Don't Forget the Diva
By DAVID CAIRNS .N1 IN the mythology of singers and their votaries the critic is the monster, the blaster of budding talents, the sucker of innocent blood, the blasphemer with no respect for established reputa- tion, the predator waiting to strike at the first sign of failing powers (which the people in their wisdom know how to overlook), like the devil, a roaring lion (though with the entrails and sensibilities of a mouse) seeking whom he may devour and stand- ing with a snarl between the divas and their adoring public.
But if only they would realise it, the people whom talented singers have greatest reason to dread are their own most fervid admirers. Critics can only wither what is already weak and stunted; they complete nature's work. It takes the self- appointed artistic counsellors, implanting too early their dreams of grandeur, the swarming parasites of the musical world, and the forcing house of press and television, to spoil a really promising singer; and today especially it is a tough integrity and resilient spirit that stands up to them. Is Joan Sutherland, to take a very topical example, strong enough to protect herself from her fame and bear the burden of the over- estimate of her achievement which has bedevilled her progress since her Pyrrhic victory bn the first night of Lucia a year ago?
One would have to be mad not to wish. Miss Sutherland well, not to hope and pray that her promise is richly and splendidly fulfilled. Chauvinism apart, it is obviouSly of vital interest to British opera that first-rate native British singers should appear. It is precisely this that makes me object to the growing tendency to hail her as a kind of joint reincarnation of Melba.and Ponselle, England's answer to Callas. Miss Sutherland has a voice of unusual grace and purity, which she uses sincerely and most 'musi- cally' and with a technical skill that is almost unheard of nowadays; but as an artist, as an exponent of all that the great masters have taught us to understand by opera, she is not worthy to stoop down and unloose the shoes of the great Maria (this is no disgrace to her—why, with her slight experience, should she be?), and it is a gross disservice to attempt to persuade her otherwise. Yet such is the cynical power of the modern publicity machine, such the disruptive effect of the aeroplane on the modern opera singer's development, and such (let it be admitted) the dearth of coloratura sopranos who are more than 'a larynx on two legs.' sound without sub- stance, that instead of being allowed to consoli- date her art and mature gradually, she is whisked round Europe from one glittering success to another, while at home she is encouraged to affect the mannerisms of the great prima donnas —the interview in The Times, complete with solemn disquisition on 'the place of Donizetti today,' the tame Italian conductor brought over specially 'for' the 'diva'—before she has con- ceivably had a chance to reach the greatness which might make such a harlequinade excusable.
Just how far she has still to develop we can see from the revival of La Traviata, now in the repertory at Covent Garden, where her Violetta, though well, sometimes beautifully, sung, hardly scratches the deeper layers of that subtle and tragic character. I am glad to say—glad, because it is gratifying to see a large crowd behaving sanely and with intelligence—that the first-night house, after seeming disposed to accord Miss Sutherland a built-in triumph, showed clearly by the warm but far from rapturous applause at the end that it had gauged her performance pretty accurately. Her first act was, in point of sheer singing, not far short of excellent, and her final scene was affecting, as a fine voice and com- petent acting cannot fail to make it. But the tragic crux of the opera, the great scene with Germain pare, found her wanting. The subtle interplay of pride, possessiveness, anger, compassion and nobility, and the slow birth of the feelings that lead Violetta to sacrifice herself and give up Alfredo, were beyond her; the almost unendur- able tension which makes the floodgates, when they open, open with such overwhelming force of emotion, was never built up. And when she came to that long, soft B flat that leads into 'bite alla giovine,' the thread by which' the whole drama hangs, which in Callas's perform- ance became an agonising suspended eternity of choice, a last, frail clinging to happiness, Miss Sutherland sang it, as one might say, movingly, but the emotion seemed, to me at least, applied from without, leaving the heart untouched; it was an isolated piece of vocalisation, very prettily and conscientiously done, and not the inevitable musical expression of a moment of supreme moral decision.
But her limitations (and I repeat that it is only a kindness to point them out) are shown most clearly in her strange conception of the character of Violetta. From the very first, in the blanched visage, the sagging mouth suggesting imminent disintegration, the small mad smile, she is a woman palpably stricken and all but crushed by life, a creature of conscious misery; the shadow of mortal sickness lies across her. No reprieve will be granted to this woman, not even the pos- sibility of a dream of hope. Not only does this mean that we cannot believe in Violetta the courtesan, the brilliant worldly figure whose voluptuous gaiety is the toast of town—so that the first scene loses dramatic force and meaning altogether; worse, by wrongly concentrating on superficial pathos too early, she deprives the opera of the real pathos of Violetta's renuncia- tion and death: there is no question of happiness being snatched from this Violetta, because we cannot imagine that so haunted and abject an image of Gothic grief could ever have been happy. Towards the end of the opera we realise whom we are watching : it is not Violetta at all, but our old friend Lucy of Lammermuir, the archetypal English (yes!) nineteenth-century miss, ripe at any moment for a Mad Scene. Lucia showed Miss Sutherland's magnificent material, and what it could become when moulded by a conductor of the experience of Serafin and a producer of the genius of Zeffirelli. But it will be a pity if it stamps all her subsequent incarnations with the same stereotyped image.
Cay. and Pag. are running as triumphantly as ever, in, spite of the changes of cast which weaken Pagliacci. Of these, Hans Kaarti a blubbering bear of a Canio, brutalises the part, and John Shaw, after Geraint Evans's brilliantly vivid and subtle Tonio, is little more than a cypher, a bari- tone with his face dipped in flour. But the show remains a thing of glory to look at. The other night a carelessly hung cyclorama somewhat dimmed the splendour of the sunset, and here and there the spotlights were beginning to creep out of their hiding places, one of them going so far as to ignore all the carefully calculated effect of Signor Zeflirelli's gloaming by playing negligently on the lovers from sheer force of habit. But in general the production should be good for a few more weeks of pure enjoyment.
Previous page
