Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, ENO, 16 February 2026

Coliseum

Images: Tristram Kenton

Announcer – The Company
Leokadja Begbick – Rosie Aldridge
Fatty the Bookkeeper – Mark Le Brocq
Trinity Moses – Kenneth Kellogg
Jenny Smith – Danielle de Niese
Jimmy MacIntyre – Simon O‘Neill
Jack O’Brien – Elgan Llŷr Thomas
Bank-Account Billy – Alex Otterburn
Alaska Wolf Joe – David Shipley
Jenny’s Girls – Joanna Appleby, Deborah Davison, Sophie Goldrick, Ella Kirkpatrick, Claire Mitcher, Susanna Tudor-Thomas
Jenny’s Boy, A Cloud – Damon Gould
Jenny’s Boy, A Typhoon – Adam Taylor
Toby Higgins – Zwakele Tshabalala

Director – Jamie Manton
Designs – Milla Clarke
Lighting – D.M. Wood
Choreography – Lizzi Gee, Spencer Darlaston-Jones
Sound design – Jake Moore
Intimacy and fight coordinator – Haruka Kuroda

Chorus and Additional Chorus of the English National Opera (director: Matthew Quinn) 

Orchestra of the English National Opera

André de Ridder (conductor)

In Berlin’s Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof, one of my favourite cemeteries, Hegel lies buried—as, very close, do Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel, as do many others. Brecht’s Chausseestrasse house and the room in which he worked overlooked that cemetery; the Marxist Brecht expressly chose it out of increasing fascination with Marx’s single most important intellectual forerunner, GWF Hegel. One summer, I lived ten minutes’ walk away and visited regularly. Karl Marx, of course, lies in another celebrated cemetery, in another great world city: Highgate in London, further from anywhere in London I have lived, yet not so far in the greater scheme of things. This tale of ‘my’ two cities, of two cemeteries, of three dead men and more – ‘Nothing you can do will help a dead man’ – shaped my experience of this new ENO production of The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, not least since I had seen Mahagonny only two months previously, in Berlin, in Barrie Kosky’s Komische Oper staging. 

In capitalist society as in its artistic production, then as now, the grit lies in contradiction. What Hegel the divined as ontology, Marx situated in particular social and economic conditions. We are not obliged to choose; both indeed may be true or at least contain truth. In any case, following in both Hegel and Marx’s wake, Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny offers an illuminating instantiation of some of these contradictions: not only in subject matter but in aesthetics and its implications for performance and reception. Some art fails because it simply is not very good, or at least is not well presented. The contradictions here, though, are of a different nature, not to be smoothed over, concealed, or reconciled, but to be such stuff as dreams are smashed on—as indeed is patently the case wherever we look in our present social and political predicaments. No wonder, then, that this new ENO production, the last, I believe, before the company’s move to Manchester, is replete with more general resonance than those personal, albeit connected elements with which I began. 

The contradiction between advertisement and reality is key to the Mahagonny and the Mahagonny we visit with Jamie Manton and his team, yet so is the form of production we can all see – and hear – if only we open our eyes and ears. In the ‘real’ world, ideology mystifies, obscures, yet never quite conceals; here, contradiction is perhaps more glaring, but that is the (Brechtian) point. It all goes back to a lorry, a box of theatrical tricks. (In what I think is pure coincidence, it put me a little in mind of the van in Frank Castorf’s Bayreuth Ring, though vehicular function may hold something in common.) Great claims are made for the city the unholy trio – less a trinity than in Kosky’s staging with c.1930 religious symbols – have built. Perceived desire and demand play their part, whether for whiskey or women—and, in a welcome update, men too. Sex workers rather than prostitutes, Jenny’s girls and boys are available to all, though the outcome does not change. Any declaration of love is not necessarily entirely hollow, but its truth is fleeting and contradicted by the destructive self-interest of all (save, perhaps, the founding mother and fathers). Even the whiskey is diluted by grim recycling that suggests what comes out one end will go back in the other. 

