La bohème, Royal Opera, 16 June 2018

Royal Opera House

Musetta (Danielle de Niese) at Café Momus
Images: Catherine Ashmore/ROH 2018

Marcello – Etienne Dupuis

Rodolfo – Matthew Polenzani

Colline – Fernando Radó

Schaunard – Duncan Rock

Benoît – Jeremy White

Mimì – Maria Agresta

Parpignol – Andrew Macnair

Musetta – Danielle de Niese

Alcindoro – Wyn Pencarreg

Customs Officer – John Morrissey

Sergeant – Thomas Barnard

Richard Jones (director)

Julia Burbach (revival director)

Stewart Laing (director)

Mimi Jordan Sherin (lighting)

Sarah Fahie, Danielle Urbas (movement)

Tiffin Boys’ Choir

Tiffin’s Children’s Chorus

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus director: William Spaulding)

Nicola Luisotti (conductor)

Schaunard (Duncan Rock), Colline (Fernanrdo Radó), Marcello (Etienne Dupuis), Rodolfo (Matthew Polenzani)

Poor Puccini. He suffers more than any other composer I know from being treated as a box-office draw. (Dmitri Tcherniakov notwithstanding, Carmen is perhaps not so dissimilar; yet, given its status as the sole Bizet opera worth staging – Lord preserve us from the tedium of another Pearl Fishers – the situation remains different.) The requirement, however, for making at least four of his operas so unfailing a draw seems to be to prevent anything but the most ‘traditional’ of stagings from seeing the light of day. I have no idea what Claus Guth’s recent Bohème was like, but thank goodness the Paris Opéra showed itself willing to do something different with the work. Stefan Herheim’s superlative, death-haunted production for Oslo remains hors concours. Otherwise, ‘major houses’ remain not so much unwilling to experiment as adamantly opposed.

I wondered, then, what Richard Jones might make of the same opera. My sense, whilst away, was that reception of its first outing had not generally been favourable. A sign of hope, perhaps? Alas not. I have never been less moved, even when I maintained a frostier stance towards Puccini than I do now, by a performance of La bohème. Indeed, given that I was not so much as slightly moved even once, such would have been impossible. That cannot have been entirely the production’s fault, but it bore greater responsibility than anything else. Now a Brechtian, post-dramatic Bohème might be a fascinating prospect indeed: imagine what Achim Freyer (when on form) or Frank Castorf might do with, or to, the work. I know that Peter Konwitschny has staged it too, although I have yet, alas, to catch up with that production. Try as I might, though, I could find no edge, no critique. This seems merely cynical – and merely cynical in just about the worst way.

The first act is stark, or at least its design is. A basic roof frame is a little more suggestive of a garret than often one sees, although the fact that one sees no sleeping quarters is, within a realistic framework, perhaps a little odd. (I shall return to that.) There is not much more to it, yet often there is not: other than everyone shivering. I presume the slightly repellent hair – is it meant to look dirty or just nasty? – of the students is intended to convey poverty or slovenliness, or both, but am not sure. Snow falls throughout, though, in a seemingly sentimental fashion, as if to appease those who wanted ‘traditional’ atmosphere. Perhaps they are being sent up, but I am afraid I found little sign of that. Even if they were, should they be?


A seemingly obscene amount of money is then expended on designs for the second act: as if to say, ‘you thought you had the germs of an austere concept, so I’ll show you’. Lavish shopping arcades – nineteenth-century Paris, I suppose, yet hardly suggestive of Walter Benjamin – whirl around for a little while centre-stage, then are banished, so that the action can take place. It is all very chocolate-box musical comedy, yet seemingly not with irony. (And even if it is, why?) Café Momus is more Michelin-starred restaurant than a place for Bohemian encounters. There is little attempt, so far as I can ascertain, to suggest either that the characters are genuinely poor, or that they are privileged boys playing at being poor. It all just seems ill-thought-through. There is worse, though. Musetta, robbed of the elegance her music suggests, is merely a drunk, who climbs on the table and, with difficulty, delivers herself of her underwear to throw around. Perhaps there is a plausible non-misogynist reading of what we saw; if so, it passed me by. Snow continues to fall.

As indeed, it does in the second half: straightforward to a degree. (John Copley surely accomplished that better – and with far more of a sense of what the opera is, or at least might be, about.) Everything happens more or less as it ‘should’, yet with a casualness to the direction that makes one wonder why anyone bothered. The only real oddity is that, when Mimì arrives, and a bed has to be found for her, it is merely linen or a blanket, or something. Again, one might think that intended to convey poverty: have they really been living like that all that time? It does not seem like it, though, and such an idea does not seem to cohere with anything else. Perhaps because there is not anything much else with which to cohere. The work ends: unloved and yet also uncriticised. It would take a better production than this, however ‘traditional’, to manage either.

