The Death of Klinghoffer, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, February 2012

This opera has sparked controversy at its first staging in London. Why?

All images by Richard Hubert Smith

The essential story is that in 1985 an Italian cruise ship at dock in Alexandria was hijacked by four Palestinian terrorists, who seem to have had a confused idea about freeing prisoners in Israeli jails. Many of the people on the cruise were away at a tour of the pyramids, leaving mainly women and children on board, along with a 70-year old American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer in a wheelchair. The terrorists ended up negotiating some kind of deal for landing the ship in Syria after shooting Klinghoffer in the back and dumping him and his chair overboard.

Klinghoffer and wife

The opera itself, created by John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman, serves to remind us of an unedifying spectacle in the recent history of terrorism, and the anti-semitic remarks made by the Palestinians surely do not reflect the opinions of either composer or librettist. The production by Tom Morris, with sets by Tom Pye, hews closely to the concept embodied in this creation, but does the whole thing work?

Five years ago I saw a rather lovely Adams opera called  A Flowering Tree, based on an old Tamil story, a far cry from the days when he went out of his way to tackle political issues. Nixon in China was wonderful, and Klinghoffer and Dr. Atomic have been acclaimed by some. Part of the problem with Klinghoffer may be that Alice Goodman delivered her libretto in pieces, the choral parts first, and as a result the whole work is structured around six choruses, making it a cross between an oratorio and an opera.

The choral pieces are conceived in pairs, like the days of creation in the first chapter of Genesis where days 1, 2, 3 are paired with days 4, 5, 6. Here though the first pair, the chorus of Exiled Palestinians and chorus of Exiled Jews, comes in the Prologue. The Ocean chorus and the Night chorus end scenes 1 and 2 of Act I, and their counterparts, the Desert chorus and the Day chorus end scenes 1 and 2 of Act II.

Conducting by Baldur Brönnimann brought out the beauty of these choral passages, which form the musical strength of this work, and some of the solo performances came off well, particularly Alan Opie as Klinghoffer. Richard Burkhard gave a strong performance as the principal terrorist and Jesse Kovarsky did a nice dance number to complement his singing as another terrorist, but the strength of Adams’ creation is musical rather than theatrical.

Jesse Kovarsky in the dance number

Video projections by Tom Pye helped this rather static opera, sometimes showing the wake of a moving ship, sometimes the background to the choruses, and perhaps a semi-staged version in somewhere like the Festival Hall would work well too. But certainly the production fitted the opera, unlike the Rusalka now playing at Covent Garden.

Performances continue until March 9 — for details click here.

The Damnation of Faust, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, May 2011

This is ostensibly a French opera sung in English, though it’s not really an opera but a légende dramatique by Hector Berlioz — a musical and vocal canvas on which a clever director can paint his own picture. And this is exactly what Terry Gilliam does by turning the whole thing into a history about the rise of Nazism in Germany from World War I to its expression in the violent anti-Semitism of 1930s and eventually the death camps of World War II.

Faust and Mephistopheles in the cube, all images Tristram Kenton

It all starts with a spoken prologue by Mephistopheles in which he talks about the desire to unlock the secrets of life saying, “there will always be a Faust”. Referring to a struggle, he then intones “My struggle translates in German as Mein Kampf“. This obvious reference to Hitler out of the way, he then seats himself stage left as Faust with his spiky orange hair hikes in the mountains carrying a massive cubical burden from which he opens out a large chalk-board replete with mathematical mumbo jumbo. He then meets Teutonic figures from German myth, but this is all just prologue, and as we watch Gilliam’s story unfold we are presented with one clever stage idea after another. For example towards the end, when Faust and Mephistopheles ride off on black horses to save Marguerite — who in this production has been transported to one of the death camps — they ride a World War II motorbike and sidecar, appearing to race across the front of the stage as the night-time scenery flashes past behind them. In the meantime we have been presented with high and low points from German history in the 1930s: the callous brutality of the brown shirts, the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin with Leni Reifenstahl’s wonderful moving images of divers, the yellow stars for Jews, the horror of Kristallnacht in November 1938, and the transportation of Jews to concentration camps.

The journey to save Marguerite

In case this all seems too much, Gilliam dilutes it with comedy and choreographic invention worthy of a musical, as the blond athletes move in formation and sing in Latin, and the brown shirts perform at one point as if in an operetta. Peter Hoare’s Faust, with his high tenor voice, is costumed as one of them, but always with that frightful orange hair, looking rather like the dog-man he portrayed so well in the ENO’s Dog’s Heart late last year. Christopher Purves by contrast was a commanding Mephistopheles with his sonorous baritone and superb stage presence, and Christine Rice was a beautifully voiced Marguerite. The relatively small part of the student Brander, another brown shirt, was well sung by Nicholas Folwell. Musically this was wonderful, with inspired playing by the orchestra under the direction of Edward Gardner.

