Rodney Milnes on perils of political opera
Wat Tyler Alan Bush (Sadler's Wells Theatre) Intermezzo Richard Strauss (Glyndebourne, Sussex)
Not even Peter Simple it his spikiest could have devised so deadly a satire on Communist culture as was witnessed at Sadler's Wells last week. But then Alan Bush's Wat Tyler has the advantage of being for real. His CP membership has been advanced as the reason for professional neglect in this country. It Must also be that for the generous Promotion of his works in °East Germany, and I suggest on the evidence of Tyler that were he not a Communist they would scarcely have been performed anywhere. His political affiliations, far from being a hindrance, seem on balance to have done him a bit of good.
Tyler was completed in 1951, i.e. ,seven years after Peter Grimes, tven taking into account the time lapse, the musical language, a sort Of Vaughan Williams-and-soda, sounds so old-fashioned as to give conservatism a bad name. The score is competent, correct and, in thY view, impersonal and uninsPired, trundling folksily along with leaden pace and precious little Purposeful use of the basic tools of the operatic trade.
As for ideology, I swear there is Irlore healthy subversion in ten rninutes of Figaro, Handel's Samson, Fidelio, Rigoletto or Boris than in two and a half hours of "at Tyler, and that is not to
thention such twentieth-century fi bgures as Weill, Schoenberg,
isler or Prokofiev. Einem's un
derrated Visit of the Old Lady, soon to be revived at Glyndebourne, is of sterling revolutionary metal compared to this.
Part of the reason lies in the phoney mediaeval English libretto by the composer's wife, which is naive to the point of risibility. All is presented in relentless black and white: honest simple workers clutching each other's shoulders in comradely solidarity versus cardboard aristos who stop at nothing. There is a small suggestion of real dramatic conflict in the second act in the indecisive character of the King, but as the singer of this role had difficulty in singing the notes quite apart from enunciating the words, this potential point of interest went for nothing.
But I was grateful for at least one moment of high comedy. Bad baronet chances upon Tyler's humble hovel and inevitably makes a pass at his daughter. "Not yet fifteen," he sneers, and the audience somehow forgot to hiss. Brave Wat knees him in the lower abdomen and indicates the door with a heroic gesture. Off slinks the villain after the memorable line "You have struck me shrewdly." Victorian melodramatists, purveyors of genuine popular culture, were doing this sort of thing better 100 years ago.
The production, £32,000 worth, was promoted by the Workers' Music Association, and served the piece well in the general style of People's Hollywood. Stalwart performances by John Noble and Valerie Masterson as Mr and Mrs Tyler, and one superb one by Martin Lawrence as the Archbishop: his economy of gesture, pointed diction and command of the stage stood out in a depressing evening. Depressing, that is, save for any capitalists who strayed in by mistake. They must have been delighted.
By contrast, Strauss's Intermezzo, newly mounted at Glyndebourne, seemed a model of progressiveness and ingenuity, though not, from the Party point of view, so morally uplifting. Yet there are worse things to hymn than conjugal love, as. Beethoven might have agreed, and no opera in which the leading tenor enters on skis and collides with the prima donna on her toboggan can be all bad.
The central character, a thinly disguised portrait of the composer's wife, is on the surface an
ill-tempered, snobbish shrew and underneath a passionate, protective and deeply sympathetic woman. Both facets were realised with boundless subtlety by Elisabeth SOderstrOm, looking a treat in Martin Battersby's affectionate 'twenties costumes.
Indeed, Miss Soderstrom has the enigmatic beauty to conquer the screen as a second Garbo, grace and elegance enough to make mast models look gawky, and a command of dramatic nuance to hold the stage of the ComedieFrancaise. Instead she is an opera singer, and I for one sink to my knees twice weekly to thank God for this simple fact. This is her )f.evening, though she is loyally supported by Alexander Oliver as the spongeing baron and Marco Bakker as her put-upon husband, and John Cox's production is notable for sharp social observation and fine wit.
With the Ariadne Prologue as starting point, Strauss devised an ideally flexible musical language of speech, recitative and arioso, leaving the symphonic meat to the interludes. These were somewhat coarsely conducted and played by Pritchard and the LPO: perhaps they were making as much noise as possible to drown the thumps required to change Mr Battersby's over-elaborate sets. Either way, much of the brass playing would have graced any pier of the realm.
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