Iron Lady
Michael Tanner
Macbeth Opera North Punch and Judy Young Vic The Minotaur Covent Garden Don Giovanni English Touring Opera, Cambridge
In a hectic and heterogeneous operatic week, three out of four of the things I saw were successful or even triumphant, so you couldn’t call it typical. Opera North’s new production of Verdi’s Macbeth largely erased memories of last year’s deplorable effort at Glyndebourne, and was therefore a matter for gratitude. Unlike that production, it wholly de-tartanised the opera, which is all to the good. Tim Albery presented it as a study in the pathology of political ambition and of the guilt to which acting on ambition leads. If that left quite a lot of the opera dangling, I think that is more Verdi’s than Albery’s fault. The Witches were, as they almost always are, problematic, a collection of malignant charwomen. I know Verdi didn’t regard them as witches in a traditional sense, but the music he wrote for them fails to clarify what he thought they were. As usual, it was a relief to get to the second scene, in which, daringly, the first part of Macbeth’s letter to his wife was read by him, the second by her.
Antonia Cifrone, a name new to me, was the most convincing and musically vivid performer of the role I have seen. A terrifying contemporary power-dressed woman, she swept through her opening aria with immense confidence. Robert Hayward’s Macbeth was hardly up to her, but who would be? It was as if Thatcher and Major were trying jointly to take over the UK. Once more, Verdi is to blame. He gives Macbeth almost no music to compare with the Lady’s in quality, let alone in determination. The power of the opera, and its interest, reside in her music and the choral scenes, which were acted and sung with huge conviction. As Macbeth stared retribution in the face, Hayward’s pitch wavered and he resorted to hand-wringing, yet I can see his portrayal ripening into a penetrating study. Cifrone only needs to go on like this to be the world’s ranking Lady; while if the operatic world knew justice, Richard Farnes would be accepted, together with Mark Elder, as the finest living Verdi conductor. What he did with Verdi’s textures and structure was evidence of the deepest understanding.
What has amounted to Birtwistle month for me continued with a second production of his brilliant, and in the opinion of many best, opera Punch and Judy. This was the second, too, of ENO’s collaborations with the Young Vic, and drew the kind of audience that the operatic suits make all their noises about. Where WMC’s production at the Linbury was predominantly dark and unsettling, as I think the work is, ENO’s was a riot of colour and of casting. It was in fact an all-star cast in a show which hardly needs any — but they were marvellous, though whether, under Daniel Kramer’s direction, they led one deeper into this extremely complex work, or created a surface so dazzling that one hardly cared what might lie underneath, is an unsettled issue. Bright circus lights revolved above us, we were entranced by the exuberant costumes, the added dancers, the ceaseless ingenuity. Punch was Andrew Shore, Bayreuth’s current Alberich and the most effective member of its Ring cast, but here he was in more genial mood, however much baby-burning and general bashing he indulged in — his enjoyment of what he was doing made him more of a rogue than a villain. Gillian Keith’s Pretty Polly, periodically appearing as a kind of manic kitschy vision, was again enormous fun but didn’t encourage one to think along the richly suggestive lines indicated by the librettist Stephen Pruslin, about Punch being the proto-opera before and behind all actual ones. If the work were done more often, such a pyrotechnic version of it would be great; as it’s a rarity, it needs more of the WMC’s type of account.
I revisited Birtwistle’s new opera The Minotaur at the Royal Opera, was just as impressed as I was on the first night, and while I admit that there’s much about it that remains obscure, that is equally the case with much of the greatest art. What I did mind, as I did in Punch, was the deplorable lack of clarity in pronouncing the words. Christine Rice sings Ariadne fabulously, but without surtitles one would be lost. This is more of an English malaise than a German or Italian one, and vocal teachers at the opera schools should direct their whole attention to it until things have improved. The Theseus of Johan Reuter, possessor of an excellent voice, was also vague in enunciation, but he is a Dane, and the figure itself seems pretty undercharacterised. The theatre was full, and we must hope for a revival as soon as that is possible — if only because John Tomlinson can’t go on for ever, and the part is unlikely to be incarnated so fully again.
I was only able to see Don Giovanni in English Touring Opera’s visit to Cambridge. As usual Michael Rosewell’s conducting was admirable; the staging was tolerable, the female singers rather good. But with the male singers, Leporello and Don Ottavio in particular, I’m relieved to have no space to deal.
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