Opera
Capriccio (Covent Garden)
Very stylish
Rupert Christiansen
This will be a year of recession for opera as much as for anything else — a year in which a much-advertised boom turns into a bubble, one of Thatcherism's most specious toys. Cards have been over- played: the English National Opera is having unscheduled trouble selling its 20th- century repertoire; Welsh National Opera threatens a complete shutdown; the Royal Opera braces itself for a further bitter harvest of cuts, as it charges as much as £42 for a seat in the front of the gods.
It is important not to become irrationally sentimental about all this. I am a paid-up believer in the unreconstructed Arts Coun- cil of the 1960s, Jennie Lee model, in which the state delivered an independent body a substantial amount of public money, which was then distributed and administered through committees of the great and good and well-informed. But occasionally the worm turns, and I lucu- brate uncomfortably: Glyndebourne is the most focused, serious and consistent opera house I have ever encountered, and it receives no state subsidy; each perform- ance of the Royal Opera costs the tax- payer £50,000 — money which could be directed towards any number of desperate people or worthy causes; would not the future of our culture be more solidly served by better-stocked public libraries than by performances of Der Rosenkavalier? Liberals may like to pretend that 'the money is there', that we don't have to make such a choice, but with so much real need banging at the door, I think we inevitably do, and that nobody except the shareholders in the recording industry has been helped by the mindless inflation of our national operatic appetite in the last few years. If we're going to pay for so
much opera (and yes, we do have a lot), it had better be good.
So it is with some relief that I can report that the Royal Opera's new production of Richard Strauss's last opera Capriccio does credit to the house and its standards: it is polished, strongly cast, beautifully played, sanely and attractively staged. Floreat such a Covent Garden! I wish I didn't find the opera itself so creepy. To spend, as Strauss did, the first years of the second world war composing a drawing-room conversation piece debating the primacy of words over music in the context of a little romantic fluttering seems to me at best a second-rate activity. His friends have always defended it as 'civilised', by which I think they mean that they are reassured by the sight of toffs with polite servants, but I'm afraid that with the drums of war again throbbing, I don't consider its melancholy dying fall provides quite enough of a counterpoint.
Still, there is lots of lovely swooping and swirling on offer, consummately judged by Jeffrey Tate, a conductor whose perform- ance at Covent Garden has previously been disappointing. In front of Mauro Pagano's pretty set, John Cox satisfactorily reproduced his Glyndebourne effort, again updating the work (much to the displeas- ure, we are told, of the Strauss estate) from the 1770s to the 1920s, in a staging that was notably well-rehearsed. The interest attached to the frocks designed by the Italian couturier Gianni Versace seemed somewhat excessive, though I did spot a pair of burgundy velvet trousers I wouldn't mind paying 40 quid for.
The chief delight of the evening was provided by Kiri Te Kanawa. Kiri-bashing may be as fashionable among critics as Versace's trapunto waistcoats are in Milan, but I found her Countess spirited in man- ner, lusciously vocalised and carefully in- terpreted. There were points of tentative- ness and she really must stop relying on the prompt box so much (nerves, I guess, rather than inadequate preparation), but the performance had all the necessary glamour, and the sheer silveriness of the noise she makes remains a rare pleasure in these dull days.
The rest of the cast was strong too, with Thomas Allen (electric blue wool jacket) wasted on the role of the Count, David Rendall (black mohair) and William `With a bit of luck we'll need shelters.' Shimell (black silk and wool) a trifle subdued as the Countess's composer and poet suitors, and Franz Ferdinand Nentwig (grey and white pinstripe) a robust impre- sario. Good old Anne Howells (black crepe camisole) had fun as the actress Clairon, and Lillian Watson and Bonaventura Bottone did a splendid comic turn as the visiting Italian singers.
It was all very civilised, I'm sure, and your critic (stonewashed denim decorated with Tintin badge, holes in his socks) enjoyed it enough, as a gorgeous, empty business.
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