Opera
Mozart right and wrong
Rodney %Ines
Dear doctor, I've eaten something that doesn't agree with me. In fact I've eaten so many things that don't agree with me that It must be me that doesn't agree with things. Perhaps an extended sabbatical is in order. In 1974 there was a production of Mozart's Idomeneo at Glyndebourne. It was slaughtered by the press, but I thought it the best Production of a baroque opera I had ever seen. It has not been revived, nor are there any signs of it being so in the future. In 1969 there was a performance of Don Giovanni at the Coliseum, sort of. pop-art and different (Producer John Blatchley, designer Derek Jarman). It was slaughtered by the press etc, etc. The management showed their faith in it by throwing bits of the scenery away at every subsequent revival. At Coyent Garden three years ago there was another production of Don Giovanni—quite the most stimulating version of the work in living memory (producer John Copley, designer Stefanos Lazaridis). It was roundly booed O n the first night, slaughtered by the press, and the management have shown their faith In it by etc etc. It is now no more than a Shadow of its former self. Last week there was a new production of Don Giovanni at the Coliseum that was pretty anodyne, and Perfectly bloody; it has been well received and will doubtless adorn the repertory for Years to come. Emigration is the only answer.
The Glyndebourne Idomeneo was relayed by Southern Television on Bank Holiday Monday. I hope not too many millions switched off automatically, as it was stun11..inglY good. Heaven knows this early n'tozart opera seria tinged with Gluck is a difficult piece, and the most impressive aspect of John Cox's production was the way he emphasised the noble simplicity of the neo-classical element, rejected every Whiff of baroque artificiality, and concentrated on the timeless human emotions 4s.. presented in Varesco's libretto. In all 1,.1is he was aided by Roger Butlin's startlingly original setting: a perspective ramp encircled by steel rings amongst which were slotted gauzes based on Turner. This exploited the, depth of the Glyndebourne stage and helped the producer get round some of the tricky soliloquies in the last act; the company could simply amble up-stage 4nd leave the soliloquisers to get on with it. STV's television presentation was in the safe hands of David Heather, king of the ejnss-fade, master of the crane shot, and uY light years the most competent television °Peril director working in this country—or 4,11Ywhere else, for all I know. Instinctively ne Picked out the key moments of the stage Production (or what was left of it—the opera
was massively, inevitably, sensibly cut) and thrust them firmly and inescapably under our noses. Cox's handling of Ilia's second-act solo was an object lesson in how to project a baroque aria with lengthy orchestral introduction, to turn an individual effusion into a dramatic duet, simply by using the listener's (Idamante's) reactions. Heather turned this into great television. Anyone interested in opera on the box should have watched it, analysed every shot, and learned. Elsewhere I marvelled at the way he underlined the iniportance of the High Priest of Neptune, a character who doesn't even open his mouth before Act Three but was very properly a major character in Cox's production from Act One onwards, at the way he gradually revealed the depth of the set, or at the crane shot with which he brought the sea-monster into contact with the chorus. He also made Butlin's colours look more beautiful on screen than they ever did on stage.
Mind you, he had good material to work on. Just as television sorts out politicians into sheep and goats (mainly goats), so it does opera singers. The extraordinarily tender relationship between father and son devised by Cox was almost one-sided on screen. Richard Lewis (Idomeneo) is a fine singer, but there is something operatically stock about his stage manner; physically impressive, musically. authoritative, but stage-bound. By contrast, Leo Goeke's Idamante was a real television performance (would that he had been paired with George Shirley, the original Idomeneo at Glyndebourne). With so much going on behind his eyes quite apart from his delicately poised singing, this was a mesmerising and deeply moving interpretation. He was well matched by Bozena I3etley's Ilia: together they looked pretty enough for any episode of Dr Kildare, which is a step forward for television opera. I relished the way Josephine Barstow chewed the scenery as Elettra, making her wild coloratura mean something dramatically (the mind snapping into madness) and admired John Fryatt's creepy High Priest. John Pritchard and the London Philharmonic realised the miraculous beauties of the score with much affecttion. and the result Was great television, great Mozart and, incidentally, great opera.
The link between the two Coliseum Don Giovannis was Richard Van Allan, a formidable protagonist in the old production. Last week his exploitable stage presence was scuppered by his costumes. Anthony Besch and John Stoddart chose to set the opera in the seventeenth century, though Don Giovanni has about as much to do with the seventeenth century as We Come to the River—in fact, now-I come to think about it, rather less. So poor Mr Van Allan was weighed down by a Charles I wig, beard and whiskers and, often, a huge plumed hat. At crucial moments.in the action —like the statue's 'Si' —you couldn't actually see his face. Besch is a producer who thinks a lot (I think ) but on this occasion he proved unable to convey his thoughts to the audience. Whereas Copley's Giovanni represented the dionysiac undertow in all of us, carefully swept under the carpet by the company in the finale. Besch's seemed little more than a Gainsborough Pictures costume villain—or was he a hero ? Who knows? Mr Van Allan was reduced to a Cipher, at one fearful point got up in powderlittle-boy-blue, a sort of Little Don Fauntleroy. The famous Fairbanks chandelier swing at the end of Act One was a good laugh for the daily papers, but where did he swing to, and whence, and to escape from whom? This was merely a coupette de theatre of the most ignominious kind.
The fights were brilliantly managed (Henry Marshall), the dances excellent (Pauline Grant), and the orchestral playing, complete with harpsichord and some appoggiaturas spectacular enough to send Mozart purists into a swoon, fair enough (Charles Mackerras). The opera was well sung. and more than well by Barbara Walker (Zerlina) and John Tomlinson (Masetto). The translation by Norman Platt and Laura Sarti has a nice line in throwaways for Leporello, gratefully seized upon by Malcolm King. But what, amongst all those trip-overable costumes and pretty sets, was it all about ?
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