Iphigénie en Tauride, English Touring Opera, 5 March 2016

 

Images: Richard Hubert Smith

Hackney Empire Theatre

Iphigénie – Catherine Carby

Oreste – Grant Doyle
Pylade – John-Colyn Gyeantey
Thoas – Craig Smith
Scythian Guard – Simon Gfeller
Ministers of the Sanctuary – Ashley Mercer, Bradley Travis
Priestesses of Diana – Susanna Fairbairn, Samantha Hay

James Conway (director)

Anna Fleischle (designs)
Guy Hoare (lighting)
Bernadette Iglich (choreography)

Orchestra and Chorus of English Touring Opera
Martin André (conductor)

At last, an opera company bothering, in London, to perform an opera by one of the most important composers in the history of the genre! (When the Royal Opera performed Orphée et Eurydice, it condescended to Gluck by hiving him off to an external orchestra, as if he somehow were not good enough for its own players.) One grows weary of lamenting, year after year, Gluck’s absence from our programmes. This performance at the Hackney Empire sold out, showing that there is a keen audience, both of devotees and newcomers; if Gluck is not programmed, just as when Schoenberg, say, is not programmed, it is because companies have decided not to do so, not because no one will go. It is all the better, then, that English Touring Opera will take the production to many theatres around the country that would otherwise receive no opera at all, let alone any Gluck operas.

What most, me included, would consider the crowning masterpiece of Gluck’s career will win converts from any willing to treat opera as a serious art form; those who are not might as well remain in front of the television. For Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the great German art historian and archaeologist, ‘the only way for us to be great, and if at all possible, immortal,’ was ‘by imitating the ancients’. Such was the context for Gluck’s crystallisation of plans for operatic reform, opera, which should have been the inheritor of Attic tragedy, being seen instead to have degenerated into an undramatic farrago of vocal and scenic exhibitionism. (It is hard not to sympathise in the case of, say, Vivaldi’s operas, and many others.) Gluck’s (well, Ranieri de’ Calzabigi’s) 1769 Preface to Alceste remains a landmark document in operatic history, the archetypal declaration of operatic reform. It was very much what we heard here:

I have striven to restrict music to its true office of serving poetry by means of expression and by following the situations of the story, without interrupting the action or stifling it with a useless superfluity of ornaments; and I believe that it should do this in the same way as telling colours affect a correct and well-ordered drawing, by a well-assorted contrast of light and shade which serves to animate the figures without altering the contours. Thus I did not wish to arrest an actor in the greatest heat of dialogue in order to wait for a tiresome ritornello … nor to wait while the orchestra gives him time to recover his breath for a cadenza. … I have sought to abolish all the abuses against which good sense and reason have long cried out in vain. ... Furthermore, I believed that my greatest labour should be devoted to seeking a beautiful simplicity.

Moreover, it was what we saw too. James Conway’s production, focused on Anna Fleischle’s resourceful single set will doubtless transfer well to other, smaller theatres. It proves eminently adaptable, focusing our attention, like Gluck’s music, on the drama, not upon extraneous ‘effects’. That is not to say that there is anything bloodless to it. Quite the contrary, in fact, the blood-drenching of the opening scene, Iphigénie and her priestesses compelled to perform their appalling task, hits home powerfully, the well-nigh psychoanalytical quality of Gluck’s writing – storm external and internal – powerfully conveyed. Conway concentrates on the characters and their plight, permitting the drama to do its own work, or so it seems. One especially welcome aspect is his willingness to follow the homoeroticism of the relationship between Oreste and Pylade. (Quite why many other directors decline to do so remains a mystery to me.) Their second-act kiss is a splendidly handled moment. Have they (physically) been lovers all along? Perhaps, but I had the impression that, at this moment, facing death and the prospect of never seeing each other again, they could finally act as their romantic friendship had all along urged them. However difficult Oreste had become, perhaps even tried to be, they now found themselves helpless, compelled by Fate to snatch the moment. The openness of Conway’s staging allows one to read that moment as one will; there is no doubt, however, that this is the truest of love. Nothing, however, detracts from the playing out of the tragedy, Guy Hoare’s lighting clearly focusing our expectation and concentration.

