Opera
Grand Hotel (Guildhall School of Music and Drama)
Mucking about with Mozart
Michael Tanner
Glyndebourne's Mozart account is now so desperately in the red that it will need a string of productions and performances of transcendent merit for the place to have any credit or credibility in that respect in the foreseeable future. Vick's farewell Cosi and Figaro were/are thoroughly undistin- guished affairs, memorable only for the old-fashioned radiator at the back of the stage. While that tiresome item is still pre- sent in the new Don Giovanni, there is plenty of other scenery too. Most of the stage is occupied by a slag heap, blackish- brown, with unpleasant adhesive proper- ties. There is a Moorish exit at the right of the stage; I couldn't see the left. The equestrian statue in evidence in Figaro didn't, despite expectations, reappear. Instead, in Act II there was a dead horse suspended from the flies, and also a dead man, half-skeleton, half-body. For the sup- per scene the horse was lowered onto the earthen set, and Don Giovanni, whose appetite is such that he could eat, well, a horse, proceeded to do so. He disembow- elled it, threw its innards about with relish, and ate some of them still more ebulliently, before sticking his head up into the gutted creature. It is vivid enough for many in the audience to be faced with the alternatives: laugh or leave. While art should disturb at least as much as it should celebrate, its dis- ruptiveness needs to affect more than one's digestive tract.
The revolting horse served, meanwhile, to distract attention from the miserable fudging of the Commendatore's entrance and dragging the Don off to hell; or if the horse wasn't bad enough, the Don seemed to be cloned at such a rate that the stage was covered with indistinguishable figures, dressed in heavy grey furs, so one couldn't see even which was the original. Plenty of his former seducees were wandering around too, having previously been under- ground, with their imploring hands strain- ing through holes. The Commendatore himself was no imposing figure: that veter- an Gwynne Howell, who made his first appearance, appropriately enough, in slip- pers, pyjamas and dressing-gown, and remained in them for his two further appearances. The producer even had the nerve to have an open coffin borne in, with unscored tolling bell and six pall-bearers, for the graveyard scene.
Act I was less actively offensive, except in the treatment meted out to Don Ottavio; and if he weren't subject to enough humili- ations as it is, he was deprived of 'Dana sua pace', i.e. this was the Prague version of the opera. He also moved by stages into drag as the act proceeded, turning up with the two Donne in full Spanish women's eveningwear. He did at least have a tantrum at one stage, flinging a goblet across the stage as Donna Anna insisted on prolonging her period of mourning. Bruce Ford, a fine tenor and decent actor, had to perform a tricky part which was crudely tilted into the ridiculous. Barbara Frittoli, his Anna, just about coped with her won- derful role but, as with many Annas, slith- ered around in 'Non mi dir', taken at a cruelly sluggish tempo by Andrew Davis, once more showing that he is no Mozart conductor. He is good or even magnificent with Romantic scores, but as with so many other performers Mozart finds him out. Faced with so few notes all he can do is beat time, and he even fails to make any- thing of the opening chord, surely an invi- tation to let fly. I was depressed before the allegro of the overture was under way, and more so by the lack of tension in the open- ing scene.
Alessandro Corbelli is a lively Leporello, Natale de Carolis looks great as the Don but is no more than a moderately impres- sive singer; and Sandra Zeltzer was only able to mark the part of Elvira, thanks to a throat infection. Masetto and Zerlina the former a contemporary office worker, with drunken slobs of friends who collapse as they enter for the Act I finale, before indulging in disco dancing — made no impression whatever. All told this was the dreariest and most infuriating evening I have ever spent in a theatre at a Mozart opera.
The only theatre where I always enjoy myself is in the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, this year's musical being Grand Hotel, adapted from Vicki Baum's novel by Luther Davis, with music and lyrics by Robert Wright and George For- rest. The piece itself is a bit uneasy in its level of seriousness, but the director and cast coped with that problem by simply being unembarrassed about their material. As always at the GSMD, vigour, unpreten- tiousness, intense concentration on the per- formance of the work rather than insolent intrusion in the interests of offering the audience an interpretation, and an all- round level of competence at least, and in some cases great promise, led to an evening of delight.
Previous page
