Janacek in a tent
Henrietta Bredin braves the backwaters of Venice for a production of Katya Kabanova Going to the opera in Venice these days is quite a business. Everything that would have taken place at the Fenice (still bristling with scaffolding and shrouded in plastic sheeting) now happens in a big tent in Tronchetto. To get there you have to stay on the vaporetto for one more stop after Piazzale Roma, which feels extremely strange and somehow wrong, as if you're slipping over the permitted edges of Venice into uncharted territory — beyond it there must certainly be dragons. On you go, into deeper waters, past huge looming cargo ships, under a grey concrete fly-over, skirting the big covered fish market, until you arrive at a place that your instinct tells you can't possibly be right. But it is. A bunch of chattering people lugging violin and cello cases get off the boat so you follow them, underneath the toppling yellow arm of a massive crane, across a road that actually has cars driving along it until you spot the lit-up tops of a shiny white tent, looking just like the hard pastel-coloured sugar whorls on top of Iced Gem biscuits.
I was there for the opening night of a new production of Karya Kabanova and had already witnessed a number of mini dramas that always seem to attend such occasions. One of the men's wigs had turned out so badly that the hunt was on for a replacement. The singer helpfully remembered that he had worn a very good wig, which he was sure would offend nobody's sensibilities, in a production in Zurich. This was duly located and sent on its way to Venice. Earlier that morning, however, news came through that it had been re-routed via Rome where, Switzerland not being a member of the EU, it was obliged to go for health and safety checks and rigorous fumigation. The costume designer, Sue Willmington, would have to go to Tronchetto in good time to make sure that it had finally and safely arrived.
Before that, however, she had to visit the costume workshop with a thank-you present for the people who had spent the past few weeks snipping and stitching on her behalf. I followed her down a narrow alley near the Rialto, through a dark doorway and into a courtyard where the stairs leading up to the first floor sparkled with traces of gold and silver thread. Inside was a muted whir of sewing machines and an explosion of colour from the bolts of cloth stacked up to ceiling height — purple and gold damask, shot silk in luscious shades of crimson, saffron and midnight blue. Giant reels of thread were piled up on shelves, dummies were being pinned into calico corsets, panniercd dresses and full-skirted frock coats jostled each other on long rails and in a cramped corner in front of a battered mirror propped against a wall, Stefano, the head of the studio, was busy fitting two skinny girls into matching polkadot outfits. 'Carnival costumes,' he told us later, 'where the real money comes from.'
By the time I got to Tronchetto that evening, the wig had been located, fitted and approved. Nobody was ill, everything was back on course. The tent started filling up with people; Stefano, Sue and David Pountney, the director, were taking bets as to whether one of the violinists in the orchestra would remove her sunglasses for the performance, having worn them throughout rehearsals; firemen with `Vigili del Fuoco' emblazoned in large letters across the back of their donkey jackets mingled cheerily with the crowd, most of them knocking back glasses of prasecco.
The auditorium is impressively spacious, although the sightlines aren't very good unless you're towards the back, on banked tiers of seating. In the stalls, the seats are on the same level as the orchestra, making it difficult to get a clear view of the stage. The performance was due to start at eight o'clock but by ten past there was still no sign of anything happening. A few rows away from me I could see David Pountney, always calm in a crisis, conferring with a harassed-looking official. After a few more minutes there was an amplified announcement: the management apologised but, owing to a slight technical problem, there would be a delay of a further ten minutes.
A number of the orchestral players promptly picked up their instruments and disappeared. Audience members did one of two things; some stood up and segued smoothly back into cocktail-party mode, gossiping and laughing away quite happily; the majority whipped their mobile phones out of their pockets and rang their friends with an update.
Eventually, over half-an-hour late, the performance got underway. Ironically, in a city built on water, in an opera which culminates in the heroine drowning herself, someone, somewhere (everybody blamed somebody else) had forgotten to turn on the tap to fill the large pool which took up much of the fore-stage, around which the action revolved and without which most of the scenic and lighting effects would have gone for nothing.
And what of the real theatre, back in the heart of Venice, burnt to a charred skeleton in January 1996? After seven years of conspiracy theories, legal wrangling and contractual bickering, is there any likelihood of it living up to its name and struggling out of the ashes by December this year when it's scheduled to reopen? Nobody can say for certain. But Stefano, the head of the costume workshop, has a brother who runs a fleet of water taxis, and his best friend is a chef who is in charge of the catering for the party that will be thrown to celebrate that opening. And he says that the menu has already been decided. Which seems like a pretty hopeful sign to me.
Oh, and Katya turned out to be a big success. The public loved it, the critics mostly concurred and I would recommend keeping an eye on conductor Lothar Koenigs, under whose direction that orchestra of laid-back, sunglasses-wearing Venetians played Janacek as if the music were in their bones.
Previous page
