Britten,  Owen Wingrave: Soloists, Players of the City of London, Rory Macdonald (conductor)  Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House, London, 27.04.2007 (AO)

 

Jacques Imbrailo (Owen Wingrave)
Steven Page (Spencer Coyle)
Thomas Walker (Lechmere)
Vivian Tierney (Miss Wingrave)
Elisabeth Woollett (Mrs Coyle)
Jennifer Rhys-Davies (Mrs Julian)
Allison Cook (Kate)
Richard Berkeley-Steele (General Sir Philip Wingrave)
Toby Spence (narrator) 

Directed by Tim Hopkins

 

Owen Wingrave is a rarity, for it has hardly been performed since its premiere in 1971. Kent Nagano conducted it in Berlin a few years ago.  He had a superb orchestra, and Gerald Finley in the leading role, and, as abstract music, it was interesting, providing you didn’t think about the drama.  But that’s not what opera is about.  The plot is awkward.  Young Wingrave decides he doesn’t want to be a soldier. Taunted by his girlfriend Kate, Owen sleeps in a haunted room and is found dead.

Much has been made of how the opera was made for television, so that camera angles and techniques could provide what the plot failed to deliver.  This production, however, shows that this isn’t the case.  Instead of elaborate “realistic” effects, this stark, black and white set concentrates on fundamentals.  It’s much more in the abstract spirit of the Noh dramas that fascinated Britten so much, where the “characters” are formalist symbols.  This is a good thing, because the roles in Owen Wingrave are cardboard: something has to be done to provide them with more depth. Getting rid of extraneous detail helps. We don’t need to “see” wood panelled rooms to know that Paramore, the ancestral home, is solid and ancient.  Its oppressive claustrophobia exists in the minds of those like Owen and Mrs Coyle, who are sensitive enough to intuit what it represents.

Surprisingly, what also makes this new production work so well is that it has been transcribed for smaller orchestral forces.  David Matthews worked closely with Britten, and understands his idiom well enough to bring out the essentials.  The result is a sharper, more chamber-like focus, which concentrates the mind.  Britten makes a lot of the militarism, but a few fanfares and drum rolls can go a very long way.  The sparser textures throw more emphasis on the lyrical ballad, reminiscent of folk music.  It is “Owen’s theme” reflecting his music.   It also emphasises the impression that the legend of the ghost is as ancient as the Wingrave family, depicted in Elizabethan portraits, one of which sports an incongruous Pickelhaube – surely this cannot be a mistake? The nature of the ballad also recalls Britten’s earliest protest music, particularly the remarkable Our Hunting Fathers to texts by W H Auden. “They are our past…..and our future” is surprisingly apposite: listen to it and think about Owen Wingrave. (For more details, see below).

It was Auden who radicalised Britten.  Britten was a conscientious objector during the Second World War, as was Pears – whose brother was a prisoner of the Japanese.  Thus, there are many reasons why Britten would think of Owen Wingrave in terms of an anti-military statement.  However, perhaps that’s what explains the weakness of the drama.  The opera assumes war is a game: toy soldiers and horses abound in this production. But as the Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke, genuinely descended from an ancient military family, said, “No one hates war more than a soldier”.  They know reality, politicians don’t.  Von Moltke’s descendant, incidentally, rejected the Army, but gave his life opposing Hitler.  Perhaps that’s the significance of the Pickelhaube portrait?

The Wingrave family certainly don’t know reality, but live in a miasma of blind duty, propelled a warped fascination with death.  Miss Wingrave got her dominant status because of the deaths of her brother and fiancé.  Kate thinks Owen’s death in battle would bring her glory: it’s not the man she wants to marry, but the social cachet. Mrs Julian is complicit, too, by moving in with the family, though as an officer’s widow surely she would have had a home of her own. Something’s very odd here.  When this household sings the funeral march in unison, their solidarity is more terrifying than the lines they sing. 

Spencer Coyle, the man who tutored Owen for Sandhurst and presumably knows lots more about what the military means, is much more sanguine about the situation.  He doesn’t get nearly as violently upset as the Wingraves.  Why are they so hysterical at the prospect of change? What really motivates them? Britten emphasises the role of the house itself. “Listen to the house!” goes a line in the libretto, as if Paramore were a living, active presence. It makes it easy to explain why Owen dies in the haunted room, but why he goes there in the first place isn‘t quite so clear.   Choosing not to be a soldier and be disinherited as a result must take lots more courage than going into a haunted room.  What has a non-violent man to fear from the ghost of a boy who refused to fight? (the ghost presumably killed his bullying father).

Britten’s libretto, written by Myfanwy Piper, is strikingly different from the original short story by Henry James.  James was a psychologist, far more interested in the human side of the story.  It’s he who emphasises the manipulative dynamic of this dysfunctional household. Unhealthy conformity spawns the family myth. Soldiering is just a symptom.  For Britten, though, anti-militarism was a far more urgent and personal concern, so naturally it comes to the fore in his re-interpretation.  The characters and even the house become symbolic archetypes.   The music is quite exciting, as if Britten were enjoying an excuse to play with military themes. But as opera, it doesn’t penetrate below the surface.  Owen Wingrave is not by any means, a match for Turn of the Screw.

Catch this production, which runs until 5^th May, and will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3.  This opera doesn’t get performed much, so it’s worth seeing it when it does appear.  This production is infinitely more interesting than the fussy, “realistic” Berlin one.   It’s much more informative to see a projection of Owen’s face trapped in a frame of a dolls-house scale model of Paramore, than a panoramic shot of some stately home.  The Berlin production had much more high profile names singing and playing, but the performers here acquitted themselves well, particularly as they are young and up-and-coming. Jacques Imbrailo, as Owen, was particularly impressive, although he only joined the Jette Parker Young Artists programme in September last year.

  

Anne Ozorio

Picture © Bill Cooper

Note: There’s an outstanding recording of Our Hunting Fathers by Ian Bostridge. It bristles with sardonic passion.  It was recorded in 1998, and was conducted by Daniel Harding, in his days with the specialist ensemble the Britten Sinfonia.  EMI Classics 7243 5 56871 28.