Lohengrin, Royal Opera, 24 April 2022

Royal Opera House

Henry the Fowler – Gábor Bretz
Lohengrin – Brandon Jovanovich
Elsa – Jennifer Davis
Friedrich von Telramund – Craig Colclough
Ortrud – Anna Smirnova
King’s Herald – Derek Welton
Brabantian Nobles (‘Four Followers of Telramund’) – Elgan Llŷr Thomas, Thando Mjandana, Matthew Durkan, Thomas D. Hopkinson
Pages (‘Four Women at the Wedding’) – Katy Batho, Deborah Peake-Jones, Renata Skarelyte, Louise Armit
Gottfried – Alfie Davis

David Alden (director)
Peter Relton (revival director)
Paul Steinberg (set designs)
Gideon Davey (costumes)
Adam Silverman (lighting)
Tal Rosner (video)
Maxine Braham (movement)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus director: William Spaulding)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Jakub Hrůša (conductor)

Considering the first night of David Alden’s (then) new production of Lohengrin in 2018, I found ‘a conceptual weakness at ... [its] heart. I suspect it can be remedied: if a shell, it is a fine shell. It will not, however, remedy itself.’ Rather to my surprise, I found this first revival, notably under a new director, Peter Relton, much stronger. It is not always easy to be sure what has actually changed, and what one is viewing differently for oneself. I shall not try; the earlier review remains for anyone who wishes to read it. In at least partial recantation, then, I am happy to say this made for a far more satisfying evening, dramatically and musically, than that experienced four years ago. Moreover, for Wagner to have returned so emphatically to one of the city’s main houses marked a step-change in London’s operatic recovery. However much one wished it to succeed, ENO’s autumn Walküre proved a bitter disappointment. If Lohengrin did not quite match the success of Covent Garden’s astonishing recent Peter Grimes, it stood closer to that than to November’s dispiriting evening at the Coliseum. 

An interwar fascist regime, on the verge at least of further war, is the setting (albeit with certain irritating Alden anachronisms of the sort that conceive postmodernism as style rather than philosophy). The aftermath of war, presumably the Great War, that haunts the first act in particular, every character seemingly damaged, mentally and often physically too. The charge of war and of preparations for another has obvious resonances to spring 2022; they could hardly fail to speak. If King Henry cowers like a question mark—in his throne, with crown, he seems an all-too-obvious rip off from Hans Neuenfels at Bayreuth—and the Herald wears his injuries anything but lightly, others struggle to stand too. Telramund and Elsa act and react in caricatured expressionist style. Even Lohengrin adopts a foetal position of comfort with Elsa, presumably seeking a mother figure lacking in the Grail brotherhood. (As Nietzsche did not say, let us not go there.) 

Only Ortrud, doubtless significantly, operates as normal. Perhaps it is her ‘magic’, or perhaps that magic is a metaphor for something broader; that is really up to us. A fine touch, at the close of the second act, is her apparition in a box, toasting (cursing) with champagne the unhappy couple. Hemmed in by Paul Steinberg’s sets, their crossings and their disjunctures a striking visualisation of catastrophe, the action is never likely to end happily. This, after all, is a tragedy, probably the purest in Wagner; a signal strength here is that we do not forget that. That is not, of course, to say that it always need be played exclusively as such, but there is an ultimate trajectory here less in evidence than last time, which certainly strengthens the drama in this context. 

So too did Jakub Hrůša’s conducting of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House—and the golden orchestral playing itself. Hrůša is not afraid to take his time, the first act feeling especially broad, though never merely slow. Careful attention to detail and to its place in the whole had Wagner’s score veritably glow with inner life. The old operatic forms on which much of Wagner’s conception is ultimately based were clear. In Mein Leben, Wagner recalls Schumann’s puzzlement at a Dresden reading of the poem; he ‘liked it, yet couldn’t figure out the musical form I had in mind for it, as he couldn’t find any passages suitable for traditional musical numbers. I then had some fun reading him different parts of my poem just as if they were in aria and cavatina form, so that in the end he smilingly conceded the point.’ Full performance can heighten that sense further—yet also more dialectically. For equally clear were the development of those forms and the forces energising that development: harmony (especially that of Ortrud), of course, but also an energised conception of Gluckian accompagnato arising from Wagner’s work as conductor, editor, and director. 

At any rate, not only did Hrůša show a fine Wagnerian’s ability to hear vast structures—acts, at least—in a single breath, but he inspired the finest playing from all sections of the orchestra throughout. Each act had its own way of unfolding; no one-size-fits-all approach, but rather a patient, powerful strategic ear and mind. Moreover, he often favoured—unfashionably—long, quasi-vocal orchestral lines: not so much Straussian as with kinship to the Wagner of a conductor such as Karajan. The vertical was not ignored, but experience suggested ultimately a more horizontal conception of Wagner’s—‘endless melody’, perhaps—and convincingly so. 