But it is not all grime and grimness: there would be no contradiction then. There is Weill, of course, on whom more soon, but there is also a lively sense of fun, of entertainment: not necessarily unmediated, but what is? There are plenty of witty moments to occasion a wry smile or more, whilst the framing – the Coliseum’s staging and technical equipment a container for, in turn, the container – reminds us this is theatre. Announcements are made by alternating members of the company, part Brechtian remnant with loudspeaker, part Handmaid’s Tale entertainment imitation. (Before the interval, that is; after, they are more clearly themselves, unmasked.) And whilst the production in general shies away from specific contemporary reference – we can hardly fail to make it – the trial as gameshow surely gives the Trumpian game away. Resourceful designs impart a sense both of using what was to hand and also of what one might see, or have seen, at the Berliner Ensemble. In the contradiction between expectation and reality, a weathervane (we have plenty of them in our world) tapdancing hurricane points the way to just destruction of the city, only suddenly to change direction in a triumph of the knowingly underwhelming that prefigures God’s forlorn, defeated attempt to visit justice on this world at the end, drawn out Weill’s Bachian chorales bleakly yet thrillingly subverting Christian passion. Likewise, a cloud dances in counterpoint to Weill’s delicious parody of overwrought, out-of-tune Romantic salon music, edging out Jimmy’s act in more ways than one. 

For the tension and indeed contradiction between Brecht and Weill will, should always lie at the heart of this work and its performance. Can, should music do what Brecht seems to imply it should? Where does that leave the songs, the tunes, the band? André de Ridder, music director designate, drew out biting and seductive playing from the ENO Orchestra. One could sympathise with Jimmy on his last night, traduced and betrayed, as for once strings soared, but not too much—and then it was over. Structurally, closed forms – how they do (and do not) add up to more – were clear and did far more than reproduce those of the libretto. It can be all too easy hearing Weill in the twenty-first century to succumb to nostalgia for a ‘Weimar’ that never was. Here, edge was maintained without entirely denying us pleasure; banjo and Hawaiian guitar could be heard amidst ominous, bass-led hemming in. If only Jeremy Sams’s translation could have decided what it wanted to be and stuck with it, much would have bitten still more savagely. Much was good, but there were too many instances that simply jarred, and the crucial Biblical element to Brecht’s writing was too often lost. 

One less productive contradiction, at least for me, lay between operatic voices and miking. The Coliseum has never offered an ideal acoustic for opera, but here balances were too often awry. The chorus suffered more than most, words sometimes more or less inaudible. Rosie Aldridge and Danielle de Niese offered nicely contrasting and complementing female leads, equally at home in more operatic moments and something closer to the street, both fine singing actors. Simon O’Neill proved a tireless Jimmy, ably supported by his friends, Alex Otterburn, Elgan Llŷr Thomas, and David Shipley. Alongside Kenneth Kellogg and Mark Le Brocq, all offered individual performances founded on the text and on a recognition that the text has contradictions of its own, not least between words and music. Ultimately, I found there was in all respects no need to choose: Berlin and London offered different experiences, in contrast, complement, and yes, contradiction. In some ways, the latter, perhaps ironically, seemed the more Brechtian in its reluctance – refusal would be too strong – to concede to opera, even in Weill’s idiosyncratic conception. It was, in any way, a properly barbed, defiant way for ENO to bid us au revoir. 

The Cunning Little Vixen, English National Opera, 22 February 2022

Coliseum

 

Images: Clive Barda

Forester – Lester Lynch
Vixen – Sally Matthews
Forester’s Wife, Owl – Madeleine Shaw
Schoolmaster, Mosquito – Alan Oke
Priest, Badger – Clive Bayley
Poacher – Ossian Huskinson
Innkeeper, Cock – John Findon
Fox – Pumeza Matshikiza
Innkeeper’s Wife, Chief Hen – Gweneth Ann Rand
Dog – Claire Barnett Jones
Pepík, Woodpecker – Alexandra Oomens
Frantík, Jay – Ffion Edwards
Harašta – Ossian Huskinson
Dragonfly – Joy Constantinides
Frog – Robert Berry-Roe
Cricket – Ethan James
Grasshopper – Kavya Kutsa