Nicola Luisotti’s conducting did not help, either – although oddly, it often seemed rather in keeping with Jones’s vision (or lack thereof). Much, especially in the outer acts, was marmoreal; much more almost – yet not quite – brutal. The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House played well enough, yet nothing like what once it could. (To think, this was once Bernard Haitink’s orchestra – and before that Colin Davis’s.) Luisotti, who impressed greatly in Il trittico in 2016, seemed at times so impatient as to be wishing to be elsewhere – I sympathised – and, when he did permit something loosely known as ‘emotion’, to be doing so less out of conviction than from duty: colouring-book Puccini. Structural grip was not lacking, yet it was mere external, imposed ‘structure’ rather than formal dynamism, content possessing but a tenuous relationship to the receptacle into which it had been squeezed. Even the Wagnerisms – a little hint of Tristan there, a Meistersinger-ish moment there – sounded incidental, certainly not generative. Puccini as modernist: forget it. As for Luisotti’s reprehensible slowing down so as actually to invite multiple instances of philistine applause within an act…

Musetta and Mimì (Maria Agresta)

The cast did a decent enough job but there was nothing to get too excited about in that respect either. How much was the responsibility of director and conductor was, in this case, difficult to tell; yet there must be something a little awry when the most memorable vocal performances come from an excellent Colline and Schaunard  (Fernando Radó and Duncan Rock). Both seemed far more alert to the drama of words and music than either Jones or Luisotti. Maria Agresta sang the part of Mimì nicely enough; I am not sure I have anything more to say about that. Danielle de Niese certainly gave a sincere, committed performance; she always has done in any role in which I have seen her. Leaving aside Jones’s perverse portrayal of her in the second act, though, sincerity was not enough to mask thinness of voice. Matthew Polenzani proved an ardent enough Rodolfo, Etienne Dupuis likewise as Marcello, but their hearts did not seem – perhaps understandably – really to be in it. For there was little heart on display at all here; nor was there anything dramatically on hand, alas, to replace it.

Idomeneo, Royal Opera, 19 November 2014

Royal Opera House

 

 

Idomeneo – Matthew Polenzani

Idamante – Franco Fagioli

Ilia – Sophie Bevan

Elettra – Malin Byström

Arbace – Stanislas de Barbeyrac

High Priest – Krystian Adam

Voice of Neptune – Graeme Broadbent

 

 

Martin Kušej (director)

Annette Murschetz (set designs)

Heide Kastler (costumes)

Reinhard Traub (lighting)

Leah Hausman (dramaturgy)

 

 

Royal Opera Chorus

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Marc Minkowski (conductor)

 

Image: ROH/Catherine Ashmore

 

Poor Idomeneo! Katie Mitchell more or less destroyed this magnificent yet fragile opera when she staged it for ENO. Here, when the Royal Opera at last returned to it, the musical performances proved sadly lacking, from the top down – or, better, from the pit upwards. The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House deserved much, much better; so of course did Mozart. Save for some bizarrely out-of-tune trumpets, the fault lay not with the players, who indeed seemed anxious to mitigate the worst of Marc Minkowski’s incompetence. When permitted to play, the strings sounded warm and variegated and the woodwind often beautiful indeed – if hardly what one would have expected under Sir Colin Davis. But Minkowski seemed concerned not only to hurl every ‘early musicke’ cliché in the would-be treatise at Mozart but also to withdraw it not very long later. And so, the Overture opened in all-too-predictably driven fashion before suddenly being pulled around in sub-Harnoncourt, even Rattle-like, fashion. The strings were left alone for a while then suddenly prevailed upon to withdraw vibrato, especially at the beginning of the second act, and still more grievously during the atrociously-conducted ballet music. It quickly became apparent that Minkowski had no sense whatsoever of harmonic rhythm; may God, Neptune, or Anyone Else preserve us from inflicting his jejune flailing around upon the symphonic Mozart. (Doubtless he already has; in which case, we should protect ourselves from having to hear it.) Whatever possessed Covent Garden to entrust this work to him? As for the nonsensical exhibitionism to be heard from the fortepianist...
 

