La bohème, English National Opera, 5 February 2022

Coliseum

Marcello – Charles Rice
Rodolfo – Adam Gilbert, David Junghoom Kim
Colline – William Thomas
Schaunard – Benson Wilson
Benoît, Alcindoro – Simon Butteriss
Mimì – Sinéad Campbell-Wallace
Parpignol – Adam Sullivan
Musetta – Louise Alder
Policeman – Paul Sheehan
Official – Andrew Tinkler

Jonathan Miller (director)
Crispin Lord (revival director)
Isabella Bywater (designs)
Jean Kalman, Martin Doone (lighting)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus director: Mark Biggins)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Ben Glassberg (conductor)

ENO La bohème 2022, company © Genevieve Girling

This was, I think, the fourth time I have seen Jonathan Miller’s production of La bohème. It strikes me, in this revival directed by Crispin Lord, to have a good deal of life in it left. Indeed, previous reservations have largely vanished. It is not a complex piece of theatre, nor does it lead one especially to reassess the piece, but it enables an intelligent retelling, far from dependent on the participation of particular artists and frames that retelling in unshowy yet arresting 1930s style. It is recognisably Paris, recognisably ‘Bohemia’, and again offers space, if far from a blank canvas, to enable artists to create them and make them their own. It has a definite photographic-cinematic look too, and a similar propulsion to the action, all suiting and shaping Puccini’s timing, concision, and ‘cuts’. Where I initially found elements of comedy jarring, now they seemed to me very much part of a greater tragicomic vision, like night and day, or life and death. The ‘extra’ elements observed, whether general city toing and froing or, in the fourth act, Musetta arriving downstairs with Mimì, struggling to get her upstairs, genuinely added to the drama rather than distracting from it.

Perhaps I had previously been too much of a curmudgeon, or perhaps the distance afforded by a revival director and lively cast make all the difference. Perhaps, even, the pandemic has played its part in permitting all of us to appreciate what we have, rather than longing for what we have never had. At any rate, it works well and spares us the inevitable ‘coronavirus production’ around the corner. The one I truly dread is the Tristan ‘Brangäne, you’re on mute’ staging: ‘I only wanted to stage this opera when Tristan und Isolde could be shown as radically distanced from each other, never truly on-screen at the same time. Video conferencing gave me the tools to pursue that vision.’ But I digress: back to Puccini. 

Or maybe not, for one of the most impressive aspects was Ben Glassberg’s conducting, which revelled in Puccini’s Wagnerisms, memories of Tristan evoked quite magically in the first act, without taking for something they were not. The sounds extracted from the ENO Orchestra were often magnificent: a great dynamic range, from moments of hushed intimacy, to grand, declamatory gesture. But it was Glassberg’s pacing and his reconciliation of vocal and orchestral demands that marked this out most strongly. That was not all his doing, of course. Both orchestra and chorus—what a joy to see and hear a chorus, handled most resourcefully, onstage once again—deserved plaudits in their own right. String sheen and incisiveness, bubbling woodwind and chorus: these and more played their part in weaving an effervescent, yet ever-darkening dramatic tapestry. 

ENO La bohème 2022, Simon Butteriss, Louise Alder © Genevieve Girling 

So too, naturally, did the singers. Sinéad Campbell-Wallace gave a touching performance as Mimì, finely acted as well as sung, with a generosity of spirit that took us far beyond any perils of sentimentality. Louise Alder was an outstanding Musetta, as charismatic as one could wish for in vocal as well as stage presence, with a sharply drawn character that avoided all suspicion of caricature and yet suggested uncommon depth, worn lightly. Charles Rice offered a similarly charismatic Marcello, swaggering, ardent, yet not without vulnerability. David Junghoon Kim was alas unable to sing Rodolfo, though continued to act it, Adam Gilbert making an excellent replacement from the wings. Benson Wilson and William Thomas gave sharply etched portrayals of Schaunard and Colline respectively, the latter's Coat Aria a tiny gem in itself. Simon Butteriss well-nigh stole the show with turns as Benoît and Alcindoro. Some may not have cared for his—and other—spoken interventions, but for me they seemed much in keeping with the general sense of musico-theatrical company. That, surely, is a post-pandemic prize ENO would do well to win back. On this evidence, at least, it is a good way there already.

