SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD UK OPERA  REVIEW
 

Verdi, Simon Boccanegra (1881): Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, conducted by Antonio Pappano. Royal Opera House, London 29.6.2010 (JPr)

Plácido Domingo as Boccanegra
 

I sat down in the Royal Opera House with the strangest feeling that I had seen this production before but apparently I had not. The programme said that this was the first revival of Simon Boccanegra since 2004 but I was almost certain that I had seen this opera at Covent Garden much more recently than that. Indeed I had and I was in fact surprised by the unusual situation that the Royal Opera has apparently two current Boccanegra productions doing the rounds; this one by Elijah Moshinsky dating originally from 1991 and also Ian Judge’s 2008 revision of his production for the earlier, 1857 version of this opera. Since that had also appeared at Washington National Opera and their general director is a certain Plácido Domingo who was here singing Boccanegra, there must have been a reason for returning to Moshinsky’s version. I would have liked to known what that was … and the relevant information must be available somewhere, although not in the programme … but so far I have not found it.

Domingo was clearly the centre of attention of these performances and as he begins to wind down his singing career at the age of … well who knows? … though it is officially 69. Obviously he is an artist driven to go on and on and he not only has these singing engagements but also conducts and leads two major opera companies. ‘If I rest, I rust, ’ he explained recently but there is even more to marvel at with Domingo: in the last few months he has been ill and needed surgery, an enforced ‘rest’, at least of sorts. How ill he had been was evident from the rehearsal photographs in the programme which showed a fuller-faced and less strained looking Domingo than the man seen during the recent broadcast of this same Verdi opera from the Met recently (see review.) When he almost bounded onto the stage during the Prologue for this performance with his hair and beard darkened it was clear that his gait was more vigorous and he was less stooped. This was in comparison to how he appeared in the broadcast.

Initially, I had thought I had perhaps come to say farewell to Plácido Domingo, but stayed to marvel at this incredibly astute tenor who has shepherded his career through the almost forty years since his Covent Garden debut in 1971. There have been innumerable performances in 130, or so, roles, most of which he has recorded, and in fact this was his 226th appearance at Covent Garden and in his 26th part there … and his first as a baritone. Does this decision to sing the title role in Simon Boccanegra - which he has already sung in Berlin, New York, Milan, with Madrid to follow soon – signal the beginning of the end for Domingo’s singing career? I'm not too sure on this evidence. It is just there are not many roles in his normal tenor repertoire he could manage at his age and with the top of his voice – and his stamina – now fading in comparison to his earlier years.

The journey his character makes in this opera from virile buccaneer to greying, aged, imperious, ruler with a twenty-five year leap between the Prologue and Act 1 almost mirrors the passage of time for Domingo’s own career. He goes from adventurer and young lover to the patriarch mired in political intrigue but dedicated to resolving the feuds in the middle of fourteenth-century Genoa. As the latter he exuded a grizzled authority and a commanding stage presence, pronouncing his curse in the Council Chamber scene with chilling effect. He has no arias in this opera in the conventional sense, but every note he sings must reflect the hard-won wisdom of the pater familias, the pain of enforced separation from his mysteriously abducted child, the celebration of their reunion and then the pain of his long slow death by poison whilst reuniting all the warring factions.

Boccanegra makes no demands on the upper reaches of Domingo’s voice and the voice he does use still has a tenor timbre with none of the conversational lyric expansiveness of a true Verdian baritone. There has long been a baritonal burnish to Domingo’s singing and he employs this resonant middle voice with considerable grandeur and stentorian power. Deeper notes - as expected - tend to be a little thinner than a ‘real’ Boccanegra would exhibit but this does not matter much. The Royal Opera had done wonders by matching him perfectly in this male voice dominated opera, with the baleful basso profundo of Ferruccio Furlanetto returning as Boccanegra’s nemesis Fiesco, with the high-lying tenor of Joseph Calleja as Gabriele Adorno (the role Domingo sang here 13 years ago), and the rather battle-scarred vocal remnants of a former Boccanegra, Jonathan Summers, as the conspirator Paolo. Furlanetto and Calleja were the real vocal stars of the evening while Summers’s Paolo had a ‘hammy’ over-the-top evilness to it at odds with those around him.

I wish I was not so riddled with doubts about Marina Poplavskaya‘s Amelia, Boccanegra’s long-lost daughter. She is exactly the willowy soprano beloved by Covent Garden who have done much for her burgeoning international career. However there is also a Slavic quality to the voice and a tension in the production of her highest notes which does not suggest that her future really should be as a Verdi soprano.

What I am thrilled about though is that after a number of attempts in the past, I finally really enjoyed Simon Boccanegra because of the sheer vocal excitement of the evening and the support to the principals given by the chorus (on great form) and the orchestra under Antonio Pappano, here peerless in Verdi. He led all concerned with drive, energy, passion, heightened emotion and exemplary orchestral virtuosity not often heard here in recent years – especially with Verdi. The only performances surpassing this that I have heard in recent memory were Semyon Bychkov’s recent Lohengrins also at Covent Garden. Never has a Verdi opera – and Simon Boccanegra in particular – flown by so quickly. Watch the broadcast on BBC2 next Saturday, 7.30pm or, even better still, see a big-screen relay live on Tuesday 13th July in London, Bradford, Bristol, Ipswich, Leicester, Manchester, Plymouth or Portsmouth.

Finally, what about the production? Well, a week or so is a long time in opera because on June 19^th, I saw Richard Jones’s new Die Meistersinger in Cardiff , a production so traditional that I judged it almost a deliberate insult to other wonderfully thoughtful and innovative Wagner productions of past decades. But here on an almost permanent set (by Michael Yeargan) with a perspective of high columns receding to the back of the stage, a few tables and benches (only really there to be thrown over in the riot) and three walls that are dropped in with either gold lettering or graffiti we need no more than some period costumes (by the late Peter J Hall) and appropriate armoury to provide a convincing staging. It works because the production, such as is, puts the leading singers in the best positions on stage to sing out to the audience and could have been used, with only a few alterations, for any number of operas with a Renaissance period setting, or thereabouts.

As Domingo’s character stumbles and struggles for breath when the poison in his body takes hold, his leave-taking is emotionally draining before his collapse to the floor. If this is also a ‘farewell’ to Covent Garden he cannot take his leave on a higher (or lower, depending how you see it?) note. I doubt of course, that all being well, this actually will be the last we will hear of him at Covent Garden.

Jim Pritchard

Picture © The Royal Opera/Catherine Ashmore