Il mondo alla rovescia, Salzburger Landestheater, 30 April 2025

Images: SLT / Tobias WItzgall

La Generala – Daniele Macciantelli
La Colonnella – Hazel McBain
L’ajuntata maggiora – Katie Coventry
Marchesa – Nicole Lubinger
Amaranto – Luke Sinclair
Il Conte – George Humphreys
Admiral – Yevheniy Kapitula
Il gran Colombo – Michael Schober
Girasole – Alexander Hüttner

Director – Alexandra Liedtke
Set designs – Philip Rubner
Costumes – Johanna Lakner
Dramaturgy – Anna N.M. Lea
Lighting – Sebastian Schubert

Chorus and Supplementary Chorus of the Salzburg Landestheater (chorus director: Mario El Fakih)

Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra

Carlo Benedetto Cimento (conductor)

La Generala (Daniele Macciantelli), Il Conte (George Humphreys), L’ajuntata maggiora (Katie Coventry), La Colonnella (Hazel McBain)

If it often proves difficult to think or write about, say, Alexander Zemlinsky without invoking his still-more-celebrated brother-in-law, how much more difficult is it for Salieri—without, well, you know mention of a certain other composer contemporary to him, perhaps all the more so in Salzburg. Or perhaps not, since Salieri has been doing relatively well there of late. Last year’s Mozartwoche offered him a number of opportunities, those I heard very well taken. This year, the bicentenary of his death, the Landestheater gives his 1795 dramma giocoso, Il mondo alla rovescia, on which he had begun work in 1779, only to set it aside and return to it in 1792, renewing an initial collaboration with his (and Lorenzo Da Ponte’s) friend Caterino Mazzolà, who the previous summer had worked with a Salzburg composer on a revision of Metastasio’s La clemenza di Tito for Leopold II’s coronation as king of Bohemia. (In the meantime, Mazzolà’s libretto, then entitled L'isola capricciosa, had been set by Giacomo Rust, briefly Hofkapellmeister in Salzburg, for the 1780 Venice carnival.) It is perhaps ironic that we now know Mazzolà best for an opera seria, when by far the greater part of his operatic work was in the buffo genre, here taking its leave from Carlo Goldoni’s Il mondo alla reversa (another Venice carnival piece, by Baldassare Galuppi in 1750). Some may know another Salieri collaboration, La scuola de’ gelosi, but any opportunity to acquaint oneself with further Mazzolà as well as further Salieri is greatly welcome. This opera, given its modern premiere in 2009 in the composer’s home town of Legnago, is now heard in a new version prepared at the behest of conductor Carlo Benedetto Cimento by the same musicologist and mandolinist Bernardo Ticci, now drawing on all available sources. Some music, including a vocal duet with mandolin, here played expertly onstage by Mert E. Akyüz, thus receives its first hearing since 1795. 

Generala, Conte, wedding guests

This is not the place for a synopsis, but for a work that will be unfamiliar to most, the basic idea is that two shipwrecked Europeans, a Count and Marchioness are taken captive by a female General (Generala, hence I have kept Italian in the cast list) and the island society over which she rules, one in which usual gender roles have been reversed, so that men do the housework, women do the soldiering, and so on, so that the Count comes to enjoy being fought over by two women, the Generala and a younger Colonella, whom he favours and with whom ultimately he will elect to stay on the island. In a sense, the idea is simple, but its ramifications are not, a dichotomy well realised in Alexandra Liedtke’s staging, brought to life in excellent, often outstanding performances from a fine cast and the Mozarteum Orchestra, galvanised by Cimento, for whom this resurrection has clearly been a labour of love. 

Projection of a few words and pictorial scenes sets the scene, yet it is still a surprise to see men in happy if oppressed domesticity when the curtain rises, clad in Barbie (Ken) pink, cleaning equipment to hand, soon lorded (ladied) over by military women who engage in the crudest of seduction—though a question immediately posed by the shadow projection of its outcome is how consonant that particular act might be with the island’s ‘natural order’ of things. Doubtless it can be and for some in a twenty-first century will be, but the question hints at an inability of any of us to escape certain aspects of gender roles, whether or no we wish to do so. The variety of means – action, designs, thought bubble interventions, etc. – with which points are made might sound didactic on the page, yet notwithstanding one or two sobering exceptions, for instance a reminder of the gender pay gap today among musicians, the general tone is comedic, even comical. If one does not get one reference, say to Barbie, one will probably do so another, say to The Magic Flute or to Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, alluding to the Count’s arrival on land as well as gender-reversal, as he sits to be painted. And lest you think this all sounds too binary, the painter and dressmaker Girasole are evidently more interested in one another. (In the programme, we learn that, ‘according to Salieri’, presumably Mazzolà too, the latter will end up partnering the Generala’s adjutant, but it counsels us to find out the meaning of ‘lavender marriage’.) So the production lightly yet firmly develops the drama from its original state, well aware of the differences in outlook between societies 230 years apart, but also of what has not changed. I was a little surprised to see the Generala’s grotesquerie – the joke being she is an older woman, sung en travestie by a basso buffo – go unquestioned, but perhaps that is also the point. We have not moved on as much as we think, and we still find the premise in large part absurd. The production’s openness to different standpoints is a strength and arguably a necessary one. 

