey, rather than acting as bearers and drivers of the drama. Dance music thereby doubly suffered, given Tcherniakov’s parallel lack of interest. Intonation, moreover, was variable, even given regular retuning. The audience, however, greeted Haïm with rapturous applause. 

Corinne Winters’s performance would have greatly impressed, had it only been in one of the operas. Hers was a musicodramatic achievement of high order, no mere ‘feat’. As well acted as it was sung, one could read almost as much into her varied facial expressions as her vocal palette. Here was a survivor in every sense. From a strong cast, Véronique Gens as a glamorous yet intensely human (and humane) Clytemnestre, Alasdair Kent’s Achille, cocky vanity matching yet not exceeding his valour, Florian Sempey’s resolute yet highly traumatised Oreste, and Stanislas de Barbeyrac’s heart-rendingly beautiful performance of Pylade stood out for me. This, though, was an Iphigénie cast in depth; I recall no weak links. Whatever my reservations, its memory will also doubtless endure.

BPO/Hrůša - Dvořák, 13 October 2023

Philharmonie

Dvořák: Stabat Mater, op.58

Corinne Winters (soprano)
Marvic Monreal (mezzo-soprano)
David Butt Philip (tenor)
Matthew Rose (bass)

Rundfunkchor Berlin (chorus director: Gijs Leenaars)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Jakub Hrůša (conductor)

 

© Bettina Stöß / Berliner Philharmoniker

Dvořák’s Stabat Mater is clearly a favourite work for Jakub Hrůša. Six years ago he conducted it in this same hall, Berlin’s Philharmonie, with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra; in 2023, it was the turn of the Berlin Philharmonic. Hrůša has called the piece a ‘wonderful gift’; he, a fine team of soloists, chorus, and orchestra in turn offered a wonderful gift to the audience with this performance. If the work, like many others, is not without unevenness, much of it has the composer firing on all cylinders. At a time when, even by current standards, our world is overwhelmed with grief, it will surely have spoken clearly and directly to many. It certainly did so to me. 

A first movement of quite extraordinary power did so from the outset. Hrůša and the orchestra offered a translucent introduction, elemental without Brucknerising, chromatic descending sequences grief-laden without sentimentality, leading somehow almost magically towards the entry of the chorus, which both emerged from and intensified such feelings, as clear of line as it was full of tone. I cannot imagine the climaxes have ever sounded more shattering. David Butt Philip’s tenor entry similarly grew out of an extended what had gone before. If somewhat operatic, that is the nature of the piece; it became more so with impassioned singing from the full quartet. Hrůša’s formal command was unerring, a crucial matter in a work of this scale. The vocal quartet that followed was naturally more intimate in scale, though no less heartfelt. Splendidly declamatory singing from Corinne Winters had her come into her own, with Matthew Rose an excellent foil, Fasolt-like in sincerity, though building later to quite a fury. 

 ‘Eja mater, fons amoris’ quite properly offered moments where the mood lightened, not least through sheer delightfulness of orchestral playing, though the chorus’s repeated cries of ‘Fac’ were anything but light. There was some much needed choral and woodwind balm in ‘Fac, ut ardeat cor meum’, where it was lovely to hear the organ in softer passages too. But even that came in the shadow of imposing, implacable brass. Harmoniemusik in the following chorus, ‘Tui nati vulnerati’, set the scene for as close as we were come to gambolling lyricism, in Bohemian Brahms fashion, with shades of the darker, mahogany Brahms to come in the opening of the ‘Fac me vere tecum flere’. Butt Philip’s imploring reading and the choral singing shone equally. 

A venerable mainstay of musical crucifixion iconography, sharpened notes made their point in both chorus and orchestra in ‘Virgo virginum praeclara’. One certainly did not need to know or see; piercing could be heard and felt. Likewise in the throbbing pizzicato playing from lower strings, contrasting in almost sadomasochistic fashion with ravishing bowed violins and woodwind, of the duet ‘Fac, ut portem Christi mortem’. Butt Philip and Winters blended and contrasted well as required. In the penultimate number, the only truly solo (without chorus) movement, mezzo-soprano Marvic Monreal offered characterful contrast, especially in her lower range. 

