SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Opera North On Tour: The Lowry Theatre, Salford Quays. 10 –16.6.2008  ( RJF)

Charles Gounod Romeo at Juliette. (1867)
Giuseppe Verdi Macbeth (1865 version)
Benjamin Britten A Midsummer Night’s dream (1960)


As I wrote in my preview to Opera North’s 2007-08 season (review), the most exciting prospect for the year was the Shakespearean theme running through the operas presented. The sequence started in the autumn of 2007 with a reprise of the 1996 production of Verdi’s Falstaff (see review), a production that has also been seen at ENO. The theme reaches its apogee this spring with three productions based on the Bard’s works and  the finale will come this autumn with an all too rare venture, into primo ottocento bel canto with I Capuleti ed i Montecchi, Bellini’s take on Romeo and Juliette.

By the time this tour reached The Lowry it had already taken in Nottingham and Newcastle . It will conclude at Woking’s New Victoria Theatre, which gets no less than six performances including a Saturday matinee.

The composers featured in this spring Shakespeare season, Verdi, Gounod and Britten come from entirely different musical traditions of course. Despite that, there are more links than Shakespeare between at least two of them and there are even more links in  Opera North’s three : for a start there is the basic set, which shared by each of them. This is not to say that anyone would necessarily recognise the fact and  it is not merely a matter of common props and backdrops either. Johan Engels, the designer for Opera North’s Eight Little Greats of five years ago, again with the same basic set, returns and is responsible for all the three works. Tim Albery directs Macbeth, his first shot at a Verdi opera although he produced the play for the Royal Shakespeare Company in the mid 1990s. Martin Duncan directs the Britten and the young John Fulljames  is in charge of Gounod.

Verdi : Macbeth (1865 version)

I greatly admired Tim Albery’s Katya Kabanova in the summer tour 2007 and his Madama Butterfly the following autumn. In both he managed to include elements of updating without losing sight  or sound  of the composer’s intentions. But Verdi is a different kettle of fish. No other opera composer had such a feel for the theatre, or marries music with dramatic intentions so exactly. Premiered in Florence in 1846 Macbeth was Verdi’s 10^th opera and his first attempt at Shakespeare, an author whom he revered and whose works he kept by his bedside, albeit in Italian.. He wrote to the impresario Lanari giving detailed instructions about décor and costumes for Macbeth, which he wanted to be historically accurate. He also wrote to the singers who portraying Macbeth and his wife, giving precise instructions on how to perform the music. (Verdi always composed with particular voices and even singers in mind, as was the case with Macbeth.) He also rehearsed his singers up to the very last minute.

All Verdi’s detailed preparations and stage requirements for the premiere were worthwhile and the opera was a resounding success with the composer taking thirty-eight curtain calls. There, Macbeth might have rested,  but whilst on holiday in Genoa for the winter of 1863-64,  Verdi was visited by his Paris representative Léon Escudier who informed him that Paris’s Théâtre Lyrique had enquired if ballet music could be inserted into the 1847 version of the opera, for performance at there. Verdi’s response was more than Escudier could have hoped for, indicating that the he wished to undertake a radical revision, in French, of the version he had written eighteen years earlier. Verdi’s changes included new arias for Lady Macbeth and her husband and a new last act finale deleting Macbeth’s death scene as well as other details. This revised 1865 edition, though sung in Italian, is the version generally used present day and this  is so in this production.. The downside to all of this is to be found in the different styles of musical composition and structure between the original and the rewritten parts. The sonorities in the 1865 version are more akin to those of Un Ballo in Maschera and La Traviata and do stand out in contrast with the relative musical immaturity of Verdi’s earlier style, harking back as it does to the Risorgimento and his ‘Years in the Galleys ’ They can present with particular challenges.