Amaranto (Luke Sinclair) and others

Intention is always a fraught issue, whether in performance or ‘the music itself’ (‘TMI’), a once-fashionable problematising term in musicology (feminist critiques included), but from which we now have mostly moved on. Whether Cimento ‘meant’ to bring to the fore things I thought and heard I cannot possibly know without asking him, but I can certainly say that much did come to mind, dramatically and conceptually. Above all, he drew outstanding, committed playing from the orchestra, big-boned and subtle, characterful and situational, fully aware of structure, form, dramatic momentum, and their interaction. No, Salieri does not have the gift of musical characterisation that someone else does, but nor does Haydn; even Gluck’s gift here is distinctly limited in comparison. Very few composers from any period of musical history do, if indeed that is what they are attempting (which we should by no means take for granted). I found particularly interesting the way vocal writing and number form more generally adapted or did not according to gender reversal. Was this parody? And if so, whose parody was it anyway? How much was playing with expectation, in a different way from Così fan tutte, yet one whose requirements for musical learning did not, amongst the more knockabout material, necessarily seem less. Moreover, the wind and specifically brass writing, often associated, obviously enough, with militarism set me to think how much might this have been (re-)conceived, or at least received, as an opera in wartime, coming about two years before Haydn’s Missa in tempore belli. Indeed, in broader conception, Haydn’s Goldoni opera Il mondo della luna, written only two years before Salieri’s initial compositional work, often came to mind dramatically—and perhaps even musically. 

Individual performances were uniformly excellent. Daniele Macciantelli clearly had a ball as La Generala, never putting a stage or vocal foot wrong whilst doing so. If you wanted to know how soprano coloratura – and much else – might be used to convey toxic masculinity/femininity, Hazel McBain was your person as La Colonnella. George Humphreys managed the competing demands – allure, cunning, and resolve – as well as, well, any woman might have done. In a strikingly different role from Lucio Silla (not JC Bach’s), in which I saw him last year, our Amaranto Luke Sinclair showed that comedy, properly understood and presented, is so much more than mere amusement—whilst offering that too. In a ‘smaller’ role that nonetheless seemed considerably greater, Alexander Hüttner did likewise as Girasole. Nicole Lubinger’s Marchesa’s journey to greater feminist self-knowledge was finely traced. As the Generala’s adjutant, Katie Coventry similarly combined striking stage presence and every musical virtue, as she had as Cecilio in that Lucio Silla.  Yevheniy Kapitula as the Admiral and Michael Schober’s Gran Colombo rounded off the cast in ‘smaller’ roles that yet contributed to an evening that was so much more than the sum of its parts.

Colonnella, Conte, Ajutanta

Overall, then, the overt emphasis was comedic, although creditably not to the extent one could not also consider what else might have been done, always bearing in mind that no one staging or performance is likely to cover all bases. Dramas worth performing are usually more open, if sometimes to the discomfort of their creators, than any single approach will allow. Scenically, what I missed was a stronger sense of that wartime context. That is not a complaint but rather an observation concerning what further layering might be added—and doubtless reflecting my own historical (and contemporary) preoccupations. Austrian defeats of the previous year 1794 (Fleurus and Aldenhoven) would doubtless have informed the first critical responses of many to an opera premiered in January 1795. And there may be reason to consider a gendered element there too. Little more than three years earlier, during the Bohemian coronation festivities for Emperor Francis II’s father and predecessor, Leopold II, La clemenza di Tito received star theatrical billing, its premiere the evening of the coronation itself. That, however, was as first among equals in a programme that also included August Kotzebue’s topical, one-act comedy Der weibliche Jacobiner-Club, pitting the Parisian Madem (sic) Duport, radicalised by revolution, against her traditionalist husband. 

