1 AUGUST 1998, Page 44

Opera

Play it again

Michael Tanner

The Proms have begun in a highly oper- atic vein this year, as if to make up for defi- ciencies elsewhere in London. Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust may not quite, as a 'dramatic cantata' not intended to be staged, and happily not even demi-semi- staged on the first night, count as opera, but it is flamboyantly theatrical. Szy- manowski's King Roger would be tricky, but well worth the effort; though it is a work of such rich musical fabric that staging doesn't seem necessary. What is necessary is that, as one of the most elaborately wrought and genuinely serious operas of a period that went in for gratuitous orchestral thickness and 'philosophical' pseudo-profundities, we should be given a chance to hear it much more often, so that we can find out how valuable a contribution to the all-too-small operatic canon it might be. It could be mounted on stage without the visual equiv- alent of its musical texture.

I suspect that Rameau's Zoroastre may have to wait a long time for a staging here, despite the increased fashionableness of his music. Even in a performance as exemplary as that under William Christie, this opera seems to me irremediably flawed by its digressive, discursive structure. Rameau is clearly a composer who needs investigating, but how can we get round the reality that his tragedies lyriques don't begin to exist as dramatic entities? And in such a work as Zoroastre, which proposes a serious — to put it mildly — theme, in the cosmic con- flict of good and evil, the dissipation of any tiny reserve of dramatic momentum seems to me wholly disabling.

The first staged event was a late-night Prom, the London premiere, and it's to be fervently hoped derniere, of John Harle's and David Pountney's Angel Magick, a hardly credible piece of verbal and musical waffle. Billed, in best Sixties style, as 'a sci- entific ritual', it deals with Giordano Bruno and John Dee, and offers to examine, among other things, the disparity between lofty if weird beliefs and squalid practice. John Dee, acted with intelligence and swagger by Christopher Good, focused what attention one could summon on the piece. Bruno is a sung part, ineffectual as most of the singing was. An exception was Sarah Leonard's lively Elizabeth I, express- ing herself in a style very different from Rossini's or Donizetti's Tudor queens, but just as camp. Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser were ridiculed for no rea- son, and the total effect is of unself-critical indulgence on the part of both librettist and composer. The latter, garishly dressed, conducted, or rather held the forces together, Fretwork playing energetically but to little audible effect against The Bauhaus Band. The staging, in the centre of the arena, worked very well.

Verdi's Falstaff was a complex affair, a mixture of highly interesting sounds and disconcerting dramatic coarseness. It is an intimate opera, less suitable to the Albert Hall than La Traviata. Here we had action at the front, the orchestra in the middle, and more action high up above and behind it. That necessitated a good deal of mobili- ty from the conductor, the evening's other Sir John. It also meant that Sir John Fal- staff, excellently sung by Jean-Philippe Lafont, had to dart around, and succeeded in doing so, at a rate that belied his alleged age, alcohol intake and girth, and suggest- ed he was still a page of the Duke of Nor- folk. There were incessant comings and goings, mostly up and down staircases, and not much possibility of subtlety, which the director Ian Judge had clearly ruled out from the start. The result was that this music hardly inhabited the same world as what it was accompanying or illustrating. Gardiner favoured both tempi and dynamics that were extreme. The opening of Act III was wholly inaudible, many pass- ing effects were lost, as perhaps in that venue they are bound to be. From where I was sitting the predominance of winds over strings was gross, though it meant that I did hear a lot of woodwind detail in particular which I have never heard before, and found mostly very witty. But Gardiner's concept of the work is strange, hard to divine. Why take Nanetta's song with the 'I like gays but I wouldn't want to many one.' fairies at a grotesquely slow speed? It was easy to see why he wanted Falstaff to have plenty of time for his monologues, especial- ly 'Mond° ladro' (the audience laughed). And one can also see the point of taking the final fugue at a breathless speed, but since not one singer could, understandably, enunciate the text, it degenerated into gab- ble, neither exhilarating nor amusing. The women were an underpowered team, with a Quickly who altogether lacked the ability to be fruity, and an Alice who couldn't soar in the wonderful climactic phrase of the letter, Verdi sending up his grand manner; but Gardiner was disinclined to share that joke too. It was one of those quirky perfor- mances from which one can learn a lot; but that's something that is better done from records or reading.