The final movement’s uneasy calm from soloists and orchestra paved the way for some truly radiant choral singing when reprising the opening material. Its ‘Amen’ still seems to me a little unsatisfactory as a conclusion to a setting of this poem; Dvořák’s more typically personal style sits a little awkwardly with its import. Ironically, if Rossini in his Stabat Mater at times adopted a jaunty, well-nigh postmodern dissociation from the poem, his writing here seems to me more congruent. There was no gainsaying the performance’s all-round excellence, though, and there are many worse things than being oneself—whether for Dvořák, Rossini, Schubert, or anyone else.

Salzburg Festival (5) - Katya Kabanova, 26 August 2022

Felsenreitschule

Katěrina Kabanova – Corinne Winters
Marfa Ignatěvna Kabanova (Kabanicha) – Evelyn Herlitzius
Varvara – Jarmila Balážová
Boris Grigorjevič – David Butt Philip
Váňa Kudrjáš – Benjamin Hulett
Tichon Ivanyč Kabanov – Jaroslav Březina
Savël Prokofjevič Dikoj – Jens Larsen
Kuligin – Michael Mofidian
Glaša – Nicole Chirka
Fekluša – Ann-Kathrin Niemczyk

Barrie Kosky (director)
Rufus Didwiszus (set designs)
Victoria Behr (costumes)
Franck Evin (lighting)

Christian Arseni (dramaturgy)

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus director: Huw Rhys James)
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra,
Jakub Hrůša (conductor)

Images: SF / Monika Rittershaus 

For me, Barrie Kosky has often been at his best when staging more serious operas, which do not lend themselves to his trademark ‘showbiz’ treatment, and for which he has shown a single-mindedness again quite different from what other stagings may have led us to expect. Pelléas, Rusalka, Eugene Onegin, and Iphigénie en Tauride spring immediately to mind. Others differ strongly, I know, so it is probably more a matter of taste as anything else (though not in the case of that breathtakingly dishonest Bayreuth Meistersinger). This new Salzburg production of Katya Kabanova broadly falls, I suppose, into that category. There was certainly nothing to object to, nothing to distract; and yet, I could not help but feel—more feel than think—that something was missing. 

Theatre is not, of course, made in a vacuum. Experience of the pandemic—far from over, of course, whatever our overlords may tell us—is still raw and its consequences are still very much with us (he wrote, typing, FFP2-mask-clad, on a train out of Salzburg). No need to worry: this is not a Katya full of masks, Microsoft Teams, and parties chez Johnson and Simmonds, though surely it will come. (My bet is on a Zoom Tristan by 2025.) But rather, the vast stage of the Felsenreitschule seemed strangely underused, as if to allow for social distancing, save—a crucial exception, I grant—for a vast, immobile (boundaries occasionally altered between scenes) crowd, backs turned to us throughout. Extremely realistic, of all shapes and sizes, this wall of puppets could well have been taken for actual human beings, had one not known—or suspected, given the lack of movement. It was an arresting image, walling in the community, Katya’s horizons, and indeed those of everyone else, although Kosky’s interest, not unreasonably, seemed to lie in the heroine. A large stage with nothing else to detain us: on second thoughts, one could readily have had set designs and kept the characters apart as necessary, so perhaps it was not Covid at all. Words from a programme interview lend credence to that view, Kosky saying that he did not want to ‘do Kátá Kabanova as an Ibsen or Strindberg drama – it’s not just about the family.’ He says he and his production team needed ‘to consider how we could represent this village or small town and Kátá’s feeling of isolation within this place, and at the same time concentrate on Kátá and the immediate family around her, without turning it into a chamber piece with walls, doors, tables, chairs and a samovar – which wouldn’t work anyway in the Felsenreitschule.’