There is a case to be made that bourgeois revolutionaries strengthened gender binaries and power relations; certainly with hindsight that seems to have been the case. But it was not necessarily how things seemed at the time. Comedy was often a ‘safe’ way of expressing and exaggerating fears of social upheaval. Revolution and the revolutionary wars, which were how the former most immediately manifested itself in this part of Europe, might also threaten another variety of the ‘world turned upside down’, or at least be feared to do so. Music could – and did – deepen and question such assumptions and indeed their questioning too.

Lucio Silla, Salzburger Landestheater, 4 June 2024

Images: SLT/Christian Krautzberger

Lucio Silla – Luke Sinclair
Cecilio – Katie Coventry
Giunia – Nina Solodovnikova
Lucio Cinna – Nicolò Balducci
Celia – Anita Rosati
Aufidio – Joseph Doody

Director – Amélie Niermeyer
Set designs – Stefanie Seitz
Video – Janosch Abel
Costumes – Kathrin Brandstätter
Dramaturgy – Frank Max Müller and Vinda Miguna
Lighting – Tobias Löffler

Chorus of the Salzburg Landestheater (chorus director: Tobias Meichsner)

Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra

Carlo Benedetto Cimento (conductor)  

The Salzburg Landestheater’s new production of Lucio Silla, generally accorded the finest of Mozart’s three opere serie for Milan, was first seen in January of this year. Though I was actually in Salzburg for the second performance, I was unable to see it then, so I was delighted to have opportunity to catch up with a thoughtful staging and fine performances, worthy of anyone’s attention—and which it would be highly desirable, if at all possible, to have preserved on film. The sixteen-year-old composer’s relish for the forces, chorus included, at his disposal in Milan was vividly brought to life. If he had not yet learned the dramatic virtues, at least from time to time, of concision such as one experiences in later dramas, it is difficult to imagine anyone having minded. Such was the expertise with which this young cast made Mozart’s recitative and da capo arias, coloratura in particular, vividly meaningful as well as vocally thrilling, that more modern prejudices against the genre were thoroughly dispelled. The quality of staging and performances also offered a welcome opportunity to (re-)assess Giovanni De Gamerra’s admittedly very early libretto. 

De Gamerra has come in for a bad press, then and now: to my mind, at least a little unjustly. Lorenzo Da Ponte, who perhaps, having been compelled to leave Vienna, had his own reasons for dissatisfaction with those who had remained, reported in a footnote to his memoirs:

 

Leopold [II, Holy Roman Emperor] took [Giovanni] Bertati to his opera. A year later came [Giovanni Battista] Casti: and that wretched dramatic cobbler was dismissed. But Casti was not fond of hard work. He asked for an assistant and obtained one in person of Signor Gamerra, a poet famous for his Corneide, a poem in seven or eight fat tomes wherein he mentioned all the horns that had appeared in Heaven or on earth from the birth of Vulcan down to those of his own grandfather. This ungrateful cornifex had not been a year in Vienna before he began butting with his benefactor, accusing him of Jacobinism; and poor Casti … was enjoined to depart from Vienna at once.

 

This is both odd and intriguing, given that Leopold himself spoke harshly of the poet, advising his brother Ferdinand, governor of the Duchy of Milan, in a letter John A. Rice discovered in the Vienna archives, that De Gamerra was ‘fanatic to excess, hot-headed, imprudent concerning … liberty, very dangerous,’ a startling extreme judgement coming from one who was far from reactionary, and which certainly attests to strong political sentiments on De Gamerra’s part. We might also note, though, that Leopold was none too complimentary about Ferdinand, dismissing him in a secret memorandum on members of his family (!) as ‘a very weak man, of little intellect and paltry talent, but who has a very high opinion of himself’. Make of that what you will. (I shall resist the temptation to go into greater detail about the House of Austria and Mozart’s operas here, but more will follow both in articles and, when finished, a book on the complete operatic œuvre.)

Celia (Anita Rosati), Aufidio (Joseph Doody), Lucio Silla (Luke Sinclair)

Perhaps more significant has been the view that the libretto, in particular its ending, is not very good. Mozart found himself having to make revisions in light of criticism (of the libretto) by Metastasio. In his New Grove article, Julian Rushton calls the denouement ‘unconvincing’ and the libretto as a whole ‘turgid’, whilst allowing Lucio Silla nonetheless to be ‘musically the finest work Mozart wrote in Italy, … [ranking] with opera seria by the greatest masters of the time’. I certainly should not dissent from the latter, either in principle or in light of this performance, but I find the judgement of the libretto unduly harsh, both in general and with respect to the ending, demanded by the conventions of the genre but also foreshadowed more than many allow both in libretto and score. A virtue of Amélie Niermeyer’s production is its taking the ‘problem’ of the ending, on which more shortly, on board. Greater faith in the work, one might well argue, might make such a strategy unnecessary; but in light of the decisions made, reasonable and justified for a contemporary production, its subversion (or, if you prefer, extension) makes good sense.