La bohème, English National Opera, 26 November 2018

Coliseum

Images: Robert Workman

Marcello – Nicholas Lester

Rodolfo – Jonathan Tetelman

Colline – David Soar

Schaunard – Božidar Smiljanić

Benoît – Simon Butteriss

Mimì – Natalya Romaniw

Parpignol – David Newman

Musetta – Nadine Benjamin

Alcindoro – Simon Butteriss

Policeman – Paul Sheehan

Official – Andrew Tinkler

Jonathan Miller (director)

Natascha Metherell (revival director)

Isabella Bywater (set designs)

Jean Kalman (lighting)

Kevin Sleep (revival lighting)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Mark Biggins)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Alexander Joel (conductor)

And still they come. The last opera I saw during my near-year of liberation from Poundland was La bohème at the Deutsche Oper. No year goes by without multiple opportunities to see it; few years now go by without my taking at least one of those opportunities. Indeed, I see that I shall now have gone to Jonathan Miller’s staging on three of its five (!) outings since it was first seen at ENO in 2009. Is there a degree of overkill, especially when it comes to a far from adventurous production? Perhaps, although I am well aware of the (alleged) reasons for a company performing the opera so frequently. Do they add up, though? Judging by the number of empty seats at the Coliseum on this, the first night, I am not sure that they do. Might that indicate that it is time to give the work a rest or a new production? Again, perhaps, although what in the present climate would be an adequate substitute for box-office certainty? Perhaps there is no longer any such thing. Is that a bad thing? For a company struggling with declining funding and years of mismanagement – remember the self-styled ‘She-E-O’, Cressida Pollock, granting interviews about how she liked to relax with a bottle of wine whilst wearing her favourite training shoes, at the same time as attempting to sack the chorus? – the answer would seem to be yes. On the other hand, might it ultimately be a prod towards diversity of repertoire, towards taking Puccini as something more artistically serious than a box-office certainty, towards asking whether a performance in an often jarring English translation vaguely ‘after’ Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica is really the best way to ‘sell’ as well as to perform this work to a multicultural audience? Perhaps. We shall see.

One very welcome aspect of this performance – and possible justification for retaining the production a little while longer – was the opportunity it granted, well grasped indeed, to a young cast including two of ENO’s Harewood Artists: Nadine Benjamin and Božidar Smiljanić. Benjamin’s Musetta is very much her own woman, no mere memory of other Musettas we have heard – or claim to have heard (‘does not efface post-war memories of Dame Ermintrude Heckmondthwike, “Ermie” we called her…’). Not that she was different for the sake of it, quite the contrary, the crucial facets of Musetta’s character coming through bright and clear, but fresh too, very much an acquaintance as well as a reacquaintaince – and a vocal acquaintance too.  Smiljanić is likewise an able actor and impressed greatly both as soloist, insofar as possible for a Schaunard, and in ensemble. Likewise David Soar as Colline, his final-act moment something truly to savour. Nicholas Lester’s Marcello was definitely a cut above the average, rich and, where appropriate, ardent of tone, hinting cleverly at far more to the character than we ever officially learn (surely so much of the trick to a compelling Puccini performance). Simon Butteriss’s comedic turns as Benoît and Alcindoro even had a doubter such as I consider the approach (Miller’s, I suspect, more than the artist’s) perfectly justified.

