Glyndebourne
Rodney Milnes
Glyndebourne—no Englishman unmoved that legend reads, because with all our faults it still succeeds. Our faults, note, not theirs. Much serious ink is spilled on the Glyndebourne audience, its stridency and supposed unappreciativeness. Yet people who work there swear that amongst all those bank managers trying to sound like baronets there is a solid core representing the most knowledgeable and discriminating opera audience in the world. I think I believe them: otherwise the performances could never be as good as they are.
One nonsense to be isolated this year is the concept of the after-dinner guffaw. In three of the operas there has been an easy laugh soon after the beginning of the second part: a sodden Falstaff climbing out of the Thames-orchestra-pit, the Figaro Act Three Sextet, and some wild over-playing by supporting artists in Capriccio. The audience is full of wine, the singers know it, the temptation is too strong, we have our guffaw and the music is lost. Then those who are only there for the beer doze off and the rest get on with sharing in some of the world's great opera performances.
It has been a vintage Festival if you forget Pelleas, which is only too easy. The second-. series Figaro reached new heights even for this production; you would have to delve back into the dear dead days of the Ebert version to match it. There were two heroes. First, John Pritchard at the peak of his form: the ever-elegant musicianship coupled with muscularity and strongly dramatic propulsion, a combination that on the right night—and this was emphatically one of them—makes him an unbeatable Mozart conductor. Secondly, there was Michael Devlin's Count. There are many ways of performing and listening to this opera, but in all of them it seems to me the Count is the key figure. If he is a boor, the conflict evaporates. Devlin's Count is young, finelooking, and for all his near-feudal power still unsure of his authority—almost, vulnerable. This man's sins are those of someone
not quite up to the role for which he has been cast in life, and in the drama it is subtly redefined for him with the help of his household.
This moving and finely sung interpretation somewhat overshadowed the new Figaro of Samuel Ramey, a musical young US bass who was less bolshy, more mercurial than Knut Skram. It was a great pleasure to re-encounter Helena Dose's frailly human Countess and the convincingly—though gently—lustful Cherubino of Delia Wallis.
Cosi fan tune, neatly—almost too neatly—conducted by Kenneth Montgomery, returned from last year. Adrian Slack's production, mercifully free of gags though not of laughs, works well, though I was sorry he had cut most of the shock lighting effects that were so startling and provocative last summer. Of the three newcomers, Lillian Watson's Despina, borrowed from the Welsh National, might as well have been borrowed from Salzburg, so utterly idiomatic was her performance. David Kuebler (Ferrando) and Trudeliese Schmidt (Dorabella) slotted neatly into the ensemble with last year's Bozena Betley, Frantz Petri and Knut Skram.
It is dangerous to nurture memories of a great production like John Cox's 1973 Capriccio. Memory plays false, times change. It is still a bewitching evening, and the advantages of updating in terms of emphasising the immediacy and relevance of the subject-matter in this conversation piece far outweigh the few literal Gluck-andCouperin textual problems. But everyone has been up-dating since 1973, and even though no costumier or decorator comes within spitting distance of Martin Battersby, the coinage is somehow debased.
No complaints, of course, about the immortal Elisabeth Soderstrom as the Countess; this uniquely graceful impersonation is soon to be preserved on film. But Kerstin Meyer's Clairon has become almost a caricature of a rapacious actress, Hfikan Hagegard's Count just too eager and boyish, and the shameless playing for cheap laughs by Italian singers and dancers simply irresponsible. 1973's 'creatures of flesh and blood' didn't know they were being funny: someone has told them they were and inevitably they are no longer. The temptation, I repeat, to project textual humour visually to a supposedly uncomprehending audience is enormous. We are the problem at Glyndebourne. Perhaps the long-awaited English language touring production will iron that problem out, There were only two new singers. Dale Duesing's brooding Olivier was entirely successful, while Ryland Davies's Flamand seemed a little too pleased with his compositional prowess. Overall disappointment was minimised by Andrew Davis's conducting of the ever-responsive London Philharmonic Orchestra, radiating warmth, marking detail, never sinking to overstatement. But I was way up on cloud nine in the interlude and finale, and that is really enough to be going on with.
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