OPERA AT COVENT GARDEN
By DYNELEY HUSSEY
wHEN the heavy red curtains closed upon the final scene of Don Carlos last June, it was impossible to leave the theatre without a lingering and sorrowful glance round the auditorium, that the beauty of its symmetry, incomparable alike to eye and ear, might be indelibly impressed upon the memory. There seemed no hope. In a few weeks, at the most, the housebreakers would be sending the elegant turquoise dome crashing to the ground. Yet last week the black and green posters were once more affixed to the portico fresh with paint, and on Saturday evening the preliminary camp-stools were already being set in Floral Street outside the gallery- door. By one of those sudden reversals, with which we are accustomed to rescue lost causes, doomed monuments and open spaces at the eleventh hour, Covent Garden Theatre has been saved. With singular aptness the opera selected for its reopening last Monday was .Pidelio, which the Germans with their genius for classification called a Rettungsstlick, a rescue-piece.
It has been more than a salvage—a renovation that goes deeper than the coat of new paint which brightens the once dingy entrance-hall, and the better provision for comfort and refreshment in the foyer upstairs. The main innovations are behind the proscenium. A modern lighting system has been installed—it is even rumoured that lighting-rehearsals have been held—and a cyclorama, which is a vast white cloth stretched in a semi-circle from wing to wing, replaces the old-fashioned painted back- ground in outdoor scenes. Upon this cyclorama can be produced, in conjunction with the lighting-system, any aspect of the sky known to meteorology. The enormous advantage of such a device in the staging of Wagner's Ring, with its very " unsettled " weather-conditions, will be readily appreciated.
In assessing the results of the new resources upon the stage, it is well to remember that Covent Carden still remains under a handicap unknown in any other European opera-house. As presented here, opera is still as exotic, if not as irrational, as in the days of Dr. Johnson's famous definition. A number of singers, who may or may not have acted together before, are collected for the space of six weeks for the performance of a varied repertory. To expect of these artists, however good they may be indi- vidually, the cohesion, which makes all the difference between comparative and superlative excellence in a performance, is asking for the moon. It is one thing to give a new production of Der Ring with a permanent opera-company, which can be rehearsed for months if need be ; quite another to improvise it in the brief space that, even with the extra rehearsals this year, can be afforded without incurring fabulous expense. For this reason productions at Covent Garden, except when they are transferred, singers, scenery and all, from a foreign theatre, cannot attain the artistic standard which has been achieved, in its modest way, by the permanent company at Sadler's Wells as the result of two years' concerted effort.
As an example of the way in which the peculiar condi- tions of opera at Covent Garden affect seemingly irre- levant matters, M. Wolkoff's new design for the second and fourth scenes of Das Rheingold may be cited. Infi- nitely superior though it is to the old one, it overlooks one important factor. The rocky and uneven levels, represented in realistic and rather unimaginative detail, of the mountain-top are a snare to the feet of singers, which are not the feet of chamois, and until they know instinctively every slope and eminence, it is impossible for the gods and giants to move naturally (or even with safety) or to group themselves effectively in these scenes, which are among the most difficult to produce in the whole of Der Ring. In the final scene of Fidelio, too, some cobbled steps made it difficult for Herr Janssen to keep his balance, not to mention his ministerial dignity.
Even on the musical side concessions must be made to these conditions, and it was a failure to accommodate his tempi to singers -accustomed to a broader style, that marred Sir Thomas Beecham's otherwise excellent performance on Monday night. Had there been time for Mine. Lelunann to assimilate the conductor's view of the con brio section of Fidelio's great aria, all might have been well. As it was, one could only sympathize with the singer's desperate effort to keep in touch with the orchestra. Mme. Lehmann is almost an ideal Fidelio both vocally and physically and, when she was allowed space enough in which to exploit the part, her per- formance was magnificent. It is surprising that Sir Thomas Beecham, who has shown in his recent concerts a new feeling for the spaciousness and grandeur of the classics, should have resorted to tempi which in the quartet in Act II and in the finale, defeated their own ends by reducing the music to a mere gabble. The deplorable performance of the " Leonore No. 8" Overture, which was played between the two scenes of Act II, may perhaps be excused on the ground that the conductor was put out by the untimely applause which interrupted it at the fall of the curtain, when he turned round and told his distin- guished audience to "shut up."
Among the new singers Miss Erna Berger is the most distinguished. Her singing of Marzelline's music was an unalloyed delight, and on the following evening her pure and steady tone, as first Rhinemaiden, contributed its share towards making the first scene in Dar Rheingokl as pleasing to the ear as M. Wolkoff's admirable set made it to the eye. Herr Zimmermann is the best Mime we have had at Covent Garden in recent years, but his singing as Jacquino was untidy except in the famous canon-quartet, which was one of the high-lights of Fidelio.
Beethoven's solitary opera, Whose sub-title is Die Eheliche Liebe, was a solemn dish to set before a fashion- able audience as the prelude to a brilliant season. It can- not be said that it is a satisfactory opera. The characters are types, not individuals, and they do not develop before our eyes like the characters of Mozart and Verdi. Beet- hoven's genius was essentially untheatrical. This is not to say "undramatic," for the Fifth Symphony and the Overtures would give the lie to that. The drama in his music is a conflict of ideas, not one of personalities. So it is in Fidelio. When the idea of the clash between tyranny and freedom at last comes to the fore, Beethoven presents it with superb mastery. For the rest, and espe- cially in all that concerns the minor characters, he resorts to conventional formulas. Even the canon-quartet, great music though it is, is static and completely devoid of that feeling of dramatic tension between opposed individuals, which makes the quartet in Rigoletto a supreme example of operatic technique. Pizarro's gusty rages and Rocco's geniality are portrayed conventionally and without psychological subtlety, while the final scene of all is pure cantata. Yet the opera contains in its second act one of the greatest and most moving scenes in the whole repertory. It is not the less true, for being a common- place of criticism, that the essence of this drama is summed up once and for all in the " Leonore Overture No. 3," but it would be base ingratitude not to thank the Covent Garden management for departing from the well-trodden path of Strauss and Wagner, and setting before us this noble work in a performance that was, in spite of faults, worthy of the occasion.
Previous page
