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.

Il tabarro, Gianni Schicchi, and Le nozze di Figaro, English Touring Opera, 2 and 3 March 2018

Hackney Empire Theatre

Stuart Haycock, Don Curzio; Devon Harrison, Antonio; Ross Ramgobin, Figaro; Dawid Kimberg, Count
Image: Jane Hobson

Michele – Craig Smith

Giorgetta – Sarah-Jane Lewis

Luigi – Charne Rochford

Talpa – Timothy Dawkins

Tinca – Andrew Glover

Frugola – Clarissa Meek

Young lovers – Galina Averina, Luciano Botelho

Stevedores – Luciano Botelho, Ed Ballard, Ian Beadle, Maciek O’Shea, Jamie Rock, Bradley Travis

Song Vendor, Stevedore – Dominic Walsh

 

Gianni Schicchi – Andrew Slater

Lauretta – Galina Averina

Zita – Clarissa Meek

Rinuccio – Luciano Botelho

Gherardo – Andrew Glover

Nella – Joanna Skillett

Betto – Bradley Travis

Simone – Timothy Dawkins

Marco – EdBallard

La Ciesca – Emma Watkinson

Maestro Spinelloccio – Maciek O’Shea

Ser Amantio – Dominic Walsh

Witnesses – Ian Beadle, Jamie Rock

 

Countess Almaviva – Nadine Benjamin

Count Almaviva – Dawid Kimberg

Figaro – Ross Ramgobin

Susanna – Rachel Redmond

Cherubino – Katherine Aitken

Marcellina – Gaynor Keeble

Bartolo – Omar Ebrahim

Don Basilio – John-Colyn Gyeantey

Don Curzio – Stuart Haycock

Antonio – Devon Harrison

Barbarina – Abigail Kelly

 

James Conway, Blanche McIntyre, Liam Steel (directors)

Neil Irish (designs)

Rory Beaton, Guy Hoare (lighting)

Rosie Purdie, Rory Fazan (assistant directors)

Orchestra of English Touring Opera

Michael Rosewell and Christopher Stark (conductors)

 

It is always a joy, or at least has always been to date, to return both to English Touring Opera and to the Hackney Empire. Hellish weather, or rather travel, conditions made the business of returning somewhat less of a joy on this occasion, as did my no longer living in the East End. Once there, however, I was treated once again to two delightful evenings, more than recompense for the travails of the first night in particular.

Sarah-Jane Lewis, Giorgetta; Charne Rochford, Luigi
Image: Richard Hubert Smith

 

Two of Puccini’s Trittico were on offer first. Doubtless some would have been moaning about the loss of Suor Angelica, but then, some will moan about anything: let them. The performance of Il tabarro confirmed my sense that this is one of Puccini’s finest achievements: a perfect tragedy in miniature, penetrating far deeper than many realise. The realism of James Conway’s production struck just the right – or at least a right – aesthetic for the work. We need not set it on the Moon just for the sake of doing so. Hints of an external, Zola-like world are there, but the emphasis lies upon character and action, quite rightly so. And there is no character more important, of course, than the Seine: somehow both the colours of score, orchestral performance, and stage alike seemed specifically to speak of that river, not just a generic one. (Or perhaps it was that anywhere, let alone Paris, would have seemed better than London in one of its collective fits of transport hysteria.)

 

At any rate, Michael Rosewell’s direction of the excellent orchestra – a little short on strings, perhaps, by the standards of a ‘large’ house, yet hardly the worse for it – proved uncommonly attentive to the barcarolle that is there even when it is not, to the Seine, not unlike the castle in Bartók’s Bluebeard, as the most important character of all. All the while, its flow formed and bound the horizons, the possibilities, the ambitions of those we saw on stage, leaving us with the inevitable conclusion that their lives were always fated to be lived and to end in misery. Not that the lighter moments went unnoticed: who can fail to smile at the quotation from La bohème? In any case, darkness without even the possibility of light will often struggle to be darkness at all. Charne Rochford and Sarah-Jane Lewis made for an ardent pair of lovers, hopeful and thus all the more hopeless. Craig Smith sealed their fate with due sadism. A fine ‘supporting’ cast greatly enhanced the chiaroscuro, even as the dramatic scales were ever more tilted towards the ‘scuro’.

