Falstaff, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, May 2012

The production team for Robert Carsen’s new staging of Verdi’s Falstaff received a mixed reception. Why so?

Falstaff in Windsor Forest, all images ROH

This is a co-production with La Scala where it will feature in Verdi’s bicentenary there next year. Carsen has updated the setting of Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor from Elizabethan times to 1950s England, with Sir John and other men in hunting red at the end. Nothing wrong with that, and I found Paul Steinberg’s vast set designs very effective, along with Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s costumes. In Act III the two huge walls that frame Falstaff’s location after his river ordeal open out to reveal a starry sky behind, and Sir John appears on horseback. The horse itself was his neighbour as he lay on a pile of straw earlier in the Act, rising to drink a little wine and feed the horse some small treat. Quite effective, so where was the problem?

Ford in disguise meets Falstaff

The end of Act II was set in Ford’s huge and brightly coloured kitchen, where the contents of the clothes hamper were tipped out of a large window facing the audience, Falstaff himself having scooched out behind one of the counters. Not a brilliant illusion, though passable enough, but before that there was a gratuitous comedic bustle as things were wildly tossed out of eye-level kitchen cupboards, and the assembled men went round the floor on all fours. This was a bit over the top, and comedy is best played seriously. Less can be more, but even that scene did not justify the many boos that greeted the production team.

The restaurant scene

The interplay of the characters was well directed, with Ambrogio Maestri singing well as Falstaff, and playing the comedy with admirable restraint. Here’s a man who’s a bit of a slob and can leave the funny bits to his henchmen, Alasdair Elliot and Lukas Jakobski as Bardolph and Pistol. This duo of the short and the tall was amusing to look at when they stood together, and I loved the small incident in Act I scene 2 when Bardolph came into the restaurant, wiping his hands on a table cloth before picking up a napkin to give back to one of the diners while purloining her handbag. A nice touch.

Verdi’s last opera is a musical masterpiece, started in collaborative secrecy with his brilliant librettist Boito, and Daniele Gatti conducted with great verve and sensitivity, moving things forward with huge effect. Musically this was a delight, and the singers brought the comedy very much to life.

Dalibor Jenis was a stylishly naïve Ford, Joel Prieto a handsome young Fenton, and Carlo Bosi a suitably dull Dr. Caius. The women all did very well with Ana Maria Martinez a charming Alice Ford, Marie-Nicole Lemieux a bumptiously fancy Mistress Quickly, the lining of her coat identical to her dress. Amanda Forsythe was vocally very pretty as Nannetta, and ex-Jette Parker young singer Kai Rüütel sang delightfully as Meg Page. Oh, and Rupert the Horse did a very fine job.

Audience ovations at the end for the conductor and singers, and despite the mixed reception accorded the production team, this Falstaff looks likely to last many years. The fact that the ROH has given us an effective production to such a superb opera is surely welcome after one or two recent duds, and this is part of the World Shakespeare Festival for 2012.

Performances continue until May 30 — for details click here. The final performance on May 30 will be relayed to 15 BP Summer Big Screens around the country, and on June 30 the production will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

Faust, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, September 2011

Covent Garden has a talent for staging nineteenth century operas in sumptuous productions with excellent singers, and this is another fine example.

Gounod’s Faust, with its libretto by Barbier and Carré based on Carré’s earlier play Faust et Marguerite, is loosely fashioned on Goethe’s great work, though it’s hardly Goethe. David McVicar’s production, with its sets by Charles Edwards and costumes by Brigitte Reiffenstuel, all superbly lit by Paule Constable, are wonderfully evocative of the period when this 1859 opera was created. It may be high-brow French pantomime, but many of the scenes are very effective, and Gounod produces some excellent orchestration with a lovely melodic line.