 

Neirmeyer takes her leave from the historical Lucius Sulla’s dictatorship. That did not necessarily hold quite the same implications as now, but such qualification is largely beside the point if it makes for good drama, which, on the whole, it does. In this world of modern dictatorship, rebels, resisting a new, brutal régime, in which opponents, pictured in placards held up by those resisting, have been ‘disappeared’. Lucio Silla exists and is amplified by propaganda, photographed snaps retouched and enhanced by his friend, the tribune Aufidio to portray the essence of strong, masculine leadership. Cecilio, Lucio Cinna and others are in hiding, clothing suggestive of a guerilla movement, and crucially are being watched (at least part of the time) through electronic surveillance rom the dictator’s palace.

Lucio Silla

 

Silla vacillates and is persuadable, picking up on the mediating role of his sister Celia as well as his love for Giunia, she of the old regime, so that his sudden decision for clemency (a recurring theme, we might note, through Mozart’s entire œuvre, as well as much other eighteenth-century opera) seems less unmotivated than has been alleged. But there is a twist. Since we have moved to a world of modern psychological realism, heir to the ‘Romantic critical tradition’ Rice highlighted as having done such damage to understanding of the composer’s final instantiation of operatic clemency, La clemenza di Tito, the change of heart is a ruse. The dictator who, it has seemed, might prefer a lengthy retirement in which he can indulge himself with whisky and women, has had a plan all along. Acclaimed by the people for forgiveness of those who have plotted against him, he has in fact seized the moment to add them to the ranks of the disappeared, chillingly undercutting the final vocal and orchestral rejoicing,whilst, in a sense, remaining true to the claims to total knowledge on which clemency insists. (Think of Sarastro as well as Tito.) If, sometimes, the relentless activity during arias threatened to detract from moments of musical reflection, it was a finely balanced thing. Mozart survived—and rather more than that. If anything, the classic AMOR/ROMA conflict gained by its rethinking.

 

Luke Sinclair’s performance in the title role was fundamental to this dramatic success. Vocally strong and agile, his stage portrayal helped fill in many of the gaps. Ably assisted by Joseph Doody as Aufidio, no mean singer and actor himself, Sinclair’s Silla offered psychological depth in instability, whilst maintaining something quite other to the external world. Those in whom he almost met his match were equally impressive, complementing and contrasting like a fine wind ensemble. Katie Coventry as Cecilio offered an extensive range of dramatic colour, not entirely unlike an early piano. Nicolò Balducci’s coloratura and the dramatic use he put to it in the soprano castrato role of Cinna would have more than convinced even the most countertenor-sceptical of listeners. Nina Solodovnikova’s warmly sympathetic, yet unswervingly committed Giunia brought her music and role thrillingly to dramatic life, poignantly in tandem with the spirit world (and others) conjured up by Carlo Benedetto Cimento and the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, as well as the Chorus of the Salzburg Landestheater. Anita Rosati’s Celia proved a musical as well as dramatic lynchpin, stylistic command second to none. But then, I could almost have exchanged the descriptions given for each singer at will. All had cruel vocal demands placed upon them, all succeeded not only in fulfilling them, but in creating an ensemble drama that was far more than the sum of its parts.

Cecilio (Katie Coventry)

Cimento’s alert musical leadership from the pit, allied to the long Mozartian experience of the orchestra, was just as impressive—and crucial. Tempo decisions were wise. Dramatic momentum was created and maintained. Artists on stage were given freedom to act as singing actors, nonetheless bound together by careful ensemble preparation and finely judged orchestral incitement. Affective use of keys, E-flat major in particular, was meaningfully conveyed. That is Mozart’s doing in the first instance, of course, yet it still needs – and received – sensitive, dramatically alert conducting and orchestral performance. Likewise, the composer’s extraordinary orchestration, veiled, muted strings, tender woodwind, sepulchral trombones and all, disconcerted, beguiled, and thrilled. 

A welcome and apt surprise came at the beginning of the second part (the third act) when an entr’acte not a million miles away from Mozart, but which I did not recognise and which I was 99.5% sure was not Mozart, was heard. I later discovered that it was the first part of the second movement and all of the third from Johann Christian Bach’s Symphony in G minor, op.6 no.6. Not only did it accompany the pantomime action very well; it served to remind us both of Mozart’s close connection to the ‘London Bach’ and the latter’s own Mannheim Lucio Silla, to a revised (I admit, improved) version by Mattio Verazi of De Gamerra’s libretto. Perhaps Salzburg might tackle this next? It would be a fine thing indeed to be able to see and hear the two together one day. In the meantime, this did nicely indeed.

