Tosca, Royal Opera, 8 December 2021

Royal Opera House

Cesare Angelotti – Yuriy Yurchuk
Sacristan – Jeremy White
Mario Cavaradossi – Bryan Hymel, Freddie De Tommaso
Floria Tosca – Elena Stikhina
Baron Scarpia – Alexey Markov
Spoletta – Hubert Francis
Sciarrone – Jihoon Kim
Shepherd Boy – Alfie Davis
Gaoler – John Morrissey

Jonathan Kent (director)
Amy Lane (revival director)
Paul Brown (designs)

Mark Henderson (lighting)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus director: William Spaulding)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Oksana Lviv (conductor)  

Images: Tristam Kenton. Copyright: ROH, 2021.
Tosca (Elena Stikhina) and Scarpia (Alexey Markov)

Tosca is a puzzling opera. It seems to me quite the weakest of those Puccini operas in or at the edge of the repertory. Its characters are nothing more than cardboard cut-outs; there is little in the way of broader dramatic interest; for so generally sophisticated a composer, it is often crude, even drab, though there is perhaps greater interest in aspects of the vocal writing than elsewhere. Then there are the bits that read—and sound—like an especially bad historical novel or television mini-series, undigested pieces of historical record thrown up as if somehow to guarantee veracity. It remains steadfastly unmoving—for who or what might move one here?—compared to the rest of Puccini. And yet, Tosca continues in its bewildering popularity. Perhaps I instead am the problem.

 

Whatever the truth of that, Jonathan Kent’s Royal Opera House production is a serious problem. Quite what Kent or any of his team—there is little to it other than its designs—was thinking, it is difficult to say, for it emerges as something that advances on the late, unlamented Franco Zeffirelli only by providing a sort of Reader’s Digest abridgement to the latter that rids it of its gaudiness and any semblance of internal coherence. One waits for any sense of ironic detachment; then one waits longer; and longer still. The set’s heavy vulgarity—there is little or no production beyond the designs—might have been a wry comment on the work, but wryness seems no more to be at stake here than it is in the airheaded vanity of Tosca herself, neither character nor idea. Characters, for want of a better word, generally seem too far away from one another, reducing still further any prospect for chemistry between caricatures. Quite what the point of having people walk up and down ladders is, I cannot say. It gives them something to do, I suppose, but there seems to be beyond no concept beyond that. Borgesian labyrinth this is not; nor is it Piranesi. The oddly designated ‘revival director’ Amy Lane doubtless does what she can, but you cannot revive something that never had life in the first place.

 

Musically, things were better. Elena Stikhina gave a finely variegated account of the title role, with considerable heft where needed, and considerable range of dynamic and colour contrast. She certainly seemed to believe in the role and would surely have made greater dramatic impact in a more plausible staging. As Cavaradossi, Bryan Hymel did not return after the interval, an announcement made that he had been suffering with a heavy cold. It only seems fair therefore to draw a veil over his performance and to say that his replacement Freddie De Tommaso would have made an excellent impression in any circumstances, let alone these. This was, like Stikhina’s, an unsentimental, idiomatic, and—work and production permitting—involving performance. The production’s crudity did Alexey Markov as Scarpia no favours, but there was no doubting the intelligence of his artistry, nor the blackness of this baron’s intent. Other singers all contributed with excellence, Hubert Francis's Spoletta in particular catching the ear. 

So too did the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, perhaps the greatest star of the evening. The players clearly relished Puccini again and responded with accuracy and style to conductor Oksana Lyniv, whose precision and disinclination to yield prevented any lapse into mere sentimentality, though perhaps it drained a little too much of the sentiment without evident cause that is Puccini’s orchestral stock-in-trade here. The Royal Opera Chorus’s contribution was mostly dependable, if at times a little frayed. I could not find the children’s chorus identified in the programme, though perhaps I missed it.

It will doubtless sell. Some, especially at the moment, will say that that is enough; but is it, really? If institutional opera even gives up the struggle to be anything other than a bad-taste museum piece, why should we struggle on its behalf? As we emerge, fingers crossed, from this wretched pandemic, Covent Garden should set its sights higher than being a faded Met-on-Thames. Give a director such as Calixto Bieito a chance to prove us Tosca-sceptics triumphantly wrong.