After Dmitri Hvorostovsky sang Avant de quitter ces lieux in Act II the second-night audience roared their applause, and we were treated to glorious singing by an all-star cast. After an unconvincing start as a venerable academic, Vittorio Grigolo sang his heart out as the youthfully revived Faust, and literally bounced onto the stage at the end to take curtain calls. His elegant Marguerite, more debutante than village maiden in this opera, was stylishly portrayed and lyrically sung by Angela Gheorghiu. Add to this the beautiful voice of Michèle Losier in the trouser role of Siebel, and the cast gave a wonderful rendition of the vocal roles, superbly grounded by René Pape as the ever present Mephistopheles, his voice and stage presence giving huge depth to the whole performance.

Conducting by Evelino Pidò gave Gounod’s music just what it needs, and if the stage action is a bit melodramatic . . . well that’s what this opera is, but the whole performance is visually appealing and vocally superb.

The production continues until October 10, though with cast changes for Marguerite and Valentin in some later performances — for details click here.

Lucrezia Borgia, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, February 2011

A mother’s anger leads unintentionally to the death of her adored illegitimate son. Shades of Verdi’s Rigoletto here, where a father’s anger leads to the death of his beloved daughter, but there are strong differences. Where Rigoletto is a physically ugly man with a hunchback, Lucrezia Borgia is a beautiful woman, now in her early forties. It’s a wonderful vehicle for a great soprano, but that’s not how it was played here.

Michael Fabiano as Gennaro, photos by Stephen Cummisky

The director, Mike Figgis has made a film about Lucrezia, and he imports several scenes from the movie into his staging of the opera. The purpose is to give some background from Lucrezia’s early life, which is not in the opera, but the effect was disorientating, like a Renaissance painting with several vanishing points. In fact we were also treated to projected images of paintings in which the figures started moving. This was supposed to give background to the background, but I felt myself in some avant garde Gesamtkunstwerk (mixed languages intended) that was attempting to educate me in the attitudes of the time.

The background to Lucrezia is that she was the daughter of a man who became pope, and the sister of a man who was a psychopath. Both supposedly had incestuous relations with her and she, like a true Borgia, took a delight in causing the death of others. At least that is what the movie showed, but where does this leave the opera?

Alastair Miles and Claire Rutter as Alfonso and Lucrezia

The part of Gennaro, Lucrezia’s lost son, whom she seeks out in the Prologue, was strongly portrayed and sung by Michael Fabiano, and his friend Orsini was beautifully sung by Elizabeth DeShong. Lucrezia’s third husband Alfonso was well sung, though rather woodenly portrayed, by Alastair Miles, and much though I have admired Claire Rutter in other roles, I found her a disappointing Lucrezia who avoided the high notes at the end. As for Lucrezia’s father and brother, who are so prominent in the movie sequences, they are simply not in the opera.

Costume designs of the period by Brigitte Reiffenstuel were excellent, and the sets by Es Devlin were wonderful. I loved the dual throne in Act I, which reappeared in Act II, and I thought the small proscenium arch in Act II, which widened later, showing a stage within the stage, was a clever idea. Lighting by Peter Mumford was very well done, giving a sense of irreality at appropriate moments. Conducting by Paul Daniel lacked a sense of drive, partly perhaps because of the various interruptions for the movie sequences.

The chorus in black cloaks, acting like a Greek chorus, formed a strong background to the drama, reminiscent of the chorus in Rigoletto. That opera is almost always a success, and it would be good to counterbalance it occasionally with Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia, but apart from clever production ideas one needs a very strong soprano, and the music must be played for all it’s worth rather than used as a background, which is what happens in movies.

Performances continue until March 3^rd — for more details click here.

Adriana Lecouvreur, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, November 2010

As I took my seat on the first night a young man said to his neighbour that this was better than Puccini. On the other hand I know of someone who walked out of the dress rehearsal at the first interval saying this was not opera. My opinion falls in between such strikingly different reactions.

