Tiny hands at Glyndebourne ARTS
CHARLES REID
Last week John Pritchard brought off not so Much a feat of versatility as an act of aesthetic bilb.cation. At Covent Garden he conducted Sir MiChael Tippett's revived King Priam and at Olyndebourne a brand new La Bohame, the first Iiitecini to be sung there since John Christie started- up in 1934. Tippett's way of looking at opera, the things he wants to put into the medium', the things he wants to get out of it, are sO 'diffetent from Puccini's that the two men might be wOrking on different planets and foi different •speCies. • -Mr Pritchard did well by both Score's, especi- ally' on the orchestral side. In the case of the Priam orchestra, individual string `Choirs,' brass groups, and solo 'woodwind keep-peeling off; turn and turn about they play in isolation, passing from filigree and fioriture to stark unison tunes which either sharpen` the drathatic tension when tension's there or give our ears something taf4ed on when (as often happens) it's missing: Tippett's 'linear' writing, whether for orchestral sections or soloists,. makes demands' on the players far beyond .anything they ordinarily come up against either in the pit or the concert hall. A flaw here, a roughness there, were to be expected, and they duly hap- pened. The point is, however, that Mr Pritchard brought zest and a good deal of authority to his task. On the whole, a night of magical, shatter- ing sound., ; z At Glyndebourne he was favoured by an acoustic which brought out and .vitalised much orchestral' detail which, When -.we hear La Bohame in bigger houses, goes ,unmarked or under-appreciated.. Can it be that we. were all wrong; that the late John Christie's `Mozart house' has really been a Puccini one all the time? As well as being helped by the acoustic, Mr Pritchard got shades and eloquences of his own from the pit. His phrasing of some of the lower string parts threw what amounted to a new light on Puccini's thinking and potential. This applied particularly to the cellos. Perhaps Mr Pritchard's parallel immersion in Priam, which has superb pages for massed or divided cellos, sensitised him to Boheme beauties that have hitherto escaped most of us.- So much for the Covent Garden and Glynde- bourne pits. The thing that really counts, how- ever, is the stage. In Priam no less than in La Boheme, it is the singers who are entitled to precedence. (In Priam, I'm happy to say, they got it. For all its innovations, the Wanamaker- Kenny production never slaps them down.) I would go further than the two cases under notice and contend that this precedence rule applies to opera in general. It seems that Glyndeboume's chairman, George Christie, isn't altogether with me on this.
An extraordinary passage in his fore- word to the current season exalts con- ductors and producers as the `pivotal' figures of Glyndebourne and, ideally, of every other opera house under the sun. It is they who have the essential 'interpretative job'; they who are `the principal mouthpiece' of the composer and librettist. Not fir them to let the music or the drama %peak for itself,' a phrase which Mr Christie rather derides. `It is for them,' he goes on, `to make the music or drama speak to the audience by giving it att;f3e reflecting their own individuality and by show.: ing in the work more and deeper meanings which are personal to them.' But what if these 'deeper meanings' make nonsense of, or at any rate blur, meanings which the composer and libreitiat had in mind? Let us consider from this Point of view what has been done to La Bohame by Sir Michael Red grave, the producer, and Henry BardOn, his designer. '
The garret of 'the first and last ads has no back-centie door as the text requires. Instead Of appearing'with her blown-out candle, visible from top to toe as within a pictute frarne, liml makes her entry (like everybody else)"up a stair with railed-off top, for-all-the world like It prisoner COthing.ifF to plead from the bridewell. Instead Of s'itroatung into a chair, shealtinips forward in such a posture that Rodolfo, while singing abotit -IOW pale her face is cannot 'See anything biit tikhaek of her head. The eicilitisife pizzicato touches which supposedly accOMPany the reviving Serinkle of Water' go for nOthini. Instead of sjituililinit„ koriolfo dabs her behifid the ears 'with what gitiks like a wet tea Instead of ".grOifig'. '"moonlight for the missing key;` hand Meeting hand, the loyeres Stoop and staijia.aboht incOniequeatly in droit a table between them most of the time On'a redithdant upper floor level stands a single-bad 'redOleni' of a Camden ToWri juhk shop. But again a departure frOm script. friendi opt for her to die' fully dressed in an armchair._ Are they .beitik callous?. Or just feckleis? • . Christmas tve in and around the Ca.f. Momus haS: been 'shoehorned on to it small stage ingeniously and gaily. An excellent 'eieful. There were, however, oddities that had me tweaking My. ear. Dressed like a Park Line hostess, circa;,I§00, in ivory. gown, chic mantle and tiara, Mitietta Sang her Waltz Song diimb-show accompaniment (iinisono./ by bOy fiddler, who? 'Sprang up froth nowhere, and certainly for no reason, in, the 'OP Wing. I will not go so far, as to claim that, in the matter of freakishness and thiestionable taste, Glynde- bourne's La Ifolf'a.me outdoes or even rivals the one last seen at Sadler's Wells. The mere fact that. one draws the comparison is dis- quieting.
Granted that producer and conductor are opera's top dogs in perpetuity, it follows that singers must decline to the status of pawns; and I am bound to say that, especially as to the first two acts, this was, despite good cast material, one of the worst-sung Bohemes I have heard in any theatre of note. The official opening night had been preceded by two private performances for the Glyndeboume festival society. Yet much of the singing was so ill-geared that the com- pany. might have been meeting together for the first time.
In the second act Ottavi' o Garaventa (Rodolfo) and Anna Novelli (Mimi) were, between them, thrice behind or ahead of the beat on important entries or cliniactic phrases. In the opening scene Marcelo (Attilio d'Orazi) so forced . an excellent baritone that he sounded rather like Amonasro in full rage than a painter in a pet Perhaps when the pro- &lotion, with all its eccentricities, has bedded down there will be better acting and singing from the foregoing; as also from Federico Davits. (who has in him the makings of a first- rate Collin), Enrico Fissore (Schaunard) and Alberta Valentini- (Musetta).
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