Manon Lescaut, Royal Opera, 17 June 2014

Royal Opera House

Manon Lescaut – Kristïne Opolais

Lescaut – Christopher Maltman

Chevalier des Grieux – Jonas Kaufmann

Geronte de Revoir – Maurizio Muraro

Edmondo – Benjamin Hulett

Innkeeper –Nigel Cliffe

Singer – Nadezhda Karyazina

Dancing Master – Robert Burt

Lamplighter – Luis Gomes

Sergeant of the Royal Archers – Jihoon Kim

Naval Captain – Jeremy White

Jonathan Kent (director)

Paul Brown (designs)

Mark Henderson (lighting)

Denni Sayers (choreographer)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Stephen Westrop)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor)

 

A moronic audience and obscenely high ticket prices were not designed to have one in the best of moods. The Royal Opera House should be ashamed of itself for its cynical pricing: I had to pay £51, more than I could really afford, for the most distant reaches of the Upper Amphitheatre, from which it is impossible to see the singers’ fasces, whilst Stalls tickets far exceeded £200. So more should those who, having previously been laughing, shuffling, talking, opening sweets, coughing, sneezing, etc., booed the production team. Jonathan Kent’s staging has all sorts of problems, yes, but such boorish, threatening behaviour has nothing to do with art and suggests the perpetrators would be better off at a football match, of which there seems to be no shortage at the moment.

 

Indeed, it was tempting to conclude that such people received what they deserved. Having tittered at the surtitles – is it not side-splittingly hilarious that someone should be interested in preserving an emerald or too? – they, needless to say, failed to notice what might have been the virtue of Kent’s production, had it been coherently thought through and presented. Turning the tables on spectators of different varieties, most notably during the filmed ‘show’ of Manon’s antics in the second act, set to a backdrop of sickly pink vulgarity, might have worked in a Katie Mitchell-like manner; it might even have succeeded in indicting those who had turned up for an evening of conspicuous consumption and sentimental refusal to hear something other than ‘lovely tunes’. One might be able to set aside jarring details, such as this modern(-ish) woman having had parents decide to send her to a convent. The problem is that a not uninteresting idea – and I appreciate that this is a generous reading of what we see – utterly collapses following the interval. Suddenly, without warning, and more to the point without discernible agency, we appear to be in a different production altogether. The point – and again I am trying to be generous – may well be that now the audience, having been rendered aware (a fine chance with most of that lot!) of its complicity, should now be more or less conventionally harrowed, but that is not how it comes across. What registers instead are incoherence and ineptitude, increased by designs which seem to have been ‘borrowed’ from Kent’s less than successful Flying Dutchman.

 

By the time one reaches the fourth act, the production team seems to have given up completely. Not only is it well-nigh impossible, even for the most sympathetic viewer, to consider the cartoon-like presentation with a hint of irony; it is far from clear whether Des Grieux’s failure to bother to find some water, instead just sitting down a few yards away, is deliberate or just an unknowing commentary on what we have been watching. If Kent had had the strength of his (apparent) convictions, had continued to undermine an ‘easy’ reading, perhaps by having Manon fake her death and return to a life of luxury, this would have been worthier of respect; as it stands, one can neither sympathise with the characters nor with the botched attempt at critique of the ‘drama’, such as it is.

 

With a cast such as this, there are compensations of course, but again, bearing in mind the cynical pricing, that is hardly enough. Jonas Kaufmann sounded at times a little strained in the first act – he would surely be more home as Siegmund, the sort of role in which the ROH never permits us to hear him – but, even from the very back of the house, one could see as well as hear his dramatic presence. The Italianate sobs are not overdone, thank goodness, and one could take dictation from his words and vocal line alike, however softly sung. Much the same, bar the Siegmund observation, could be said of Kristïne Opolais, whose shaping of her lines was every bit as impressive as Kaufmann’s. The voices may not always quite have blended, but they certainly came together powerfully in the fourth act – which would have been far better off in a concert performance. Christopher Maltman’s Italian sometimes seemed a little deliberate, but his was an alert reading of the role of Lescaut, both on stage and in voice. Maurizio Muraro probably had the best of the production in terms of the presentation of Geronte; his was a powerful presence throughout. ‘Supporting’ roles were pretty much all well taken; especial mention might be made of Benjamin Hulett’s finely observed Edmondo. Choral singing was of an equally high standard.

