Arts
Regality and heroism
Rodney Milnes
Marla Stuarda (Covent Garden) Dalibor (Coliseum) Orpheus In the Underworld (Coliseum) 1977 ended on a Jekyll and Hyde note at both London houses. After the splendour of their Lohengrin and Figaro, the Royal Opera's Maria Stuarda seemed a little hairy about the back of the hands, but John Copley's efficient production — shared with the Coliseum — certainly served as a frame for what I am tempted to call a come-back. In the title-role Joan Sutherland sang more brilliantly than on any other occasion that I have heard her since those legendary Lucias of nearly twenty years ago. Her tone was bright yet subtly varied, her decoration (a little too much of it, perhaps, for so austere a piece) seemingly effortlessly articulated, her line sensitively moulded, and there were quite a few words too, particularly in the lower register. For agility allied to fullness of timbre, there is still no one to beat her, and on this form her technical bravura induces the same sort of physical exhilaration as a faultlessly played early nineteenth-century virtuoso concerto. I didn't grudge her either the brave or the neatly aimed bunches of daffodils (where do they come from?) at the endless curtain calls.
But there is more to Maria Stuarda than bravura singing, though you wouldn't think so from what my sterner colleagues write (have they ever even looked at the bloody score?) and here was a second cause for rejoicing. Miss Sutherland rose to fame as a put-upon heroine and here, when necessary, she drooped as winsomely as only she can; but when pushed too far in the famous unhistorical confrontation, she rounded on Elizabeth I with positively viperish fury, spitting out the famous insults with a venom that that nice Janet Baker could never quite muster at the Coliseum, and then, standing stock-still stage-centre, head erect, dwarfing the guards, she looked every inch a queen of France, Scotland and, dammit, Europe. Here was a real operatic frisson; add to it the near panic in the confession scene when pressed about Babington and other past indiscretions, and the resigned dignity of the finale, and you have a fully rounded interpretation, vulnerable yet regal, that effaces memories of the unfortunate Traviata of two years ago. The time is surely ripe for that DBE. Pausing briefly to praise the Leicester of Stuart Burrows, who perhaps offers more authentic Donizetti sound and style than any other tenor today, and to grovel admiringly before Heather Begg's 400th clearly differentiated maid/confidante, back to the hairy hands. There are those who can take .Huguette Tourangeau's extraordinary chest voice (she is a sort of upside-down Yma Sumac, plunging recklessly into the baritone register) but to my ears it sounds uncomfortably like the bath water running away. She chose to play Elizabeth as a raddled old tart (very well, too) which was not quite Donizetti's idea, nor that of the production when new. The main contribution of David Ward (miscast as Talbot) was to get the only laugh of the evening — down the road they managed to avoid laughs even though it was in English. Richard Bonynge conducted in such a way as almost to justify dismissive reactions to the piece itself, and it was hard to believe that this was the same orchestra that had played so beautifully for Bohm.
Worst of all, Miss Sutherland was allowed to wear 'costumes designed by Jose Verona' in the third act. Desmond Heeley's decor depends largely, and successfully, on the muted colours of the frocks; his stage pictures were ruthlessly destroyed first by mauve and then by an astonishing scarletand-black number. Not only that, but the diVa, gorgeous in Heeley's second-act bltick, looked like an old sofa in M Varona's creations, whereas I imagine the point of a costume de balle is that it should flatter the traveller. Is there no one at Covent Garden with the authority to stamp on this sort of nonsense?
The Coliseum's Jekyll was Dalibor. The very antithesis of a formula opera like Stuarda (nothing against formulae, though, since great composers like Handel and Donizetti tight and rise above them) and one of the first gusts of fresh air that revitalised nineteenth-century opera, Smetana's beroic epic breaks every known rule of content and form, and either because of or in spite of that glows as a unique, if odd masterpiece. The music can look after itself, especially when the peculiar mixture of early-Wagner and Czech folkery is conducted with the understanding and sympathy of Charles Mackerras, and so tenderly played by the ENO orchestra.
John Blatchley's hieratic production works well enough, though it seems a pity that when Dalibor is dispatched by crossbow he has to pull a little string and release an arrow on a spring from under his waistcoat (I've heard of alienation, but this is ridiculous) and there are rather too many appearances by the boy friend's ghost, especially when we are all hoping that the love of a good woman is doing him a power of good. There are definitely too many hats on Stefanos Lazaridis's costumes, and his set seemed to agree as it kept knocking them off. How many tenors command the variety of tone-colour and dynamic, the sensuousness of phrasing of John Mitchenson in the title-role? He tends towards blandness as an actor, but this is cleverly taken account of in the production. Anne Evans and Anne Conoley (the latter starting to sound dangerously like Gwyneth Jones) were fine as the women in his life, but it was the combination of Mackerras and Mitchenson that made this so inspiring an evening.
It may be unfair to dub Orpheus as the Coliseum's Hyde, since audiences love it. Positively the last-ever performances of Wendy Toye's production were announced in 1969; this really is a case of return by public demand. If you are going to do Offenbach's second version in a large house, I suppose this is the way to do it, as a defiantly English romp. I still don't think it's quite fair on the composer. The main newcomer is Norma Burrowes as Eurydice, and she is wholly delicious. The hairiest moment is the jazzed-up section of the Galop, which might have seemed frightfully gay at Sadler's Wells in 1960, but is quite insupportable in a metropolitan opera house in 1977. Is there no one at the Coliseum with the authority to stamp on this sort of nonsense?
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