La finta giardiniera, Royal College of Music, 28 November 2016

Britten Theatre

 

Violante/Sandrina – Josephine Goddard

Belfiore – Joel Williams

Anchise – Richard Pinkstone

Arminda – Ida Ränzlöv

Ramiro – Katie Coventry

Serpetta – Harriet Eyley

Roberto – Julien van Mellaerts

 

Harry Fehr (director)

Roxana Haines (assistant director)

Yannis Thavoris (designs)

John Bishop (lighting)

Victoria Newlyn (choreography)

Royal College of Music of Opera Orchestra

Michael Rosewell (conductor)

I saw my first Finta giardiniera close to eight years ago, at the Royal College of Music’s Britten Theatre. In between, I have also been fortunate enough to see a very different staging, indeed a more or less total reimagining of the work, from Hans Neuenfels, in Berlin. Now, it was back to the Britten Theatre for a new staging. Not too bad, then, for a work that hovers on the fringes of the repertory – although how absurd that a work fully the equal of any of Haydn’s operas is still so relatively neglected, if not quite so scandalously neglected as Haydn’s works themselves. Three cheers, though, to the RCM, for another splendid evening, and for placing such faith in this lovely work!

 

Harry Fehr’s production is ‘based on one which was first presented at the 2013 Buxton Festival’: slightly odd wording, but anyway. The important thing is that it is fresh, lively, abidingly theatrical. It does not explore the depths that Neuenfels did in his Pforten der Liebe; there is little, perhaps no, sense of the darkness of love, nor indeed of the German director’s fantasy. By the same token, though, it avoids the tendency towards preciosity of the previous RCM production (Jean-Claude Auvray). A moneyed, contemporary Long Island setting works well and, quite simply, looks good. Yannis Thavoris’s excellent designs are resourceful in their suggestion of broader social milieu, but also provide elegant framing for the action. For my taste, Fehr perhaps overplays the farcical element; there were certainly times when I wished the production would calm down, just a little. On the other hand, a work very much, I think, in the tradition of Carlo Goldoni arguably brings Mozart closer than he had previously come, or would come again, to the world of Rossini. I just do not think it is that close, and should have preferred something that engaged with the surely undeniable presentiments of Così fan tutte. (On the other hand, when one thinks what Così often must endure…) In any case, all is smartly, slickly accomplished – and it offers a fine showcase for the young singers.

 

Fortunately, there was not much in the musical performances that approached Rossini. (However much I may differ from the late Nikolaus Harnoncourt with respect to what I want to hear in Mozart, I certainly share with him that vehement opposition he voiced to any tendency towards unvariegated breathlessness.) Michael Rosewell’s reading did not draw especial attention to itself. Tempi were judiciously varied; perhaps a little more variety would not have gone amiss, but I am being ungrateful. The spirited playing of the orchestra only occasionally had me miss the sound of a slightly larger band (strings a parsimonious 6.5.4.3.2), but that may well have been as much a matter of acoustics. Jo Ramadan’s harpsichord continuo proved supportive, exhibiting none of the irritating exhibitionism one often hears today (especially on the fortepiano). Orchestral solos were well taken throughout; if one does not miss the clarinet in Mozart, one must be on the right track.

 

The disguised marchioness herself, Violante/Sandrina, received a likeable performance from Josephine Goddard, integrity of character at the heart of her reading. Joel Williams’s cavalier, not a little devilish Belfiore would clearly return to her, and he did. The sparkle of his eminently musical performance was matched, at the very least, by Ida Ränzlöv’s Arminda, dressed to kill (not quite literally, although one would not necessarily have been surprised) by Thavoris. Richard Pinkstone’s tenor contrasted enough from Williams’s to suggest difference of character; his subtly more buffo (never too much) demeanour confirmed it. (There are considerable distinctions of social order in Mozart’s writing, even this early; almost the only thing this opera lacks is the later delineation and depth of individual character.) If Pinkstone’s Anchise, splendidly contrasted to this summer’s outstanding Hänsel und Gretel Witch, thereby attested to considerable versatility, Katie Coventry’s Ramiro confirmed her gift, already shown by her Hänsel, for the mezzo trouser role, both in timbre and demeanour. Such alertness and social awareness extended to the pair of servants rounding off the cast: Julien van Mellaerts’s affable Roberto and Harriet Eyley’s knowing Serpetta, very much in the line of Pergolesi. Ensemble was tight throughout, permitting different lines to tell and yet also to combine. Such is the essence of this opera; it was equally the essence of this performance.

