Lulu, Opéra national de Paris, 28 October 2011

Opéra Bastille

Lulu – Laura Aikin
Countess Geschwitz – Jennifer Larmore
Dresser, Schoolboy, Groom – Andrea Hill
Painter, Negro – Marlin Miller
Dr Schön, Jack the Ripper – Wolfgang Schöne
Alwa – Kurt Streit
Schigolch – Franz Grundheber
Animal Tamer, Athlete – Scott Wilde
Prince, Manservant, Marquis – Robert Wörle
Theatre Director, Banker – Victor von Halem
Fifteen-year old girl – Julie Mathevet
Girl’s Mother – Marie-Thérèse Keller
Artist – Marianne Crebassa
Journalist – Damien Pass
Professor of Medicine, Professor, Police Officer – Johannes Koegel-Dorfs
Servant – Ugo Rabec

Willy Decker (director)
Wolfgang Gussmann (designs)
Hans Toelstede (lighting)

Orchestra of the Opéra National de Paris
Michael Schønwandt (conductor)


Lulu in Paris: one immediately thinks of the first performance of the full work, as realised by Friedrich Cerha. What it must have been to be present at the Palais Garnier when an opera hitherto known only through its first two acts (and the Lulu-Suite) finally saw the light of day, conducted by Pierre Boulez and directed by Patrice Chéreau. Bafflingly, Chéreau’s production seems never to have been revived, being supplanted in 1998 by Willy Decker’s staging for the Paris Opéra, now at the Bastille, here revived for the first time.



There is no initial curtain, so one is immediately confronted with Wolfgang Gussmann’s set, in which a stage of sorts is viewed by something akin to an amphitheatre above. Sometimes, there are people watching the events onstage, sometimes not; they are nearly always men. A red stepladder forms the initial circus-like – remember the Prologue with the Animal Tamer – setting for Lulu to be observed and manhandled. Ladders prove important throughout, not least in permitting some degree of movement between the ‘audience’ and ‘stage’: the final scene with Jack the Ripper has several. The focal point for the scene with the Painter is a sofa in the form of red lips, stylishly evoking, like much else, a vague sense of design-led era and also reminding us that this is often as much the blackest of comedies as it is tragedy. (Contrast with Wozzeck is instructive.) Gussmann’s designs – costumes and hairstyles in particular – look strikingly similar to those for Decker’s well-travelled staging of Die tote Stadt, which I saw in Salzburg, as strong a case as is ever likely to be made for a rather overblown, more than a little ridiculous work. But this Lulu of course came first – and the style is certainly appropriate. Serried mannequins in the final scene of the first act are a splendid touch of artificiality as well as an opportunity for an existentially bored Lulu to select her latest performing outfit.

One only has to recall Christof Loy’s dreadful ‘minimalism’ for the Royal Opera – in which no one and nothing were distinguished from anybody and anywhere else, Berg’s carefully-crafted parallelism coming to naught – to appreciate this lively, colourful setting in which the drama could be understood and experienced in all its bewitching variety. It does not especially matter where the different scenes are set, but there needs to be a sense of difference – which there is here. Loy achieved what one might have thought impossible, to render Lulu boring – with considerable help from a conductor, Antonio Pappano, utterly at sea with Berg’s music – but Decker draws one in, paints a picture but allows one to imagine and to think as well. Mention of the picture reminds us that, unlike at Covent Garden, there is one, into which – a very nice touch this – Lulu blends at the end. Likewise, there is, crucially, a sofa on which Lulu can chillingly remind Alwa of his father’s death. (The absence of any such props, or substitutes, simply made nonsense of the work in Loy’s hands.) And the phalanx of men all drawing their knifes upon Lulu at the end makes still more explicit what has been apparent all along.

Michael Schønwandt led a very good account of the score: perhaps not quite revelatory– we can listen to Boulez for that – but unfailing alert to the longer line as well as to the ever-shifting balances between the myriad orchestral voices. If I regretted somewhat the lack of film for the palindrome turning-point – why is it that directors, often so eager to use film in quite unnecessary places, seem reluctant to do so where it is actually stipulated? – the black curtain had the beneficial consequence of allowing one only to listen. It is testament to Schønwandt’s formal control that Berg’s design was searingly audible, with all the dramatic implications that follow. Another interesting point made was the closeness of the music for Lulu’s appearance in that act, before the scene with Alwa, to that of Gurrelieder, for which Berg of course provided the vocal score and an introductory thematic guide. Schønwandt and the excellent orchestra conjured up a golden yet darkly Teutonic sound quite in keeping with such references. Indeed, the orchestra was on splendid form throughout, strings silken and woodwind quite delectable.