Gheorghiu and Kaufmann

Covent Garden has not produced Adriana Lecouvreur since its first performances in 1904 and 1906, not long after the Milan premiere of 1902, so I’m delighted they have now put on such a fine production by David McVicar. Sets by Charles Edwards and costumes by Brigitte Reiffenstuel are complemented by Adam Silverman’s lighting, and the effect was excellent. Add to that two principal singers — Angela Gheorghiu and Jonas Kaufmann, both at the top of their game — who sang the same roles in concert at the Deutsche Oper Berlin last month, and we were all set for the best that this opera has to offer. Gheorghiu and Kaufmann were wonderful — she was dramatically terrific, exhibiting a lovely tone, and he sang like a god. They rose to the heights and parsed the quiet passages with superb control. Their duet towards the end of Act II was glorious, and anyone unfamiliar with opera would surely say, “This is opera”.

So much for the answer to one objection — but is it better than Puccini? I don’t think so. Puccini’s work was brilliantly theatrical, but one cannot say the same for this opera: political intrigue, mistaken identity, love triangles, jealousy, and those violets . . . oh, the violets that appear in Acts I and II, and again in deathly form in Act IV. If one of those ‘Konzept’ directors got hold of this, the flowers might be represented by a figment of the unconscious mind, but this is unlikely to happen because Adriana Lecouvreur is not an opera that attracts a multitude of different productions. I think the libretto cannot sustain an abstract production, but fortunately the music is better than the story. It’s pleasingly melodious, and from time to time it sounds as if it may really take off, but never quite does. That’s just the way it is, and no fault of Mark Elder who produced beautiful sounds and admirable tension from the orchestra. The audience were enormously enthusiastic about the singing, which helped create a buzz and must surely have helped inspire the performers.

Along with Gheorghiu and Kaufmann as Adriana and Maurizio, Alessandro Corbelli brought a wonderfully sympathetic dignity to the role of Michonnet the stage manager who loves Adriana, and acts almost as a surrogate father to her. Michaela Schuster sang beautifully in the part of the jealous Princess who sends Adriana the poisoned violets, and Maurizio Muraro sang strongly in the bass role of the Prince, with Bonaventura Bottone delightfully foppish as his servant the Abbé.

Michaela Schuster and Jonas Kaufmann

A wonderful production with superb singing and beautiful sounds from the orchestra. What more could one want? . . . Well, actually  a few cuts might not come amiss in Act III, which I found tedious. They already cut the Prince’s description of his work as an amateur chemist who has discovered a poisonous powder that induces delirium and death when inhaled, though this at least shows how the Princess gets hold of such a strange murder weapon. I would rather see the ballet cut — the music is hardly on the level of the Dance of the Hours, and it was choreographed deliberately as a mockery of bits of classical ballet, such as Ashton’s La Fille mal gardée, with its ribbon dance and cat’s cradle. In the end it was all about the singing, and I’d be glad to see the abandonment of anything that detracts from that.

Further performances are scheduled for November 22, 25, 27 and 30, and December 4, 7, 10, with Angeles Blancas Gulin taking over the role of Adriana on Nov. 25 and Dec. 10, and Olga Borodina taking over as the Princess on Nov. 30 and Dec. 4, 7, 10. For more details click here.

Lucia di Lammermoor, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, February 2010

This David Alden production for the ENO, originally staged in 2008, has a clarity that allows a striking distinction between Lucia’s beloved Edgardo, and her brother Enrico. He is shown as a very nasty piece of work — a child still playing with his toys, putting his hand up his sister’s skirt, and showing himself to be an immature bully who eventually twists the neck of the mortally self-wounded Edgardo. This is hardly the Walter Scott story on which the opera is based, but the libretto by Salvadore Cammarano cut some of the main characters, namely Lucia’s mother and father, in order to fit the story into a three act opera. The result is usually considered a great success, and it makes Enrico the force behind Lucia’s fatal wedding, against her will, after he has shown her some forged letters demonstrating that Edgardo no longer cares about her. Enrico’s retainer, Normanno who is fully complicit in these forgeries is shown to be a callous rogue when he laughs loudly after hearing the chaplain’s condemnation. Altogether, David Alden has created a particularly malicious take on the story, and it works.