Last yet anything but least, our pair of star-crossed lovers, played by Jonathan Tetelman and Natalya Romaniw, showed themselves (mostly) sensitive artists who could yet project to the back of the largest of theatres. (Alas, the Coliseum remains not the least of ENO’s problems, whatever audience members ‘of a certain age’ might claim.) Romaniw’s Mimì proved perhaps the more moving early on, but that is more likely a consequence of the opera itself than of any great performative disparity; both certainly moved in the final tragedy of the work’s final minutes. If only they had not on occasion – under instruction, I suspect – played to the gallery, treating their ‘big moments’ as stand-alone arias. The real culprit here, I think, was Alexander Joel. His conducting of the ever-excellent ENO Orchestra was incisive and mostly unsentimental, but he seemed incapable of thinking – or at least projecting – a greater unity to each act, let alone to the score as a whole. Of Puccini’s ‘symphonism’, we heard little or nothing.

As for Miller’s production, ably revived by Natascha Metherell – who surely deserved a curtain call – it is what it is. Paris updated to the thirties looks beautiful, occasionally desperate too; Personenregie is keen. As mentioned above, I am more reconciled to its comedy than I first was. Moreover, I rather like – some do not – the glimpses we catch of characters off the set as such, carrying on with their lives. Something a little challenging or interesting, though, would surely not go amiss in the future. As yet, few if any directors seem to have matched Stefan Herheim’s challenge in his superlative Norwegian Opera production, let alone gone beyond it. Will time tell? Perhaps.

La bohème, English National Opera, 29 October 2014

(sung in English)

 

Coliseum

 

Marcello – George van Bergen

Rodolfo – David Butt Philip

Colline – Barnaby Rea

Schaunard – George Humphreys

Benoît, Alcindoro – Andrew Shore

Mimì – Angel Blue

Parpignol – Philip Daggett

Musetta – Jennifer Holloway

Policeman – Paul Sheehan

Foreman – Andrew Tinkler

Jonathan Miller (director)

Natascha Metherell (revival director)

Isabella Bywater (designs)

Jean Kalman, Kevin Sleep (lighting)

Chorus of the English National Opera

Orchestra of the English National Opera (chorus master: Genevieve Ellis)

Gianluca Marcianò (conductor)

 

Jonathan Miller’s production of La bohème for ENO, shared with Cincinnati Opera, sits uneasily, at least as revived by Natascha Metherell, between comedy and tragedy. Perhaps, you might say, that is as it should be; there is certainly an element of taste in such matters. However, it seems to me that a highly creditable desire to explore the darker elements – and they are hardly difficult to find! – in Puccini’s opera is somewhat undone by moments closer to farce. The greyness of an imagined Paris inspired by Cartier-Bresson works very well, Isabella Bywater’s designs in themselves a great visual strength, waiting to be relieved by brief, or at least relatively brief, moments of colour. Café Momus makes a particular impression in that respect. However, I could not help but wonder whether some of the things – entrances, concealment, and so on – one sees going on around the sets would be better left unseen. Elements of ‘surprise’ – yes, many of us know the opera all too well, but that is a different matter – are lost, without the ‘workings’ adding anything genuinely new. Still, it is a relief not to have anything too sugary; the last thing Puccini of all composers needs is sentimentalising. Doubtless I have been spoilt by seeing Stefan Herheim’s urgently compelling version on DVD: the only staging of this work that has really revealed anything at all to me. Recommended to Puccini-lovers and –sceptics alike, indeed to anyone who believes that opera can and should be something more than a tired museum piece.

 

A few more serious drawbacks prevented the evening from having had the impact it might have done. Amanda Holden’s translation started off poorly and, if anything, got worse. It managed both to be vaguely ‘after’ the libretto and dreadfully anti-musical. Italian suffers worse than most languages by translation into English, but the task can be accomplished much better than this. This was a version only for those who might think there is something ‘edgy’ about people randomly singing the word ‘bastards’. But then, perhaps a selfish – or hard-of-hearing? – audience happy to applaud throughout, and indeed before the orchestra had stopped playing at the ends of acts was genuinely enthralled or even shocked by such banalities. Moreover, Gianluca Marcianò’s charmless conducting helped nothing or no one. The first act in particular seemed devoid of life. I struggled in vain to hear anything throughout the evening that would vindicate Puccini’s symphonic ambition. Instead, phrases followed one after another, quite unconnected. The ENO Orchestra, on generally excellent form, both pointed and luscious where permitted, deserved far better.

