Peter Grimes, English National Opera, 29 January 2014

Coliseum

Peter Grimes – Stuart Skelton

Ellen Oford – Elza van den Heever
Captain Balstrode – Iain Paterson
Auntie – Rebecca de Pont Davies
First Niece – Rhian Lois
Second Niece – Mary Bevan
Bob Boles – Michael Colvin
Swallow – Matthew Best
Mrs Sedley – Felicity Palmer
Revd Horace Adams – Timothy Robinson
Ned Keene – Leigh Melrose
Hobson – Matthew Treviño
John – Timothy Kirrage
Dr Crabbe – Ben Craze

David Alden (director)

Ian Rutherford (assistant director)
Paul Steinberg (set designs)
Brigitte Reiffenstuel (costumes)
Maxine Braham (movement)
Adam Silverman (lighting)

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

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Edward Gardner (conductor).

I am no uncritical Britten fan; last year, we heard far too much not only of his music but of ludicrous overrating – not his fault, more that of the English musical parochialism Britten himself often struggled against. As so often, the sterner test comes when an anniversary year has been and gone. In the present case, in a work more prone to overrating than most, largely on account of the dearth of noteworthy English opera during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. It was, however, not only that test which was passed with flying colours; so too ENO triumphantly dismissed malevolent – as opposed to constructive – criticism from philistine, right-wing newspaper critics with no understanding of opera as drama (nor, for that matter, as music).

 

This, in short, was far and away the best staging of Peter Grimes I have seen. If even these forces could not entirely conceal the weaknesses of some sections of the score, then the dramatic fervour with which every aspect of the performance was presented made them count for little. (Even I have to admit that not every opera can be Wozzeck, though I still find Britten’s third-act homage to the tavern scene a little too close for comfort.) It was certainly the best conducting I have yet heard from Edward Gardner. If he struggles in much of the central Austro-German repertoire, he was clearly born to conduct Britten. If there were occasional moments of imprecision, they were so few as to seem touchingly human. For not only was the broad sweep of the musical drama searingly present; the constructivism of Britten’s compositional method was lain bare too, not didactically, but with a keen sense of its dramatically generative method. This held both throughout the three acts as a whole, but also between them. Perhaps especially impressive was the sense of material emerging in the first act, blossoming and withering as it developed. Moreover, the ENO Orchestra and Choruses were on magnificent form throughout. Weight and clarity were equally present, but so was a lighter touch where necessary; so too was a plethora of dynamic shadings. Chorus master (and assistant conductor) clearly merits plaudits of his own.

 

David Alden’s staging is, quite simply, brilliant, just as much so as his brother Christopher’s more controversial Midsummer Night’sDream. (Please, ENO, may we see that again?) Post-modernism does not, as often in Alden’s work, become overt and distracting; rather the tension between a joyless, ‘austerity’ 1940s setting and moments and episodes of heightened expressionism almost miraculously coheres. More than once I thought of Brecht: not in the sense of ‘similarity’, but in the sense that his dramaturgy seemed both extended and called into question. The hypocrisy of the Borough almost presents itself, but the spiv-like portrayal of Ned Keene seemed almost to evoke the world of Mahagonny, reminding us that this is at least partly an essay in socialism as well as an exploration of sexual repression. Presentation of Auntie as a Weimar lesbian Master/Mistress of Ceremonies sounds out of context quite out of place; and yet, it works, especially in a performance as committed as that offered by Rebecca de Pont Davies. It also sheds interesting light on her relationship with her Nieces, both disturbed and disturbing. (Abusive behaviour never lies far beneath the surface of this vile community, yet it is often as much hinted at as spelled out.) What leaves perhaps the longest and deepest impression, though, is the handling of the crowd. When choreographed as expertly as here (Maxine Braham), its madness as well as its viciousness, its sinister Daily-Mail provincial conformism and its ready manipulation by those with hidden motives, play with frightening realism – and surrealism.