 

As for Antonio Pappano’s conducting: well, at least it was not his Wagner. Many extol him in Puccini; he certainly seems more at home here than in a great deal of other repertoire. There remains, though, more than a little stiffness, and that same desire to ‘accompany’ rather than to lead. The Wagnerisms of Puccini’s score came through, perhaps ironically, far more strongly than when I had heard the work in Leipzig in April, but, like much of the rest, they seemed isolated rather than properly placed within a greater scheme. Delicacy was more to the fore than passion, let alone a dialectic between them. The orchestra, bar some surprisingly thin string tone at times, played very well, considered in itself, though it was too rarely given its head; I could not help but wonder what a symphonic conductor such as Daniele Gatti, Semyon Bychkov, or Riccardo Muti would have brought to the performance. That said, the most glaring shortcomings were those of the half-baked staging.  This really is not, or at least should not be, the place to present work-in-progress.
 

Don Giovanni, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, 7 June 2014

Don Giovanni (Elliot Madore) and Donna Anna (Layla Claire)
Images: Robert Workman

Glyndebourne Festival Theatre

Leporello – Edwin Crossley-Mercer

Donna Anna – Layla Claire

Don Giovanni – Elliot Madore

Commendatore – Taras Shtonda

Don Ottavio – Ben Johnson

Donna Elvira – Serena Farnocchia

Zerlina – Lenka Máčiková

Masetto – Brandon Cedel

 

Jonathan Kent (director)

Lloyd Wood (revival director)

Paul Brown (designs)

Denni Sayers (movement)

Mark Henderson (lighting)

The Glyndebourne Chorus (chorus master: Jeremy Bines)

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Andrés Orozco-Estrada

 

Having become so jaded with indifferent – or, sadly, far worse than merely indifferent – stagings of an opera I love more than words can tell, it proved a relief and indeed a joy for me to attend this first revival of Jonathan Kent’s 2010 Glyndebourne production, especially its first act. It was not perfect; perfection we leave for Mozart. But Kent’s staging, as revived by Lloyd Wood – I am afraid I am in no position to say how much is Kent and how is Wood – treats this masterpiece seriously and joins a select group of productions I should happily see again, not least because I suspect there would be intriguing points revealed to me that I had missed upon a first viewing. (Incidentally, its Glyndebourne predecessor, from Graham Vick, forms part of that small band.)

 

Kent’s staging may lack the cocaine-fuelled kinetic energy of Calixto Bieito’s unforgettable ENO production, or the (apparently) all-encompassing, Calderón-like Salzburg World Theatre of Herbert Graf’s production for Furtwängler (the most precious opera DVD this side of the Boulez-Chéreau Ring?), but even such magnificent achievements as those can only begin to hint at the possibilities Mozart and Da Ponte offer us. Most stagings come nowhere near accomplishing even that. Social tensions are either absent or underplayed – an all too common shortcoming – but a seriousness and sensibility it is perhaps not unduly exaggerated to call theological nevertheless comes to the fore. Giovanni’s unflinching, libertine atheism is of course the true heroism of the opera. The dark force of what to him may be reaction is symbolised by the darkness of Paul Brown’s excellent set designs, from out of which the action seems to emerge and into which it retreats. But some in the audience – and some of the characters too – might equally decide that it is the temporal stability of the revolving cube (the Mother Church, perhaps?) which protects and which ultimately proves the villain’s downfall.

