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| Images: Ruth und Martin Walz (from 2017 premiere) |
Anett Fritsch, Robin Johannsen
(sopranos)
Benno Schachtner (countertenor)
Reinoud Van Mechelen, Stephan
Rügamer (tenors)
Neal Davies, Arttu Kataja
(bass)
Arthur – Michael Rotschopf
Merlin – Jörg Gudzuhn
Oswald – Max Urlacher
Osmond – Paul Herwig
Emmeline – Meike Droste
Grimbald – Tom Radisch
Conon – Roland Renner
Aurelius – Steffen Schortie
Scheumann
Mathilda – Sigrid Maria Schnückel
Little Arthur – Béla Jim
Ottopal
Sven-Erich Bechtolf (director)
Julian Crouch (director, set
designs)
Kevin Pollard (costumes)
Olaf Freese (lighting)
Gail Skrela (choreography)
Joshua Higgason (video)
Ein Skills Ensemble
Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)
Akademie für Alte Musk Berlin
René Jacobs (conductor)
What to do with King Arthur? Rightly or wrongly, a ‘straight’
performance seems out of the question, even in the case of this, the only case
of a Purcell semi-opera conceived as such (by Dryden), as opposed to adding music
to an existing play. There are several problems here. Some might say, not
without reason, that there are several opportunities too, that those very
problems may readily be understood to be opportunities. For our purposes,
doubtless too schematically, they may be summarised as: how to conceive of this
genre; how to conceive of this particular example of that genre, likely written
as an allegory whose meaning we shall never recover or, at best, at which we
shall only hesitantly be able to guess, closing with an uncomfortably ‘patriotic’
final act; what sort of dialogue to use, most likely to write; and, last but
not least, how to accomplish any of that for a largely non-English, indeed
non-Anglophone audience. I shall not attempt fully to answer those in turn, but
they are worth bearing in mind in consideration of what was seen and heard in
this performing version by René Jacobs, with a little – or a good deal of –
help from various friends, Sven-Erich Bechtolf and Julian Crouch included, in ‘updating’
a German translation by Wolfgang Wiens and Hans Duncker.
The fundamental conceit is far
from a bad one; its framing permits for various standpoints, depending on the spectator,
to be taken. Set in wartime, in the 1940s – it seems, though some designs
appear, confusingly, to be from earlier in the century – this is a tale of a
boy, Arthur, who has lost his father in action. His mother would like to move
on with her life, but Arthur is resistant to anyone taking his father’s place.
Various characters and situations – his mother, his father’s father, a puppet show, his father in a dream,
etc. – recount to Little Arthur a story from Britain’s ancient past, of battle
between Britons and Saxons, onto which some issues of the present may be read,
and vice versa. Ultimately, the war
comes to an end; Arthur’s mother remarries; and, both disturbingly and
unconvincingly, Arthur learns, seemingly without irony or any of the double
reading in which he or we might previously have engaged, that the King Arthur
of whom he has learned – in this context, a somewhat odd King Arthur, more
deeply engaged with retrieving his love, the blind Emmeline, than the
activities for which we know him – should be his model as an English patriot. Almost
all of the spoken theatre proceeded in German; Purcell’s music was always given
in English, heightening a sense of separation.
The doublings of historical
standpoint, if sometimes a little confusing, at least to start with, have much
to be said for them, their often bizarre accoutrements rather less. I could not
help, as an Englishman at present inevitably still more disenchanted with any
show of ‘patriotism’ or nationalism, but wonder at the ideas other, neighbouring,
still-friendly – whatever the provocations – countries have of Purcell’s ‘fairest
isle’ right now. One is clearly of ongoing obsession with the Second World War:
fair enough; one can hardly argue otherwise, however much one might wish it
otherwise. Another enduring conception seems to be of a Monty Python-style humour that frankly irritates many of us, but
which is certainly enjoyed by a number of my German friends. That combination
of something not nearly so clever as it thinks it is with mere silliness certainly
haunted a good deal of what we saw.
If, for instance, you had for
some reason been longing to see a black-and-white-striped, exaggeratedly
priapic version of the creepy 1980s BBC children’s television ‘character’,
Wizbit, brought to us once upon a time in association with Paul Daniels and
‘the lovely’ Debbie McGee, this would certainly have been your night. (I can
only presume, indeed hope, that the resemblance was coincidental, but who
knows?) If, moreover, you were someone who found threats of rape on the part of
that strange conical figure inherently amusing – disturbingly, much of the
audience seemed of that persuasion – your dramatic cup would verily have run
over. Mishearing of ‘Uhren’ (clocks) for ‘Huren’ (whores), farting and other ‘smell’
jokes (yes, afraid so), and so on and so on were largely suggestive of variety
show rather than Dryden. Ribaldry certainly has its place in other works by
Purcell, but hardly here. This show – that seems to me the right word –
certainly seemed happier with the generalised rather than the particular.
Occasional flashes of something wittier, more substantive, for instance a
character musing on how the drama might have developed, had postdramatic
theatre been yet invented, offered tantalising possibilities. Greater focus
would have been no bad thing.
There was much to admire in the
singing – in particular – but also the acting, overdone though some of the
latter may have been. All singers covered numerous roles to excellent effect: Anett
Frisch’s stylish and intelligently dramatic soprano, Benno Schachter’s
hauntingly beautiful countertenor, and Neal Davies’s performance in the
celebrated ‘Frost Scene’ – how manifestly superior it is to its likely model in
Lully! – were the pick of the bunch for me, but there were no weak links. The
Staatsoper chorus, as ever, proved on fine form. Some, I suppose, might have
preferred a smaller body of singers; for me, however, it proved rather a wonderful
treat. With the best will in the world, a band such as the Akademie für Alte
Musik cannot approach the warmth of, say, the English Chamber Orchestra in
Antony Lewis’s recording of this music, nor its easy way with Purcell’s idioms.
However, there was fine playing on its own terms, to which my ears became more
accustomed as time went on.
Jacobs’s tempi and general
direction were for the most part unobjectionable, although there were times,
doubtless predictably, when the music might have been permitted to breathe more
openly. Various other music by Purcell was added, sometimes offering an
orchestral background to dialogue: not a Purcellian practice, but in its
borrowing from later ‘melodrama’ unproblematic and a welcome addition of
textural variety. Jacobs seems also to have felt the need beyond that to ‘improve’
on Purcell’s scoring. I have no objection in principle to rewriting,
reorchestrating, reordering, to anything really, so long as it works; there was
nothing here to which I especially objected, though Jacobs’s amplifying choices
were highly predictable in practice. On the other hand, the relative intimacy
of Purcell’s writing here – compare it with, say, The Fairy Queen – was often lost, without sign of any true
rethinking in modern terms.
As ever, then, pious talk of
musical ‘authenticity’ proved about as plausible as a Liberal Democrat bar
chart. Thoughts inevitably returned to our – Britain’s, that is – lamentable
political present. There were lessons to be learned, even if far from
straightforwardly. On reflection, that is doubtless as it should have been. However
uncomfortable this may have been for an Englishman in temporary exile, if ever
a failed state deserved to be the butt of ‘foreign’ humour, it was surely ours.
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