 

Stuart Skelton’s portrayal of the anti-hero was again, without qualification, the best I have seen and heard. Skelton suggested that it is no luxury, but even a necessity, to have a Heldentenor in the role. There is no doubting the strength of his voice – his excellent Seattle Siegmund last summer offering further testimony to that – but just as impressive were the moments of hushed arioso (‘Now the Great Bear and Pleiades’) and all manner of colours and shades in between. The final scene showed just how movingly Skelton can act too (even if Britten, alas, is no Mussorgsky here). It did no harm, of course to have a Balstrode as sincere (and yet with quiet toughness) as that of Iain Paterson, nor an Ellen Orford as compassionate and as silvery-toned (yet again, though, with steel beneath the surface) as in Elza van Heever’s revelatory portrayal. Felicity Palmer’s Mrs Sedley was quite beyond compare: Miss Marple meeting Mary Whitehouse, with a generous dose of laudanum, a portrayal as intelligently sung as it was acted. Leigh Melrose proved utterly convincing as this especially sleazy Ned Keene, and Matthew Treviño revealed a dark, focused, highly attractive bass as Hobson, the carrier. There was not a weak link in the cast, nor in the performance as a whole. This is a production that absolutely demands to be seen – and heard.

Così fan tutte, Opéra national de Paris, 16 June 2011

Palais Garnier

Fiordiligi – Elza van den Heever
Dorabella – Karine Deshayes
Guglielmo – Paulo Szot
Ferrando – Matthew Polenzani
Despina – Anne-Catherine Gillet
Don Alfonso – William Shimell

Ezio Toffolutti (director, designs)
André Diot (lighting)

Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus master: Patrick Marie Aubert)
Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris
Philippe Jordan (conductor)

William Shimell (Don Alfonso), Paulo Szot (Guglielmo), Elza Van Den Heever (Fiordiligi), Karine Deshayes (Dorabella), Matthew Polenzani (Ferrando) and Anne-Catherine Gillet (Despina)
Images: Agathe Poupeney/ Opéra national de Paris

Così fan tutte is such an integral part of any music-lover’s life that one readily forgets how recently it became more than a connoisseur’s piece. Sometimes, given what this most fragile of works has inflicted upon it, one almost wishes that it had remained so. Busoni and Strauss were heralds of a more enlightened age; festivals such as Glyndebourne, Aix-en-Provence, and of course Salzburg also played their part. It is not an easy opera to stage, though I am not sure what is. Herbert von Karajan thought it an opera for recording rather than stage performance. Moreover, Così is certainly not an easy opera to perform either; nothing by Mozart, whether vocal or instrumental, is. It is salutary to note that the work only entered the repertoire of the Opéra Comique, in a ‘French adaptation’, in 1920, and had to wait until 1963 for that same company to present the work as would be more readily recognised, borrowing a production from Aix. The Palais Garnier came even later to the party in 1974, though the list of participants looks mouthwatering indeed. The production was by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, conducted by no less a Mozartian than Josef Krips, with a cast that reads as if it were assembled for a recording: Margaret Price, Jane Berbié, Tom Krause, Ryland Davies, Teresa Stratas, and Gabriel Bacquier. That was then, this is now. Leaving recordings aside, I have had two, arguably three since one counts twice, revelatory experiences of the work: Hans Neuenfels’s Salzburg Festival production, which took the work seriously, as it must be taken, presenting its trajectory as a dangerous exploration of something wonderful and ineffable, and Sir Colin Davis’s conducting of the work for the Royal Opera (twice). Alas, Sir Colin’s truly great direction from the pit was on both occasions allied, heartbreakingly so, to Jonathan Miller’s vulgar travesty of a staging. Less revelatory, perhaps, but still very good, and more consistently so, was my first viewing of a successor to that Salzburg production: a painterly depiction by Karl-Ernst and Ursula Hermann, conducted by Philippe Jordan.


