Labyrinthine complexities
Michael Tanner
English Touring Opera Cos!; Mary Queen of Scots For its spring season, English Touring Opera has chosen an ambitious pair of operas, Mozart’s Cos! fan tutte and Donizetti’s Mary Queen of Scots, as Maria Stuarda’s title has been newly translated. Cos! is ambitious because it is Mozart’s most sophisticated comedy, needing a sureness of touch from director, conductor and singers to maintain its unique ambivalence of tone. It is also the Mozart opera to which we are now most frequently exposed, and standards of production are very high, with Opera North leading the field at present.
In his intelligent programme note, the director Timothy Walker writes: ‘What is remarkable about Cos! is that even while it leads us to reflect on the problematic, and in a sense illusory, nature of “romantic” love, the experience of love itself is not simply diminished as a result.’ The prob lem lies in transmitting that insight to the performers, and it is hardly surprising that Walker has only partially succeeded — but enough, one hopes, for audiences to be enticed to explore the labyrinthine complexities of this marvellous drama.
The production is as straightforward as possible, set in the period in which it was written and in Naples, Vesuvius in the background, but not threatening (enough). There’s a minimum of props, no chorus (this is becoming a regular, obviously regrettable, feature of Cosis — what were the chorus who were on stage the following evening doing that night?), and not much movement on stage. That would all be fine if it weren’t that there is also too little interaction between the characters, apart from Don Alfonso and Despina. Andrew Slater’s Alfonso is almost devoid of personality, not even mock-genial, possibly too bored to reveal any qualities, while Amy Freston, though a standard Despina, sings attractively and doesn’t ham up her disguises, though those parts of the plot I always find tiresome.
The characterisation throughout is lowlevel, the lovers almost abstract figures, so that in one way the piece does feel more like an experiment than usual; while on the other it is played for laughs, of which there turn out to be rather few. And to add to uncertainty about the nature of the work, and of the production, the finest piece of singing by far, at any rate in the Cambridge Arts Theatre, was Fiordiligi’s immense second-act aria ‘Per pietà’ (in English), sung centre stage, as a concert piece, and with complete seriousness, even though I’d have thought it obvious that Fiordiligi is laying it on thick. Amanda Echalaz, the Fiordiligi, evidently has a future, though not, on this evidence, as an actress. Her original betrothed, Guglielmo, was performed with conviction by Leslie John Flanagan, the strongest all-round performer on stage. The other pair just about passed muster, but everyone seemed happiest in ensembles, except for Echalaz. This is an opera where that is emphatically the right way round. Robert Dean’s conducting, from a too-brisk opening to many underplayed accompaniments, did little to probe the opera’s ironies; he occasionally went in for arbitrary underlinings. There was a lack of a sense, as Act II progressed, that the characters were losing control of themselves and their situation. Yet, as so often, the spirit of the opera triumphed over the inadequacies of the performance, and by the end I felt, if not as unsettled as usual, at least vaguely disturbed.
Mary Queen of Scots is a difficult work to bring off because like most of Donizetti’s operas it is so uneven, with passages of heartfelt inspiration alongside long periods of routine flaccidity. Even the most notorious scene, in which Mary hurls savage insults at Elizabeth, calling her ‘the painted daughter of a harlot’, etc., is much stronger dramatically than it is musically, where, as often in his work, Donizetti is no more than perfunctory. In fact, most of the urgency of this opera comes from Schiller’s play.
The first act, centring on Elizabeth and her mixed feelings about Mary, together with her passion for Leicester, is mostly conventional if tireless. Jennifer RhysDavies makes a strong-voiced if acidic Elizabeth, capable of almost frightening volume. Nicholas Ransley as Leicester is the star of the show, elegant in appearance, manner and musical style, with a piercing tenor that suggests he could soon be Essex in a far greater Gloriana opera. Mary is Anne Mason, a dignified and interesting singer, but one whose voice is too similar to Elizabeth’s. In their confrontation it was hard to tell who was singing what, if you didn’t look at the very thorough surtitles. She rose to the final scenes, however, and as Donizetti’s inspiration at last flowers — in the last half hour — so did the performance. Even so, I wonder whether his serious operas really merit revival without great singers. For all its touching moments, and they were something, the impression was insubstantial and if one thinks of the mission of ETO, one wonders whether they are well advised to tackle such singer-dependent repertoire.
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