Three consecutive evenings at The Coliseum, each with
its vocal casualty and unique particularity, merit additional observations
about Opera in English in England.
La Vestale as performed in a truncated
version by the English National Opera at the Coliseum did Spontini no
favours, and this revival was almost unanimously savaged
by the critics. Best was the stage design (Alison Chitty) and lighting
(Rick Fisher) which made for some pretty pictures; worst the inadequacy
of Jane Eaglen, who had not recovered vocally since the disastrous
first night, the diva embarrassingly overshadowed when they duetted
by the Grand Vestal of Anne-Marie Owens. Eaglen struggled with Spontini's
vocal lines - needing the sort of bel canto singing Maria Callas did
to perfection. I saw Callas on stage once only, in Cherubini's Medea,
a revelation of how singing-acting might become in opera of the, then,
still far future. After this unhappy evening at The Coliseum, it was
therapeutic to return home to Callas, who shows how it should be done
in a collection of arias from Medea, La Vestale and Bellini's
La Sonnambula, which also had been given in London recently with
an inadequate diva (EMI Classics 7243 5
66457 2 1).
A Masked Ball was generally well liked,
but not universally so, and this production has been described in detail
by Melanie
Eskenazi. For me, it so overloaded a popular Verdi opera with the
incongruities of the maverick Calixto Bieito's 'concept' that it was
hard to attend to the music - the picture
at curtain up encapsulates what was to come. The director has helpfully
explained
to Seen&Heard that ‘It’s not
about them shitting - those 14 toilets aren’t about shit.’
The lavatorial focus confronting us brought back to mind an Opera Factory
production of his Songs for a Mad King which was repudiated and
boycotted by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies; Verdi was not available to do
likewise. That apart, our attention was taken in straining to catch
the words of the English version, a not uncommon difficulty at The Coliseum;
there are many seats where surtitles would be a boon! The singing was
adequate but unmemorable (Giselle Minns as Oscar replaced the indisposed
Mary Plazas, who had set ME's teeth on edge) and the acting was generally
stiff.
The special element which captured attention on our
evening was the signing by ENO's resident sign-interpreter for hearing-impaired
watchers, situated across the stage from our front-left stalls. I joke
not - we could not take our eyes off Wendy Ebsworth! Has anyone
before noted in print the expressiveness of gesture and body language
with which she is liable to upstage the stars? She really conveyed the
emotions of Verdi's characters far more clearly than did those actually
responsible for doing so.
Jude Kelly’s idiosyncratic and over-burdened
staging of Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love, with
Rhys Meirion’s winning Nemorino, was riveting even with the
delights of the Gheorghiu/Alagna DVD still active in recent memory.
His light tenor was mellifluous and the complicated choreographic deployment
of the chorus by movement director Quinny Sacks, up and down and around
Robert Jones' elaborate urban set, made the whole thing work and contributed
to an evening of unspoiled pleasure, given a special lift when Andrew
Shore's effervescent Dulcamara takes centre stage. And this even though
the Adelina, Alison Roddy (praised by ME at a later
performance) had so lost her voice that at the premiere of this
revival she was obliged to share her role with Louise Walsh,
who sang from music and from the same spot on the opposite wing as had
been occupied by Wendy Ebsworth the previous night.
What made this event worth noting was that these two
sopranos did so well together, achieving such perfect synchrony between
two mouths, one singing, the other miming, that the vagaries of acoustic
reflections often made it seem that the sound was coming from the principal
on stage, so dominant is seeing over hearing! What was in prospect a
likely disaster was soon easily taken for granted, and I look forward
to hearing Louise Walsh in her own right soon.
Whether you saw or missed Jude Kelly's The Elixir
of Love, try not to deprive yourself of the supreme pleasure
of the Lyon Opera DVD of L'elisir d'amore [Decca
074 103-9], with Angela Gheorghiu &
Roberto Alagna. Frank Dunlop's stage production, updated to the
1920s, returns the comedy to Italian village life and works well with
Brian Large's direction for video and the DVD gives you choice of subtitle
language. It is as happy a presentation of this different slant on the
Tristan & Isolde story as you could ever wish to see. The starring
couple, currently darlings of the opera world, had only been married
a few months before it was filmed, and that shows in their rapport and
almost subliminal gestures of affection. Gheorgiu instils real joy into
her roulades and Alagna, a skilful actor, points up the fun with subtlety
throughout. Roberto Scaltriti swaggers outrageously as the over-confident
suitor Belcore and Simone Alaimo makes a great deal of the itinerant
alternative physician, dispensing cheap wine and preying on the gullibility
of uneducated rural villagers. Derek Bailey's supplementary film Love
Potion is uncommonly illuminating, especially for the insight it
brings into the differences between filming and audio recording. It
is an entertaining documentary and informative on many aspects of the
processes of creating this great production, with thoughtful opinions
from all concerned.
Peter Grahame Woolf
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