 

 

Such openness to interpretation is quite different from a lack of direction. There is room for the burning conviction of strong directorial lines – Bieito is surely one of the greatest and unquestionably one of the most celebrate examples – and for more reticent yet nevertheless intelligent productions, permitting of various understandings. In that respect, Kent’s likening, in his brief director’s note, of Brown’s spinning cube to ‘a kind of Cabinet of Curiosities or, perhaps, a great sarcophagus,’ proves fruitful both in itself and for the further consideration it might suggest. Moreover, such properly Baroque references, in a more broadly cultural sense rather than the narrow conceptions of ‘style’ prevalent today, prove equally stimulating to the imagination – just as they do in Mozart’s score and Da Ponte’s libretto. The 1950s updating registers if one wishes: Kent suggests a ‘time of transition, in which a sexual, social and moral revolution, a dolce vita world, coexisted with the remnants of a devout society. However, at least to my eyes, it does not force itself unduly upon one’s consciousness. The staging is again, then, suggestive; it does not make the mistake of trying to shoehorn the drama into a pointlessly narrow conception, let alone somehow attempt to make Don Giovanni ‘about’ the era in question.

 

There remains, however, one significant reservation. I do not know whose decision it was to serve up what seemed pretty much to be the Vienna version of the score, but I wish he or she had thought again; it made a change, though, from the unholy conflation of Vienna and Prague generally foisted upon us. To anyone who cares to think about it, Prague wins every time, although I have yet to attend a single performance in which Mozart’s dramatic sensibility is thus honoured. At any rate, we heard both of Donna Elvira’s arias, just the one of Don Ottavio’s (‘Dalla sua pace’), and the very rare Vienna duet for Zerlina and Leporello, ‘Per queste tue manine’. It was not, of course, uninteresting to hear the latter, for once, but it is almost unworthy of late Mozart, and holds up the action just as much as if we were to hear both of Ottavio’s arias (and/or, for that matter, both of Elvira’s: just as much a problem with Vienna). There was, at least, no messing about with the scena ultima – a relief, given the recent butchery perpetrated by the Royal Opera. It was a great pity, though, about the surtitles, whose translation was unworthy of Da Ponte’s matchless marriage of wit and profundity.

 

Andrés Orozco-Estrada’s Mahler I greatly admired in Vienna a year-and-a-half ago. At first, that is, in the Overture, I found him somewhat wanting in Mozart. I have learned to live with the opening being taken at an allegedly alla breve tempo far too fast to my ears; off the top of my head, only Barenboim and Muti, amongst living conductors, come close to what I hear in my head. More concerning were a general thinness of tone and apparent lack of concern with harmonic rhythm.  If those were not actually natural trumpets – I could not see the pit – they certainly sounded like them; others, of course, respond better to that rasping sound than I do. However, once past that disappointing opening, there was much to admire, though such tendencies were far from entirely banished. There will always be tempi with which one can quibble, but this was a variegated performance which did not harry the music, and which permitted both the on-stage drama to develop and the excellent London Philharmonic Orchestra to have its say. The Stone Guest Scene, however, was strangely un-climactic: partly, I think, a matter of the failure to use the Prague score, but it was more than that, for that failing is common to many other performances. Though beautifully played by the LPO and – for the most part – well sung, the final scene therefore did not jolt quite as it should.

 



Leporello (Edwin Crossley-Mercer) and Don Giovanni

Indeed, the main factor was probably the underpowered singing of  Taras Shtonda’s Commendatore. The other disappointment amongst the cast was Layla Claire’s vibrato-laden Donna Anna, whose musical line really needed to be clearer throughout.  Otherwise, a cast almost entirely unknown to me acquitted itself well, with a fine sense of company. Ben Johnson, whom I had heard before as Ottavio, albeit in English, sang exquisitely, almost to the extent of having one regret the lack of ‘Il mio tesoro’. Serena Farnocchia was a stylish Elvira, whilst Lenka Máčiková and Brandon Cedel offered vocally lively assumptions of the roles of Zerlina and Masetto. If Elliot Madore lacked the charisma of the great Giovannis, then he nevertheless delighted in the musico-dramatic quicksilver of the role, sufficiently differentiated from the equally lively Leporello of Edwin Crossley-Mercer. There was genuine chemistry between them. Perhaps ironically, given the ‘loss’ of his aria, it was only Johnson’s Ottavio which continued to ring in my ears; but this, like the production and performance as a whole, was a cast that proved considerably greater than the sum of its parts.