Jamie Manton (director)
Tom Scutt (designs)
Lucy Carter (lighting)
Jenny Ogilvie (movement)

Children’s Chorus (chorus director: Patrick Barett)
Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus director: Mark Biggins)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

Failure to love the operas—more generally, the music—of Janáček would be a strange, soulless thing indeed. It seems more to be opera companies, strange, incomprehensible entities, than opera-goers, be they casual or more seasoned and committed, that accomplish that strange, incomprehensible failure. Fortunately, since opera returned to London, we have had opportunity to see a Janáček opera at Holland Park, Covent Garden, and now at the Coliseum too, with Glyndebourne adding to the tally not so far away. Holland Park’s Cunning Little Vixen last summer makes ENO’s claim that the opera is ‘rarely staged’ especially peculiar, but arts advertising is another strange and incomprehensible world. We can and should be grateful for Janáček wherever we find his works staged; that is surely the important thing, not least at a time when humanity stands in danger of extinction from so many catastrophes at once.

The idea of Jamie Manton’s new production seemed to be that the human world aged more readily and found itself less capable of regeneration, perhaps in light of its incomprehensible despoliation of Nature, than the natural world of animals, to the detriment of the slow-witted former and probably the quicker-witted latter too. Deforestation was, I think, part of that tale, felled logs across the stage, living wood turned dead at the hand of man. Silent child and/or adolescent versions of certain characters—the Forester, his Wife, the Vixen, and the Dragonfly—heightened the sense of cyclical, generational narrative, freer than their elder selves, without merely getting in the way. Just as important, they and other silent roles gave opportunity to child performers, as of course did the children’s chorus. Vivid, painterly impressions of human life and the seasons were unfurled: always a dramatic reminder that what we think of as Nature, or at least what we can ever know of it, will always remain an uneasy compromise with the natural world 'itself'. 

There was also an intriguing sense of the story, or at least the human part of it, lying closer to earlier Janáček works such as Jenůfa and Katya Kabanova. When the Forester took the Vixen home, it was indoors, to a claustrophobic setting that would not have been out of place in a typical ‘contemporary’-minded production of either of those. This Moravia was far from a rural idyll, though it arguably had more in common with the stage of life at which Janáček wrote his opera, memories of his relationship with Kamila Stösslová colouring the Forester’s strange love for the Vixen and ultimately that sense of transcendental communion engendered by that love.

Martyn Brabbins led a loving—perhaps in the third act, a little too loving—musical account, especially strong in conveying not only the metrical implications of Janáček’s use of Czech speech rhythms, but how evidently felt they might be by performers and audience alike (even in English translation). Here was a score clearly internalised, whether its moments of rapture or its (often overlooked) harder edges, chiming nicely with what we saw on stage. By the nature of the work, a Vixen performance needs to be a company effort. That was certainly what we saw and heard here.

Sally Matthews shone in the title role, her bell-like soprano emotionally adaptive to a variety of situations, Pumeza Matshikiza’s Fox similarly likeable and (strangely?) relatable. The journey of Lester Lynch’s Forester offered a crucial dramatic counterpoint, ably supported and brought into relief by a host of sharply drawn cameos. It would ultimately be a little pointless to go through the large cast, but Madeleine Shaw’s Forester’s Wife and Ossian Huskinson’s Harašta seemed to me particularly vivid portrayals, in stage and vocal terms. Storm Eunice, the natural world in notably hostile guise, may have put paid to the premiere, but there will always be more to come, further opportunities. Like the Forester, we human beings must learn better how to take them—before it is too late.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, English National Opera, 19 May 2011

 The Coliseum

Images: Alastair Muir (click to enlarge)
The eve of the wedding...

