Julietta, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, September 2012

Dreams or Reality? For Michel, a bookseller from Paris, there is something addictive about dreams, but in the first two acts the auditorium lights slowly come on at the end, as if he is waking up. When the third act nears its conclusion the lighting shows some promise of doing the same again, but it suddenly goes dark and Michel is trapped for ever. This clever idea is just part of Richard Jones’s excellent new production of Martinů’s opera.

All images ENO/ Richard Hubert Smith

Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů left his homeland for Paris in 1923 and during his many years there he found Georges Neveux’s recent play Juliette, ou La clé des songes (the key of dreams) a fine subject for opera. He wrote the libretto himself, initially in French then in Czech, and it was first performed in Prague in 1938.

Michel and Julietta

The main protagonist Michel yearns to find a girl named Julietta, and he revisits the small coastal town where he once heard her singing at an open window. The inhabitants seem to live only in the present without memory of the past, and when Michel encounters a fortune teller he finds she doesn’t read the future, only the past … and can also read dreams. Nothing however is quite as it seems, and though Michel shoots Julietta it turns out later she is still alive and there is not a drop of blood.

Surreal it certainly is, and the music is intriguing. Severely spare at times, yet suddenly swelling into glorious melody, particularly in Act II, which is nearly as long as the other two half-hour acts combined. We are swayed and seduced by the harmonies, taken away into dreams, memories and hallucinations, and Edward Gardner in the orchestra pit succeeds brilliantly in bringing out the mystery and charm of this music.

Peter Hoare was outstanding as Michel, with Julia Sporsén giving a fine portrayal of Julietta. Andrew Shore was excellent as the man in a helmet, plus two other roles, and the other soloists, such as Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts and Susan Bickley, all did well and took on multiple roles. An abundance of roles helps advance the action by exchanges between a constantly changing sequence of individuals, avoiding the need for extended vocal solos or big arias, despite the lyrical nature of the music.

The Central Bureau of Dreams

Huge designs by Antony McDonald, helped by Matthew Richardson’s excellent lighting, give a sense of irreality to Michel and the strange people he encounters, and the staging and wonderful conducting make this a compelling evening. Edward Gardner and director Richard Jones have scored another great success for the ENO.

Performances continue until October 3 — for details click here.

The Passenger, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, September 2011

A ship bound for South America in the early 1960s is taking a German diplomat and his wife Liese to a post in Brazil. Steep stairways connect the upper deck of the ship to the hell of 1940s Auschwitz below. Nearly twenty years after the Second World War a guard and a prisoner of the concentration camp are on the same ship — or are they?

The prisoner Tadeusz plays Bach, all photos Catherine Ashmore

The set design was the idea of librettist Alexander Medvedev who died just a few days before the opera’s first staged performance at the Bregenz Festival in 2010. The composer himself, Mieczysław Weinberg, died in early 1996, but incredibly enough the ex-prisoner of Auschwitz who wrote the original story appeared on stage at the end, looking much younger than her 88 years. Zofia Posmysz, a young Polish woman, was one of the few who survived, and after the war she became a journalist. One day in the late 1950s she was sent on a quick round-trip visit to Paris and found herself close to a party of German tourists. She thought she heard the voice of one of the guards in the camp, “And there on the Place de la Concorde I heard that shrill voice yelling again. …  I looked in all directions and searched for her … my heart had stopped beating for a moment”. Back in Poland she wrote a radio play inspired by this incident, but in order that the guard could not get away, she set it on an ocean liner.