Tosca, Royal Opera, 10 May 2014

Royal Opera House

Cesare Angelotti – Michel de Souza

Sacristan – Jeremy White

Mario Cavaradossi – Roberto Alagna

Floria Tosca – Oksana Dyka

Baron Scarpia – Marco Vratogna

Spoletta – Martyn Hill

Sciarrone – Jihoon Kim

Shepherd Boy – Michael Clayton-Jolly

Gaoler – Olle Zetterström

Jonathan Kent (director)

Andrew Sinclair (revival director)

Paul Brown (designs)

Mark Henderson (lighting)

Royal Opera Chorus and Extra Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Oleg Caetani (conductor)

 

Scarpia (Marco Vratogna) and Tosca (Oksana Dyka)
Copyright: ROH/Catherine Ashmore

 

 

All in all, a dispiriting evening, this. Jonathan Kent’s 2006 staging of Tosca, revived again, as last year (!), by Andrew Sinclair, certainly does not reveal greater subtleties of meaning with further acquaintance. Indeed, it makes little or no attempt at conveying meaning at all, be it subtle or otherwise. There is nothing wrong in principle with setting the work when and where specified in the libretto, just as there is nothing wrong with reimagining it, though an over-exposed opera such as this more or less cries out for some element of rethinking. But irrespective of the relatively unimportant question of setting, there needs to be something, or rather a great deal, more to a production than that. Not only is there no sense, as I wrote last time, of dialogue between Puccini’s time, our own, and the time at which the opera is set; there sadly is no sense of drama beyond the gunshots in the third act. Paul Brown’s large scale sets might have imparted a welcome impression of menace, of claustrophobia, but again they could hardly do that on their own. I have no idea how much or how little rehearsal was permitted, but interaction between the singers was often so rudimentary as to suggest none whatsoever (which cannot have been the case).

 

Roberto Alagna at least offered energetic commitment on stage, unlike his Tosca and Scarpia. Alagna’s first act was shaky vocally; indeed his opening suffered from wild intonation and vocal constriction. Later on, however, he improved, though cleaner lines would often have been welcome. Such matters are, however, partly a matter of taste, and on his own terms, the second and third acts were reasonably impressive. Alas, Oksana Dyka’s vibrato was so wide as often to encompass the best part a minor third; her acting skills on this occasion were well-nigh non-existent. Perhaps it was as well that she simply strolled off the battlement rather than attempting anything that would vaguely qualify as a ‘leap’, but it hardly made for much of a climax. Marco Vratogna’s Scarpia also suffered from dryness and constriction in the first act, proving more focused in the second. His acting, however, matched that of his Scarpia; would that the Carry On element of his demise had been born of irony. The smaller parts were generally well taken, however. If only we had seen and heard more from Michel de Souza’s dynamic Angelotti, Jeremy White's characterful, bumbling Sacristan, or Martyn Hill’s nasty Spoletta.

 

The orchestra played well enough, though the strings sometimes tended towards thinness. However, Oleg Caetani’s inconsistent conducting proved a considerable break upon the flowering or, more plainly, the progress of the score. He seemed undecided what he thought of it and therefore unable to make it cohere. The first act’s lack of sentimentality was to be welcomed, but instead it was brutalised; hard-driven rather than riven with menace. Phrasing throughout was short-breathed, instances of a longer line standing out awkwardly, given their lack of relation to what surrounded them. Alas, as with so much of what we saw and heard, what might have passed muster in a small, provincial theatre wedded to the repertory system simply was not good enough for a world stage, upon which this Tosca was presented as a major revival. All with ears to hear will have praised the Royal Opera House to the skies for its recent, superlative performances of Die Frau ohne Schatten; if a work which it performs so incessantly as Tosca is to be performed again any time soon, it needs to be done with similar care and attention. This spoke more of cynicism than of having ‘lived for art’.  