 
Oberon – William Towers
Bottom – Sir Willard White
Tytania – Anna Christy
Lysander – Allan Clayton
Demetrius – Benedict Nelson
Theseus – Paul Whelan
Puck – Jamie Manton
Helena – Kate Valentine
Hermia – Tamara Gura
Flute – Michael Colvin
Snug – Grame Danby
Snout – Peter van Hulle
Starveling – Simon Butteriss
Quince – Jonathan Veira
Cobweb - Alexander Lee
Peaseblossom - Luke Saint
Mustardseed - Luke Dugan
Moth - Dominic O'Donnell
Changeling boy - Dominic Williams
Hippolyta - Catherine Young


Christopher Alden (director)
Charles Edwards (set designs)
Sue Wilmington (costumes)
Adam Silverman (lighting)

Boys of Trinity School, Croydon (chorus master: David Swenson)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Leo Hussain (conductor)

Iestyn Davies (Oberon) and
Anna Christy (Tytania)

ENO’s superlative Return of Ulysses has been my operatic highlight of the season so far; This Midsummer Night’s Dream in many respects comes close: such a relief after the well-nigh unwatchable Damnation of Faust recently endured. But this was not easy ‘relief’, Christopher Alden’s production proving intent on exploring the darker side of Britten and his work. It was telling that the discomfort of a certain section of the audience manifested itself in the unpardonable boorishness of booing the production team. Reactionaries who might just about have reconciled themselves to Britten’s music – forget Birtwistle... – did not want their ‘enjoyment’ ruined by something that went beyond kitschy tales from the Athenian woods. For those with ears to listen, as well as eyes to see, an opera that has its weaknesses emerged stronger and, a signal achievement this, managed both to chill the spine and to elicit genuine comedy. How many times has one previously consulted a watch during the Tedious Brief Scene of Pyramus and Thisbe? Not on this occasion. Excellent personal direction and acting, not least from Sir Willard White’s Bottom, made that scene a genuine joy, focusing attention on Britten’s clever parodies, which thereby emerged as more than merely clever (often a danger with this particular composer).

That said, the darkness is really the thing. Alden daringly – and no, I am not using the word ‘ironically’ – reimagines the opera in terms of a mid-twentieth-century boys’ school. I immediately thought of Britten’s own – and Auden’s – Gresham’s, a connection reinforced both by Charles Edwards’s superb set designs and a mysterious figure strolling around, observing, and to a certain extent participating, suggestive of Britten himself. (More of that figure anon.) Just in case one were in any doubt, the inscription above the school entrance forbiddingly – invitingly for some? – reads ‘BOYS’. The fairies are the younger boys, with Puck an older, apparently knowing member of the community. Oberon and Titania are an especially twisted master and mistress, free with their favours, clearly in competition for the favour of their charges. A nice touch is Titania’s schoolmarmishly wooden beating time for the fairy choruses. When Puck gets things wrong, he is subjected to a spanking by his master Oberon, who may already have transferred his affections to the Indian Boy. Clearly Puck will have to redouble his efforts, though his relationship to the Britten-like figure seems to grant him extra kudos. Lysander and Hermia explore their sexual awakening behind the dustbins, whilst the sadistic rejection of Helena by Demetrius and her masochistic response are especially cutting and credible, given his status as a highly popular member of the rugby team. Sue Wilmington’s costumes, here and elsewhere, strike just the right note. One can quibble, no doubt, about what the girls are doing there at all, but their presence does not really jar, and girls have a habit of sneaking in to such environments, wanted or otherwise. During their explorations, the boys are initially as inclined to play with each other, similarly the girls, as old habits die hard. The magic, when it comes, is all, or at least mostly, to be attributed to whatever it is that Oberon is smoking. Puck passes around the cigarette to devastating effect. It may sound contrived, but it really works on stage. And he threatens to set the entire school ablaze at the end of the second act.

Paul Whelan (Theseus) and Jamie Manton (Puck)

Finally, the observer, himself earlier subjected to sado-masochistic tying up by Puck, is revealed to be the Duke, returned to his old school on the eve of his wedding and now again following the (play) reception. One often wonders, whether in Shakespeare or Britten, quite what the nature of his role should be: not here, for we were in for another turn of the screw. This is a tormented man, turned tormentor, who, following the rustics’ departure, manages to free himself from his respectable, echt-1950’s wife, returns to the school to revisit Puck, with whom he has earlier shared his neck-ties (a bond, it seems, born of a gift, or perhaps of identity). Puck, whom one might expect now to be triumphant, appears broken, perhaps literally. The abuse, and abuse it undoubtedly it is, has taken its toll. Rather than force himself upon the boy again, the Duke, perhaps chastened, as a Puck himself in later life, slinks away. Punk’s final words are defiant, but we know that this boy will remain troubled.

