15 FEBRUARY 1986, Page 27

ARTS

Opera

Second time round

Rodney Milnes

Faust (Covent Garden) When Jonathan Miller's production of Mozart's opera was first staged in Glasgow three years ago I rather haughtily described it in this column as 'a fascinating sketch for a Flute rather than a finished production'. In its current manifestation in St Martin's Lane it is certainly finished, indeed as absorbing and probing a staging of the work as you could hope to see. It is one of the great pleasures of an opera- goer's life to see ideas that at first looked disparate being welded into a satisfying whole second time round, as happened in between the first and subsequent showings of Dr Miller's Cosi fan tutte for Kent Opera. The director would say, and indeed has, that nothing changed in that instance other than the opera-goer's perception, to put it kindly, and we shall doubtless continue to disagree in the nicest possible way with regard to this one. Part of the general improvement is purely circumstantial, in that the opera is far better sung, played and conducted than it was by Scottish Opera, and in that Philip Prowse's brilliant permanent set — part Boullee library, part Sir John Soane Museum, and both wholly relevant to the Flute — expands beautifully on to the larger Coliseum stage, where it is magni- ficently lit by Robert Bryan. Add other fleeting visual references, via the quirky illuminati who use the library, to Fuseli (Pamina's dangerously abandoned swoon) and early Otranto-ish Gothick (the Armed Men), and you have an informed vision of how educated people in the last decade of the 18th century might have thought about the Flute, and in this context the rash of French Revolutionary tricolours in the finale seems less disturbing: the worst excesses of that unfortunate movement might not have been general knowledge in Vienna in January 1791. Bliss was it still. . . .

The other main difference between Glasgow and London is that the perform- ance is much funnier here, thanks not only to Benjamin Luxon's classic Papageno (his angry 'shushing' from the Cabinet of Silence of an audience making not the smallest effort to stifle its coughs was a comment to remember) but to such lively comedians as Stuart Kale and Mark Richardson as the Priests, the Three Ladies led by Marie Slorach, no less, and underpinned by the majestic Anne-Marie Owens, and to the Papagena of Lesley Garrett, the charm of whose combination of extreme old age and extreme randiness was an encouragement to us all. A Flute whose second act contains as many good laughs as this is something to be treasured — all too often it descends into hushed portentousness.

The absence of any spectacle, which the music presupposes, in the Trials of Fire and Water remains a disappointment: sure- ly Sir John would not have been averse to pyrotechnical effects in his basement, and if not, maybe the watching Priests could engender some indication of suspense. Pamina and Tamino simply walking in and out of library doors is not quite enough.

There is much excellent singing, not least from Mr Luxon and the Three Ladies. Maldwyn Davies's musically and firmly projected Tamino gave constant pleasure, as did his forthright, unaffected stage manner. Nan Christie's Queen of Night, which has been on the whole grudgingly received, seemed to me a complete suc- cess: she sang the staccati accurately and even indicated the treacherous legato tri- plets with a certain conviction but, much more important, she sustained the notes of both arias in full, penetrating voice with terrifying venom.

And there was a notable Pamina in Susan Bullock, here making her profes- sional debut. Her voice is beautifully creamy in timbre, and she phrases with the succulent Viennese grace of her mentor Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, but without any of the Admiralty-scale Archness that could afflict that lady's singing. The voice is not huge, and Miss Bullock sensibly did not attempt anything she could or should not do, like belting 'Die Wahrheit' or the off-stage `Tamino, halt' — all that will come later. Meanwhile, this sensational young talent must be nurtured with the utmost care.

On the first night the orchestra played marvellously for Peter Robinson, who has already shown in Cosi that he knows how to conduct Mozart in a big house, the secret being based on judiciously chosen tempos and extreme care with orchestral

texture. The brass playing was especially well judged. A really good evening.

Which Faust at the Garden, alas, is not, indeed scarcely could be in the wake of the Coliseum's sprightly new look at Gounod's text last year. The Garden staging looked old-fashioned when it was new 12 years ago, and now looks impossibly so, despite tinkerings by hands other than those of the original producer, John Copley, in the later acts (if anything, the Church Scene is even worse than it was before). But the Grand Opera version of the score is warm- ly conducted by Michel Plasson, Nelly Miricioiu has a good go at Marguerite, a role in which she is rather uneasily cast, and Stuart Burrows repeats his Faust, nicely moulded in the middle but a little diffident at the top — indeed, to turn your back on the audience when singing a top B might be thought to be taking diffidence a little too far.

Voice-hunters, however, should hear the Mephistopheles of Samuel Ramey, a bel- canto bass who treats the role with due respect, shaping the phrases elegantly and singing in clearly articulated French. Of traditional or East-European ham there is not the slightest whiff — if anything the role is dangerously underplayed, which is infinitely preferable to the opposite. But this is certainly how the role should be sung.