Hänsel und Gretel, Royal College of Music, 4 and 5 July 2016

Hänsel (Kamilla Dunstan), Peter (Timothy Connor), Gertrud (Elspeth Marrow), Gretel (Gemma Lois Summerfield)
Images: Chris Christodoulou

 

Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music

Peter – Timothy Connor/Nicholas Morton

Gertrud – Elspeth Marrow/Amy Lyddon
Hänsel – Kamilla Dunstan/Katie Coventry
Gretel – Gemma Lois Summerfield/Sofia Larsson
Witch – Richard Pinkstone/Joel Williams
Sandman – Maria Stasiak
Dew Fairy – Louise Fuller

Liam Steel (director)

Myriddin Wannel (designs)
Andy Purves (lighting)

Chorus of Echoes, Angels, and Gingerbread Children

Royal College of Music Opera Orchestra

Michael Rosewell (conductor)

Gertrud (Elspeth Marrow) and
Peter (Timothy Connor)

 

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, albeit with less varied tunes, I shall say again that much of the best opera in London is to be found at our conservatoires. Moreover, they seem to get better and better. I am not sure why, but it had been a little while since I had gone to a Royal College of Music production; this made me realise just what I had been missing. Indeed, I think it was probably not only the best production I had seen there, but perhaps, all things considered – and there are always many things to consider when it comes to opera! – the best production of Hänsel und Gretel I had seen anywhere.

 

Liam Steel’s staging is the one I and many others have been waiting for, light-years away from the evasive, glossy, yet reassuringly völkisch  - reassuring to the völkisch, that is – School of Cameron Mackintosh production Adrian Noble recently inflicted upon the Vienna State Opera. I can hear a self-styled operatic ‘conservative’ seething already: ‘Oh for goodness sake. Leave it alone; it’s just a fairy tale.’ Indeed, the bizarre Bernd Weikl has recently called for criminal prosecutions (!) of directors whose work he does not like, has done just that, pointing to the New York Met (yes, you read that correctly) as a model of sensible staging and funding. Just a fairy tale? Fairy tales, as we all, save for a bewildering number of opera directors and managers, know, are full of all manner of violence. So, of course, are adult constructions of something called ‘childhood’. Children do not think about ‘childhood’, claim to wish to ‘protect’ it, whilst at every twist and turn undermining it; children, simply, or rather not so simply, live their lives under the increasingly oppressive shadow of this construction. They – and we – learn a great deal from ‘fairy tales’. We certainly do on this occasion, in which abuse takes centre stage. That abuse is not so much the abuse of childhood’s construction, although we are likely also to be led to reflect upon that, as that violence against children which, more often than not, takes place within the ‘home’, within the hallowed sanctuary-cum-torture-chamber of the family.

 

Gretel (Gemma Lois Summerfield)

I nearly added ‘bourgeois’ to ‘family’, then decided against it, since one of the many disturbing aspects of Steel’s production is the poverty – very much part of the ‘fairy tale’ and of the ‘original’ artwork from Engelbert Humperdinck and his sister, Adelheid Wette – in which the family lives. We begin with a cartoon, a projection of what two children, plonked in front of the television whilst their parents are out (perhaps working), are watching: David Ochs’s Who’s Hungry? Ending with the old test card – now that is something to divide us according to age – we can then focus properly, in every sense, upon the revealed stage. When we first properly see Peter and Gertrud, they are dirt – literally, so – poor, their unwashed, unkempt existence mirrored in, intensified by the miserable kitchen in which they play. Myriddin Wannell’s designs, here and elsewhere, are as crucial to the development of the Konzept as Steel’s detailed, yet never too-detailed Personenregie. The awkwardness of the children’s dancing is as important, in its way, as the stunted dance of Elektra in Patrice Chéreau’s shattering staging (ironically, recently taken to the Met). They are certainly damaged, then, by the abject poverty that reduces them to the all-too-convenient category of what many, too many, in this country would dismiss as ‘chavs’, and, as soon becomes clear, by something else, as yet intangible. And yet, at the same time, they are not quite broken; they can play, even if, especially in Hänsel’s case, it takes a bit of sisterly encouragement for him to break his inhibitions. (And what, we might well ask, lies behind or beneath those inhibitions? It seems a little more than mere insistence that he is a boy, not a girl, although that is clearly the starting point, in work and production.)