Weinberg and his librettist turned it into an opera in 1968, but it remained unstaged until last year. Weinberg was a Pole who escaped to the Soviet Union in 1939, but since his work did not fit the political correctness of so-called ‘Soviet Realism’, it was largely ignored. Musicians however knew it well, and Shostakovich wrote that he would never tire of this opera, “I have heard it three times already and have studied the score. …  [it] stirs the very soul in dramatic terms”. The music is on a subtle psychological level, sometimes represented by a single instrument, and at one point a solo violin is played on stage by one of the prisoners. This addition to Ms Posmysz’s original story is very effective. As she herself recalls, “The worst … was in 1943 and 1944 when huge numbers of Hungarian Jews were transported to the camp. … these masses of people were marched off towards the crematorium … and our excellent orchestra stood in front of the block Kommandant’s quarters and played … all those cheerful pieces [such as] Ich brauche keine Millionen“. This jaunty foxtrot can be heard on YouTube, and it’s a shock to listen and imagine . . . But to get back to the opera, the violinist is commanded to play the Kommandant’s favourite waltz. He knows he will be killed afterwards, so he plays Bach instead, is beaten to death, and his priceless instrument smashed to pieces. Later on the ship, the band plays the Kommandant’s waltz, apparently requested by the passenger who was once a prisoner. The effect on the guard is devastating, and the ghost of the past sends her down from the upper deck to the camp beneath.

The ship’s band plays the Kommandant’s waltz

This fine production by David Pountney with sets by Johan Engels and costumes by Marie-Jeanne Lecca, was cleverly lit by Fabrice Kebour, sometimes from high above, sometimes from below. It’s a superb set with the white of the ship and its occupants contrasted with the darkness of the camp, and the railway tracks. Deft conducting by Richard Armstrong, and excellent singing from Michelle Breedt as Liese with Kim Begley as her diplomat husband, and especially Giselle Allen as Marta the prisoner whose role parallels that of the author herself. It’s a great team effort, with Leigh Melrose and Julia Sporsén as two of the other main prisoners. The story and subsequent opera is a remarkable creation, beautifully staged, and I shall go again.

Performances continue until October 25 — for details click here.

Rigoletto, Opera Holland Park, OHP, July 2011

This was a terrific performance of Verdi’s Rigoletto in a simple but very effective staging. The set was essentially two large shipping containers, one serving principally as Rigoletto’s residence and the other as Sparafucile’s tavern.

Rigoletto after the abduction, all photos by Fritz Curzon

The first scene, of libidinous fun, with oligarchs in black tie and sexy girls in red slit skirts, worked well and never went over the top, and Monterone’s entrance and curse were powerfully done. It’s only a small role, but William Robert Allenby played and sang it for all it was worth. He was in good company with Jaewoo Kim as a stylish Duke with a beautiful voice. His soliloquy at the start of Act II showed real longing, if only of a temporary nature, yet he also managed the insouciance one expects of this libertine. His convincing charm to the ladies made it entirely understandable that Rigoletto’s daughter Gilda, and Sparafucile’s sister Maddalena should want to save his life. These darker characters, Sparafucile and Maddalena, who are willing to bend to Rigoletto’s vengeance were convincingly performed by Graeme Broadbent and Patricia Orr.

Gilda and Rigoletto

Rigoletto himself was brilliantly sung and performed by Robert Poulton. He didn’t overdo the nastiness of this character, as sometimes happens, yet his determination to take revenge came over very well when he makes the fatal mistake of telling his daughter to go home alone, after showing her the Duke’s real character. He also showed the softer side of his own character in dialogues with his adored Gilda, and Julia Sporsén sang her beautifully, very ably portraying this young woman’s emotional state in a virtual scream at the end of Act II when she admits that the Duke betrayed her but still pleads for his pardon.

Maddalena and the Duke

The production by Lindsay Posner, with designs by Tom Scutt, had some unusual and rather effective features. In the tavern scene of Act III, Sparafucile is watching football on television, and when the Duke bursts into La donna è mobile the picture suddenly changes to Pavarotti singing the same aria. The Duke grabs the remote control, presses the off-button and carries on, using the remote as if it’s a microphone — just the right point for a lighter moment. Then in the final scene when Rigoletto opens the sack to find his daughter inside she appears on top of the shipping container that served as their house, giving us a voice disembodied from the dead body in the sack. It’s a clever touch, because it always seems rather odd that Gilda can still be alive in the sack that Sparafucile hands over, let alone having the strength to sing.

Excellent conducting by Stuart Stratford with the City of London Sinfonia, and this wonderful production with its fine cast can still be seen until August 13 — for details click here.