I include this information not out of pretentiousness, but because I believe there are issues within the background germane to any current successful production. Looking at the mob-cap headgear of the witches, and other members of the chorus, which seems suited to post Second World War factory girls, my first thoughts were that Albery’s inevitable update is generally to that period. Not so; the uniforms of the various armies were of an earlier period while  the dinner jackets at the Macbeth’s party and the mute Duncan’s trilby hat come from much later as does Lady Macbeth’s chic slinky and sexy dress at their party. Whatever the intended period though, the shedding of blood in war is inevitable and there was plenty here:  with the killings by dagger at least in the original period. A modern setting is not one in which the supernatural can be so readily accepted however, something of a drawback.

The nature of the divide between the Macbeth’s over the fact that others would produce the kings of the future is starkly focussed in the opening scene. Lady Macbeth arrives at a maternity delivery room, her dress stained with her burst waters. She is placed  on a wrought iron framed bed to give birth to a dead child which is quickly wrapped in newspaper and consigned to the litter bin, not a scene to everyone’s taste. Albery then goes even further with the maternity theme to overcome the problem of the future kings. This time an unknown woman gives birth to five live babies, already swaddled to contrast their viability perhaps, which, after an initial welcome, are tossed about like rugby balls.  I suppose Scottish kings of the period, or wherever the setting was meant to be, were likely to have a rough time of it before passing the mantle, or paper crown in this case, onto their siblings. The hospital bed had further uses too, and together with a screen and a few tables and chairs,  comprised all of the props. The set had a large steeply raked elliptical surface to represent the blasted heath with a door at the side which opened to allow Duncan to enter  alive, and to leave as a propped up bloody corpse. The sidewalls were later shared with the Gounod work:  all legitimate in getting three productions for the price of one.

Robert Hayward’s Macbeth was a big shambling bear of a man who showed early signs of lack of backbone, regularly dabbing  his eyes with his handkerchief and  later suitably bloodied, to  his fevered brow. Although he tired by the time of his Act IV aria, Hayward’s singing was strong, full toned and well characterised, his Italian pronunciation good although his vocal patina lacked something of Italianata. Antonia Cifrone acted well as Lady Macbeth. A lyric soprano,  she lacked some lower notes and the vocal vehemence they allow: hers  was in fact,  far too beautiful a voice for Verdi’s vision, but very satisfying to hear particularly in the sleepwalking scene. Albery took some liberties in Act I, Scene II as Lady Macbeth read her husband’s letter. The man himself is sat by her and, in Vieni! T’affreta she stands him on a chair and exults at the opportunities awaiting them. His presence is quite legitimate directorial imagination and licence although Macbeth has to walk off come back again to  be greeted by her ‘Cawdor.’  But  giving him him words, even a few, to sing? Verdi might not have been pleased even though the effect momentarily enhanced the dramatic moment.

Ernesto Morillo Hoyt, a Venezuelan, sang Banquo sonorously. This role is his Opera North debut and possibly his UK one too. For a bass he is physically rather small and was overshadowed by Hayward.  Peter Auty sang Macduff’s O figli miei!…Ah la paterna mano in Act IV with much feeling, vocal expression and ringing tenor tone. Peter Wedd’s Malcom had Italianate squilla and he too sang with ringing tone. This luxury casting of this minor role was made possible by singers doubling up roles in the three Shakespeare linked operas in this season with the useful by-product of developing a Company Ensemble, though for a short period. The chorus was up to its usual high standard in Patria oppressa whilst the three witches also sang and acted well. The opera was sung in Italian with surtitles.

Whatever virtues might have gone before,  I have left the best until last. This came from  the musical the orchestra directed by Richard Farnes. I have never heard him give a flaccid orchestral performance of an opera,  but as I have indicated lready  there are particular challenges in Macbeth. Great names such as Abbado at La Scala have sounded tentative in parts of the 1847 music, whilst Muti deals with it in a brash somewhat over forceful manner and  Sinopoli dissects it as he might a cadaver, all on record. I cannot take Farnes’ interpretation away to compare in detail, but in the theatre I could not help be struck by his natural Verdian sweep in both the early and late music.