So maybe the pandemic and the horrific loneliness it brought for many of us haunts responses rather than intention; or maybe, just maybe, the one does not exclude the other, especially in the work of so experienced a man of the theatre. For whilst Kosky verbally acknowledged the role of the community, and that puppet-wall was ever-present, the impression—present, I think, in much of the Personenregie too—was of a more existentialist drama than either we are accustomed to or those words imply. True, there were at the beginning of each act other, sonic hints of something, whether natural or social, lying beyond. Birdsong preceded the first act, bells the second, and thunder the storm of the third. Beyond a light bit of sado-masochism, as Kabanicha walked Dikoj around on a leash and poured liquid on him, the abiding feeling for me remained loneliness in a vast space.

In the title role, Corinne Winters proved an estimable contributor to this concept, determined to make her own way in the role, never remotely reliant on post-Hardy (at least for an English speaker) cliché. If I observed and was duly repelled by her treatment, only really at the end was I moved. I say this not as adverse criticism; that seemed to be the dramatic strategy, to emphasise the final breakdown. It seemed to be Jakub Hrůša’s conception too, in the pit. Goal-orientation is not only a musical strategy for Beethoven and his followers. There was never an ounce of sentimentality, never a moment to enjoy the excellent, if not to my ears always entirely idiomatic, playing of the Vienna Philharmonic for itself. Sometimes, I may have wished the music, the drama, would linger just a little, but that was surely the point. And surely they were right.

Where I had a few doubts was with some of the Czech language heard. I cannot really say more than that, speaking not a word of the language myself, but I wonder whether it is a coincidence that, without knowing who they were beforehand, I often felt a greater immediacy from those whose first language it was. First and foremost was Jarmila Balážová: an outstanding Varvara, glowing with an infectious zest for life in such sharp contrast with Katya’s fate and, yes, that of the society around them. Presented with considerable vocal beauty and undeniable sincerity, David Butt Philip’s Boris was another fine portrayal—from an artist who seems never to give anything but. Evelyn Herlitzius gave a duly terrifying star turn as Kabanicha, surely one of the most unremittingly evil characters in all opera. As is her wont, this was a powerfully committed performance throughout. Benjamin Hulett’s idea of Kudrjáš and his communication of that idea seemed almost designed to vindicate the description in Ivana Rentsch’s excellent programme essay of his character’s ‘mellow detachment’, as much expressed through sonority as gesture.All contributed, though, to the sharply delineated drama unfolding; there were no exceptions, nor even weak links. And whether the pandemic coloured conception, response, or both, is perhaps unimportant, given the tragic power of the denouement.

 

Così fan tutte, Royal Opera, 22 September 2016

Royal Opera House

Dorabella (Angela Brower) and Fiordiligi (Corinne Winters)
Images: ROH/Stephen Cummiskey

Ferrando – Daniel Behle

Guglielmo – Alessio Arduini
Don Alfonso – Johannes Martin Kränzle
Fiordiligi – Corinne Winters
Dorabella – Angela Brower
Despina – Sabina Puértolas
 

Jan Philipp Gloger (director)

Ben Baur (set designs)
Karin Jud (costumes)
Bernd Purkrabek (lighting)
Katharina John (dramaturgy)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: William Spaulding)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

Dorabella, Ferrando (Daniel Behle), Guglielmo (Alessio Arduini), and Fiordiligi

At last: something at the Royal Opera to replace Jonathan Miller’s slapstick onslaught on Così fan tutte, not only the most sophisticated, most profound of Mozart’s operas, but the most sophisticated, most profound opera of all. (At least, that is how I feel at the moment.) It broke my heart to hear Colin Davis, conducting the greatest musical performances of the work (2007 and 2012) I have ever heard and am ever likely to hear, undermined at every juncture by Miller’s antics. Alas, the good news is not unmixed. It rarely is, of course; however, once again, we see and hear a split between music and production: not, I think, a productive mutual questioning, but just a dissociation. The fault, I am sorry to say, lay squarely with the production, although it was compounded by different – both valid, but undeniably different – conceptions of the work from conductor and singers. I suspect that some issues will be resolved as the run proceeds, but it is difficult to imagine that they all will be, especially when it comes to Jan Philipp Gloger’s production – although, paradoxically, I suspect that the lively young cast might even salvage something from that once the director is out of the way.