An unfortunate exception came with the decision to present the deus ex machina in the guise of a little girl Diana, splashing around in the puddles. It makes for an undeniably arresting moment of theatre. Alas, its vocal effectiveness stood in inverse proportion to the element of visual surprise. Another aspect of vocal weakness came with Craig Smith’s stiff Thoas, king of Tauris. It is not the most grateful of roles, perhaps, but he sounded elderly rather than barbarous. Otherwise, there was much to admire in the cast. Catherine Carby’s gave a heartfelt performance as Iphigénie; how could one not deeply sympathise with her plight? Grant Doyle’s Oreste came across as properly conflicted, properly stunted by his appalling experiences, growing in humanity and self-knowledge. If John-Colyn Gyeantey’s Pylade was not always vocally secure, sometimes possessed of an unduly distracting vibrato, he had one believe in his character and his motivations, which is of greater importance; moreover, ‘Divinité des grandes âmes’ proved a proper climax to the third act. An excellent small chorus made its mark in various guises, as did those taking the smaller roles.

What a joy, moreover, to hear Gluck performed on modern instruments! If Martin André’s direction sometimes veered a little towards the frenetic for my taste, one hears far more extreme examples. Rarely did the instruments sound circumscribed, even if a little warmer string tone would not have gone amiss at times. More importantly, though, the bubbling of this well-nigh proto-Wagnerian (and proto-Berliozian) wordless Chorus told us so much of what we needed to know, explained so much of what we saw on stage and heard in the vocal line. Continuity and variety were impressive, André ensuring that both emerged as sides of the same dramatic coin. This was not a performance on the grand scale of, say, Riccardo Muti’s legendary recording from La Scala, but one would not have expected it to be. ETO does in many respects a far more important job, for which we should all offer thanks. There could be no doubt that it gave us the opportunity to hear just what Louis Petit de Bachaumont wrote of, in the account he gave in his Mémoires secrets of the 1779 premiere:

It is a new genre. It is truly a tragedy, … a tragedy in the Greek style. There is no Overture, … no arias [an exaggeration, but one knows what he means!]; but many indications of passion expressed with the greatest energy; they arouse an interest hitherto unknown on the lyric stage. One can only congratulate Chevalier Gluck for having discovered the secret of the ancients, and he will raise it to a pitch of undoubted perfection.

Now, more Gluck, please!

 

 

Martinů - Mirandolina, Garsington Opera, 28 June 2009

Garsington Hall, Oxfordshire

Mirandolina – Juanita Lascarro
Ortensia – Mary Hegarty
Deianira – Jean Rigby
Fabrizio – Daniel Norman
The Count of Albafiorita – Mark Wilde
The Cavaliere of Ripafratta – Geoffrey Dolton
The Marquess of Forlimpopoli – Andrew Slater
Servant of the Cavaliere – Stuart Haycock

Martin Duncan (director)
Francis O’Connor (designs)
Steve Elias (choreography)
Bruno Poet (lighting)

Garsington Opera Orchestra
Martin André (conductor)

This was an enjoyable evening. Well performed and gloriously produced, Bohuslav’s Martinů’s final opera, Mirandolina, is receiving its first British production, at Garsington. The story, derived from Carlo Goldoni’s La locandiera, has the innkeeper Mirandolina run rings around her suitors, a count and marquess and convert the absurd misogynist, the Cavaliere of Ripafratta, into a lovesick madman, before rejecting all three for her servant, Fabrizio. One might perhaps have expected a company with so impressive a record in staging Haydn’s operas – seven to date, though sadly nothing since the revival of Il mondo della luna in 2000 – to have marked the bicentenary of that composer’s death; one might not have been surprised to see Handel, perhaps even Purcell or Mendelssohn, have a look in. But Garsington has shown enterprise in honouring a less-celebrated anniversary, Martinů having died fifty years ago this year. In many respects, this must be applauded, although I must register two fundamental reservations. However, let us try to stick with applause for the moment.

Martin Duncan’s production seeks no hidden depths in the work, for there clearly are none, but is very good fun. The individual and ensemble direction of the cast is an object lesson in such matters. Insofar as would seem humanly possible, the characters are given their own life. Their actions, reactions, and interactions are keenly observed –though the libretto, derived by the composer himself, is almost certainly of more help here than the score. Steve Elias’s choreography is a great boon in this respect, providing moments of slapstick ensemble movement, not least with the two actress ‘ladies’, Ortensia and Deianira, which could only work if executed as well as here. Greater joy still is provided by Francis O’Connor’s designs. Mirandolina’s inn is presented in a riot of (neo?-)Fauvist colour, which wittingly or unwittingly reminds one that Martinů has much more in common with a vein of twentieth-century neo-classical music considerably earlier than anything one might consider characteristic of the 1950s, when the operas was written; more of that anon. And O’Connor’s costumes, beautifully designed, amuse and wryly evoke a post-Great War perspective upon the eighteenth century and commedia dell’arte: the celebrated first production of Pulcinella on steroids.

