Opera
Don Quixote (English National Opera) Idomeneo (Scottish Opera) Iphigenia in Aulis (Opera North)
Human nobility
Michael Tanner
It has been a week of and about high- mindedness in opera, leaving the continu- ing Ring cycle on one side. English National Opera has revived its 1994 pro- duction of Massenet's Don Quixote, with Richard Van Allen quite touching, as he is bound to be looking like Chaliapin looking like Daumier's famous sketches. He does rely rather heavily on his appearance, though, offering little• in the way of singing or acting. He was content to use a kind of exhausted Sprechgesang, which may have been partly intended to come to the rescue of the composer's extremely economical characterisation.
This is in truth a work where the familiar Massenet pastel shades hardly any longer survive as individuating features, and the only contrast is between the extroverted, shamelessly Carmen-derived world where Dulcinea is at home, and the Don with Sancho Panza — the best performance, by Nicholas Folwell — trundling around on their sadly comic 'animals'. There is plenty of quasi-Spanish preening (yet another work where French eyes and ears create their own version of Spain — I wonder why so many do), carried out with aplomb by the ENO dancers, with Sally Burgess obvi- ously longing to launch into the Habanera. I wished she would too. The Death Scene is too blatantly derivative from Boris Godunov to be moving, and anyway the context that all the previous Acts have cre- ated makes such a would-be tragic gesture inappropriate, which may be why Massenet was so embarrassed by Chaliapin's tears when he played the scene through to him.
In Glasgow, the new Scottish Opera sea- son was launched with what could be either the greatest opera seria, or the transcen- dence of the genre: Idomeneo. It was at the Theatre Royal in 1934 that the British pre- mière of the great work was given, with designs and ballet by the Glasgow School of Art. This new programme dispensed with scenery altogether, with the occasional exception of a chair; and the principals wore costumes of the same shade of red and were discalced, while the chorus were in black and white, some in waistcoats, some in suits.
A sense of concentration on essentials was immediately established, with a com- manding account of the Overture. With the beginning of the action, it soon became clear that the conductor, the Spaniard Antoni Ros Marl* was going to emphasise lyricism at the expense of drama. The text is an unusually complete one — we aren't even spared Arbace's aria; and at three- and-a-half hours the evening did seem, especially towards its close, torturingly pro- tracted. With a young and largely good cast, almost every particular aria sounded beautiful or ardent: Thomas Randle deliv- ered his raging `Fuor del mar' with a vigour reminiscent for the veteran opera-goer of Ronald Dowd. Lisa Milne's Ilia, though appearing to suffer from a stitch through- out — her only resource for expressing anguish, but she did lay it on a bit thick is a lovely performance, cultivating an extreme legato which seemed to be the con- ductor's ambition at every point. His tempi were almost always sedate, and as the evening wore on a languorousness crept over the work, moving in the opposite direction, as it were, to the expected increasing dramatic tension. The choruses towards the end of Act II provided the dramatic highlight, and, though they are amazing, they should only prepare us for the continuous excitement of Act III, after Ilia's `Zeffiretti lusinghieri', its marvellous opening of repose. The enterprise ran out of steam so drastically that the quartet, greatest operatic ensem- ble up to that point, and until Act II of Figaro, more or less fell apart. The produc- tion, decidedly spare, neither helped nor hindered. Toby Spence's Idamante, rather too willing to be the sacrificial victim, had a reedy voice to match. All concerned should read David Cairns's magnificent essay on the opera in his book Responses, and act, sing and conduct in the light it sheds.
What Cairns says of Idomeneo, that it `moves us because it holds out the possibili- ty of human nobility in a context of unblinking psychological truth', can also be claimed, though less completely, of Gluck's Iphigenia in Aulis, given by Opera North in a translation which Hugh MacDonald has understandably disowned, since it has been tampered with to make salient phrases banal. This is in line with the production, which oddly enough left me less angry and unable to respond to this work than such send-ups, as they must appear, normally do. I think that it may be because unlike, say, Richard Jones's Ring production, this one by Tom Hopkins fails to intersect with the musical drama at any point, so one merely watches a succession of pointless images, and listens to a decent or good ren- dering of what is Gluck's tautest, most hard-driven opera, made more so here by abbreviations, most of them welcome, especially the elimination of the final series of dances.
Why the work should be set beside the seaside, apart from the fact that it takes place on an island, I do not know and don't want to. The islanders are cheerfully gaudy, there is a lot of superfluous, dangerous- looking woodwork hanging overhead; peo- ple keep on crawling out of trap-doors. It sounds like a recipe for a nightmarish evening, especially if you think that Gluck is a great master but needs kid-glove treat- ment. As I say, this production shows that he is sturdier than one might have feared. The conducting of Valentin Raymond is lacking in tension in the marvellous Over- ture, but thereafter it errs on the right side so far as fast tempi and dynamic impact are concerned. The four principals make a strong mark, especially Lynne Dawson's Iphigenia, result of long experience of the role. Della Jones looks as if she would be more at home as Strauss's Clytemnestra than Gluck's, and sounds hoarse and coarse; but in the last Act she summons some of her former vocal stature. The men, without being impressive, are at least ade- quate. What matters is that Gluck survives with triumph a ridiculous production, and banishes any thought of a connection which one might have made after Glasgow's Idomeneo between nobility and boredom.
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