The sets by Hildgard Bechtler ranged from open air romanticism of a style to suit Der Freischütz, to utilitarian buildings and their interiors, all superbly lit by Peter Mumford. Good costumes by Katrina Lindsay and clever video designs by Finn Ross helped make this a remarkable staging, yet I feel discomforted by the huge range of production ideas, and wonder if it isn’t all a bit self-indulgent.

Faust and Marguerite fearing crowds outside

Of course, as a musical creation by Berlioz this is not exactly an opera, but more like a cantata, and it failed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1846 during its first performances. Only in 1893 was it successfully staged in Monte Carlo, and now Terry Gilliam has created it anew, using Berlioz’s wonderful music to tell the story of where German Romanticism and idealism took a badly wrong turn, leading to one of the great tragedies of the twentieth century.

Performances continue until June 7 — for more details click here.

A Dog’s Heart, English National Opera, ENO at the London Coliseum, November 2010

It’s 113 pages in my translation — Bulgakov’s novel I mean — and I wondered how it would convert to an opera. But it did, and it works, brilliantly.

The Dog in the Apartment, all photos by Stephen Cummiskey

A Dog’s Heart is a striking exposé of the massive Soviet experiment instigated by Lenin and Trotsky. Bulgakov tells of a senior physician, eminent for rejuvenating the bodily functions of his patients, who picks up a stray dog. The animal, woefully undernourished and mistreated, is ready to die of hunger in the winter snow, but the medical professor takes him back to his apartment and treats him well. When a young man dies in an accident, they harvest his pituitary gland and testicles, and implant them in the dog. The result is a new man, a rude, aggressive, dishonest man who creates havoc. The good and peaceful dog has become a menace to a society that welcomed him but unwisely tried to turn him into something else. It was an experiment with results that its creator had not been prepared for. His life has been turned upside down, and there appears to be no solution.

Professor and Dog

It may sound an unpromising subject for an opera, and I wondered whether the result would convey all the bizarre aspects of the story. But it did! The composer, Alexander Raskatov has created a multi-faceted ‘polystylistic’ score that does justice to the serious nature of the professor, the wild nature of the dog/man, and the insidiously destructive nature of the new regime. Raskatov has not previously been a well-known composer, having spent several years reconstructing Schnittke’s ninth symphony after that composer’s death in 1998, but this opera — his first — will surely put him on the map. It was first produced earlier this year at the Dutch National Opera, and will apparently move to the Mariinsky in St. Petersburg next year. The libretto in Russian by Cesare Mazzonis hews closely to Bulgakov’s original story, and is heard here in translation by Martin Pickard.

The production by Simon McBurney — a collaboration between Complicite, Dutch National, and the ENO — is riveting. There is perpetual action and movement without in any way detracting or distracting from the music, and the puppetry by the Blind Summit Theatre is excellent. The dog comes to life and elicits our sympathy, and the set designs by Michael Levine give just the right atmosphere, helped by Paul Anderson’s lighting and the costumes by Christina Cunningham. I loved the operation on the dog being done by silhouettes, the wacky dance movements by Zina the maid, and the projection designs by Finn Ross. This is McBurney’s first opera direction and I hope he does more.

The new man (left) creates havoc

For those who want to read something other than a mere synopsis of Bulgakov’s magical satire — which was written in 1925 but banned by the Soviet authorities until 1987 — the programme contains an excellent essay by James Meek. He refers to Bulgakov’s ability to shift the narrative perspective, which I think is well reflected in Raskatov’s polystylism, and he gives an excellent summing up of the hubris in the great Soviet experiment, and its comparison to the medical experiment carried out by the professor and his assistant Dr. Bormanthal. As the professor says, “These hands have turned a harmless friendly dog into a monster”. A monster who shouts about his ‘rights’, like a yobbo taunting a respected teacher, and comes out with Soviet expressions such as ‘bourgeois filth’ when referring to cats. What can the professor do about it all? If you haven’t read the book I won’t spoil it, but as the professor says, almost at the end, “Animals revert to their own nature”.

Man becomes Dog again

The music was beautifully conducted by Garry Walker, and the singing was excellent from the whole cast. It was a team effort, and I find it difficult to single out individuals, but Steven Page as the professor carried the role off to perfection. Dr. Bormenthal was well portrayed by Leigh Melrose, Zina the maid by Nancy Allen Lundy, Sharikov the awful man/dog brilliantly played by Peter Hoare, and the dog’s voice was shared by counter-tenor Andrew Watts and soprano Elena Vassilieva, who also sang the cook.

If you want something a little spicier than Covent Garden’s new production of an opera they have not produced for over a hundred years — I refer to Adriana Lecouvreur — then go to this new ENO production. Instead of the violets in Cilea’s plot for Adriana — a late romantic device that doesn’t convince — we have a scientific experiment that serves as a great metaphor for all pseudo-scientific attempts to create a brave new society, and in that sense carries a timeless message. This is the type of production that the English National Opera does very well indeed, and they have excelled themselves. Congratulations.

Further performances are scheduled for Nov. 24, 26, 30 and Dec. 2, 4 — for details click here.