Brandon Jovanovich offered a finely judged portrayal of Lohengrin, as acute in verbal as musical terms, its clarion heroism shielding—and sometimes not—a vulnerable and decidedly ambiguous inner core. Craig Colclough’s Telramund, tragically in thrall to Anna Smirnova’s sensational Ortrud, presented similar ambiguities, those similarities engaging sympathy and our appreciation of dramatic complexity. If there was something winningly ‘old-school’ to Smirnova’s vocal delivery and sheer star presence, that was not at the cost of more ‘modern’ engagement with directorial concept, far from it. Jennifer Davis’s movingly human Elsa grew in stature throughout a committed performance. Gábor Bretz vividly captured the King’s instability. Derek Welton made for an uncommonly vivid Herald, hinting intriguingly at psychological complications from a wartime past. 

Last but far from least, William Spaulding’s Royal Opera Chorus sounded on as fine form as I can recall for some time. How welcome, moreover, it was to have a large chorus seemingly unrestricted—reality may have been different—by pandemic restrictions in what it could do and, above all, how it could sing. Ultimately, then, it was that crucial, yet often elusive, sense of a dramatic whole that served to distinguish revival from first incarnation.

Tosca, English National Opera, 3 October 2016

Coliseum

(sung in English)

Tosca (Keri Alkema), Spoletta (Scott Davies), and Scarpia (Craig Colclough)
Images: Richard Hubert Smith

Floria Tosca – Keri Alkerna

Mario Cavaradossi – Gwyn Hughes Jones
Baron Scarpia – Craig Colclough
Cesare Angelotti – Andri Björn Róbertsson
Sacristan – Adrian Powter
Spoletta – Scott Davies
Sciarrone – Graeme Danby
Gaoler – Robert Winslade Anderson
Shepherd Boy – Alessandro MacKinnon
 

Catherine Malfitano (director)

Donna Stirrup (revival director)
Frank Peter Schlössman (set designs)
Gideon Davey (costumes)
David Martin Jacques, Kevin Sleep (lighting)
 

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: James Henshaw)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Oleg Caetani (conductor)

 

Poor Puccini. He is far too often treated as a ‘box-office hit’ by our ‘major’ opera houses, at least in Anglophone countries. For so consummate a musical dramatist, that is something beyond a pity. Here in London, one is far better advised to go to Holland Park for interesting, intelligent productions, although ENO’s offerings have often had something to be said for them. Catherine Malfitano’s production once had a somewhat literalistic yet straightforward integrity to it; now it seems simply to flounder. When I saw it previously, in 2011, the Personenregie at least proved generally accomplished; here it veers (too little rehearsal time for a revival, perhaps?) between the non-existent and the all-too-local am-dram. The lack of any discernible concept thus matters far more than previously it did. We simply have sets and costumes and wandering around. Quite why the Sacristan looks as though he comes from Shoreditch-cum-Kandahar I have no idea. Nor do I understand the weirdly inter-galactic backdrop for the third act. The rest – well, the rest is unobjectionable, yet nothing more.

Cavaradossi (Gwyn Hughes Jones) and Tosca

The ENO Orchestra, as usual, was on excellent form. Oleg Caetani summoned up some luscious sounds, especially in the third act, although I found the first act a little jocular in tone. There was, in general, a reasonable sense of line, although Caetani fell some way short of the more distinguished ‘symphonic’ realisations. (No, it is not really quite the right word, but we all know what it means in this context.) Greater variegation would also have been welcome; I never felt Caetani was engaging with anything other than the score’s (impressive) surface. Choral singing was also of a high standard; let us never forget the sterling work the chorus undertakes day in, day out.

It was not, however, a vintage night for solo singing. Keri Alkerna offered an alert performance in the title role, but it rarely caught fire until the second act, and only intermittently then. Gwyn Hughes Jones clearly has quite a following at the Coliseum. Although he certainly has vocal heft, I was unable to discern much beyond that in his Cavaradossi: his singing was generalised – far too often a problem in this role, I have found – and his acting at best rudimentary. Craig Colclough’s underpowered Scarpia came across in strangely camp fashion, at least on those occasions when his voice rose above the orchestra and/or chorus. I am all for revisionist readings, but pantomime villain faces are not a satisfactory substitute for true malevolence. The smaller roles, however, tended to impress, Andri Björn Róbertsson’s Angelotti, Scott Davies's Spoletta, and young Alessandro MacKinnon’s Shepherd Boy were all especially well presented.