 

So too did the cast: probably the principal reason to catch this revival. There was a good sense of ensemble between the singers, which will doubtless only increase as the run progresses. Individually, there is much to admire too. David Butt Philip really presented Rodolfo as a credible character, not a mere opportunity to sing. The conflicts within his soul, cowardice and self-absorption vying with a genuine if ‘poetic’ aspiration towards something nobler, came across with considerable subtlety. Angel Blue seemed slightly stilted to start with, but quickly grew into the role of Mimì. Her vocal allure is by now reasonably well known; it did not disappoint. However, a little more attention at times to words and their implications would have deepened the impression. If George von Bergen was somewhat stiff as Marcello, the other students impressed; Barnaby Rea’s Colline and the Schaunard of George Humphreys helped to create a proper sense of milieu and preoccupation from which Rodolfo could emerge. Jennifer Holloway’s Musetta very much looked the part, but the top of her range proved uncomfortably strident, even squally. Andrew Shore, however, proved luxury casting as Benoît and Alcindoro, vivid portrayals them both.


 

Il barbiere di Siviglia, English National Opera, 25 February 2013

(sung in English as The Barber of Seville)

The Coliseum

Fiorello – Alexander Robin Baker

Count Almaviva – Andrew Kennedy
Figaro – Benedict Nelson
Rosina – Lucy Crowe
Doctor Bartolo – Andrew Shore
Don Basilio – David Soar
Berta – Katherine Broderick
Ambrogio – Geraint Hylton
An Official – Roger Begley
A Notary – Allan Adams

Jonathan Miller (director)

Peter Relton (revival director)
Tanya McCallin (designs)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Genevieve Ellis)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Jaime Martin (conductor)

 

ENO’s advertising emphasises the ‘25^th anniversary year’ of Jonathan Miller’s staging of The Barber of Seville. It holds the stage well enough without offering any especial insight – at least by now. The programme book mentioned commedia dell’arte: Tanya McCallin’s designs are of that world, certainly, even if there does not seem to be a great deal in Miller’s production that goes beyond the general ‘look’ of that tradition. Unlike many endlessly revived productions, this, then, is not in itself particularly tired, and one can readily imagine it offering the opportunity for new casts to come in and assume their roles without a great deal of stage rehearsal. By the same token, when compared with, for instance, John Copley’s considerably more venerable Royal Opera La bohème, which I happened to see earlier in the month, the staging does not especially sparkle, enlighten, or indeed charm either. It would do no harm to have a little Regietheater cast Rossini’s way. Either that, or assemble a cast whose sparkle would lift the work above the merely quotidian.

 

I say ‘the work’, but this performance, unfortunately, put me in mind of Carl Dahlhaus’s ‘twin musical cultures’ of the nineteenth century: too clear a distinction, no doubt, but nevertheless heuristically useful. On the one hand, one has the culture of the musical work, as understood in an emphatic sense, that of Beethoven and his successors; on the other, one has ‘a Rossini score ... a mere recipe for performance, and it is the performance which forms the crucial aesthetic arbiter as the realisation of a draft rather than an exegesis of a text’. The problem was that this performance, taken as a whole, simply did not sparkle as Rossini must. One therefore became of the score as a decidedly inferior, indeed well-nigh interminable work. Repetitions grated and a good part of the audience was espied, furtively or less furtively, glancing at wristwatches. If Rossini’s ‘musical thought hinged on the performance as an event,’ then this was an unhinged performance – and not, alas, in the expressionistic sense.

