Opera
Stiffelio (Royal Opera House, Covent Garden)
Solid worth
Rupert Christiansen
Hugely enjoyed by the first-night audi- ence, the Royal Opera's new production of Verdi's rarely heard Stiffelio is a welcome and significant success for the house. The collaboration of the conductor Sir Edward Downes and the producer Elijah Moshin- sky which gelled for the revival of Attila in 1990 here consolidates itself: a staging that is straightforwardly representational, a bit dull and undercharacterised, but eminently sensible and serviceable, with austerely handsome sets (by Michael Yeargan) and imaginative lighting (by Paul Pyant), com- plemented by firm, lucid conducting that doesn't turn white-hot or shake the rafters. I'm not being sneery. Far better to cultivate such solid home product than to tart about with fashionable foreign floozies who breathe the fumes of their intellectual pre- tensions into our clean and innocent air.
Anyway, Stiffelio will not bear the weight of much interpretation. It is a way-station in Verdi's passage from his 'early' to 'mid- dle' style, but hardly a watershed. Harmon- ically and orchestrally, it is thoroughly predictable: the first act is downright dull, and at no point did I feel the quickening of the composer's creative pulse — the musi- cal risk-taking — that excites me in Mac- beth and Luisa Miller, the masterpieces of this episode in his oeuvre. This is a fair example of how Verdi could coast comfort- ably on a wave of technical and expressive cliché, cutting his cloth to fit the convenien- ze, the conventions, of the day, and I really can't buy the line that it's a neglected mas- terpiece.
The plot concerns the adultery of the wife of a high-minded pastor, living in some unspecified Nordic community. With an idiom more subtle, supple and intimate
than Verdi's was in 1850, there might have been some fascinating dramatic potential to be drawn out of the situation; but it's all so heroic and public, so forthrightly stated, that the emotional level remains that of Lady Audley's Secret rather than Rosmers- holm. At Covent Garden, the cast give it their all — lots of look-yonder finger-point- ing and chewing of the carpet. In the title role, Jose Carreras was in strong and steady voice (marred only by some gratu- itously 'expressive' aspiration); as his erring wife, Catherine Malfitano sang confidently and again proved herself one of the strongest stage personalities among her generation of American sopranos. Decent performances from everyone else, although I do wonder why the management are quite so besotted with baritone Gregory Yuritsch.
I have at last caught up with the nation's most celebrated opera buff, Inspector Morse. In his television swan-song, he investigated the shooting of a Welsh Wag- nerian diva, name of Gwyladys Probert. Pretty commonplace stuff, I thought, nei- ther exciting nor intriguing, and full of fee- ble snobbery about clever people who go to Oxford and understand Art — but I was tickled by the show's ludicrous depiction of the glamorous life and camp entourage of a prima donna. 'I've seen all the operas,' complained Madame Probert's younger sis- ter and travelling companion at one point. 'Baby clothes are what interest me now.' I sympathise. How wrong they got it: not least the poster decorating Morse's office, advertising a performance of GOtterdam- merung at the Holywell Music Room, tick- ets price £6. Could this be wise? The
Holywell Music Room I know is not much bigger than a Methodist Chapel and even the tinkling of a harpsichord can set its dainty rafters shaking. A horde of Gibichung could prove totally devastating. The seats seem rather on the cheap side too: could the great Gwladys have been lending her lustre to an amateur effort? The mind boggled.
While, I'm on the baneful subject of opera on television, did anyone out there see the adaptation of Marschner's rubbishy old Der Vampyr on BBC 2 over Christmas? Touted as the creative acme of Janet Street-Porter's regime at the channel, as a wildly witty and inventive enterprise which would make opera accessible to benighted modern youth, it turned out (surprise, sur- prise) to be slick, meretricious, self- congratulatory and pathetically time-locked in clichés about yuppies with mobile phones making a pile in the City etc, etc. All too recently BBC 2 were reported to have spent a million or so on an equally dreadful and futile opera supposedly 'accessible to modern youth', Tippett's New Year. I wonder how much this latest fiasco cost the licence-payer, how many people managed to watch it and how those respon- sible can be brought speedily to justice. On a happier note: I can't resist putting in my pennyworth of praise for the Royal National Theatre's production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, consummate- ly executed and performed by all con- cerned. How cruelly the libretto's warmth and sincerity and the score's effortless flow of melody expose the tricksiness and pre- ciousness of Stephen Sondheim's latter-day contributions to the genre.
'We've got his name down for Winchester, King's, the Foreign Office and the Sunttyview Rest Home.'
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