There was nothing bad here, then, but nor was there much over which to rejoice. Next time, might we have something that engages with the dramatic possibilities of the work, rather than pandering to the reactionary ‘taste’ of an imaginary ‘general’ audience? The Arts Council has behaved disgracefully towards ENO, but timidity never helped anyone, and it certainly does not help Puccini.

 

Tristan und Isolde, English National Opera, 9 June 2016

Isolde (Heidi Melton), Brangaene  (Karen Cargill), Tristan (Stuart Skelton), Kurwenal  (Craig Colclough)

 

 

Coliseum

Tristan – Stuart Skelton

Isolde – Heidi Melton
King Marke – Matthew Rose
Kurwenal – Craig Colclough
Melot – Stephen Rooke
Brangäne – Karen Cargill
Shepherd – Peter van Hulle
Steersman – Paul Sheehan
Young Sailor – David Webb

Daniel Kramer (director)
Anish Kapoor (set designs)
Christina Cunningham (costumes)
Paul Anderson (lighting)
Frieder Weiss (video)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Stephen Harris)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Edward Gardner (conductor)

My first Tristan, indeed my first Wagner, in the theatre was ENO’s previous staging of the work, twenty years ago, in 1996. The experience, as it should, as it must, although this is alas far from a given, quite overwhelmed me. Whether it would now is beside the point: I have no way of knowing and could not, would not go without a considerable number of Tristan- and Wagner-experiences in between. ENO’s new Tristan has its faults, but it also has far from negligible virtues. If the acid test might be said to be whether it reminds one that Tristan is, will surely always be, the greatest musical drama of all – with, that is, the possible exception of the St Matthew Passion, depending on how one considers Bach’s supreme masterpiece – then ENO succeeded not so very far off triumphantly. Given the strength of the company’s enemies within and without, that success deserves trumpeting loudly.

There are certainly some very good things in Daniel Kramer’s production. I use that somewhat limp phrase deliberately, for the overriding impression, or at least an overriding impression, is that it would benefit from revision, from a strong hand that would enable greater coherence and ruthless elimination of the irrelevant. (The latter is perhaps the worst foe of all in Tristan: remember Christof Loy? If not, do keep it that way.) In retrospect, it is the first act that stands out as seemingly from another production. Give or take the division of the stage into Isolde’s world and Tristan’s, strongly reminiscent of Herbert Wernicke’s excellent Covent Garden production, absurdly dispensed with in order to prepare the way for Loy, it seems really to be a straightforward, almost ‘traditional’ staging. I have no problem with that; it lets the work speak, and there is much to be said for that. Whatever one does with Tristan, one is ill-advised indeed to do something to it. Its status as an almost entirely metaphysical drama renders it curiously, almost uniquely, impervious, to such Konzept­-driven treatment. (Or at least it has done so in my experience: it is foolish and indeed absurd to rule things out ‘in principle’.)  Alas, Kramer has a bizarre mini-concept, or whatever we want to call it, concerning Kurwenal. Of any character in opera, I find it difficult to think of a less camp specimen. Undoing or undercutting conventional views of masculinity might be an interesting project here, but simply turning him into a camp monstrosity, dressed, like Brangäne, as if he were a refugee from a highly stylised presentation of Alice in Wonderland, is bizarre and, frankly, extremely irritating. He spends a good deal of time and energy spraying perfume, or air-freshener, or something at Tristan before the latter’s confrontation with Isolde. To what end? I am afraid I have no idea. Something, I think, to be eliminated from the revival I hope will come. The very peculia costumes (in themselves well designed by Christina Cunningham, but again, to what end?) would benefit from rethinking en masse.

 

In the second and third acts, Anish Kapoor’s striking designs do a great deal – perhaps a little too much? – of the work. The lack of specificity is no bad thing. Tristan is certainly not about Cornwall. (Imagine a Tory-UKIP production, in which the whole problem never arises, because Cornwall’s borders are ‘secure’ and our ‘migrants’ are never able to disembark thanks to Theresa May’s ‘tough’ stance on immigration. Or rather, do not.) The love duet takes place in something not so very far removed from what Wagner stipulates; the landscape supplies its own, neo-Romantic (quasi-lunar?) magic and ‘beauty’, without becoming ‘the thing’, which is surely as it should be. The death-wish, that sickest Romanticism-cum-Schopenhauerism, which pervades the whole work is intelligently brought out in Kramer’s vision of neurotic self-harm. It certainly convinces far better than the unbearable dullness – it might work as Konzept, but in the theatre, with this most particular, resistant of works? – of Christoph Marthaler’s Bayreuth production. If the hospital beds and physical restraining of the final scene are perhaps a little too overt, I did not find them unforgivably so. For English audiences, notoriously resistant to modern musico-dramatic theatre, there is sometimes something to be said for spelling things out (although preferably not in this particular work). Again, the costumes are weird: here almost Dr Who-like. Again, rethinking for a revival, so as to bring out more strongly what matters? We can but hope.

