ARTS Chase in Arcady
JOHN HIGGINS
A score unperformed since 1651 and a libretto concerned with lusting gods and chaste nymphs: such a combination could well produce dire results. It is easy to Imagine one of those evenings of musical wiggery-jiggery that sprout in certain Eng- lish country houses like the cow parsley in midsummer: a buffet supper in the main hall (included in the price of the ticket) and a countertenor tenor in the dining room. But with Raymond Leppard and Peter Hall cast- ing their joint magic over CavaIli's La Calisto there emerges a Glyndebourne evening over- whelming in its beauty, elegance and human- ity.
The humanity must come first. It is none too evident in Faustini's libretto (published, with facing English translation, by Faber and essential reading before going to the opera). This is a concise, efficient affair drawn partially from Ovid: Jove comes down to Earth and catches sight of Calisto, a chaste follower of the chaste Diana; Jove's advances are accepted only when he takes on the form of Diana herself; Juno quickly discovers what is happening and changes Calisto into a bear; Jove responds by con- verting this baby bruin into Ursa Major and together god and mistress return to the skies.
Put in these basic terms Faustini's story could well be the starting point for one of Meilhac and Halevy's pieces of classic mockery, a kind of Jove in the Undergrowth. But the quality of the Venetian public can he judged from the speed at which La Calisto moves: characters and actions are estab- lished in a very few moments of music with no allowance made for the leaden-witted. Sophistication is assumed on all levels, but most particularly on the moral one. Faustini has produced a libretto of the chase in which everyone except. Mercury covets someone else's body. CavaIli's score describes the heartbreak of this pursuit: in practically every bar the humanity of the work wells up. sympathy is constantly subduing laughter.
Humanity runs through Peter Hall's pro- duction, his first for Glyndebourne and the most brilliant staging seen here for a decade. Beneath their fine feathers and flowing wigs these gods suffer. Juno, in her exit aria 'Racconsolata e ma!' begins exultantly, for she has repaid love's infidelity in full by turning Calisto Imo a bear, but her pleasure is shortlived as she recalls the lot of all women who no longer command the interest of their husbands, 'Noi sempre sian: roflese% she may lie wearing the clothes of a goddess hut her emotions are directed to every wife in the audience.
Jove's own position is, in every respect, more ambiguous. As soon as he takes on the disguise of Diana, which he keeps through- out the central section of the opera, the role moves from the bass to the soprano clef. What is to be done, should the bass sing fal- setto? Not according to Raymond Leopard and Peter Hall, who have the same singer (Janet Baker) play both Diana and Jove dis- guised as Diana. It is a brilliant stroke— always provided there is Someone of Miss Raker's ability around—but it does alter the emphasis of the opera. Diana becomes the central figure, whether as the chaste huntress secretly attracted by Endymion or as the disguised Jove taking Calisto off to the bushes for a lesbian work-out from which, surprisingly. Arcades was spawned. There, on stage, are the two sides of Diana, the sensual and the virginal, instead of the two Joves, real and disguised.
The ambiguity and irony which result are typical of the whole opera. No one can be quite sure of anyone else in shape, voice or gender. CavaIli's gods, men and satyrs live in an uncertain, overlapping world where conventional barriers of sex and race are there to be snapped by desire. Jove the god has the misfortune to fall in love with Calisto the mortal, Pan the half-beast wants Diana the huntress, Linfea the reluctant virgin is approached by a baby satyr with only a tiny, tender tail.
Peter Hall neatly sidesteps the possibility of too much comic bawdry, time after time wiping away the broad grin with a touch of carefully devised elegance. The baby satyr turns out to be a topless soprano (most attractively sung by Janet Hughes), with fringes of hair over the sternum and down the spine that would have been immensely titillating to anyone slightly more sophisti- cated than Linfea (a high tenor role taken with great restraint by Hughues Cuenod). I4e allows the occasional baroque touch but for the most part his characters are only too human as they move through John Bury's Arcadian glades and finally up his long stair- case to a frigid starlit paradise.
Janet Baker, whose acting talent has all too rarely been extended on the English opera stage, gives a superb performance as the two Dianas, lasciviously toothy in her Jove role, and restraining her ardour as the true goddess. To hear Miss Baker sing 'Amara servitu% smuggled in from another Cavalli opera I am told, is alone worth the journey to Glyndebourne. Ileana Cotrubas is the pretty Calisto, only too vulnerable in a world she cannot understand; there is the dreamy, waif-like quality Miss Cotrubas brought to her Melisande last year, and the two roles are not dissimilar. lrmgard Stad- ler's steady, firmly focused tone makes her an ideal Juno.
In an opera which is often feminine and feminist the men have fewer chances. But I admired Peter Gottlieb's Mercury, played as an uninvolved Don Alfonso, controlling the action and reminding the audience of his superior intelligence; James Bowman has one of the most difficult roles as Endymion (a counter tenor) and gives it the sort of virility that would have appealed to Diana; Ugo Trama, covered in plumes and godly brocades, is a rich and lecherous Jove.
From the pit came sounds of a beauty to match the movements on stage. The score is so quick, so fleeting in its mood; yet it can dominate within a matter of seconds. The ripple of laughter which greeted Juno's descent from the heavens was silenced at once by the majesty of the music she is given to sing. Squabbles about the edition of
Calisto that Raymond Leopard has prepared are so much waste of time when edict° comes to us through Leopard, the ITO and
Peter Hall as an opera to ravish the mind and the senses. Surely that is qu.:te craiugh.
The previous evening the Glyndebourne season opened with a revival of one of the best productions of the 'sixties, the Enriquez Luzzati Zauberflate, firmly anchored in its blue and turquoise fairytale land. The cast is mainly new and strong: an aggressivel■ vindictive Queen of the Night from Ursula Koszut, who will surely be engaged by other houses, an imposing Sarastro from Hans Sotin and a skittishly camp Monostatos from Alexander Oliver. Wielsaw Ochman and Sheila Armstrong, the Tamino and Pamina. might be overwhelmed in a larger theatre, but in this production they match well. Heinz Blankenburg is still on hand as Papa- geno and Reinhard Peters, who made such a poor impression in last year's Don Giovanni. gave the kind of crisp, precise feel to the score that meshed well with this faintly frivolous but always consistent Flute.
Previous page