Peter (Nicholas Morton)

The milk having been spilt, the children expelled, we witness a tattooed, swaggering, Peter’s return to Gertrud, her hairstyle (‘Croydon’, is I believe, the snobbish description), condition (heavily pregnant, ‘once again’, one assumes, de haut en bas), and clothes almost the very image of what our construction of a ‘neglectful parent’ would be. Theirs is an evidently sexual relationship. (Freud would, of course, tell us of the anxiety resultant from children imagining their parents having sex, and the consequences of such anxiety.) Indeed, Peter cannot keep his hands off Gertrud; and once she realises he has, literally, brought home the bacon, and much else, she is duly, seemingly genuinely, appreciative. It is Peter, though, who asks about the children and who worries when he hears from Gertrud where they have gone. At the time, we think – or at least I thought – that that is just a matter of being interrupted in the act, and, once she has attended to her cane (which we may or may not notice at the time), her handbag and its contents, she happily accompanies her husband to look for the children.

 



Sandman (Maria Stasiak)

Lest that all sound too un-Grimm-like (but what do the ‘protectors’ of the Brothers actually know of their collections?), the woods are wonderfully so. Are they in some sense a projection, a fantasy? Perhaps. Certainly some of the darkness appears to have resulted from the cartoon projections. (The second act is introduced by Jan Švankmajer’s Jabberwocky, the third by Katy Towell’s Never Wake Up; their relevance will be clear from the titles alone, but their portrayals of childhood within a general framework entertainment, not least portrayals of dolls and their dismemberment, tell us more still.) That this is a nightmare is clear, certain objects, not least the stove, the fridge, and the kitchen door, remaining constant, or near-constant, throughout all three acts. That is not, of course, to say that the nightmare is not also ‘reality’. Gnarled trees, made up sometimes, or so it seems, of strange woodland figures, enhance the sense not only of danger but of necessary enchantment (whether good, evil, or something else). The Sandman’s emergence fascinates: is he ‘just’ a vagrant with carrier bags or something more primæval, as his pleasing, traditional countenance and, indeed, Andy Purves’s lighting might suggest? We are not sure, and indeed our dreams and nightmares play a role in our interpretation.

 

Hansel (Katie Coventry), Peter (Nicholas Morton), Gertrud (Amy Lyddon), and Gretel (Sofia Larsson)

The Evening Prayer underlines how close, through necessity, Hänsel and Gretel have become: now he does not mock her prayer, as he had at the beginning of the first act; they protect each other. And the Dream Pantomime is, quite simply heartbreaking. Here, we see the ‘perfect’ family, the ‘perfect’ Christmas they – we – desperately want. Not only are the children the objects of that unconditional parental love society has children, rightly or wrongly, believe is the norm; not only do they receive gifts which are worth more, emotionally as much as financially, than they have likely ever received in their lives; not only are their parents bedecked in good, respectable middle-class clothes (slightly different, according to which cast) which they could never afford and would most likely shun even if they could; not only is a veritable feast of food and wine prepared; there is hope, and there is fulfilment of that hope. It is, in short, Christmas – or rather, our construction of ‘Christmas’, which necessarily involves, co-opts, arguably abuses children. The appearance of the Dew Fairy, at the beginning of the next act, offers deconstructive humour; where that ideal might have granted us forlorn hope, here we have someone much the worse for wear, spilling her wine from the bottle – not so much the morning after the night before as her revels not yet having ended.
 

Witch (Joel Williams) and Hänsel (Katie Coventry)

An abiding childhood fear at my school, and I am sure not just at my school, was of the loner who would attract one back to his – it always seemed to be ‘his’ – car with a bag of sweets. We heard about that all the time, although no one ever seemed to have heard of it actually happening. The Witch attracts the children then, with conventional methods – just as (s)he always has. We see the gingerbread house as we should. And we see a ‘respectable’ if somewhat grotesque old lady (en travestie), her house boasting comfortable furnishings as well as edible treats, and, crucially, photographic portraits of young children, just as we would when they were reported missing – and indeed, just as we have at the beginning of the show. The children are wary, perhaps warier than usual in productions of this work; do they know something already, perhaps have some experience of what might happen? At any rate, the conservative’s ‘harmless’ fairy tale progresses as it should, the Witch capturing Hänsel in her cage, force-feeding him like a dog, ready for his baking, until the children turn the tables. There is a break in which we are blinded – well, not quite, but we certainly cannot see what happens behind. A few words of dialogue – the first act also began with some – lead us into the children’s tentative healing of the rescued other children. There is joy, but there is clearly also trauma; how could there not be? And when, full of the (apparently, at least) purest joy, their father finally discovers them, ‘true’ familial love seems to be the order of the day. Given the horrors of what have happened, this reunion is rendered all the more moving – perhaps more so on the first evening than the second, which seemed a little less dark (although that might have been more a matter of my own mood, or that of a section of the audience, which seemed determined, bizarrely, to laugh a little too often on the second evening).