Musically, there was much to impress too. Martin André led a tight, rhythmically alert reading, full of bright, primary colours, brought into being by fine playing from all sections of the Garsington Opera Orchestra. One only really noticed a slight untidiness of ensemble at the opening of the third act because it was so uncharacteristic. (I wish I could say that the audience noticed the opening of the act, let alone the untidiness, but the appallingly ill-mannered conversation continued for only a little less long than it had into the overture.) Martinů’s almost bewildering cornucopia of styles, which yet remain severely limited – I am tempted to say stunted – in expressive scope, was unerringly captured by these splendid musicians. In the title role, Juanita Lascarro struck me as ideal: alluring in every respect. She handled her tricky coloratura with ease and could certainly act – partly, of course, a tribute to her direction. Her noble suitors made the most of their comic opportunities, and then some. (It did cross my mind that, given their camp demeanour, the Count and Marquess might have been better off with each other.) Perhaps their performances, considered in purely musical terms, were less impressive, yet, given the limited rewards offered by the score, they were probably wise to concentrate upon other matters. Daniel Norman made a properly likeable Fabrizio, who deserved to emerge victorious. Mary Hegarty and Jean Rigby’s characters seemed to me dramatically redundant but they once again relished the opportunity for humour, acting quite brilliantly.

And yet... As the reader will have observed, the ‘fundamental reservation’ to which I referred has stubbornly persisted in seeping through, so I ought now to state it explicitly. The music and indeed the work as a whole are barely worth the effort. Acting for the defence, Jan Smaczny writes, in his programme note, ‘From the late 1920s, his musical style was always recognisable ... by the 1950s his musical language, while by no means eschewing harsher dissonance, is possessed of a warm tonal palette which nevertheless manages to avoid banality.’ I hate to seem curmudgeonly, but I cannot recall a single instance in which the tonal palette, which seemed to me bright rather than warm, rose above banality. Nor could I recognise a single instance of ‘recognisable’ style; rather, we heard a melange of the most banal music of Les Six, Stravinsky minus the crucial acerbity, and, in the third act, the mildest hint that the composer was Czech. It is difficult to discern whether there was any attempt at musical characterisation; at any rate, none really shone through. Nor, for the most part, did the music even sound related to the action. With a few exceptions, one could probably have rearranged the music of different passages to different words and no one would have been any the wiser. This was not a point-making dissociation of words and text but mere note-spinning that would have made a Telemann blush. For the music is certainly of no more interest than that of those run-of-the-mill eighteenth-century composers, most considerably less interesting even than Telemann, who set Goldoni in the first instance. Few of us are interested in them, though the odd enthusiast exists; Martinů’s fate, again despite a contemporary resurgence of interest from certain quarters, should probably be about the same. It is difficult to begrudge a work a British premiere. Now, however, as I recall thinking about Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane, whose bloated pretention is at least quite lacking in the relentlessly slight Mirandolina, it would be kinder to let it rest in peace.

None of this is helped by Jeremy Sams’s translation. Such was the skill of the cast that one could hear every word, rendering the surtitles superfluous; surely, however, the titles themselves should have rendered translation superfluous. Nevertheless, translation we had to endure. Its relentless colloquialism and playing for laughs – always the least likely way to amuse – grate almost beyond endurance. I could discern no attempt at rendering or re-creating Goldoni’s style. Here is an example: ‘I’m getting soup, and a sandwich that someone’s sat on, a smelly sandwich that someone’s sat on.’ Despite the delights of the production, I began to wonder at this point what on earth I was doing listening to such words and such a non-entity of a score. Shouts of ‘Bastard!’ jar not because they are somehow transgressive – your average three-year-old will have heard ‘worse’ – and not only because they simply sound silly, attention-seeking in what is supposedly an eighteenth-century context; they are also unmusical, failing to heed the composer’s notes.

The wonder, then, is that the evening remained as enjoyable as it did. For that impressive achievement, great thanks should go to the performers, the production team, and to Garsington Opera itself. But the company is wisely returning to Figaro (alongside Rossini’s Armida and Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) next year. As the Leipzig Gewandhaus has it, quoting Seneca: Res severa est verum gaudium (‘True joy is a serious thing’).