Tosca, Royal Opera, 4 March 2013

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Cesare Angelotti – Michel de Souza

Sacristan – Jeremy White
Mario Cavaradossi – Massimo Giordano
Floria Tosca – Amanda Echalaz
Baron Scarpia – Michael Volle
Spoletta – Hubert Francis
Sciarrone – Jihoon Kim
Shepherd Boy – Filippo Turkheimer
Gaoler – John Morrissey

Jonathan Kent (director)

Andrew Sinclair (revival director)
Paul Brown (designs)
Mark Henderson (lighting)

Royal Opera Chorus

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Maurizio Benini (conductor)

 

 

I shall doubtless be behind the curve when compared with many readers concerning Jonathan Kent’s Royal Opera staging of Tosca, first seen in 2006 and now revived by Andrew Sinclair, given that this was my first viewing. There is not much to say about it really. It is certainly not radical in any way, nor does it seem to have anything to say about the work. (To be fair, though, when Kent has seemed to have had something to say, for instance, in his dreadful Flying Dutchman for ENO, it has not always seemed coherent or worth saying.) I doubt that there is anything to which even the most hidebound ‘traditionalist’ – by which, I mean a fetishiser of set designs and costumes, who thinks that everything should conform to his or her poor-taste conception of what might be ‘beautiful’ – might object. There was certainly nothing so daring as a spot of updating, let alone any sense of dialogue between Puccini’s time, our own, and the time at which the opera is set. The greatest, arguably the only, dramatic jolt came from the third act gunshots. Relatively heavy set designs (Paul Brown) might have added a sense of dramatic claustrophobia, but that would have required something a little more than simply placing singers in front of them and leaving them to it. I can see why having the Te Deum take place a level above Scarpia might visually have seemed an attractive idea; the problem, however, was that it dulled the aural impact of the chorus to the level of background music, when a degree at least of sensory overload should be experienced.

 

Maurizio Benini, however, delivered a decent account, and sometimes rather more than that, of Puccini’s score. Again, it did not especially challenge, but it brought to life that which remained visually dormant. If my preference would undoubtedly be for something that brought more to the fore the symphonism of which many of Puccini’s contemporaries complained, likewise his modernist anticipations, then that has to remain a preference rather than stipulation. In a relatively straightforward way, Benini, a slightly hard-driven opening aside, supported and shaped the action, the melodramatic dénouement quite thrilling in its way. Turning of the musical screws of torture was accomplished to truly searing effect. A few slips aside, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House played well for him, if without quite sounding on the very top of its form. I could not help but wonder, though, what more we might have learned from a great conductor such as Daniele Gatti, whose Salzburg Bohème last summer made a more powerful case for the score than any I have otherwise heard. Gatti of course had the signal advantage too of the Vienna Philharmonic playing for a conductor it loves.

 

And yet, if that all sounds a little easy-listening, one was must take into account the singular contribution of Massimo Giordano’s Cavaradossi. If a Konzept were entirely lacking in Kent’s staging, Giordano supplied his own element of deconstruction, offering a brave parody of popular conceptions of the ‘Italian operatic tenor’. There was no Kaufmann-esque mezza voce here. Instead we heard one of the most convincing assumptions of the ‘Just one Cornetto’ style I have experienced since – well, since that advertisement. What do you mean, it was not intended as a parody? Was that ‘authenticity’ too, in terms of ‘what Puccini might have expected,’ in the unfeasibly wide vibrato and portamento comprising a decent sized portion of the chromatic scale? In the immortal words of the Princess Royal, replying to Cherie Blair’s urging, ‘Call me Cherie,’ ‘Let’s not go there.’

 

Amanda Echalaz, however, offered a detailed, beautifully sung account of the title role. If she never thrilled in the way the Greek soprano who shall not be mentioned has unfortunately led us to expect, then such is a more than usually odious comparison. Michael Volle was perhaps better still, presenting an uncommonly intelligent assumption of Baron Scarpia. Hints of Dr Schön – and not just because so many of us associate him with the role – informed this villain’s sadism; if only a plot twist might have been added, in which Jack the Ripper appeared during the third act. Volle’s command of words and musical line was second to none, lifting the melodrama in many cases beyond itself. Many of the smaller roles were very well taken too. Jette Parker Young Artist, Michel de Souza, an attractive, compelling Angelotti, made one eager to hear more of him in the future; doubtless we shall. Hubert Francis’s contribution as Spoletta did likewise. Company stalwart, Jeremy White, presented as rounded a Sacristan as production and work permitted. And let us not forget Filippo Turkheimer, who certainly made one sit up and listen to the Shepherd Boy’s solo, more dramatically telling than I can previously recall.