All in all with a little tinkering here and there, this Macbeth whilst not ranking with Albery’s earlier successes with Opera North, is a promising start to his Verdi; perhaps Simon Boccanegra could come next. If Albery and Opera North were to venture there, I hope he would read Verdi’s correspondence with Boito in his preparation and go on to ensure Farnes is at the rostrum. Farnes’ Macbeth is among the best I have heard, on record or in the theatre,  since the memorable Glyndebourne performances of 1972.

Gounod: Romeo and Juliette

Second up in compositional sequence, although the first in the trio at The Lowry was Gounod’s Romeo and Juliette. Despite being written in the French opéra comique tradition with spoken dialogue, completely alien to the Italian recitative, it does have  more than slight connections with Verdi. The Gounod  was premiered at the Théâtre Lyrique in April 1867, two years after Verdi’s revised Macbeth in the year of the great Paris Exhibition when the theatres of the French capital were all vying for custom from masses of visitors. After the problems he had encountered with Les Vêpres Sicilienne, s Verdi had vowed never again to compose for the Paris Opéra but with the exhibition on the horizon, and Meyerbeer dead, the Theatre Director Perrin needed a new Grand Opera. He turned once more to Verdi and the composer committed himself to write a work in four or five acts, complete with ballet.

Don Carlos was premiered on March 11^th  but both  Verdi and Gounod had  composed more music than could be managed in a reasonable evening whilst allowing for the Parisian bourgeoisie to catch their last trains to the suburbs and each  excised large amounts of music. Verdi struggled on and off for the  next eighteen years to get what he really wanted staged and similarly Gounod, subject to pressures to accommodate singers as well, also modified his score. From the morass of music and editions of Romeo and Juliette available, the conductor and the director for this performance  have produced a viable and cohesive performing edition which keeps the often  interminable spoken dialogue to a minimum, a great  improvement for  non-French speakers among the singers and audience, especially with the excellent surtitles provided.

As a young producer, keen to make his mark, and with  contemporary news reports of youth gang and knife violence on the streets,  it was  inevitable that John Fulljames would present Romeo and Juliette in an updated version. Sure enough,  Romeo and his gang were punks or Goths with spiked brightly coloured hair and  wearing heavy metal they stood out like sore thumbs at Capulet’s party, none more so than Mercutio in a multicoloured harlequinade type outfit. No chance for them to pass unnoticed then.  The set was generally dark and tomb like with black tiled surroundings from the beginning. A dais, suspended at each corner by hawser wires which raised and lowered it from time to time was centre stage and  at  her entrance Juliette was adorned with angel’s wings, perhaps to represent Capulet’s view of his daughter. Her having to divest them , much as Romeo had to do later with his safety belt, was an unnecessary distraction. The central dais by turns became the nuptial bed, Juliette’s catafalque and a rather strange outdoor setting, complete with grass snipped by Friar Lawrence, for the wedding ceremony.

The setting was dominated throughout by the physically smallest members of the cast,  Leonardo Capalbo as Romeo and the Slovenian lyric soprano Bernardo Bobra as Juliette. Her light flexible lyric soprano and appealingly youthful appearance suited the part to perfection and she acted well throughout too, helping to make the story very believable. Her singing  was more than matched by Capelbo who produced a honeyed tone mezza voice when required while having vocal strength and colour for the more dramatic moments. Gounod’s writing for the tenor does call for a wide range of colours and is typically in the French tradition of the period and similar to the title role in Faust. French tenors often have a particular slightly nasal patina to their of native vowels and one not easily imitated by others. Capaldo managed his French to the manner born. The virtues of the two principals made it frustrating for me that the final scene was not as harrowing as it might be. Part of the problem was the continuous rear-stage presence of the Capulets and Montgues, watching and certainly distracting from total focus on the fated lovers.

