Opera Eugene Onegin (Covent Garden)
Not quite ready
Rodney Milnes
Ihave little doubt that by the time this appears in print the new production of Boccanegra at Glyndebourne will be a very different show from the one that the first-night audience saw. That was one of those occasions when a certain impression of unease made itself felt even at curtain- rise, and a sadly botched scene change from Prologue to first act caused a sense of communal freezing on stage that you could almost touch. Singers of whose capabilities one knew were plainly giving less than their best, and those who were new but came with high word-of-mouth reputation were disappointing; in the pit Bernard Haitink seemed to withdraw nervously into his shell — the recognition duet failed to seize the heart and the great ensemble in the Council Chamber refused to take off. Only towards the end of the second half did the musical insights one expected, indeed longed for, start to become evident. In that department much, surely, will have changed.
But it was a first night, people had paid good money to hear it, and it must be said that it was a grave disappointment. It sounds ungrateful, but that outstanding soprano Carol Vaness sang almost too well. There was little sense of danger as she soared effortlessly and rather loudly through Amelia's treacherous opening aria, and little sense of character either: you felt that this enormously capable and strong-willed young woman could have sorted the plot out in ten seconds flat, and anyone proposing to abduct her would have needed, his head examining. The vulnerability of the character was almost entirely missing. In the title-role the Amer- ican baritone Timothy Noble, making his British debut, revealed a cleanly focussed voice with a limited range of colour; mezza voce and pianissimo effects were finely calculated, but the tone seldom expanded into the great climatic phrases as it must, and he proved to be a stolid figure on stage. We have, alas, been spoiled with Boccanegras here: Gobbi , Cappucci Ili , Bruson, to name but three.
Robert Lloyd (Fiesco) sang, as ever, gloriously, but dramatic effects that work well at Covent Garden looked decidedly overstated in this small house; Tit)6re Raffalli was a very decent Gabriele — it's a beast of a part; only John Rawnsley as Paolo, a peach of a part, did himself full justice, singing and declaiming colourfully, acting most inventively. Paolo is a dry run for Iago, sand one fell to musing on what Mr Rawnsley might do with that particular villain when the time comes.
I repeat, vocally and orchestrally the show may have improved out of recogni- tion, but certain eccentricities, crudities almost, in Peter Hall's production and John Gunter's decor may not. It is a cliché to call Boccanegra a sombre opera, but the sombreness is in the action and the charac- terisation, not in music that positively glows with light and air. Mr Gunter's claustrophobic, dun-coloured (and lit) sets weighed heavily upon the score and the Council Chamber was, frankly, a mess: you couldn't see the principals in the choral melee and wondered why on earth the depth of the Glyndebourne stage wasn't being used to give them all room to breathe.
A noisily mobile gauze behind which the chorus gestured meaninglessly at the open- ing, characters singing climactic phrases facing up-stage (in Verdi!), enough flag- waving to put one in mind — fatally — of Les Miserables, the sort of shoulder- clutching, hand-shaking, grief-twitching choral direction that I thought went out at Sadler's Wells in the 1960s — such things one does not expect to see in a Hall production. But there are also things one does expect, like the faultless direction of the recognition scene (they know who they are long before they dare admit it) and of the reconciliation between Boccanegra and Fiesco, which was profoundly affecting: at moments like these Sir Peter gets right to the heart of Boccanegra. There is an unofficial tradition of some Hall produc- tions being not quite 'ready' on first nights — Figaro was one of them, and Boc- canegra looks as if it might be another. I look forward to revivals with some impati- ence.
Sir Peter's Herring was a joy last year (and totally ready) and remains one. The playing of the LPO's soloists is if anything even more expressive and witty than be- fore, and Jane Glover brings marvellous zip, lightness and comic ingenuity to her conducting without ever overlooking the dark edge to the comedy. John Graham- Hall's tenor has gained in weight since last year and he now sings the title-role as expertly as he acts it; Elizabeth Gale (Miss Wordsworth) gives one of the funniest and Patricia Kern (Mum) one of the most slyly understated comic performances I have seen in this piece, and Adrian Thompson's Mayor is an absolute riot. At the third performance Patricia Johnson (Lady Bil- lows) was indisposed: lucky Glyndebourne to have so capable a cover as Christine Bunning, who sang firmly and accurately with nuttily incisive tone and made every word tell — a really smashing perform- ance. My only doubts concern the recasting of Sid and Nancy. Last year they were so positively characterised by Alan Opie and Jean Rigby as radically to shift the worles epicentre; this year Jeffrey Black and Louise Winter, both very good singers, somehow just miss the poetry and mystery of these two symbols of earthy normalitY. A small point: this Herring is a classic, and you should fight tooth and claw to get tickets.
As you should for Onegin at the Garden, for Ileana Cotrubas's infinitely touching Tatyana (she has one of the most express- ive faces on the operatic stage today), for Thomas Allen's hair-raisingly intense por- trayal of the title-role, and for Cohn Davis's cunningly devised conducting, moving from silky suaveness at the opening to barely controlled hysteria in the finale. A really good evening.
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