Opera
Capriccio (Glyndebourne)
Irony and iron
Rodney MIlnes
0 f all Handel's myriad qualities, the one least appreciated is surely his sense of humour, at least until recently. Yet the 'Great Mr Handel' side of him, the tower- ing majesty of his genius, should not be allowed to detach him from the century and the society in which he lived, characte- rised by a sense of detached irony tending to infect even the grandest flights of rhetoric. While we know when Handel is being funny, whether in Acis or Semele or Partenope, his latest humour never de- tracts from the desperate seriousness of the matter in hand — indeed, as in Mozart, the humour enhances it. Nowadays we may perceive an element of irony even in the heroic operas — how could it be otherwise when he wrote so many anti-heroic ones? — or so it seems in the light of Nicholas Hytner's virtuoso new production of Giulio Cesare in Paris.
Mr Hytner's prize-winning Serse (defi- nitely an anti-heroic opera) at the Coli- seum two years ago mined precisely the right vein of irony; some, perhaps, might find moments in his Caesar too broad, among them Parisian audiences who, un- like those in London, do not wait until the end of an act to express disapproval — they boo whenever they see something they don't like, which certainly kept us all awake. But while underlining moments of genuine Handelian irony in the piece, Mr Hytner also brings a 20th-century ironist's wit to bear on proceedings, from the opening image of Caesar entering David Fielding's darksome box-set like Lord Car- narvon broaching Tutankhamun's tomb to the closing conceit of his staff packing up the treasures of Egypt (crates stamped 'SPQR' and methodically numbered) for transport to the capital, which given the current concern with the Elgin Marbles could hardly be more topical.
Much that comes in between — oil- tankers chugging up the Nile and rigs flaring at the climax of Cleopatra's 'Da tempeste', the treatment of Ptolemy as a first cousin to Valentino's Sheikh, Come- la's attempted suicide in a crocodile- infested private zoo, Cleopatra tiddly on champagne merrily vamping the entire Roman army — is admittedly on the broad side, but most of it springs from the text and it is presented with such laid-back wit and discretion that only a Tyrian-dyed-in- the-wool purist could take offence. It certainly does damage to neither music nor action — on the contrary, this is the first production I have seen to make the opera credible as a love story.
Mr Hytner was lucky to have a superb cast to work with, headed by Valerie Masterson, who sounds at her best in the Opera's acoustics and who traced the character's progress from flirt to mature woman with. great insight, and by three outstanding counter-tenors: the Australian Graham Pushee (Caesar), the East Ger- man Jochen Kowalski (Ptolemy), both of them fine actors and blessed with free, open top registers wholly free of falsetto hoot, and the French Dominique Visse, hypermusical and a great comedian to boot — he played Nireno as a Levantine Mr Fixit, a fag forever dangling from his lips. Susan Quittmeyer (Sesto) and Guillemette Laurens (Cornelia), both absolutely seria, were first-rate. Had there been a Hande- Han in the pit with more guts than the lackadaisical Jean-Claude Malgoire, my cup would have run over; as it was, it was pretty damned full.
The two Strauss evenings are, in their different ways, quite remarkable (the Meyerbeer of the 20th century, my foot). What happens on stage at the Garden's FroSch is not to be described — the Apparition of a Youth plumbs untold depths of tacky inappropriateness — but all is well in the pit, where Christoph von Dohnanyi conducts one of the best per- formances of the piece it has been my good fortune to hear: the pacing faultless, inter- nal and external balance under iron con- trol. Virtually every word was clearly audible and, alas, visible in surtitles that joined in the depth-plumbing stakes and won several prizes for bathos. 'I didn't do it' for the Frau's confession — well, hon- estly. Gwyneth Jones, on top form, is unbeatable in that role, Helga Dernesch's Nurse forcefully accurate, Ruth Falcon's Empress highly promising (this was her first attempt at the role) and Robert Schunk's Emperor roundly sung, though his wooden stage manner made the threat of petrification seem redundant.
At Glyndeboume, John Cox has re- rehearsed his classic Capriccio and brought it up as fresh as new. There are some really good laughs (and no snaffles) in this brilliantly directed, meticulously detailed comedy of manners. On the first night both Bernard Haitink and Felicity Lott (Coun- tess) took a little time to warm up, but together they made the finale 20 minutes of pure gold. There are glorious perform- ances throughout from Anne Howells (Clairon), Olaf Bar (Count) and Ernst Gutstein (La Roche), and two Italian Singers (Jean-Luc Viala and Floralla Pedi- coni) who sing exquisitely while finding much sly comedy in their parody duet, At 85, Hughes Cuenod is a bewildering inci- sive M. Taupe. Total joy, but I think (and hope) that Miss Lott will get even better. Watch this space.
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