 

Jaime Martin’s conducting started well enough. There was throughout a welcome clarity in the score; this was not, at least, Rossini attempting and failing to be Mozart or Beethoven. Give or take the odd orchestral slip, there might have been much to enjoy in the contribution of the ENO Orchestra, considered in itself.  However, impetus was soon lost, and any ‘purely musical’ tension soon sagged. Whether the first act were actually as long as it felt, I am not sure, but many during the interval opined that it seemed as though it was never going to end. If Rossini’s repetitions as opposed to development serve a dramatic purpose, one can readily forget them; here they were apparent in unfortunately lonely fashion. I could not help but mentally contrast the extraordinary use to which Beethoven, for instance in the Waldstein Sonata, puts simple tonic and dominant harmony, to the tedium induced on this occasion. For some reason, the fortepiano was employed as a continuo instrument: a strange fashion, which has enslaved musicians who would never think of using it in solo repertoire. Performance, then, failed to elevate the ‘work’. At least the English translation, by Amanda and Anthony Holden was a cut above the average.

 

The greater fault in any case lay elsewhere, above all in Andrew Kennedy’s Almaviva. His casting seemed simply inexplicable. Almost entirely lacking in coloratura, let alone Florez-like facility therewith, he resorted to mere crooning, a state of affairs worsened by the application at seemingly random intervals of unnervingly thick vibrato. His stage presence was of a part with his vocal performance. Benedict Nelson’s Figaro started off in reasonably convincing fashion, but by the end was somewhat hoarse and throughout lacked the pinpoint precision that might have lifted the performance. By contrast, Lucy Crowe was an excellent Rosina. Her coloratura was impeccable, her gracious stage presence no less so. Andrew Shore reminded us of his skills as a comic actor in the role of Doctor Bartolo, and Katherine Broderick also took the opportunity to shine as Berta. Sadly, the increasingly lacklustre conducting and the embarrassing performance of Kennedy conspired to negate those positive aspects of the performance, rendering one tired with the ‘work’, however it were considered.

Così fan tutte, Royal Opera, 27 January 2012

Royal Opera House

Ferrando – Charles Castronovo
Guglielmo – Nikolai Borchev
Don Alfonso – Sir Thomas Allen
Fiordiligi – Malin Byström
Dorabella – Michèle Losier
Despina – Rosemary Joshua

Jonathan Miller (director)
Harry Fehr (revival director)
Jonathan Miller, Tim Blazdell, Andrew Jameson, Colin Maxwell, Catherine Smith, and Anthony Waterman (set designs)
Jonathan Miller and John Charlton (lighting)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)

Ferrando (Charles Castronovo), Don Alfonso (Sir Thomas Allen), Guglielmo (Nikolai Borchev)
Image: Royal Opera/Johan Persson

In principle, there could be no better way of celebrating Mozart’s birthday than hearing Sir Colin Davis conduct Così fan tutte. It was certainly advisable to think of this performance from the standpoint of hearing two well-loved knights from British musical life: Davis, of course the world’s greatest living Mozartian, and Sir Thomas Allen, marking his fortieth year with the Royal Opera.

