Arts
Profitable investigations
Rodney Milnes
p reconceptions were signally disap- k Pointed at Wexford this year. We all „,riew in advance that Alfano's Sakuntala "as going to be frightful, whereas it turned Zilit to be really rather interesting, while assenet's Griselidis, the predictable hit, las a slight disappointment. Amidst the eer good fun that Wexford represents in every opera-goer's diary (I could devote the tie
of this notice to Bernard Levin's bow
but will resist) it is too easy to overlook 11.1.e seriousness behind the programme plan- IN: the festival — new prop. Elaine Pad- more — not only mounts works few others The Alfano was the third instalment in their investigation of the Italian post-verismo l'is".01, and the profitability or otherwise of Wolf-Ferrari's investigation (otherwise, in the case of A,W-Ferrari's preposterous Jewels of the '"adOnna) is of less significance than the Perception-widening experience following n that investigation's wake. 3Alfano (1876-1954) is much in the news at 1/-resent, in that we are about to hear for the irst time his completion of Turandot sup- pressed by Toscanini. The Wexford perfor- s'a.nce left one in no doubt that he was a secrtious and resourceful musician. Of course k,kuntaia was too 'big' for the Theatre du 'MI, though Albert Rosen's brilliant con- bieting and the enthusiastic but tactful d'.4Ying of the RTE Orchestra succeeded in wlsguising that fact: it sounded as it should, by c' is roughly Debussy as if orchestrated th'rovulunecinirt.i and with a dash of Rimsky with is easy, too easy, to say what is wrong pit". Sakuntala. The plot, based on o'‘alidasa, is too thin to sustain a full-length hi3tra. In Act One, King and eponymous lertnitage handmaiden meet and sing a long d°ve duet; Act Two, in which the heroine is eserted, is virtually one long and cruelly h.,ting soprano solo; in Act Three they re- eves and sing away like billy-oh. The piece ti:,e,r comes down, there is respite for n"[Ier soloists nor audience from with the ruc)°d of rapturous ecstacy, and even with is winning time of well under two hours it ts `, a bit to much. In the title-role the Swiss soprano Evelyn shrunner gave an extraordinary display o f eer stamina allied to careful musicianship — a remarkable performance. If David Parker (King) could not match her finesse, one still had to admire his energy. Suppor- ting roles of handmaidens and hermits were all strongly cast. Even the troublesome bee (or 'ape cattiva' as the Italian so charmingly has it) made its invisible mark. Musically this was as impressive as anything I've heard at Wexford.
Nicholas Hytner's decision to set the opera in the palm court of a Raffles-ish hotel with a stage audience suggested a slight lack of trust in the piece and was largely self-defeating: his direction was so skilful that one forgot all about it. And it allowed David Fielding to design a very elegant permanent set, which was atmos- pherically lit by Mick Hughes. An illu- minating evening.
In Massenet's version of the patient Griselda story the lady's trials are devised not by her husband, thank heavens, but by the devil, a quintessentially Gallic comic role written for Lucien Fugere. The com- bination of sentimental charm and light humour is a heady one — this is a lovely piece of mature Massenet eminently worth reviving. Next in the Wexford canon, sure- ly, must be Le Jongleur. The problems were musical and dramatic. The (fine) cast tend- ed to over-sing, and Steven Pimlott's pro- duction was on the broad side; Gunter von Kannen's hen-pecked Devil got his laughs, but from the belly rather than the brain and at the expense of the French idiom.
The young Russian baritone Sergei Leiferkus (Marquis) is a discovery — a i strong high baritone in the Mazurok mould but far more musical; and we should hear more of the American tenor Howard Haskin who, though he sang too heartily as the shepherd Alain, sang awfully well. The Canadian soprano Rosemarie Landry displayed a mature knowledge of the Massenet style in the title role. Robin Stapleton didn't quite succeed in making us forget what a marvellous Puccini conductor he is, always a danger in Massenet. Again, good supporting singers, discreet heavenly choirs, a motionless Lady Diana Cooper- like St Agnes, and a child irresistible even to a confirmed Herodian like me. Few dry eyes then, but some teeth gritted at the farcical broadness.
Haydn's Isola disabitata was jinxed by colds. Bernadette Greevy and Philip Gelling were well below par, as indeed was the orchestra under Newell Jenkins. Ursula Reinhardt-Kiss made a notable debut in these off-shore islands in the ingenue role: she is a musical singer and a most charming actress. MaldwYn Davies sang smoothly as the hero. Even in this comparatively seria opera, determinedly through-composed, there lurks Haydn's irrepressible and quirky sense of humour, but it was notably absent from Guus Mostart's stolid production. John Otto's set, part-Magritte, part-Dou- anier Rousseau, was pretty. A disappoin- ting evening, but at least Wexford keeps on reviving Haydn, for which many thanks.
Can Mussorgsky have known a note of Monteverdi? Common sense, not to men- tion musicology, insists that the answer be 'no', but the similarities between Khovan- shchina and Poppea verge upon the uncan- ny, from a shared and dim view of humani- ty playing the power game, from charac- terisation (Dosifei is pure Monteverdi), from musico-dramatic layout and the rela- tionship between words and notes, right down to the way both operas open with a comic scene for two soldiers. The latest Co- vent Garden revival, finely conducted by Evgeny Svetlanov and played with the ut- most finesse by the orchestra, emphasises the similarities in the purity and musician- liness of the realisation of the Shostakovich version. Maybe he knew his Monteverdi, but even that seems more than unlikely.
Seldom have I felt so frustrated by ig- norance of a language. The way Yvonne Minton (Marfa) enunciated one of the few Russian words I do know — Knyaz — in her scene with Robert Tear's shifty Galitsyn spoke volumes, and I have to take it on trust that the thousands of words I didn't understand were delivered with equal, Monteverdian meaning. The casting show- ed the Royal Opera at its best, with first- rate singing from Gwynne Howell (Dosifei), Donald McIntyre (Shaklovity), Helen Field (Emma), Robin Leggate (Andrey) and, towering over all in his UK debut, Evgeny Nesterenko, his voice as granite-black and expressive as on record, turning in an out- size barnstorming performance as the rascally old Khovansky. Musical and vocal values triumph over negligible production and decor, so next Monday's broadcast is strongly recommended, with the new Radio 3 magazine's English libretto a useful crib.
Colin Graham's staging of War and Peace at the Coliseum remains one of the landmarks in post-war British opera, so overwhelming in its physical impact, so sure in its grasp of the epic and the intimate, that (along with Mark Elder's fiercely sym- pathetic conducting) it sweeps away linger- ing doubts about Prokofiev's score, doubts centred upon the way the music — much of it salvaged from his then unperformed in- cidental music for a dramatisation of Eugene Onegin — is spread pretty thinly over the four and a half hours, and upon some propagandist poster-paint writing in the second half. The cast is excellent, led by Thomas Allen's exquisitely sung Andrey, Eilene Hannan's infinitely touching Natasha, Kenneth Woollam's Pierre (much more flexible than ten years ago), and Nor- man Bailey's crafty Kutuzov. The ENO ensemble is seen and heard at its best in countless supporting roles. As an evening in the theatre this remains an absolute knock- out, and should not be missed.
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