 

Brangaene, Isolde, Tristan, and King Marke (Matthew Rose)
 

The central ideas of the third act are strong too, Kapoor’s designs and Frieder Weiss’s video providing an æsthetically inviting setting and a necessary visual confrontation with the sapping away of Tristan’s life force respectively. One would hardly be able to avoid, in the case of the latter, Tristan’s loss of blood; the way in which it both horrifies and yet remains a thing of compelling beauty is surely quite in the spirit of the work. It complements the score without overshadowing it, very much what is required. Paul Anderson’s lighting, excellent throughout the evening, offers just the right mixture of subtlety and night-day contrast. The neo-Beckettian direction Kramer offers seems far more appropriate than the strange distractions of the first act. If the attempt at transfiguration does not entirely succeed, that is at least in part Wagner’s fault. He almost gets away with it, but the rupture with tonality, with reality, with pretty much anything and everything should have been so extreme during Tristan’s monologue that Isolde’s Verklärung both enraptures and misses the point. I have yet to see a production that took quite such an Adornian line, although Peter Konwitschny arguably comes close at times, whilst also veering in completely the opposite direction; here, in a broadly traditional sense, Kramer characterises the act pretty well as a whole.  

 

Tristan, his blood draining away

Edward Gardner led a largely successful, often highly ‘theatrical’ account of the score. Its metaphysical basis might have suffered somewhat, but does it not always when Furtwängler, or at least Carlos Kleiber, cannot make it? On its own terms, whilst sometimes considerably driven (echoes perhaps of Böhm, if not quite with his symphonic, post-Beethovenian grounding?), there was considerable give and take, a sense of melos much stronger than his Meistersinger, and a well-judged balance between the requirements of the moment and those of the greater line. If the orchestra sounded at times a little thin, especially in string sound, during the first act, it played for the most part magnificently. Even earlier on, there was to the playing a productive, ever-surprising physicality, a true sense of bow touching string and sparking off something one cannot, should not put into words. The offstage (in-theatre) brass at the end of the first act was a mistake: far too loud, far too much a distracting ‘effect’, but such things are worth trying, at the very least. Some outstanding woodwind playing was greatly valued, not least, of course, the expert English horn solo in the third act (Helen Vigurs).

Tristan and Kurwenal

 

Stuart Skelton’s performance in the title role showed just how much this generous artist has to give in Wagner (and not just in Wagner). He made everything he could out of the words, out of the notes, and out of the mysterious alchemy Wagner here achieves between them. If he seemed a little tired onstage, although not vocally, later on during the third act, that may readily be forgiven; indeed, it offers its own dramatic justification. I have said this before, and fear that I shall have to say it again: it is frankly beyond belief that Covent Garden offers Skelton nothing, especially when one considers the Wagner tenors it has continued to inflict upon us. Heidi Melton was strongest during the first act. Again, she made much of the words, although some of her vowels were decidedly peculiar; however, some of her singing later on was distressing in quite the wrong way. She seemed miscast, unduly stretched by the role. Karen Cargill, on the other hand, made for a lovely Brangäne indeed, despite the bizarre nature of her treatment by the production. This was someone in whom one would readily confide, beauty of tone part of the dramatic assumption rather than a thing-in-itself. I wondered whether we might have been better off with her as Isolde. Craig Colclough suffered more from the production than anyone else, but his Kurwenal managed vocally to rise far above such limitations. His third-act Beckettian best-friend portrayal, true nobility of tone again very much part and parcel of what we saw and felt dramatically, was one of the most moving aspects of the entire performance. Likewise Matthew Rose’s dignified – if oddly, coldly treated by Kramer – King Marke. It is, I think, a more difficult thing to sing this part, arguably any of these parts, in English than in German. Rose, like the rest of the cast, but perhaps more so still, made one of the best cases in practice for performance in the vernacular I can recall hearing. Here, for once, was that vaunted dramatic immediacy, with the outstanding diction it requires. The smaller roles were all taken very well indeed, David Webb’s Sailor song setting the scene with considerable distinction. All in all, this is a Tristan that deserves to be seen, still more to be heard.