As Lucia, Anna Christy sang beautifully, and looked about sixteen. This was partly helped by her excellent costume, courtesy of Brigitte Reiffenstuel whose costumes gave a strong impression of religious Protestantism, and I liked the bowler hats on some cast members — in particular Normanno — reminding me of the Orangemen in Northern Ireland. Indeed Scott’s original story had this feature, as Lucia’s family were Protestant supporters of William of Orange, while Edgardo’s family were supporters of the Jacobites. But to return to the singing, Barry Banks was a very fine Edgardo, and Brian Mulligan a strong Enrico. Clive Bayley sang very clearly and powerfully as the chaplain, holding the stage with his erect posture, which reminds me that the staging involved people on their knees at many points, making them look small and powerless in this ill-fated drama of love and hatred. This was helped by the set designs of Charles Edwards, which were simple, yet surprisingly effective. With Adam Silverman’s lighting they gave an appropriate air of darkness and decay to the dwelling places of both Edgardo and Enrico.

Of course the singers can only give their best with suitable direction from the orchestra pit, and here we have to thank conductor Antony Walker for excellent work. The orchestra, including a glass harmonica that is used during Lucia’s mad scene, played beautifully. These are performances of Lucia that should not be missed!

Peter Grimes, English National Opera, London Coliseum, May 2009

This superb Benjamin Britten opera was given a terrific performance by Edward Gardner, with Stuart Skelton singing a strongly lyrical Grimes, Amanda Roocroft a slightly underpowered Ellen Orford, and Gerald Finley a rather too young looking Captain Balstrode, whom I found somewhat unconvincing. Felicity Palmer was terrific as the busybody Mrs. Sedley, and Michael Colvin was a beautifully voiced Methodist, waving his Bible. But there were too many Bibles being waved in this rather odd production by David Alden, who has gone out of his way to portray the inhabitants of the Borough as being crazier than we normally think of them. He is also a director who likes to put some off-beat sex onto stage, but I think it detracts from the power of this opera. Auntie admittedly runs a pub that doubles as a whore-house, but her ‘nieces’ were made to be almost mentally retarded victims of sexual abuse, dressed in identical school uniforms, playing with their dolls. They even hit them when Grimes hits Ellen and forces his new apprentice into joining him for yet more fishing on Sunday. Auntie herself was played as a weirdly transgendered woman in a long coat, performed as a sideshow by Rebecca de Pont Davies. That was not her fault, because Alden plays this opera as part musical, rather in the style of Kurt Weill, and some of the weirder scenes in Act III had a feel of Berlin decadence from the 1920s. There was even a dancing sailor from the Royal Navy — what was he doing in this fishing village?

The lighting by Adam Silverman was very effective, as were the sets by Paul Steinberg, who also collaborated with Alden on La Calisto at the Royal Opera House earlier this season. Costumes by Brigitte Reiffenstuel dressed most of the chorus in very dark colours, which was effective, but there were some odd extras, like the animal head for Auntie in part of Act III. Again the director was showing the inhabitants of the Borough as weird, while Grimes and Ellen are more normal by comparison, but I think the story needs no outside help. What it does need is to make the high points as effective as possible, and Grimes’s Act I soliloquy, “The Great Bear and the Pleiades . . .” can have a tremendous impact, but here he delivered it from a sitting position in the pub rather than it being a sudden intrusion from without by Grimes. This might be seen as a small quibble, but I’m afraid this production left me cold, never really driving home the tension, except for the death of the apprentice near the end. But the production aside, what really drove Britten’s masterpiece home was Stuart Skelton, Felicity Palmer, the chorus, and the conductor Edward Gardner. They were the stars of the evening for me.