The Return of Ulysses, English National Opera, ENO, at the Young Vic, March 2011

The return of Odysseus to Ithaca and his faithful wife, Penelope forms the end of the Odyssey, that magnificent epic by Homer. The Latinised version of Odysseus is Ulysses, and this opera by Monteverdi tells of Penelope’s anguish, the shenanigans of her suitors, and the unruly behaviour of some servants. Ulysses returns after twenty years away, looking like a beggar — a trick of the goddess — and his son Telemachus returns after a short sojourn abroad. Father and son recognise one another, and the rest of the story involves various incidents such as the fight with the local beggar, the contest of the bow, the killing of the suitors, and Penelope’s eventual recognition that this really is her long lost husband.

Pamela Helen Stephen as Penelope, all photos by Johan Persson

Hefty stuff for a two-act opera lasting under three hours, including an interval. But this music has muscularity coming up well from the bass, and was beautifully played by the thirteen musicians, under the direction of Jonathan Cohen. The singing was all good, and some of it was glorious, but what didn’t work so well for me was the production. The central glass cage, complete with living room, bedroom and bathroom for Penelope, was fine, but other things were a bit too fussy, and the two large screens showing close-ups were a bit much. Why not use them to show surtitles? That would have been very useful because the diction was variable, and it was hard to catch some of the words.

Some singers, however, had superb diction. Thomas Hobbes as Telemachus, making his ENO debut, was outstanding in this respect, but others were good too. Nigel Robson was excellent as Eumaeus the shepherd, Diana Montague was very clear as Ulysses’ old nurse Eurycleia, and Tom Randle was very good as Ulysses himself. The main character, Penelope was elegantly portrayed by Pamela Helen Stephen, singing beautifully, showing Penelope’s anguish and her charm with the suitors — it was a fine performance.

Tom Randle as Ulysses

The production was by Benedict Andrews, one of several directors new to opera that the ENO has brought in. I approve of bringing in new ideas, but people who have made their names in theatre and film have done so for a reason, and do not always seem to see the sheer power of the music. They sometimes fill the staging with too many good ideas that distract from the main issue. Andrews is a well-known Australian theatre director who also works in Berlin, but I found this to be something of a Konzept production. For example, the goddess — well sung by Ruby Hughes — was dressed identically to Penelope, suggesting an abstract idea that they are different representations of the same soul. On the other hand there’s nothing abstract about having the maid Melanto pull her knickers off, showing stockings and suspenders, then lifting her skirt so that her lover can go down on her, but that was just one incident out of many. There were lots of ideas, food and drink being thrown to show the sorry state of the household, the nasty local beggar urinating on Ulysses — and there really was liquid splashing on him — and Ulysses meeting the goddess in the form of a small bald-headed puppet, which stayed around for the rest of the opera. Then towards the end, Ulysses took a shower in the bathroom, cleaning off the blood. Lots to see, and ponder over, but perhaps so much that it reduced the impact of the music and the singing.

Interesting, however, that the ENO are ready to do productions in smaller venues. The Royal Opera has the Linbury Studio, but there’s more atmosphere at the Young Vic.

Performances at 7:00 pm continue until April 9 — for more details click here. Note that tickets are only available from the Young Vic box office: 020 7922 2922, http://www.youngvic.org

Promised End, English Touring Opera, Royal Opera House Linbury Studio, October 2010

In Shakespeare’s King Lear the fool and Cordelia are never on stage at the same time, and in this operatic version of Lear they are the same character, beautifully sung by Lina Markeby. One might expect an operatic treatment of King Lear to be of Wagnerian proportions, yet Alexander Goehr’s version lasts only one and three-quarter hours, including an interval. Some characters have to be cut, but the nasty sisters are still there, and one of them does the wicked deed of putting out Gloucester’s eyes herself. It’s an intense opera, and the meeting of the blind Gloucester and half-mad Lear is a late focal point.

The simple staging worked well under the direction of James Conway, with designs by Adam Wiltshire, in which the faces of the performers are given an eerie make-up with dark eyes. Throughout the opera all the characters stay on stage, while those not involved in the action stand behind a darkly translucent screen, ready to sing as a chorus when required. The singing was all good, with Roderick Earle notable as Lear, Nigel Robson as Gloucester, and Nicholas Garrett as a sonorously vicious Edmund, well-befitting a man who sang Don Giovanni at Holland Park this past summer.

Unfortunately the diction was poor, probably because the singers had difficulty adjusting to the score, and without surtitles it was not possible to know what was being sung half the time. This is a serious flaw because the words are extracts from Shakespeare, selected by the composer and Frank Kermode, and they’re important. Even with the Aurora Orchestra — well conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth — behind a screen at the rear of the stage, the singers still had to project very strongly to deal with the music, and this may not have helped their diction.

The music itself was intense, as it has to be when distilling the work of a great playwright into a short opera — think of Strauss’s Elektra as distilled from Sophocles by Hugo von Hofmannstahl — but I felt no emotional grip as I do with Elektra’s yearning for Agamemnon in the Strauss opera. I think it’s not an easy play to turn into opera, though several people have tried, most notably a 1978 version by Aribert Reimann, which was produced by the ENO in 1989, but that is a longer work with more scenes. On the whole this seems a bit dull, but may come over better on a second hearing.

Two more performances at Covent Garden are scheduled for October 14 and 16, after which it will tour to the following venues: Malvern Theatres, Oct 21; De la Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, Oct 26; Exeter Northcott, Oct 29; The Hawth, Crawley, Nov 1; Cambridge Arts Theatre, Nov 3, 6; Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Nov 26.