The cast entered into this scenario with gusto. Indeed, one had the real sense of a company performance, and even if it were not so in the strictest sense, it is surely no coincidence that many of these artists have worked together before. Iestyn Davies, sadly, was ailing, similarly his understudy Iestyn Morris, so Davies acted the role of Oberon, whilst Will Towers sang from the side of the stage. With that performance, Towers has doubtless ensured himself of a major role of his own at ENO before long, with a hauntingly beautiful rendition that never once lapsed into stereotypical hooting. (I cannot say the same for a certain other, highly celebrated counter-tenor, whom I heard a few years ago at Glyndebourne.) Allan Clayton was also, we were told, suffering from an infection, but one would barely have known: his Lysander remained an impressive portrayal. Benedict Nelson’s Demetrius was full of youthful masculine swagger, which yet retained a propensity, understated though it may have been, to equally youthful self-doubt. Tamara Gura and Kate Valentine made an impressive pair of female lovers. White’s excellent Bottom, blessed by a genuinely comic vocal delivery I have not heard in this artist before, was complemented by an excellent oddball assortment of rustics, from whom Michael Colvin’s Flute should be considered first amongst equals. The Donizetti parody truly hit home. Paul Whelan, whom I previously admired as Claggart in Glyndebourne’s Billy Budd, proved a haunted and haunting Theseus: this Duke will linger long in the mind. Jamie Manton was equally impressive as Puck, his adolescent cockiness twisted into something almost too painful to watch; memories of Manton’s fine performance will doubtless prove equally difficult to dispel. Magic, as the production suggested, only takes one so far: to treat it is a refuge from reality is at best irresponsible.


Underpinning this real company success were the excellent contributions of Leo Hussain and the ENO Orchestra. Hussain, making his ENO debut, conducted as if he were a knight of the realm, so readily did Britten’s style and structure speak from his baton. One would not have been surprised to discover that it was a Sir Colin, or a late Sir Charles, save that neither of those conductors, I suspect, would have warmed to Alden’s production. Magic was there: those harps, the woodwind, the slithering fairy-music. We were left in no doubt, however, that malevolence was always present too. (What, after all, is a forest? It is hardly a place of straightforward comfort. Think of Hansel and Gretel.) Above all, and this is crucial in music that can otherwise tend to meander, Britten’s score was shown to be constructed. The booers would doubtless have preferred not to be reminded of Britten’s twelve-note experimentation, but so much the worse for them. Boys from Trinity School, Croydon, proved impressive too, clearly well coached by their Director of Music, David Swinson.

It was an interesting coincidence upon returning home from the Coliseum last night, to post a quick summary on Twitter, to see the name of Melanie Phillips ‘trending’ there. (Reader: if you do not know who she is, may you at all costs strive to retain your blissful ignorance. Suffice it to say, that she is a ‘commentator’ to the humourless, far right fringe even of the rabid, petit bourgeois bigotry that infests the Daily Mail, Britain’s answer to Der Stürmer, both then and now. To its eternal discredit, The Spectator offers her a platform upon its website too.) It appears that Ms Phillips had wound up – and she appears to mean what she says – a good section of the television audience for BBC television’s Question Time, doubtless by spitting and cursing upon the slightest semblance of human charity. One can well imagine how she and her readers would have reacted to this production: not a justification in itself, but not a bad sign either. As Germaine Greer has pointed out, the obsession amongst large sections of our society with paedophilia reflects their own paedophilia: witness the photographic reproductions of missing children, especially girls, whereas for those of us not interested, we are simply not interested and should prefer to hear about something else (our ruling class desperately trying to keep it from us). They want to ‘hear all about it’ but react violently when their motives are questioned, let alone examined, hence the mittelständisch booing. The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual, as we shall be reminded when the Royal Opera revives Peter Grimes next month. ENO would also seem to have set the scene very nicely for Nico Muhly’s Two Boys, from which I shall also report in late June.