ARTS

Filling the opera slot

Rodney MrInes What role should opera play in a general arts festival like Edinburgh? There has been a certain amount of huffing and puffing this year about the standard of performances given by the Dresden State Opera. Compared to what? To Salzburg and Munich, which are primarily opera festivals? Compared to past events in Edin- burgh in the Diamand days, such as the Berganza/Domingo/Abbado Carmen five years ago, with its £25 tickets — today's equivalent would be £40 — which caused just as much huffing and puffing because such extravagances were supposed to be mounted at the expense of drama and dance? What does one expect from festival opera as opposed to an opera festival?

The Dresden Opera is the rough equivalent of our English National. It is, defiantly, an ensemble, probably as much for ideological as for artistic reasons. Major and minor roles were double-cast, even for a week's guest visit, and lucky the ensemble that can field two good tenors for Bacchus in Ariadne — our surviving ensembles would be hard pushed to find one. Not all the doublings, however, were as good, and there were moments in both performances when one wondered how one would have felt had one paid £25 (the equivalent of £15 five years ago) for the ticket.

The interest was two-fold: in the Dresden Staatskapelle, which despite circumstantial disadvantages on this occasion (two very mediocre conductors) remains one of the world's great orchestras; and in seeing how a company with a long and great tradition embracing Weber, Wagner and Strauss is faring in a changing world. Are such things of interest only to critics? One would hope not, and very probably be wrong: there were plenty of empty seats. Nevertheless, I am sure that such guest visits, like the Col- ogne Opera last year and the Piccola Scala later this, are the best way of filling the opera slot: they bring a more real sense of perspective to an intelligent audience's ex- perience than ad hoc, gramophone tie-in, one-off 'festival' stagings.

The Dresden Entfiihrung was very in- structive. This notorious problem piece emerged astonishingly problem-free, simply because virtually the whole text was played: not just all the arias but most of the play as well. With the too-many-notes score inter- spersed with long stretches of extremely well directed and spoken dialogue, a gen- uine Singspiel balance was struck: since no apologies were made for verbal naivety and musical sophistication, it worked as a piece

of living theatre. Our emotions were en- gaged, and we were entertained as well.

The director in question was Harry Kupfer. Admirers of this usually hyper- provocative individual, perhaps disap- pointed that the action was neither set in an abattoir nor a searing indictment of bourgeois racism (though with a black soprano as Constanze, and a horribly grotesque black-mammy masseuse who would never have been allowed by our Race Relations Board, that would have been tricky), thought that since it was an old pro- duction the expected Kupfer edge had been blunted. I think not; on home groun.I Mr Kupfer obviously doesn't have to bother about being provocative. The performance was crisp and alive, simple in outline and beautiful in its groupings within a set by Peter Sykora that allowed several changes of location — from Osmin's bathroom to Pedrillo's potting shed — to ease the nar- rative along.

The cast, performing well within a disciplined German tradition, included an excellent Osmin (Rolf Tomaszewski) and Pedrillo (Uwe Peper): both sang their arias superbly and their Bacchus duet was funny without being silly. The Constanze, Carolyn Smith Meyer, lacked the notes for her first aria, which proved deeply em- barrassing, but used her slight voice to ex- pressive effect elsewhere. Blonde (Barbara Sternberger) and the Pasha (Werner Haseleu) were, again, traditional and good. Armin Ude (Belmonte) has a beautiful Mozart tenor with a golden mezza-voce; he did not sound utterly secure and had trou- ble with his breathing (Hiroshu Wakasugi's sluggish tempos were no help). Both he and several singers in Ariadne suggested that musical preparation is not the ensemble's strongest suit: time and again it seemed that a distinguished or promising voice was not being used to its full potential. Really well turned phrases were few and far between, and sentences were broken by ungainly gasps for breath. The more I hear opera from abroad, the more sure I am that mak- ing the best of the voices we have through really good coaching is the most notable feature of British operatic life.

In both Mozart and Strauss the Staats-. kapelle largely overcame poor conducting. Along with the singers they tactfully jogged Mr Wakasugi up to tempo in Entfahrung and produced silky sound and elegant phrasing. In Ariadne they had to counter sheer dullness from Siegfried Kurz, but again managed some lovely instrumental playing. To little avail, though: competition from the stage was formidable. The pro- ducer was Joachim Herz. Either Herr Herz doesn't know what Ariadne is about, in Spectator 4 September 1982 which case he shouldn't be producing it, or he does know, in which case he shouldn't he producing opera at all. I suspect the latter to be the case, and judge his Ariadne to be one of the most wicked stagings of an opera I have ever seen, in that it was wholly and determinedly anti-musical.

Herz took the Prologue, as he tends to

take everything, absolutely literally, so that the Opera proper was his lethal impression of what a simultaneous performance by two separate companies would be like. (The Prologue is of course a poetic commentary telling us how to listen to the Opera.) Anyway, that was Herz's excuse for con' sistently using direction to distract You from what the music was saying, and for turning Ariadne herself into a figure of fun' Just two examples: the Composer's out- burst in the Prologue was upstaged by the Tenor putting his wig on, scratching his, neck and fussily reading a book; the final duet was systematically undermined by stage-hands rushing about, the commedia on-stage applauding and, in the postlude, a welter of meaningless mimed action. I've heard of alienation, but this was the Put', poseful destruction of a substantial work of art. If Herz dislikes, or fears, opera a,s, much as he does, he should really fin" something else to do. There is little point in discussing the singers involved in this farrago: Reiner Goldberg's strongly sung Bacchus could' like his Covent Garden Walther, have been even better with some imaginative coaching; Ana Pusar's Ariadne, choPPeuA

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up by noisy breathing, held promise; Werne: Haseleu's. Music Master was first-rate. But if this is what the programme writer mean; by 'a critical and deepened reception to and reassessment of Strauss's works', the heaven help us all.

It is certainly right and proper that Scot-

tish Opera should contribute to Edinburgh' The only problem this year was that PO' cini's Manon Lescaut is not an awfully good piece. The expository first act makes Massenet look like a genius, the second 1s overloaded with genre episodes of great tedium, the third is largely taken up by an exercise in Puccinian sadism surpassed !II sheer nastiness only by the torture of Liu in Turandot, and by the fourth (and best) act it is all a bit too late. The interesting aspects of the Manon/Des Grieux relationship why she leaves him, how she gets him back' how this affects him — are scarcely toucher upon, whereas they are the essence of Massenet's infinitely more accomplished treatment. An additional local problem is the pitlessness of the King's Theatre: should the conductor scale down the sound so that the singers can be heard, or should he give Puce cini his head? Sir Alexander Gibson chose the latter course in an exciting and Pas- sionate performance of the decidedly operetta-ish score (a rich vein much mined

, by Lehar) even though this meant that heard too little of Peter Lindroos's musical

a and sweetly Italianate Des Grieux. New Miricioiu's Manon fared better: her swee', 1Yric soprano has a good spinto edge to it, and she is a graceful and feeling performer. Gino Quilico contributed a dashing Lescaut. John Cox's production was as good as the piece itself — i.e. at its best in a highly wrought fourth act — though I could have done without the camperoo in the second, in which he took his lead from a nasty Gainsborough-film-type set. Are all kept women fag-flags? I fear I don't know any well enough to ask.