Of the other singers,  Peter Savage was a strongly acted Capulet, if a little dry toned, whilst Henry Waddington as Friar Laurent was lacking in sonority and power. Francis Bourne as Stéphano, with wheels on heels, glided around spray-painting during a well shaped and conveyed aria. The role of Gertrude was played as a bottle swigging slag who would lay any man around. Surely Gertrude, who supports Juliette and is prepared to lie for her, is a more sympathetic character than that. The time Romeo spent in his underpants was more than a little over the top. But when he gets his trousers off after arriving in the tomb, having first descended a ladder from on high and got rid of his safety harness, my thoughts went back to my studies of Freudian psychology and his writing on bizarre sexual habits. But all was well, it was merely to reveal the knife strapped to his calf and which Juliette would need to kill herself.

On the rostrum Peter Selwyn supported his singers in this  bel canto styled work appropriately , allowing time for phrasing while keeping the drama moving. While many in the audience might have preferred a more traditional staging of this rarely performed opera, taken as a whole and despite my caveats, it certainly worked. My only real disappointment was the poor support given to Opera North for bringing the opera to Salford. This  was a sparse house to say the least, and the work deserved better. I hope the warmth of the applause, if not its volume encouraged  the excellent cast.

Britten,  A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream

Last up, and for one performance only, was Britten’s A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream. In the ninety-three years between the Gounod and Britten’s work  opera moved on immeasurably. Italian opera passed through verismo and beyond while the French produced  Pelléas and more modern musical idioms. In the UK, where opera composition had become a near non-starter after  Purcell, and despite the Irishmen Balfe and Wallace, the arrival of Benjamin Britten was needed to wake a dormant species. His early Peter Grimes (1945) marked him out as a major player and realising the problems of staging large-scale opera after Billy Budd (1955) , he turned to chamber opera.  A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream however, premiered in 1960, was written with both chamber and large-scale performances in mind. It has no  large formal arias in the earlier French or Italian styles  but rather semi parlando singing  and ariettas.

Martin Duncan’s staging was masterful, representing the forest with many changing coloured lighting effects and rigid  hanging plastic and floating elliptical balloons. The effects were simply  magical. James Laing as Oberon was a little overpowered by Jeni Bern as Tytania although her diction, unlike his, was a fault. Both started too dazzlingly costumed for the lighting,  making  for some visual discomfort in the theatre. The fairies of the Kinder Choir were well portrayed, singing and moving with ease and conviction. The four lovers all sang with good tone and generally characterised well,  although some of the goings on in Act II  were unnecessarily carnal with participants ending up more undressed than might be seemly. Though not particularly prudish, and like many men in the audience I suspect , I was distinctly hot under the collar at Tytania’s vamping of Bottom. In that role though, Henry Waddington’s singing and portrayal were particularly effective and   despite the efforts of Quince and his thespians, and also by Peter Savidge and Yvonne Howard as Theseus and Hyppolyta, the stage image that stays with me is not of a singer but Tom Walker’s Puck. His every movement  -  body, head, arms, legs and hands -  was a masterful portrayal of a goat and how  he used the  stage was a well studied and natural characterisation which  bettered many straight stage actors. This is  an odd way perhaps to end an  opera review, but it reflects the care and attention to detail that Opera North brings to their efforts.

A distracting signer affected this performance and perhaps money would be better spent on surtitles even when opera is sung in English. English National Opera have already grasped that nettle and perhaps Opera North should do so too. While titles may  make some singers lazy, the patter of the Wives in Verdi’s Falstaff, or the heavy orchestration of Janáceck’s Katya, make diction difficult for  the audience  and  details of the plot  can easily be lost. If newcomers to opera are to be tempted in, then this is a real consideration and  perhaps audience polling would be useful. My own conversations indicate a very positive response so far.

The only other semi negative comment I heard all week was the hope that, occasionally, it would be nice to see an opera performed in the settings originally intended. Looking at next season’ s programme I wouldn’t keep my fingers crossed however, . but I do hope that Salford and Manchester, will give better support to I Capuleti ed i Montecchi which concludes  Opera North’s adventurous Shakespear year than they did for Gounod  at the Lowry this week.
 
Robert J Farr 

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