 

Image: Richard Hubert Smith

Rosewell and the orchestra seemed equally at home in the scherzo that is Gianni Schicchi. How often does one hear, say, Stravinsky there, thus marvelling at Puccini’s receptivity to the art of his younger colleagues, only to wonder whether one has it the wrong way around? The sharpness of Liam Steel’s staging, holding in equipoise, like the opera itself, the style and fashions of the early twentieth century and the age-old traditions of the commedia dell’arte. ‘Period’ (to Puccini) clothes with clown faces that were both of the time and of another seemed to me an excellent prism through which to conduct, in more than one sense, the drama. No, the ‘joke’ itself is not nearly so hilarious as some seem to think, but who cares? It is the beginning, not the endpoint, of Puccini’s play, as the cast seemed very well to understand. Andrew Slater’s comic timing in the title role did not preclude a sense of something deeper, yet not too deep, beneath the glittering surface. Galina Averina proved quite a discovery as Schicchi’s daughter, Lauretta, she and Luciano Botelho finely matched as a fresh-toned pair of lovers. Again, there was not, as the cliché has it, a weak link in the cast. And more, perhaps than in any performance I have previously seen, Steel, his assistant director, Rosie Purdie, and the cast as a whole showed an affectionate awareness of just what, and what is not, placed in inverted commas here. Thank goodness ‘O mio babbino caro’ fell into the former category: a fleeting moment the more touching for its unquestionable irony. Puccini is so much better than ‘great’ opera houses will generally allow…

 

So too, of course, is Mozart, infinitely so: doomed always to fail in performance, since he demands perfection. If conducting Puccini is a difficult task, its true difficulty only revealed on those few occasions when the music has properly taken flight, then conducting Mozart verges upon the impossible. More depressingly still, the fashion now has become for composers to inflict themselves upon the score, to insert sub-Harnoncourt roadbumps like moles upon the Mona Lisa, and to receive admiring plaudits for the ‘revelations’ such idiocies have afforded to a cast of audience fashion victims. (René who? It is apparently now all about the preposterous Teodor Currentzis.) On the morning of the Puccini performance, I had led an undergraduate class on The Magic Flute, and had found it especially moving to welcome back Sir Colin Davis on DVD to lead the excerpts we watched and to which we listened. It was thus an especial joy, not only to take some of my students to so estimable a Figaro, but to hear it conducted with a warmth and, yes, a wisdom of which Sir Colin himself would surely have approved. Not once did Christopher Stark draw attention to himself; he let the music, however apparently, speak and breathe for itself. The orchestra, again, on excellent form, seemed to love playing for him – just as it should have done. Tempi were broadly ‘traditional’, yet never staid; there were one or two surprises, never unreasonably so, always justifiable within the greater framework of work and performance. Cuts in this work are always regrettable; here we must sacrifice the choruses too. We survived though, as did Mozart. Such losses are a price eminently worth paying for a production that will tour parts of this country far less fortunate, musically or otherwise, than our capital city, snowridden or not.

 

Nadine Benjamin, Countess
Image: Jane Hobson

One might object that Blanche McIntyre’s production is a little on the basic side, but again, one needs to remember that ETO plays to considerably smaller theatres than this. After an initial flourish to the metatheatrical – singers dressing on stage during the Overture – the story is told faithfully, lovingly, and without undue fuss. There is much to be said for that, from time to time. (Not that I should ever want to be without, say, Claus Guth.) Again, the emphasis falls upon the characters and indeed upon the performances – which brings me perhaps to ETO’s signal achievement here. A sparkling cast, with, I think, a majority of non-white faces offered a standing rebuke to the casting practices of pretty much every house in the world, large or small. There were no ‘allowances’ to be made; indeed, it is surely past time to realise that allowances are being made every day to those in a position of privilege. The diversity of the cast certainly did not go unnoticed amongst my students, for which many thanks indeed!

 

I have enjoyed watching Ross Ramgobin’s artistic development for a few years now. He shone at the Royal Academy, and here he shone for ETO as Figaro, in a performance imbued both with good humour and with something deeper, more complicated. His Susanna, Rachel Redmond did likewise, in as graceful and as intelligent an assumption of the role as anyone could have asked for. Nadine Benjamin’s Countess went deeper, of course, as her character must; one truly felt her pain, her dashed hopes, but also the ambivalent joys inscribed upon the other side of the Mozartian coin. McIntyre seemed oddly concerned to present the Count as a stock character, very much in the line of the eighteenth-century commedia dell’arte. I could not really understand why, in what was otherwise a non-interventionist staging. Dawid Kimberg’s performance sometimes seemed a little blunted by that relative neutering, but there was nevertheless much to admire in it. And Katherine Aitken’s Cherubino proved unambiguously a joy, a joy to be experienced in all its youthful, lusting fullness. Once again, there was a true sense of company, not just to the performances narrowly considered, but to the valiant, in many cases life-changing enterprise that is English Touring Opera. If ever a company deserved our support, it is this.