 

Witch (Richard Pinkstone)

And yet… Steel has a chilling twist to the tale. Gretel scowls at the children; they look at her, terrified. There is no heartfelt reunion, indeed no physical contact, there. The inebriated, genuinely beloved Peter, oblivious to all but the general rejoicing, fails to notice as she collects her (the Witch’s) wig and stick. There may be no use crying over spilt milk; how, however, could the children – and we – fail to do so in this case? And ‘case’ perhaps should have more than one meaning, for who is the narrator, reliable or unreliable, here? What actually was or is the ‘abuse’? Is it ‘real’ or the fantasy of Hänsel and Gretel, as a result of neglect and ill-temper on their mother’s part? When Gertrud collects the stick, is there just a chance she might actually be the long-suffering mother (perhaps another of our longstanding constructions: the ‘wicked stepmother’) having yet again to clean up the mess? But surely that fear on the children’s faces was all-too-real, was it not? Difficult questions indeed.



Dew Fairy (Louise Fuller)

None of that would have amounted to anything very much without such excellent performances. So enthused was I by the first performance I attended that I arranged to return the following evening to hear the second cast. Our Hänsels and Gretels were not dissimilar. Both Kamilla Dunstan and Katie Coventry were excellent at portraying their character’s boyishness, without loss to genuinely lovely mezzo-soprano tone quality. (It goes with the mezzo territory, I suppose.) As Gretel, Gemma Lois Summerfield and Sofia Larsson both proved warmly sympathetic, both in vocal and stage terms. Elspeth Marrow and Amy Lyddon both carried off the difficult task of portraying, indeed exploring a more complex Gertrud than we genuinely encounter. Not only did they disturb, though; they both sang beautifully. (I am once again proud to say how lovely it is to encounter former Royal Holloway students, in this case Marrow and Coventry, making their way in musical careers.) There was greater contrast between the two Peters. Timothy Connor was fuller of swagger, disarmingly sexy; Gertrud’s mother would doubtless have thought him a bad lot, yet been charmed in person. Nicholas Morton offered a sadder, more forlorn figure, not least in vocal tone, very much emerging from the German Romantic past. Both worked splendidly; indeed, they complemented each other strikingly, offering different perspectives, even within the same production. Our two witches, Richard Pinkstone and Joel Williams, both trod with great skill the fine line between comedy and tragedy, with stagecraft second to none, stagecraft that yet did not eclipse their estimable vocal attributes. Maria Stasiak and Louise Fuller offered lovely singing and plenty of stage presence as the Sandman and Dew Fairy respectively. The RCM Chorus of Echoes and the younger Angels and Gingerbread Children rounded off a thoroughly excellent cast; their contribution may be mentioned last here, but it should certainly not be considered as least.

 



Gretel (Sofia Larsson) and
Hänsel (Katie Coventry)

Michael Rosewell’s conducting and the playing of the RCM Opera Orchestra were similarly first-class. It might seem absurd to compare them to Thielemann at the Vienna State Opera last November, in the Noble production I mentioned above, and I do not really intend to do so, but hand on heart, I can say that they would have nothing to fear from such a comparison. The theatre is smaller, of course, but what we heard was plenty to fill the RCM’s Britten Theatre, and not just to fill it, to sound as gloriously Romantic, and if anything, more variegated, both in terms of texture and articulation, than that Viennese performance. A relatively small string section (7.6.4.4.2) certainly did not sound small – perhaps occasionally on the thin side on the second night, but only occasionally (and that may have been more a matter of sitting in a different part of the theatre). There were some truly ravishing solos to be enjoyed. The wind sounded vernal, autumnal, and all manner of seasonal shades in between. Rosewell’s handling of Humperdinck’s post-Wagnerian melos was impeccable, indeed often enthralling. Transitions were handled without the slightest hint of awkwardness. Humperdinck’s Wagnerisms and, I think, his anticipations of Strauss (Rosenkavalier, for instance, in both the second and third acts) too shone through in all their irresistible loveliness. Not for nothing did Strauss conduct the premiere. Equally apparent and immediate, however, was the dramatic menace necessary to convey the story and its undertones, often founded in a secure yet wandering bass line; this was no tale of opposition between pit and stage. All concerned had, quite clearly, learned from the collaboration – and, I suspect, enjoyed it very much too. I certainly did, and, as you will have gathered, it really had me think too. These, then, were performances for which I should gladly have travelled some way to see and to hear. Outstanding!