 

My sole previous encounter with Gloger’s work had been at Bayreuth. A weak irrelevant Flying Dutchman did not augur well, but everyone deserves a second chance. Even in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, I found ‘too many instances where the action, especially for a relatively small theatre, was on too small a scale properly to understand, or was simply, at least to me, obscure. I had the sense that there was a better production waiting to break out.’ Much the same might be said about this Così fan tutte, save that, in a larger theatre, especially from the Amphitheatre, some of the problems of scale are amplified. In both productions, one has a sense of a good idea or two, anything but original, indeed seen in many other stagings of the work in question, obscured by both a director who thinks his production is far cleverer than it actually is, and by a certain lack of basic theatrical craft, the designs, impressive though they may be, being made in the absence of anything else, to do, or to try to do, far too much of the work for themselves.

 

The production begins, reasonably enough, if in wearisomely clichéd fashion, with an attempt to set up its metatheatrical stance. During the Overture, a cast in ‘period’ dress – presumably a ‘traditional’ production in our here and now – takes its bows in affected style. There is an element of welcome surprise when our real cast, apparently members of the audience, rushes into the Stalls in fashionable, contemporary – to us – dress, and replaces that on stage. From the audience reaction, anyone would have thought such an idea had never been attempted before, whether in Così or anything else. Members of the audience – one of the worst-behaved, alas, I can recall – seemed to find that all utterly hilarious, in well-nigh uncontrollable laughter because some people walked through the stalls of a theatre whilst others were bowing on stage. They need, I think, to get out a little more; perhaps, dare I suggest it, they might acquaint themselves with some less derivative ‘modern’ theatre, in and out of the opera house, if they think there is anything daring in what they saw here.

Guglielmo

 

Anyway, in another ‘borrowing’ from other recent-ish productions, Don Alfonso, who has been on stage all along, and who, for reasons unclear to me, remains in ‘period’ dress, is revealed as director of both ‘old’ and ‘new’ productions. The play’s the thing. It is one way, not a new way, as many seemed to think, to address the perceived ‘problem’ with the work. Our Ferrarese ladies and their nobles play roles in the theatre, in a number of different settings – the public area of an (our) opera house, a Brief Encounter railway station, a somewhat dated cocktail bar, the Garden of Eden, the costume department of the house, etc. – and thus suspend the alleged need for ‘suspension of disbelief’, perhaps the most tiresome operatic cliché of all.

 

I am far from convinced that the intricacy and overt artificiality of Da Ponte’s and still more Mozart’s work, that very artificiality permitting the most profoundly human predicament to come, unflinchingly to the theatrical fore, need such ‘help’, but that need not have mattered. The problem, to reiterate, is that, especially during the first act, the designs are more or less made to do a good deal of the work that stage direction should be doing. When we come to a potentially fruitful inversion of roles, as in the Garden of Eden, it comes across as hapless, not as transgressive or alienating. It is one thing, often a good thing, to have the audience do some thinking for itself – not much chance here, given the loud applause from far too many in the middle of Despina’s ‘Una donna a quindici anni’: can they not hear the music has not returned to the tonic? – but not at the expense of doing one’s job as director. Otherwise, we should all simply sit at home with a score and/or recording, and imagine the work for ourselves. (We often do, of course, but that is not really what a visit to the opera house is for.) The final emendation, spelled out in glitzy letters above the stage, to Così fan tutti does no harm, is perhaps welcome, but again would gain in strength with something more than a scenic flourish.

