ARTS Hall's Garden plot

JOHN HIGGINS

'My friends think I'm mad to take the job'. Peter Hall is happily belligerent about his decision to go to Covent Garden at the be- ginning of the 1971/2 season as co-director of the Royal Opera with Cohn Davis. 'But then of course they all told me I was mad to give up the managing directorship of the Royal Shakespeare Company, which is, in my view, the best theatre post in the country'.

On the surface the move might appear a strange one. So far Peter Hall has staged only three operas. The first was at Sadler's Wells in 1957: The Moon and Sixpence, a dim work by John Gardner which Hall reckons he didn't direct badly. Then came Moses and Aaron at Covent Garden, after which he was invited (and declined) to do Moseses everywhere from Rome to Buenos Aires, and Die Zauberflote. Both were con- ducted by Georg Solti, who has to a large extent been responsible for Hall's sudden resurgence of interest in opera—Solti will not sever his connection with Covent Gar- den when his term as Musical Director runs out at the end of the season after next; he has already agreed to return as a guest under the Davis-Hall regime.

At Covent Garden there was in the past much talk of a Solti/ Hall Ring to replace the current, and rather despised, Ring-with- the-Hole, but these plans fell through be- cause of lack of cash. He has certainly been invited to produce three other operas after Zauberflote and declined on the grounds of having 'nothing new to say' about the works on offer—this phrase gives a clue to the possible nature of the new leadership.

There has, too, been a flirtation with Glyndebourne, where he goes to produce CavaIli's La Calisto with Raymond Lep- pard, a Cambridge contemporary. The attractions of a permanent Glyndebourne post are clear: first-class rehearsal facilities and a Mozart-based repertory—Peter Hall, like most of us here below, feels more drawn to Mozart than to any other com- poser. However, Covent Garden won the day mainly because of a meeting between Peter Hall and Colin Davis, who only knew one another slightly, arranged by Lord Drogheda shortly after the nomination of Davis as Solti's successor. The encounter was a remarkable success. And this par- ticular marriage was forged, in the best British manner, over the dining table.

The Hall appointment is cruciaL It is not merely that for the first time in its history Covent Garden has a person with overall responsibility for the staging of opera. Even more important is the timing: at the moment opera production in Europe is looking for a new direction.

Over the past fifteen years standards have been set by first Visconti and then Zeffirelli. Most of us would nominate Don Carlos (Visconti) and Car and Pag (Zeffirelli) as the two best productions seen in London since the War: certainly Peter Hall had no hesitation in choosing them. But the era of this type of staging may well be coming to an end: it is not just the high cost of the colhimes and sceriery reqoic-efl—and the imrootbility of the latter which, leids to long intervals—but also a matter of taste. The

Visconti style was frankly nostalgic—prob- ably the film Senso gave the clearest indica- tion of his artistic ideals. Zeffirelli in the opera house has been at his most impres- sive with precise historical reconstructions —Tosca could well be added to Cav and Pag. Neither approach is likely to fit in with what we might guess to be the operatic mood of the 'seventies.

But no one has yet come forward to replace Visconti and Zeffirelli. Walter Fel- senstein of the Komische Oper, Berlin, has been unwell recently, and few West Euro- pean houses can afford to keep their singers rehearsing for the months he might well demand. Probably, the best contemporary operatic director is Giorgio Strehler working with Luciano Damiani or Pier Luigi Pizzi as his designers. The Strehler Entfiihrung at Salzburg is the nearest production I've seen to a possible 'seventies style. And this could well be the type of staging with which Peter Hall will be in sympathy.

Peter Hall describes himself as a 'partial director', using the adjective in its most biased sense. The Hall regime at the RSC was one of partiality, with every effort made to choose plays which could be looked at through the eyes of the time. This was why The Wars of the Roses probably repre- sented the high water mark of the era; it was also why no Restoration comedy was performed.

He acknowledges that this partiality has to be tempered in the opera house. Certain works have to be done, however out of sympathy you might be with them, because the public demands them and because the right singers are available. Hall divides the repertory into 'period pieces and operas which can be seen in contemporary terms'. Verdi's Macbeth is a period piece and can only be staged as such, much the same goes for Trovatore and Aida. Otello, though, is an opera for all seasons and so, of course, are the major Mozarts. Peter Hall will be likely to pass over the period pieces to someone else to direct—or find some current relevance in—and will himself look after those which speak to our age. The admission is an oblique comment on the Visconti/Zeffirelli approach.

The same sense of bias extends to com- posers. The sympathies felt with Mozart and Schoenberg have already been demon- strated. The season after next brings Hall productions of Eugene Onegin (conducted by Solti), Tippett's new opera The Knot Garden (conducted by Davis), and there is talk of a Hall/Solti Tristan. This line-up on paper puts Hall temperamentally well north of the Mediterranean. But I will offer even money that he and Colin Davis will open their reign with Verdi to restore the balance. A Davis/Hall Ring will follow shortly thereafter. He admits openly that he is quite out of sympathy with certain com- posers, and by a process of elimination it is not too difficult to see who they are.

However, no new partnership is going to alter a house repertory overnight, ior.,even in three. years. The inheritance of, a,,rlutch of .old productions ranging from tke,excel- lent to the catastrophic is somethingt,that goes with the job. It will not be easy to decide what is to be allowed out and what is not—would, for instance, this season's recent Macbeth have been shown? One answer might be to give some of our younger producers f1,000-£2,000 to see what they could make of the productions in store: the prospect, say, of John Cox working on the old, and probably wrongly rejected, Wanamaker Forza would be in. teresting. The idea is under consideration.

Peter Hall is certainly determined to build up a nucleus of young British directors and —equally important—designers at Covent Garden. We are likely to see the theatre. and in particular the subsidised theatre. raided far more than in the past for direc- tors who are musically literate. The first indication of this is a promised Salome next season, directed by John Schlesinger, who has worked at the RSC. Hall is firmly against the international producer, 'the sort of man who goes from one house to another put- ting on the same opera. Reviving one of your own productions with the same or slightly different cast is a creative exercise; simply repeating yourself in another place can never be'.

This very much reflects his own per- sonality. 'Despite the pressures put on me. I've never been happy as an itinerant direc- tor. The important thing is to build, as at Stratford. Of course, it's harder to work in cycles. For the first year or so they crucify you, and the streets run with your blood— that's just what happened there and I should think it will happen again at the Garden. In the third year, if you are lucky, you are king and can do no wrong. Then people start to call you Dad, and it's time to move on.'

Covent Garden surely have made a wise choice, and so, equally surely, has Peter Hall. When his new contract expires he will be forty-five and the Barbican might well have been completed.