Then there was the casting. Franco Fagioli’s Idamante offered some of the worst singing I have ever heard on this hallowed stage. If incomprehensible – in what language was he singing?! – out-of-tune squawking were your thing, you would have been fine; the rest of us were left wondering why on earth a female soprano, a mezzo, or a tenor had not been engaged. (That was not the only questionable textual decision to have been made.)  Malin Byström certainly seemed to possess dramatic conviction; it is a pity she showed herself more or less incapable of holding a musical line. I am all for ‘big’ voices in Mozart, but they should at the very least be able to sing in tune. Sophie Bevan offered some beautiful moments as Ilia, though she too proved surprisingly thick with her vibrato at times, especially during the first act. Matthew Polenzani was a decent enough Idomeneo when he didn’t confuse Mozart’s style with that of Puccini. (Listen to Francisco Araiza for an object lesson here.) Although a little wayward, Krystian Adam’s reading as the High Priest seemed dramatically justified in the context of the production. Stainslas de Barbeyrac’s Arbace generally impressed, although some strange vocal colourings left me wondering quite why so many had been singing his praises quite so ardently. Sadly, and much to my surprise, the chorus was too often all over the place – and not just in terms of where it was asked to stand. What is usually a great strength of Royal Opera productions proved decidedly ragged.
 

Martin Kušej’s staging, on the other hand, proved a more genuinely provocative experience, certainly superior to Mitchell’s in every respect. (That, I admit, would hardly have been an onerous challenge.) A certain sort of opera-goer disdains challenge and questioning, whether to himself or to the work. So much the worse for him – or her. There were irritants, including the well-nigh unforgivable inclusion of rain (visual and sounding) during the Overture and again later in the first act. But I really cannot imagine how anyone could reasonably object to an era ravaged by war looking like – well, an era ravaged by war. Likewise, surely anyone sentient would at least question claims of enlightened absolutism, even if some might think the militaristic regime of Idomeneo goes a little ‘too far’. (I certainly do not think so.) More fundamentally, though,  Kušej’s’s concept of an island in thrall to a manufactured cult of Neptune works very well – and genuinely has one think, should one be so inclined, about issues of individual and mass agency. If Idomeneo and, at the end, Idamante is not in control, then who is? How might the wrath of the crowd be harnessed, and by whom? How does our lot compare with theirs? If not so well thought-through as, say, Hans Neuenfels’s now-classic staging of Lohengrin, some of the same ‘experimental’ questions presented themselves. The stasis of the final ballet scenes – leaving aside Minkowski’s miserable effort – might initially seem perverse, and in some senses it is, but a series of tableaux presenting ‘where we are now’, and suggesting that it equates to ‘where we were before’ actually turns out to possess considerable dramatic power. A rethinking of some elements – even just that horrible rain – would strengthen an interesting production, which was apparently booed by the usual suspects on opening night. Alas, a far more desperate need would remain for a different conductor and cast – but that can and should be arranged.

 

Così fan tutte, Opéra national de Paris, 16 June 2011

Palais Garnier

Fiordiligi – Elza van den Heever
Dorabella – Karine Deshayes
Guglielmo – Paulo Szot
Ferrando – Matthew Polenzani
Despina – Anne-Catherine Gillet
Don Alfonso – William Shimell

Ezio Toffolutti (director, designs)
André Diot (lighting)

Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus master: Patrick Marie Aubert)
Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris
Philippe Jordan (conductor)

William Shimell (Don Alfonso), Paulo Szot (Guglielmo), Elza Van Den Heever (Fiordiligi), Karine Deshayes (Dorabella), Matthew Polenzani (Ferrando) and Anne-Catherine Gillet (Despina)
Images: Agathe Poupeney/ Opéra national de Paris

Così fan tutte is such an integral part of any music-lover’s life that one readily forgets how recently it became more than a connoisseur’s piece. Sometimes, given what this most fragile of works has inflicted upon it, one almost wishes that it had remained so. Busoni and Strauss were heralds of a more enlightened age; festivals such as Glyndebourne, Aix-en-Provence, and of course Salzburg also played their part. It is not an easy opera to stage, though I am not sure what is. Herbert von Karajan thought it an opera for recording rather than stage performance. Moreover, Così is certainly not an easy opera to perform either; nothing by Mozart, whether vocal or instrumental, is. It is salutary to note that the work only entered the repertoire of the Opéra Comique, in a ‘French adaptation’, in 1920, and had to wait until 1963 for that same company to present the work as would be more readily recognised, borrowing a production from Aix. The Palais Garnier came even later to the party in 1974, though the list of participants looks mouthwatering indeed. The production was by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, conducted by no less a Mozartian than Josef Krips, with a cast that reads as if it were assembled for a recording: Margaret Price, Jane Berbié, Tom Krause, Ryland Davies, Teresa Stratas, and Gabriel Bacquier. That was then, this is now. Leaving recordings aside, I have had two, arguably three since one counts twice, revelatory experiences of the work: Hans Neuenfels’s Salzburg Festival production, which took the work seriously, as it must be taken, presenting its trajectory as a dangerous exploration of something wonderful and ineffable, and Sir Colin Davis’s conducting of the work for the Royal Opera (twice). Alas, Sir Colin’s truly great direction from the pit was on both occasions allied, heartbreakingly so, to Jonathan Miller’s vulgar travesty of a staging. Less revelatory, perhaps, but still very good, and more consistently so, was my first viewing of a successor to that Salzburg production: a painterly depiction by Karl-Ernst and Ursula Hermann, conducted by Philippe Jordan.