 

Semyon Bychkov’s reading of this most wondrous of Mozart’s scores grew in stature as the evening progressed. No, it was not Colin Davis, but we have to accept, alas, that he is no longer with us. Bychkov’s conducting offered, at its best, an intriguing alternative, although, in the first half hour or so, some of the tempo variations sounded a little arbitrary and the sensuous quality of the music was occasionally undersold. There were no ‘period’ affectations, though, and as Bychkov hit his stride, the laudable flexibility he had always shown felt more ‘natural’ – however artificial a construct that, like the onstage drama, might be. I heard some people complain of ‘slowness’ and can only presume them to have been ignorant of the varied performance history of the work. Very little was ‘slow’, in any meaningful sense, but it was varied, and deeply considered. The lamentable alternative is to make Mozart sound like Rossini; that is a straitjacket we can all do without.  
 

Despina (Sabina Puértolas)

More of a problem was that the singers did not always, again especially in the first act, sound attuned to Bychkov’s understanding. They sounded as though they would have been happier in the swifter, less contemplative performance, impressive on its own, very different terms, which I had heard last month in Salzburg, conducted by Ottavio Dantone. Indeed, the Guglielmo, Alessio Arduini, offered the common link between the casts. I wrote then of an assumption that was ‘proud, assertive, flawed: just as he should be, whether vocally or in stage manner,’ and much the same might be said here; Arduini is a fine performer, not just a fine singer. Daniel Behle proved an estimable successor to Salzburg’s Mauro Peter, similarly honeyed of tone, ‘Un‘aura amorosa’ as so often a highlight. Corinne Winters mostly impressed as Fioridilgi, the coloratura well despatched, although her lower register was occasionally found wanting. The clarity of Angela Brower’s Dorabella was often married to a subtle richness of tone that was most welcome. Johannes Martin Kränzle took to his role as master of ceremonies with commendable enthusiasm and equally commendable musico-theatrical results. The fussiness of the half-baked concept was not his fault. Sabina Puértolas proved a spirited Despina, attentive to vocal as well as theatrical concerns (which is not always the case). Alas, there remains some way to go before different strands of production and performance come together.

Benvenuto Cellini, English National Opera, 5 June 2014

Coliseum

(sung in English)

Benvenuto Cellini – Michael Spyres

Giacomo Balducci – Pavlo Hunka
Teresa – Corinne Winters
Fieramosca – Nicholas Pallesen
Pope Clement VII – Sir Willard White
Ascanio – Paula Murrihy
Francesco – Nicky Spence
Bernardino – David Soar
Pompeo – Morgan Pearse
Innkeeper – Anton Rich

Terry Gilliam (director, set designs)

Leah Hausmann (co-director, movement)
Aaron Marsden (set designs)
Katrina Lindsay (costumes)
Finn Ross (video)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Nicholas Jenkins)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Edward Gardner (conductor)

 

First, a sigh of relief: in almost every respect, this new ENO staging of Benvenuto Cellini marks a significant improvement upon Terry Gilliam’s ‘Springtime for Hitler’ Damnation of Faust. If that sounds like faint praise, for beating a ‘Holocaust as entertainment’ travesty is perhaps setting the bar unreasonably low, then such is not entirely the intention. Gilliam’s Cellini has its virtues, though for me they are considerably fewer than they seemed to be for the audience at large. It is far from unreasonable to depict anarchy and ribaldry in the Carnival, and indeed during the ‘carnival’ overture – though Gilliam’s reported remark that ten minutes of music are ‘too long for the audience to sit through waiting for the show to begin’ are unworthy of anyone working in opera. There is nothing wrong in principle with ‘staging’ an overture, but the reason should be better than that; if the results are a little over the top, they are certainly superior to the justification.

