Stroke of genius
Michael Tanner
Faust Royal Opera House The Rape of Lucretia Guildhall School La Fanciulla del West Opera Holland Park Clounod's Faust has suffered a catas trophic collapse in reputation and popularity in the last 40 years, rather as Franck's Symphony has, and for somewhat similar reasons. With each of them there is a sense of what they'd like to be, struggling against what they actually are, a determination to be serious and religiously communicative versus an incorrigible urge to erotic entertainment. It is one of the many strengths of the Royal Opera's new production of Faust, which is an unqualified triumph, that it manages to take the work perfectly seriously, in that one is never tempted to mock or patronise it, while it in no way tries to impart any significance which it doesn't have and couldn't support.
Despite being thoroughly characteristic of its director David McVicar, there is no indulgence in high camp, though out of context some of the elements in it might sound as if there were. I never expected to see, and shall never forget, the sight of Bryn Terfel in a black sequined off-theshoulder ballgown, with long gloves and a tiara; but in the Walpurgis Night scene this is not only sinister but appropriately hilarious; and the dances are performed with zestful vindictiveness, making a pleasant contrast with the bland and sugary music.
The opera is set at the time of its composition, Charles Edwards's sets evoking a Paris which is photographically portrayed in the programme. The seedy underside of urban life, contrasted with the pretensions to elevation of the architecture, a comprehensive attempt on the part of the cultivated and aspiring to ignore the tawdriness and squalor of their foundations, these are presented but never stressed. If you like, you can enjoy the charms and seductions of the music and the little spasms of drama that punctuate it and overlook the tell-tale indications of vileness which are conveniently all located by Gounod and his librettist in Mephistopheles, but are an insidious factor pervading the whole, with the exception of the noble Valentin, for whom Gounod rose to a plane of genuine elevation.
In this production the casting of Simon Keenlyside in the role amounts to a stroke of genius, since he has both the magnifi cence of voice and the integrity of presence to do precise justice to the part. But there is no weak link in the casting, though some of the singers have their strained moments. Roberto /Magna appears as an uncannily persuasive feeble oldster, in all respects unrecognisable, only to throw off his years and surge forth with huge élan, swashbuckling more than I have ever seen him. His singing of his set-pieces is rather ordinary, but he reacts tremendously with his colleagues, above all with Angela Gheorghiu. Her performance is in every way wonderful, especially her innocent cupidity when confronted with jewels and her desire when seeing Faust: one feels she is completely absorbed in the role. Sophie Koch makes Siebel into a more vivid and moving character than you could have expected. And Antonio Pappano, as always, gets the orchestra to play with abandon and immaculate style. If the evening left one feeling undernourished, that is entirely the fault of an irrevocably dated piece.
After the splendour of Britten's The Rape of Lucretia in the Linbury Studio a few weeks ago, I felt that any other production would be a let-down for the next while, but the Guildhall School offered an account which wasn't far behind. The singing (I saw the first east) was uniformly excellent, with Julie Pasturaud a serene, then distraught presence with a voice that could do justice to all her detailed insights. Unfortunately, the conductor Peter Robinson made less of Britten's infinitely resourceful scoring than he might have. And though director Martin Lloyd-Evans mainly presented a straightforward account of the drama, the presence of 11 life-size mummies in the audience, glowing from within (electrically) to urge us how and when to react (`They are witnesses,' the director explained to me), was distracting. Please may this not catch on.
Opera Holland Park began with a Norma I had to miss, and progressed to an energising La Fanciulla del West which the effect of antibiotics forced me to leave after Act I. The standards rise each year — what one sees and hears there is in no respect inferior to what one might see anywhere else in London — with the City of London Sinfonia under John Gibbons providing a thrilling account of this adventurously scored piece. I hardly think it's possible to take Fanciulla much more seriously than Faust, but it's a lot more fun, and the mild complexity of Minnie's relationship to her homesick gold prospectors is touching if absurd. Elizabeth Blancke-Biggs took Minnie's role by storm, was seductive and solicitous in a way Gounod would have approved but couldn't have emulated. Ravil Atlas's Dick Johnson and Ohi Sigurdarson's Jack Rance were just as convincing, and the huge cast revealed no weak link. Holland Park deserves to be one of the country's most popular venues, and indeed appears already to be that.
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