Laura Aikin’s performance in the title role was in most respects excellent. Except for a couple of lines in the Paris scene, in which I could hear nothing at all, as if she were miming, she had the necessary stamina. If I were to quibble, I might say that her German, both sung and especially spoken, was a little too American-accented, but I should not wish to exaggerate. There was also the issue of presenting a relatively mature Lulu: the eternal childlike aspect of the character was often downplayed. (I am sure that it could be made to work, and indeed could truly intrigue, but it would require more appropriate direction.) In the first scene of the second act, Lulu seemed a little too comfortable as Hausfrau of the Schön residence. Wolfgang Schöne’s Dr Schön – what’s in a name? – was better acted than sung: the vocal performance had its moments, but dryness of tone inevitably led one to invidious comparisons with earlier performers such as Fischer-Dieskau. Kurt Streit was an impressive Alwa, thoughtful yet also honeyed of tone, the composer’s self-portrayal tugging the heartstrings as it should. Jennifer Larmore seems to have made the role of Geschwitz her own for the moment: hers once again was a moving portrayal, melding words and music together with beauty and meaning. As for Franz Grundheber’s superlative rasping and grasping Schigolch, I can only repeat what I said about his performance of the role in Salzburg last year: it was in the Norman Bailey class. Scott Wilde made a strong impression, both virile and humorous, as Animal Tamer and Athlete. Marlin Miller offered a finely observed Painter, not least in terms of uncommonly sweet-toned vocalism. What a delight it was also to welcome back the veteran Victor von Halem as Theatre Director and Banker, quite in his element as both.

Whatever misgivings I may have voiced about certain aspects of this performance, the ultimate truth lay in the work emerging once again as a towering masterpiece. Contrast that with Loy and Pappano at Covent Garden, who contrived to make Lulu neither look nor sound recognisable, or even comprehensible, let alone great: had that been the only Lulu of one’s life, one would most likely have wondered what all the fuss was about. Lulu in Paris continued to enchant, to disturb, to make one think.

Peter Grimes, Royal Opera, 21 June 2011

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Peter Grimes – Ben Heppner
Ellen Orford – Amanda Roocroft
Captain Balstrode – Jonathan Summers
Swallow – Matthew Best
Mrs Sedley – Jane Henschel
Auntie – Catherine Wyn-Rogers
Ned Keene – Roderick Williams
Hobson – Stephen Richardson
Rector – Martyn Hill
Bob Boles – Alan Oke
First Niece – Rebecca Bottone
Second Niece – Anna Devin
Dr Crabbe – Walter Hall
Boy (John) – Patrick Curtis

Willy Decker (director)
François de Carpentries (revival director)
John Macfarlane (designs)
David Finn (lighting)
Athol Farmer (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Andrew Davis (conductor)


London is doing well by Britten at the moment: Christopher Alden’s outstanding ENO production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is now joined by a fine Covent Garden revival of Willy Decker’s Peter Grimes. There was, I recall, indignation in certain quarters upon the production’s first London outing in 2004 – it was first seen at La Monnaie – but it is now difficult to imagine why. One would have to be a paid-up member of the Campaign for Real Barnacles to object to John Macfarlane’s powerful designs, which are hardly abstract in conception. Costumes are inoffensively in period, contributing to the sense of the Borough’s stifling bigotry and hypocrisy, the scarlet of the evening dance bringing out into the open the real interests of those erstwhile clad in monochrome. I suspect that hostility must have emanated from the quarters of those who are now outraged by Alden’s reimagining A Midsummer Night’s Dream: generally of an older generation, wishing to confine Britten to the safe, unthreatening pigeonhole of an ‘English composer’, when it is his demons that make him most interesting.

Claustrophobia and provincial small-mindedness are very much the order of the day in all aspects of Decker’s staging. (We, alas, know only too well the consequences of harrying outsiders, of hysterical accusations, of cynical pleas to ‘law and order’; it was a sad irony that this production opened on the very same day that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom announced wholesale capitulation to the tabloid press in terms of reductions in prison sentences.) The Established Church becomes a powerful presence, not least in terms of the Cross carried by the witch-hunters. We are also reminded that Bob Boles, as a Methodist, has a dissenting edge to him, protesting rightly at the practice of buying apprentices from the workhouse. Unpalatable though many of their views may have been, Evangelicals would after all take a lead in a great deal of nineteenth-century social campaigning. Assent to the norms of the Borough is enforced congregationally both at the beginning of the first act and in the final scene. Even Ellen Orford raises her hymn sheet at the last, to complete a closing of ranks: a final, chilling unanimity, in which the true villain of the piece, the Borough, emerges tragically triumphant.