 

And yet… here and in the Carnival itself we also experience the main problem: Gilliam’s seeming inability to trust Berlioz’s opera, an infinitely more successful work than ignorant ‘criticism’ will suggest. Yes, there is excess, even at times an excess of excess, in Berlioz’s work, but what I suspect Gilliam’s fans will applaud as ‘wackiness’, be it the director’s or the composer’s, is far from the only or indeed the most important facet of the opera. Despite the handsome, splendidly adaptable Piranesi-inspired designs, the plentiful coups de théâtre, the impressive collaboration of set design and video for the forging, etc., etc., what matters most of all – Berlioz’s score and, more broadly, his musical drama – often seems forgotten. Perhaps that also explains the unaccountable cuts, which serve to exacerbate alleged ‘weaknesses’ – many of which turn out to be deviations from the operatic norm – instead of mitigating them.

 

Matters improve considerably after the interval, and there is a genuine sense of dark, nocturnal desperation to the foundry and surroundings at dawn on Ash Wednesday (though there was, admittedly, little sense of the significance or even the coming of that day of mortification). Much of the first act, by contrast, is overbearing and in serious need of clarification. Yes, by all means harness spectacle as a tool of drama, but too often it runs riot in an unhelpful sense; it also encourages a large section of the audience to guffaw, applaud, chatter, make other, apparently unclassifiable, noises, often to the extent that one cannot hear the music. I could not help but think that a smaller budget would have removed a good number of excessive temptations and resulted in something less perilously close to a West End musical. There are the germs, and sometimes rather more than that, of something much better here, but those ‘editing’ Berlioz perhaps themselves stand in need of an editor. The updating to what would appear to be more or less the time of composition, perhaps a little later, does no harm; indeed, it proves generally convincing.

 

Edward Gardner’s conducting of the first act was disappointing, the Overture, insofar as it could be heard, setting out the conductor’s stall unfortunately: excessive drive followed by excessive relaxation. Wild contrasts are part of what Berlioz’s music demands, of course, but there still needs to be something that connects. Throughout, there were many occasions once again to mourn the loss of Sir Colin Davis, whose 2007 LSO concert performance of this work was simply outstanding. The orchestra proved impressively responsive, though, and, once both Gardner and Gilliam had somewhat calmed down, truly came into its own, sounding as the fine ensemble that it undoubtedly is. Gardner is rarely a conductor to probe beneath the surface, but as musical execution, there was a good deal to savour following the (protracted) interval. Choral singing – and blocking – were more or less beyond reproach, a credit to chorus master Nicholas Jenkins and Gilliam’s team alike, as well of course as to the singers themselves.

 

Michael Spyres performed impressively in the sadistically difficult title role, there being but a single example, quickly enough corrected, of coming vocally unstuck. His stage swagger seemed true to Gilliam’s conception, and his vocal style – insofar as one can tell, in English translation – was keenly attuned to that of Berlioz. A few ‘veiled’ moments notwithstanding, especially later on in the first act, Corinne Winters impressed equally as Teresa. ‘Entre l’amour et le devoir’ could hardly have been more cleanly sung in the most exacting of aural imaginations. Nicholas Pallesen revealed himself to be a thoughtful and at times impassioned baritone as Fieramosca, though Pavlo Hunka’s Balducci sounded thin and generally out of sorts. Despite Willard White’s undeniable stage presence, his appearance as the Pope did little to dispel suspicions that, sadly, his voice is now increasingly fallible. Paula Murrihy, however, proved an excellent Ascanio: characterful and attractive of tone in equal measure. There were few grounds for complaint from the ‘smaller’ roles either.

 

ENO’s description of this opéra semi-seria as a ‘romantic comedy’ is puzzling. It is, to be fair fair to Gilliam and all those involved, a description that stands at some distance from their vision too. An opéra comique was originally Berlioz’s conception, but that is a matter of form rather than of sentimentality. We should doubtless be grateful that we were spared a ‘heart-warming’ Richard Curtis version. Nor does it help, of course, that we are subjected to an English translation, which inevitably sounds ‘wrong’ for Berlioz, especially when so apparently deaf to musical line and cadence as this present version. If only ENO would reconsider its stance on a once vexed question, now resolved by the use of surtitles, it could truly transform its fortunes.