Opera
Nabucco (Welsh National Opera)
Hamlet
(Opera North)
Belting it out
Rupert Christiansen
After three years of flamboyant, if not Napoleonic rule, the American Matthew Epstein has abdicated the directorship of Welsh National Opera in favour of a cool- er, clearer-eyed quantity, the barrister Anthony Freud. The shift is salutary: Epstein had strengths and weaknesses asso- ciated with sticky fingers plunged deep in other operatic pies, and he tended to use the company as his bauble; Freud keeps a steadier eye on the balance sheet and the home front. Opera companies need to see- saw their policies thus, weighing the claims of Sir Dare Devil and Dame Prudence, bal- ancing expansion with consolidation.
The net result is that WNO celebrates its 50th birthday this season in fine artistic nick, with high hopes of being re-accom- modated in a new opera house in Cardiff Bay before it receives its Senior Citizens' bus pass, and a strong programme for the forthcoming season: I look forward to Matthew Warchus's new production of The Rake's Progress, conducted by Mark Wig- glesworth, and am trying to keep cheerful about the prospect of a new work from Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.
Because Nabucco, a great choral show- piece, has played an important part in WNO's history, a new staging of the opera has been chosen to launch the company beyond its half-century. Indisputably the most powerful work of Verdi's apprentice- ship, this is an explosion of energy, ambi- tion and virility, written on the Rossinian model before success trapped the compos- er on a treadmill and forced him to churn out mere stuff. The libretto adapts the bib- lical story of the Jews' Babylonian captivity, using it as a parable of nascent Italian nationalist sentiment, and the music attacks the subject without a trace of inhibiting subtlety, ambiguity or indetermi- nacy. It is all crashingly obvious; the colours are primary throughout. That isn't a criticism — the opera blazes with the impressive strength of Verdi's callow self- confidence.
But the WNO's producer Tim Albery feels obliged to provide some sophisticated gloss. His production time-travels through the history of the Jews — hence the taste- less reference to the trucks which trans- ported prisoners to the camps, and the costuming of Nabucco as some sort of Intifada megalomaniac — while Antony MacDonald's designs cast apocalyptic Babylon in the mould of ENO skew-whiff chic circa 1989. It is all very portentous and at times a bit daft (some peculiar headgear had us sniggering), but it's not easy to pump life into such a scenario and at least Albery's efforts create an arresting atmo- sphere and pack a punch.
I admired Carlo Rizzi's conducting. He steadfastly refused to soup the music up or smooth it down, and instead baked it light, dry and crisp — yes, rather like a good water biscuit. You don't want fruit cake for Nabucco, you don't want the Berlin Phil, you want a mean pit band, and that's what the excellent WNO orchestra sounded like. The chorus bears the brunt of the opera, and here it did so magnificently — `Va, pensiero' wafted, as it should, on a breeze.
Both Willard White as the Hebrew High Priest Zaccaria and Jonathan Summers as the blaspheming Nabucco communicated powerfully; the promising Sara Fulgoni and Gwyn Hughes Jones as the love interest made the most of limited opportunities. Janice Cairns had the unenviable task of singing Abigaille, a bitch of a role in every sense: her strident soprano sets my teeth on edge, I must admit, but she belted it out fair and square. This Nabucco hits hard.
Opera North's new production of Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet — a great favourite of the Victorians, now slighted and rarely heard — is both revelation and abomination. The revelation is that the piece is really lovely and highly effective: fresh in invention, full of drama, fluent in melody, elegantly scored, and an interest- ing bridge between the worlds of Gounod and Massenet. I'd love to hear it at Covent Garden, with Anthony Michaels-Moore in the title-role. At the Grand Theatre, Leeds, he proved simply wonderful, his beautifully clean baritone matched to a searching musical intelligence and a handsome stage presence. He was strongly supported by a game coloratura soprano Rebecca Caine (Ophelia), a barnstorming Linda Finnie (Gertrude), and Opera North's fine orches- tra and chorus under the assured conduct- ing of Oliver von Dohnanyi.
The abomination is David McVicar's production. Refusing to admit that he is dealing with Romantic Grand Opera, he has come up with some ghastly pseudo- Brechtian concept to the effect that all the- atre is an illusion, all performance a rehearsal — vacuous tosh which helped neither the opera, its performers nor the audience. All that this Hamlet requires is a tasteful pillared set and some nice velvety costumes. Come back Philip Prowse, there was never anything to forgive.
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