Opera
Good, knight
Rodney Wines There is a great deal to be said about Glynedebourne's new production of Falstaff andall Of it good. The work sounds marvellous in this house's clear acoustic; John Pritchard and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, both in fine form, made every orchestral detail tell without ever having to strain after effect, and the cast pointed Boito's libretto– the wittiest and most economic for any comic opera—with natural ease. Simply as a reading of the text this was an evening of rare and civilised delight. Jean-Pierre Ponnelle does not have too happy a reputation as a producer of comic °Pera, witness his cold Cenerentola and repellently joky Don Pasquale, but he took Paistall quite seriously and got two important things absolutely right. First, class— that essential ingredient of all great comedy. When the class war is finally lost (there will ,..be no winner) the theatre for one is going to „ue a much duller place. As interpreted by uonald Gramm, Ponnelle's Falstaff is no grotesque but a military gentleman only just Igt3ing to seed, slightly fat, neatly whiskered. Ile, keens his ceremonial armour in his is'ugings as a talisman and spends what cash "e has on page and guidon. His wooing costume is not an absurd fancy dress (vide effirelli) but recognisable if threadbare court finery whose faded russet is seen in telling contrast to the dowdy creams and "Lies of le gaie comari di Vindsor and their scarcely less dowdy spouses. Max-Rene Cosotti's Fenton, not strictly to the letter of the piece, is no moony gent i.°11t a randy working-class lad who can't wait L0 get his grubby hands on the boss's daughter (and bank balance), and many in the audience will have been right there with tun) since Elizabeth Gale's Nannetta looked absolutely scrumptious and sounded only marginally less so. The amorous by-play of this pretty pair, who in happy contrast to the vret way they are usually played,could hard i y stop fingering each other all evening, was ;ee, n in ironic counterpoint to the more lanoured pursuits of Sir John. That is the other thing that Ponnelle has Sot so decisively right: sex, the second essential ingredient of all great comedy (When the sex war is finally lost etc etc). v alstaff's 'Va, vecchio John' is accompanied by a vulgar gesture of the right arm that is as universal as it is expressive: he really .nleahs to get his manicured hands On those radesmen's wives (and bank balances). Scarcely arrived at Alice's, he is using her lute-stool as a mounting block for the final, Panting assault, to a reaction from her of one flattery to two parts sheer disbelief. 1 M5 magic moment is resolved by the anDearance of the inquisitive page, which
triggers off reminiscences of good old days in the Duke of Norfolk's employ. At first sight this seemed a classic Ponnellism, a piece of irrelevant business superimposed on the text, but the more you thought about both text and context, the more it seemed right, and oddly touching.
Gramm's knight was oddly touching throughout. In every situation he retained his quiet dignity and natural authority. His voice is dark, well-contained and with ideal dynamic range. There were many moments to 41reasure : his ascent of the stairs to get changed--prancing up the first two, slowing down in the middle, almost crawling up the last two; his panicky stagger to the laundry-basket, ageing ten years in as many seconds; his beautifully judged delivery of the Act 3 monologue with its heartrending reprise of `Va, vecchio John'. This masterly performance was well supported. Nucci Condo's thoroughly Italian Quickly used an amazing baritone register to high comic effect; her funniest catch-line was not the usual 'reverenza' but `povera donna' which, with eyes rolled to heaven, spoke volumes on the subject of female frustration. A good Ford (Richard Stilwell), good Wives (Kay Griffell and Reni Penkova), and above all a good ensemble. Ponnelle's sets, like his costumes, help the action save in over-long inter-scene pauses. His little Beaconsfield model village nestling in the furthest reaches of the Glyndebourne stage was a most happy conceit.
If this was a great Glyndebourne evening, then the subsequent new production of Pelleas et Milisande let us all down with a frightful bump. I know it can have been no fun to find a substitute Pelleas at the last minute, but the one they engaged had the greatest difficulty in even singing in tune, and the only dramatic suspense of the evening centred on whether an enraged member of the audience who had paid £12 for his seat would jump onto the stage and beat Golaud to it. As it was, when the latter finally skewered him neatly through the kidneys I swear a rustle of relief ran round the auditorium. Rene Terrasson's production, like his pseudish programme note and some other French stagings I have seen, was plein de rnerde. No one was allowed to do anything save stand still or walk in a trance-like glide. There was no emotional contact between any of the characters. The text was purposefully contradicted but to no perceptible purpose; Melisande ordered Golaud not to touch her before he had so much as raised a finger in her direction (I wish she had run into Monsieur Cosotti—that would have sorted her, and the opera, out) and threatened to fetter herself in eau that was a good ten yards away. Yniold could tell us how heavy his rock was simply by looking at it.
Yniold had a lot to do, indeed, like wander ing on and gazing at people who were already gazing at each other. It is one thing to write a new sub-text to an existing opera (though Pelleas has quite enough sub-texts of its own) and quite another to make it mean something. This Terrasson signally failed to achieve.
Add to all this Patrick Robertson's gauzes and projections, all in interesting shades of grey and, very occasionally, beige, and you have the recipe for an evening of almost intolerable boredom. Those members of the cast who were up to their rolesAnne-Marie Blanzat (Melisande), Jocelyne Taillon (Genevieve) and perhaps Michael Devlin (Golaud)—had their efforts effectively scuppered by M. Terrasson. The LPO played extremely well for Bernard Haitink. Back, with some relief, to Verdi. John Tooley, I imagine, did a Lilian Baylis: 'Dear God, send me a good new production—but cheap'. He has got it, but it is sad that the opera should be so cheap as well. I Lombardi alla prima crociata comes between Nabucco and Ernani and is inferior to both. A handful of effective arias and dramatic ideas are set amidst almost incredible crudity of inspiration—a crudity that Lamberto Gardelli in the pit took at face value, quite rightly. The plot is rambling enough to give roses a bad name, takes longer to read than to sit through, and panders blatantly to risorgimento nationalism. There are moments of light relief, however. When the Saracen tenor was converted on his death-bed amidst the palms by the river Jordan to a violin solo that desperately needed those palms, I wondered idly what the Italian for kitsch was. Such musings were rendered superfluous when the defunct tenor's disembodied voice, backed by harps and a heavenly choir, offered the crusaders some much-needed strategical advice.
If Covent Garden had done a Zeffirelli on Lombardi it would be time for questions in the house. But the production borrowed from Budapest is cheap, good and worth seeing, once. The projected scenery, a sort of instant history-of-early-renaissance-andIslamic-art paper, worked, and Andras Miko's spare and stylised production was crisply executed. The singing is excellent. Sylvia Sass (Giselda) has an agile, steely toned, evenly ranged soprano, and is so proud of her ability to float pianissimi in every possible direction that she is in danger of overdoing it. That is to cavil: she is a remarkable singer, if not yet worthy of the Callas/Tebaldi comparisons that are being freely scattered about. Jose Carreras's smoky tenor is as attractive as his unwilling ness to sing at less than forte and his marginal dramatic involvement are infuriating. Nicola Ghiuselev (Pagano) has a powerful, grainy Bulgarian bass. There is also the funniest opera-ballet ever: Miss Sass's look of horror at a lot of harem girls wriggling their chastely-stockingetted bellies is not something I shall forget in a hurry.
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