I might have been inclined to scepticism concerning the wisdom of conducting overlapping productions of Così and Götterdämmerung (review, indeed listening, to come), yet Jordan’s contribution to this Paris performance was for the most part impressive. Tempi were judiciously chosen and appropriately varied: nothing sounded ‘wrong’, as one generally finds. Light and shade were present throughout, without ever sounding forced; most of the reading sounded as natural as breathing, Mozartian art concealing art. In this, Jordan was aided by excellent playing from the Orchestra of the Opéra National de Paris. It was the first time I had heard the orchestra in Mozart, but will not, I hope, be the last. Strings were warm and refined; woodwind veritably bubbled. If this were not the Vienna Philharmonic of that Salzburg performance, then the comparison is more than unusually odious. There were just a very few occasions when Jordan’s momentum sagged, most notably part way through the second-act finale, but nobody – apart from Mozart – is perfect. Even when I was not entirely convinced by tempo decisions, for instance during ‘Soave sia il vento’, faster than I might have expected, less ravishing than I might have hoped for, Jordan managed to bring off the unexpected, in this case in a Klemperer-like plainspoken fashion.

Anne-Catherine Gillet (Despina)
and Karine Deshayes (Dorabella)

The vocal picture was more occluded. Pride of place should be accorded to the Despina of Anne-Catherine Gillet, hers a new voice to me. Far too often reduced to a caricature of a ‘character’ role, this Despina was beautifully sung, making one realise what one far too often misses. Phrasing was unerringly Mozartian. Karine Deshayes presented a good account of Dorabella’s part, with which I could find no real fault. Elza van den Heever started off very well as Fiordiligi, her ‘Come scoglio’ well despatched, with admirable firmness of tone, necessary to the crucial element, sadly unappreciated by most stage directors, of seria parody. However, ‘Per pietà’ provided uncomfortable listening, the line unsustained and one trill not so much fumbled as disintegrated. It is a stern task, admittedly, but Mozart is a cruel taskmaster and offers nowhere to hide. William Shimell made a decent enough job of Don Alfonso, bar one highly noticeable faltering during the first scene, but that served mainly to remind one that, given the limited resources of the role’s creator, Francesco Bussani, this is not a role given to vocal display. So long as were not expecting Sir Thomas Allen, this was a reasonably performance. Paulo Szot’s account of Guglielmo sometimes proved coarse. The character may not be an intellectual, or indeed especially sensitive, but Mozart should never sound crude. There were better moments, however, especially during the first act, when a gift for stylish phrasing displayed itself. Most surprising, though, was Matthew Polenzani’s Ferrando. I had admired Polenzani in this role at Covent Garden under Paris, but here he sounded strangely miscast. ‘Un aura amoroso’ received great applause, but this was an emoting delivery, vibrato disconcertingly wide, the all-too noticeable ‘effect’ of his mezza voce more appropriate to Puccini than to Mozart. It was almost Pavarotti-lite, without the personality.

As for Ezio Toffolutti’s staging, what can one say? This is a revival of a production mothballed during the Gérard Mortier years, not quite on the level of the recent reconstruction of Giorgio Strehler’s Figaro – a bizarre undertaking, surely more a riposte to Nicolas Joël’s predecessor than a serious artistic statement – but even so… To begin with, I thought that the pretty eighteenth-century sets and costumes might provide a harmless enough setting for the coruscating dissection of human conduct that Mozart presents; artificiality, the only way one can bear a work that unsparingly goes beyond Tristan, might even be heightened. However, mere prettiness becomes coarsened by ‘comic’ touches, which, if not so disastrous as those of Jonathan Miller, nevertheless misunderstand the work, even if pleasing a reactionary element in the audience, wishing to remain resolutely unchallenged. In Così, the form of comedy is employed in order to present something that could not be further removed from the ‘comic’; this is not Rossini. An element, albeit utterly non-amusing, of the Carry On films has no place here. Jordan’s conducting and the orchestral playing more or less saved the day, but they, and Gillet’s Despina, let alone Mozart, deserved a far better production.