I am unsure whether this were a matter of 'access', but the audience seemed to be largely made up of the hard of hearing. Not once was the orchestra permitted to complete an act prior to applause. Moreover, barely a bar of the third act passed by without bronchial accompaniment, chattering, throwing keys on the floor (??!!)...

Der fliegende Holländer, English National Opera, 28 April 2012

The Coliseum

(sung in English)

Daland – Clive Bayley
Senta – Orla Boylan
Erik – Stuart Skelton
Mary – Susanna Tudor-Thomas
Steersman – Robert Murray
The Dutchman – James Creswell

Jonathan Kent (director)
Paul Brown (designs)
Mark Henderson (lighting)
Denni Sayers (choreography)
Nina Dunn (video)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Francine Merry)
Edward Gardner (conductor)



Aoife Checkland (young Senta)
Images: Robert Workman


ENO’s peculiar decision not to stage any Wagner during its 2012-13 season, that is the season in which the greater part of Wagner’s bicentenary falls, is at least mitigated by a new production of The Flying Dutchman during this preceding season. There is much to enjoy musically, though there are a few problems too, but Jonathan Kent’s production fails to cohere. Whilst resemblances to Tim Albery’s dreary production across town for the Royal Opera are doubtless coincidental – though might it not reasonably be part of a stage director’s job to inform himself of what others in his position have done? – the factory setting of the second act, the increasingly odd, yet unrevealingly odd, costumes, and apparent unwillingness or inability to listen to Wagner’s score present an unfortunate kinship.

James Creswell (The Dutchman), Orla Boylan (Senta)

Unlike Albery, Kent appears to have some ideas. The problem is more that they rarely seem properly thought through, and that they do not necessarily cohere with each other. Video now seems more or less obligatory for the Overture; it is very well done here, but is it really necessary to evoke storms visually when Wagner does pretty well for himself with the orchestra. The curtain comes up a little way in, to present a little girl, a young Senta, one presumes, reading a book, referring to the Flying Dutchman, one presumes, whilst apparently being pushed aside by her busy father. (Weird lighting made the girl appear, at least from my seat, as if she were auditioning for The Black and White Minstrel Show. I wondered what on earth was going to happen, feeling quite filled with foreboding, until I realised that she had not after all blacked up.) The timing is unclear; sometimes we appear to be vaguely contemporary, at other points a few years back, though certainly not when Wagner sets his drama. It seems that Senta therefore imagines her Dutchman from her childhood fantasies; the problem here is that in no way is this as coherently presented as when Harry Kupfer in Bayreuth and Berlin unforgettably presented the drama as her dream. Is she dreaming the rest of the drama? It does not appear so. In which case, how is it that anyone else can see the Dutchman? Most do not – a ghost, perhaps? – but Daland certainly does. How, otherwise, can he treat with this strangely nineteenth-century apparition. A more Romantic, dangerous figure might make more sense; this Dutchman, however, dresses more like a character from Jane Austen. He stands out, but not necessarily in the right way; the concept either does not work or is not adhered to consistently.

