Hindsight
Rodney Milnes
Rodelinda (Welsh National Opera, Mold) Lucia di Lammermoor (Scottish Opera, Glasgow) Romeo and Juliet (English National Opera, Coliseum) Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Operatic managements can hatch the most promising of ideas for new productions and watch, helplessly or otherwise, as they develop over the months, only to be told by some insensitive outsider after the first night that all those ideas were wrong in the first place, were they not? Smug smiles and much grinding of teeth ensue. Some such scenario may be relevant to the WNO's new Rodelinda, It is understandable that the management should want to use Andrei Serban and Michael Yeargan — producer and designer of last season's memorable Eugene Onegin — again as soon as possible, even to the extent of allowing early rehearsals to take place with the producer in New York and the cast in Cardiff. In the event, it hasn't worked out. The dream-like movement and decor that suited Onegin, a piece that has a lot to do with memory, took on the qualities of a nightmare when applied to opera seria.
It all comes back, as so often with Handel, to not trusting the music. Mr Yeargan's design was basically attractive, even though it looked cheaply and flimsily built: a two-storey arcaded gallery with spiral staircase in modules that could be re-grouped. Inevitably, it would keep on either re-grouping (sliding about during arias) or being re-grouped (pushed about by stage-hands to the accompaniment of interesting squeaks and thumps, also during arias). And staircases are red rags to producers: I lost count at about seven of the number of times a singer had to scurry up or down stairs during a ritornello in order to deliver (breathlessly) a B-section or a da capo from a different level.
The set walking about is one thing; the singers walking about as well gave the evening the appearance of Hyde Park Corner at rush hour, and as with Glitz Friedrich's Idomeneo, so often did the singers lurk about significantly while their colleagues were soliloquising that the uninitiated could be forgiven for concluding that all opera-seria plots depend wholly on eavesdropping. More seriously, the overwhelming impact of the two instances in Rodelinda where an aria is interrupted before it ends was inevitably lessened. The climax of inappropriateness came with the duet-finale of the second act, during which Rodelinda and Bertarido were perched high on separate modules being shoved around, parted, brought together again to hold hands, parted again and so on — lovely for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,I am sure, but too kitschy an accompaniment to music of this stature. Hindsight suggests that with a liberal application of super-glue to all adjoining sections of the set and a powerful electric current passed through the staircase there might be the basis of a sound staging of Rodelinda here.
The combination of a peripatetic set and a somewhat inexperienced cast brought further perils. I do not think it fair that young singers performing major roles for the first time — and of extremely difficult music — should be required to have to do so ten feet up in the air and on the move. Near-panic was evident more than once. And if the plot is to depend on eavesdropping, then those doing so should indicate to the audience the benefits accruing. But no: characters sloped across the gallery or lurked in the pavilions with faces innocent of any expression save mild bewilderment. I must repeat myself: producers today lose their nerve when faced by opera serif?: they assume it must be the most difficult thing in the world and that something must be 'done' with it. In fact it is the easiest thing in the world once you make the basic assumption — fairly safe I should have thought — that audiences like music.
Nevertheless, the evening brought intense musical pleasure because Rodelinda is the masterpiece that it is. The score was tactfully, minimally cut. All the arias were performed complete and properly decorated. In the pit. Julian Smith found the emotional weight of the music as well as its dramatic vigour. There was some fine singing, even though hindsight might question some of the casting — as in the case of that first-rate soprano Eiddwen Harrhy in a mezzo role. She did very nicely, but was obviously not at ease. There were two newcomers: Robin Martin-Oliver, a countertenor with ideally unconstricted and pure tone who lavished great musicianship on the many 'pathetic' arias written for Senesino; and Richard Morton, who sang brilliantly as the weak tenor villain but found little of the carefully drawn character. In the title role, Suzanne Murphy looked lovely as always and alone of the cast had worked out a convincing style of movement, instinctively I would guess since the producer was presumably too busy getting the wretched set to move; vocally Miss Murphy's intentions were of the purest, but there were moments when her intonation was not, as precise as it must be in Handel. Catherine Savory (Unulfo) sang her two remaining arias prettily; Russell Smythe, although got up as Capt. Hook, brought little in the way of menace to the double-dyed villain Garibaldo. Musically, then, much to enjoy; perhaps the anonymous sponsors could run to free blindfolds for future audiences.
There has been much dire news recently about Scottish Opera's financial problems, so it was good to see that they are still capable of mounting first-rate performances. Their Lucia is six years old, but looks romantically handsome in Henry Bardon's sets and Alix Stone's costumes. The raison d'être of this revival was the American soprano Ashley Putnam — a beautiful woman, a good singer and an excellent actress. All was set fair, and all was fair. The traditional version of the Score was played, all of it, with attendant flute-skitterings, but Miss Putnam's handling of all this nonsense was persuasive enough to silence purist objections — indeed the single most impressive aspect of her stunning performance was the way she managed a dramatico-visual commentary on the music that drew on 20th-century acting style without ever damaging 19th-century conventions (Mr Serban please note). The moment that Lucia's mind finally cracked (in the horn phrase before the sextet) was heartstopping, as was the feverish, LadyMacbeth-like hand-washing while the flute twittered away in the pit. The fioriture were accurately delivered, and always to dramatic purpose.
Brent Ellis was the Enrico, preserving elegance of vocal line while suggesting the violence of the character — very good indeed. Dennis O'Neill (Edgardo), a Welsh tenor with an Irish name who started his career in Australia, has a more Italianate voice than most of today's Italian tenors, who anyway are nearly all Spanish. His delivery tends towards the Italianate as well, indeed on this occasion teetered on the edge of a demonstration in the art of coarse opera-singing. Mr O'Neill is far too talented to need to run such risks.
To descend from the blazing genius of Handel and Donizetti to the amiable routine of Gounod was indeed a nasty bump. There is nothing wrong with his version of Shakespeare; it is just that you feel that any competent student of composition asked to write Gounod's Romeo as an exercise would come up with precisely the same score, one that irons out the earthiness of the play and substitutes the sort of predictable drawing-room elegance that delighted middle-class audiences in 1867. I think, br hope. that middle-class audiences today require a little more. The piece is very well performed at the Coliseum: a good, traditional production by Colin Graham; pretty and adaptable decor by Alix Stone; and expert conducting by Louis Fremaux that combines sensitivity with as much energy as the score will take. And the cast is
strong: Valerie Masterson fully equal to the demands of the music and wholly, enchantingly convincing as Juliet; John Brecknock singing smoothly enough as Romeo yet somehow giving the impression of a shy public school boy who has strayed into dubious company until the bedroom duet that is, when he relaxed; and Marie McLaughlin, an absolute treat in the travesti role of Stephano. The ENO ensemble brought strong support in smaller roles. It is all very lovely, but if you want to know precisely what Brecht meant when he described some operas as culinary, then hurry along to the Coliseum.
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