Sir Andrew Davis made a welcome return to the pit, summoning up as visceral and intelligent an account of the score as I can recall. Doubtless this will be anathema to the elder Brittenites, but I found it a more moving condemnation even than Britten’s own recording. The orchestra was on splendid form throughout, clearly responding with enthusiasm to Davis’s dramatic impetus, the brass in particular searing. There remain weakness in what is after all Britten’s first opera – Paul Bunyan is a rather different kettle of fish – but I cannot imagine them being better papered over than here. The sooner Britten shed outmoded taints of Verdi – the thin ‘Embroidery Aria, for instance – the better. Talk of Berg often seems like special pleading, but the reminiscences of Wozzeck – and Mahler – at the evening dance for once seemed real enough, a telling correspondence with Berg’s tavern scene, even if the latter’s music remains on an entirely different compositional level. I have never, moreover, heard the introduction to the second act sound so Stravinskian, the tightness of rhythm recalling the Russian master’s anti-symphonic ‘symphonies’. Britten only gains by relation to continental developments: those who would confine him to visions of an Aldeburgh that never was do him nothing but harm, and would do well to remember his fervent desire to study with Berg.

What, then, of the vocal performances? Ben Heppner’s portrayal of the work’s anti-hero is powerful indeed. The flawed vocalism will doubtless dismay many: it certainly would me, if this were Tristan or Siegfried, but somehow it seems to matter less in so damaged a role as this. There is certainly vocal power, though unpredictably so: more Jon Vickers than Peter Pears, if without the former’s steely determination. One also needs to overlook, and I can imagine many being unable to do so, what are sometimes severe difficulties not only with respect to intonation but concerning wholesale pitching of lines, the entry to the Boar Inn the ultimate case in point. No, this is not a musical performance on the level of the three recently deceased artists to whom the present revival is dedicated: Robert Tear, Philip Langridge, and Anthony Rolfe Johnson. But it moved me nevertheless, since it exhibited such sympathy with Grimes’s predicament. Moreover, I was surprised by the improvement in Heppner’s acting. Partly it is a matter of his somewhat awkward stage presence chiming with the demands of the role, but it is not only that. He puts what might be a disadvantage to good use, intensifying the lumbering quality, ever a loner. Amanda Roocroft also suffered from vocal insecurities, especially at the top, but by the same token also threw her dramatic all into the role of Ellen. Her goodness not only shone through, but seemed credible rather than sentimental. This is clearly an artist who requires careful casting, her recent Meistersinger Eva an unfortunate mistake, but there was much to admire on the present occasion.

A number of other assumptions stood out, none more so than Roderick Williams’s excellent Ned Keene: ever attentive to words and musical line, with finely judged, disconcertingly ambiguous stage presence. Balstrode seems to me a quintessential Thomas Allen role, but Jonathan Summers evoked a powerful human presence that was far from disgraced by the comparison. Alan Oke’s Boles captured well the air of the righteous fanatic, without ever resorting to mere caricature. Catherine Wyn-Rogers made for an unusually subtle portrayal of Auntie: nothing was ever straightforward with her kindliness or her slight brashness. Again, there was no need for caricature, and one could not help but respond to the warmth of her voice. Her ‘nieces’, Rebecca Bottone and Anna Devin both made strong impressions too, their proper air of grotesquerie never allowed to proceed too far. Then there was Jane Henschel’s wonderfully malicious Mrs Sedley. Somehow even the American accent did not jar, granting an air of Angela Lansbury to the crime addict’s already potent brew of Frau ohne Schatten Nurse and Anne Widdecombe. I could not take my eyes off her. Once again, there was a credible air of character rather than caricature, for which some of the praise must surely be accorded both to Decker and to revival director, François de Carpentries.

For there was certainly nothing of the routine to this revival. Even when something went wrong, a failure in a stage motor necessitating alterations to the second-act scene changes, the reworking was accomplished so professionally that I have to admit I did not notice, only learning of the difficulty afterwards. Finally, no praise is high enough for the magnificent contribution of the Royal Opera Chorus, as trained by Renato Balsadonna. Weight, intensity, diction, stage performance: all of these were irreproachable. Britten was well served indeed. And, just as Theodor Adorno in 1951 urged the necessity to defend Bach from his puritanical ‘devotees’, so should we, even those of us sometimes ambivalent in our response to the music of Benjamin Britten, defend him from his.