Senta surrounded by the crowd

A potentially good idea is the viciousness of the other factory workers towards Senta. She clearly does not fit in; they mock her, make her miserable. She belongs somewhere else: Wagner would surely have agreed. This continues into the third act, but alas, an apparent wish to be ‘theatrical’ undermines what might truly have intrigued and provoked. Albery too had a tawdry vision of the crew’s celebrations. Having married – or imagined marrying – the Dutchman during the entr’acte, Senta now finds herself jeered at, molested, and seemingly worse (shades perhaps of David McVicar’s ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’, in which Salome’s childhood abuse is relived). The women of the community do not care; they aid and abet the events. Unfortunately, the presentation is so over the top that it becomes more ludicrous than threatening, more West End musical or perhaps television game show than serious music drama. (And The Flying Dutchman is nothing if it is not taken seriously.) Amongst the oddities we witness are a person dressed up as a parrot, lots of inflatable toys, some people with Santa Claus hats, at least one woman with a huge red hand, and a few supernumeraries whose principal function seems to be to look good when they take off their shirts. It all seems quite out of proportion to whatever we have seen before, and reeks of a desire for spectacle, of whatever sort. Not once did I have the impression that Kent was responding in any depth to the score; often he did not even respond to the words. The frankly silly dance movements flatly contradicted, yet not in an interesting way, Wagner’s writing.

Senta is then rescued by the re-appearance of the Dutchman’s crew – unfortunately rendered in amplified, recorded form: a terrible mistake – but how and why, if, and I repeat if, they do not really exist? Has she merely imagined everything? In that case, it is difficult to take seriously any claims to societal critique, at least without further guidance or refinement. As for why a spotlight suddenly swung around the theatre and focused upon a seemingly random part of the Coliseum ceiling, I simply have not the faintest idea. My abiding impression of Kent’s production, then, was of an undergraduate with a few too many ideas, who would need to be taken aside, advised to deepen his acquaintance with the work over a few years, before returning to it and deciding more clearly how to pursue one or two of those ideas. The contrast with ENO’s most recent other Wagner, Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s ‘heap of broken images’ Parsifal, is stark.

Daland (Clive Bayley)

The ENO Orchestra was on magnificent form, as fine as I can recall hearing it. As for Edward Gardner’s direction, this was a reading clearly determined to focus on dramatic excitement. There is nothing wrong with that, up to a point, but it missed Wagner’s depths. There was little of the problems with maintaining dramatic line that bedevil so many conductors – an impressive achievement for someone conducting his first Wagner opera – but the sound and drive seemed more appropriate to Verdi, or at a push perhaps to Rienzi. As so often, the Overture suffered from being driven too fast to start with and then abruptly altering to a drawn out snail’s pace. Yet once that was over with, and to the extent that one could ignore the lack of ‘German’ depth in sound quality as well as 'musico-dramatic' striving towards symphonism, there was a good deal to enjoy. Whether one should be ‘enjoying’ rather than thinking is of course another matter, but it was a relief to be spared the stopping and starting one so often endures, even in high-ranking houses. Perhaps Gardner’s conception will deepen over time. The work was performed without an interval, without the later, ‘redemptive’ halos to the conclusions of the Overture and the third act. I heartily approve, though a distinguished Wagner scholar, to whom I had been speaking on the telephone just before heading off to the Coliseum, thought otherwise. (Apparently he had advised Gardner to opt for the more ‘authentic’ version with intervals, on the basis that Wagner never performed it otherwise.)

James Creswell made for the most part a commanding Dutchman; his care with the words, here sung in David Pountney’s translation, was noteworthy. Unfortunately, Orla Boylan seemed quite miscast as Senta. It is, I know, a very difficult role, but her often squally tone often turned downright hectoring; at times, it was almost impossible not to wince. Intonation deteriorated as the work progressed too. Thank goodness, then, for a typically detailed character portrayal from Clive Bayley, despite the silly dance he was forced to perform at the end of the second act, and for the undoubted star of proceedings, Stuart Skelton as Erik. His Romantic ardour led one to sympathise as often one does not, yet he ensured that one remained aware of the character’s limitations, of his modest existence, so as to avoid the danger of thinking Senta should have thrown in her lot with him after all. Skelton’s is a fine voice, of course, but he can act too – and certainly did. Though the voices could hardly be more different, I was reminded of a production I saw in Vienna, in which Klaus Florian Vogt – the first time I heard him – quite stole the show. Despite that misguided decision concerning the Dutchman’s crew, the choral singing was, a few rough edges aside, of very high quality: weighty and yet surprisingly incisive. Would that I could say the same concerning the production. For far more interesting stagings, turn on DVD either to Kupfer from Bayreuth or to Martin Kušej’s recent production for the Netherlands Opera.