For Jonathan Miller’s production, always a tawdry slight upon this most ravishing and sophisticated of operatic masterpieces, has not improved with age. The ludicrous slapstick – in this of all works! – continues at best to irritate, not least given its effect upon sections of an extremely poorly-behaved audience. When not coughing, chattering, dropping items, reading the subtitles out aloud, or making strange oinking noises (the row behind me), far too many people seemed to find the appearance of mobile telephones intrinsically, indeed overpoweringly, hilarious, their selfishly prolongued guffaws well-night obliterating the magical strains of Mozart’s – and Sir Colin’s – orchestra. Designs for the most part now simply look dull, outlandish costumes representing an attempt to breathe life into a corpse that should be put out of our misery. (It is extraordinary to think that no fewer than six people, Miller included, are credited for the set designs. What could they all have been doing?) To take the most brazen example: why ever would the girls be interested in the hideous biker transformations to which Ferrando and Guglielmo are subjected? They are certainly unrecognisable, so the disguise at least has worked; yet, however fickle Fiordiligi and Dorabella may be, they would be in need of psychiatric attention to forget two handsome young men in favour of what is put in front of them. The only glimmer of a real idea – and it is, to be fair, an interesting one, partly to be attributed to Rosemary Joshua’s fine acting skills – is the final outcome for Despina, who appears genuinely troubled by what she has seen. Was this, though, the doing of revival director, Harry Fehr? I do not remember it from before, though that may simply be a matter of fallible memory. Enough of the production: I have probably dwelled too much on it in the past and have granted it far too great a benefit of the doubt. Let us proceed to the more congenial matter of the music.

Davis remains a master of this score. If he did not perhaps quite scale the heights of greatness I heard in 2007 – probably the best conducted Mozart opera I have ever heard – then it is difficult to conceive of anyone nearing, let alone matching, him. As so often, the overture gave a clue, its opening bars somehow both sensuous and magisterial, the unbearable lightness of being that followed a true and poignant opening to the work as a whole. There is often more than one answer to a puzzle of tempo, but Sir Colin’s wisdom ensured that we never realised there was a puzzle in the first place, every number so seemingly ‘natural’ both in pacing and progress that one could not imagine it being performed otherwise, and every number of course integrated into a greater whole. That is the key to this opera, both in music and drama: the highest artifice, expressed with the greatest ease. (Would that Miller had been listening.) The wind ravished, as they must, witnesses to the unspeakable pain that Mozart as musical dramatist inflicts upon us, more so, should we listen, than anything even in Wagner. There were a few occasions, however, when, in a house of this size, the excellent strings would have sounded even better had they been augmented. Paul Wynne Griffith’s witty, ever-musical harpsichord continuo proved a joy throughout, attesting as did Davis’s conducting to some of the truths voiced in David Syrus’s splendid programme note, ‘Interpreting Mozart Operas’. As Syrus, writes, ‘Directors don’t always welcome discussion of music when rehearsing recitative, and some prefer to treat the text as if it was as free for interpretation as a spoken play.’ How many times have we all suffered, as again here, from un-musical directors? And how greatly do we value directors such as Peter Konwitschny, and Stefan Herheim, who are musicians?

There was, quite rightly, an extended curtain call for our other musical knight, at which he was presented with a cake in honour of those forty years. The humanity of Sir Thomas Allen shone through both in his brief, typically modest response, and of course in his portrayal of Don Alfonso. (From my encounters, including an interview at Covent Garden, I can attest that every personal compliment paid him is if anything an understatement.) Allen held the stage as much through his visual as his musical assumption of the role: indeed, the two were quite properly indivisible. However many times he may have played Don Alfonso, the freshness is such that it might have been the first. He was, it must be said, equally fine in Salzburg, where he was blessed with a far superior production. Joshua’s Despina was a pleasure too: far removed from the frequent portrayal of a servant several years past her best. (One only has to read the libretto to be disabused of that strange notion.) As agile of voice as on stage, hers is a Despina to be savoured. Of Charles Castronovo, I am afraid I can only repeat, word for word, what I said of Matthew Polenzani last year in Paris: ‘… 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 ...’ Così simply does not work – thank goodness – as La bohème. The contrast with the superlatively sensitive Egyptian cotton spun by the orchestra was stark, similarly with Malin Byström’s Fiordiligi. There were a few too many times when she failed to maintain her vocal line, and as for the attempt a crude sexual humour upon a trill… Whether her idea or the director’s, it has no place in Mozart. Nikolai Borchev’s Guglielmo and Michèle Losier’s Dorabella occasionally lacked the proper degree of Mozartian chiaroscuro, yet nevertheless had much to offer in musical sensitivity.