I might have been inclined to scepticism concerning the wisdom of conducting overlapping productions of Così and Götterdämmerung (review, indeed listening, to come), yet Jordan’s contribution to this Paris performance was for the most part impressive. Tempi were judiciously chosen and appropriately varied: nothing sounded ‘wrong’, as one generally finds. Light and shade were present throughout, without ever sounding forced; most of the reading sounded as natural as breathing, Mozartian art concealing art. In this, Jordan was aided by excellent playing from the Orchestra of the Opéra National de Paris. It was the first time I had heard the orchestra in Mozart, but will not, I hope, be the last. Strings were warm and refined; woodwind veritably bubbled. If this were not the Vienna Philharmonic of that Salzburg performance, then the comparison is more than unusually odious. There were just a very few occasions when Jordan’s momentum sagged, most notably part way through the second-act finale, but nobody – apart from Mozart – is perfect. Even when I was not entirely convinced by tempo decisions, for instance during ‘Soave sia il vento’, faster than I might have expected, less ravishing than I might have hoped for, Jordan managed to bring off the unexpected, in this case in a Klemperer-like plainspoken fashion.

Anne-Catherine Gillet (Despina)
and Karine Deshayes (Dorabella)

The vocal picture was more occluded. Pride of place should be accorded to the Despina of Anne-Catherine Gillet, hers a new voice to me. Far too often reduced to a caricature of a ‘character’ role, this Despina was beautifully sung, making one realise what one far too often misses. Phrasing was unerringly Mozartian. Karine Deshayes presented a good account of Dorabella’s part, with which I could find no real fault. Elza van den Heever started off very well as Fiordiligi, her ‘Come scoglio’ well despatched, with admirable firmness of tone, necessary to the crucial element, sadly unappreciated by most stage directors, of seria parody. However, ‘Per pietà’ provided uncomfortable listening, the line unsustained and one trill not so much fumbled as disintegrated. It is a stern task, admittedly, but Mozart is a cruel taskmaster and offers nowhere to hide. William Shimell made a decent enough job of Don Alfonso, bar one highly noticeable faltering during the first scene, but that served mainly to remind one that, given the limited resources of the role’s creator, Francesco Bussani, this is not a role given to vocal display. So long as were not expecting Sir Thomas Allen, this was a reasonably performance. Paulo Szot’s account of Guglielmo sometimes proved coarse. The character may not be an intellectual, or indeed especially sensitive, but Mozart should never sound crude. There were better moments, however, especially during the first act, when a gift for stylish phrasing displayed itself. Most surprising, though, was Matthew Polenzani’s Ferrando. I had admired Polenzani in this role at Covent Garden under Paris, but here 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, without the personality.

As for Ezio Toffolutti’s staging, what can one say? This is a revival of a production mothballed during the Gérard Mortier years, not quite on the level of the recent reconstruction of Giorgio Strehler’s Figaro – a bizarre undertaking, surely more a riposte to Nicolas Joël’s predecessor than a serious artistic statement – but even so… To begin with, I thought that the pretty eighteenth-century sets and costumes might provide a harmless enough setting for the coruscating dissection of human conduct that Mozart presents; artificiality, the only way one can bear a work that unsparingly goes beyond Tristan, might even be heightened. However, mere prettiness becomes coarsened by ‘comic’ touches, which, if not so disastrous as those of Jonathan Miller, nevertheless misunderstand the work, even if pleasing a reactionary element in the audience, wishing to remain resolutely unchallenged. In Così, the form of comedy is employed in order to present something that could not be further removed from the ‘comic’; this is not Rossini. An element, albeit utterly non-amusing, of the Carry On films has no place here. Jordan’s conducting and the orchestral playing more or less saved the day, but they, and Gillet’s Despina, let alone Mozart, deserved a far better production.