Perfect teamwork
Michael Tanner
Osud; Le Villi Vienna State Opera Don Carlos Welsh National Opera, Oxford Idon’t usually associate the Vienna State Opera with adventurous programming, but staying in the city for a few days last week I was able, by chance, to catch the première of a double bill of two quite exceptionally rare operas, one of which largely deserves its fate, the other certainly doesn’t. They were performed in the wrong order — if one of a double bill is notably inferior to the other, clearly it should be done first. As it was, we began with Janacek’s Osud, perhaps the rarest of his operas, in a quite brilliant production by David Pountney, who is an old hand at this piece. I can’t remember much about his ENO production of it in 1984, but I don’t think it was much like this one. At his insistence the work was performed in German, which seems a sensible idea. Surtitles, in German and English, were available, on handy individual screens, which I’m sure Pountney didn’t approve of. I found them a godsend, since Janacek often makes it difficult for the singers to project their words over his seething orchestra.
Osud is so extremely bizarre that it’s both a good thing and almost a tragedy that its music is consistently so wonderful. It is characteristic of the composer from the opening bar onwards, streaming and jagged string lyricism accompanied by pounding timpani and alternating with ebullient brass. It’s almost possible to take it as ‘abstract’, and in view of the unrewarding complexities of the plot very tempting to. As usual with him, the states of mind of the characters and their relationships are weird, but for every prosaic incident on stage he seems to be ever more stimulated to transfiguring music in the pit, while the characters semi-declaim and indulge in strange repetitions. If one weren’t feeling sympathetic to the composer in the first place, Osud might be a strong if relatively brief provocation to acute irritation.
Fortunately, the music was in the safe hands of Simone Young, with the orchestra of the State Opera (largely constituted of the Vienna Philharmonic) sounding more untamed than they sometimes have in their Janacek recordings. And the casting was ideal, Jorma Silvasti as the composer Zivny who is having severe problems on both the artistic and personal fronts, his beloved Mila played by Cornelia Salje, and the apparently immortal Anja Silja as Mila’s mother, an amazing performance, though as always with this artist a piece of perfect teamwork — it’s just that as soon as she appears on the stage, even, later on, as a corpse, it is hard to concentrate on anyone else. Pountney had the action taking place on a particularly restless revolve, but that both imparted a sense of the harassed, tumultuous nature of the drama and clarified it as far as possible — the staging is by Stefanos Lazaridis.
After the interval Le Villi, an opera ballo and Puccini’s first stage work. It’s not much good, but it would have made a far more favourable impression if it hadn’t been sent up by the producer Karoline Gruber and the designer John Engels, who were booed savagely by the discerning audience. This tale of rural domesticity and then the willis of the title, undead women haunting their unfaithful lovers, inhabits the same kind of world as Der Freischütz, which is one of the influences on the score. Taking either work at less than face value is fatal, and here we had a world of impossibly spruce and colourful peasants, with nice large fridges and washing machines in the middle of the countryside; later, when the natural order had been disrupted, the kitchen furnishings were suspended and inverted — that kind of thing. Musically things were far better, a lively account of a crude but occasionally stirring score. The discovery for me was the soprano Krassimira Stoyanova, who sang the part of Anna with such charm and fullness of tone that I long to see her as Mimi. José Cura was the faithless Roberto, ardent but now with a rather rough delivery, and a clumsy actor. Verdian father Guglielmo Wulf was the excellent Franz Grundheber, making the most of the opera’s most meaty number. Simone Young again conducted expertly — but doesn’t Osud deserve a better partner, or none at all?
I revisited WNO’s Don Carlos when it arrived in Oxford. For several performances it is being graced by the Elisabeth de Valois of Sofia Mitropoulos, who has a larger voice than Nuccia Focile, and a more regal presence. She made the most of all her opportunities, and together she and the Don Carlos of Paul Charles Clarke made the last act, Verdi’s supreme operatic achievement, into something very memorable indeed. The production continues to convince, apart from the wretched Philippe of Andrea Silvestrelli, whose unbelievably bad French accent is only the beginning of his shortcomings. But I wondered, more this time, about the wisdom of doing so full a version of the score. Because the opera lacks narrative direction, for the most part, it isn’t cumulative in its effect, so that after a certain point fatigue can set in, and you find yourself recognising greatness without being able to respond to it.
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