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.

Rinaldo, Glyndebourne, July 2011

The Siege of Jerusalem in 1099 is represented here by public schoolboys versus St. Trinian’s. Hockey sticks against lacrosse sticks. Super fun, and a rather good background for all the youthful amour and magical manipulations that form the heart of this Handel opera. The main feature of the story is that Rinaldo is in love with Almirena, daughter of Goffredo, aka Godfrey of Bouillon, one of the military leaders of the First Crusade. After the expected success against the enemy, they will marry.

Argante and Armida, all photos by Bill Cooper

Alarmed at the prospect of losing, the Saracen chief, Argante, calls on the sorceress Armida for help, and she promises to remove Rinaldo from the battle. Her girls abduct Almirena, and attract Rinaldo onto a boat to find her, bringing him to Armida’s magic realm. She herself then appears as Almirena, and though she can’t fool Rinaldo she certainly deceives her beloved Argante who admits his passion for this new vision of femininity. This infuriates Armida, who finds herself falling for Rinaldo. Confusing perhaps, but it’s a rather clever trick of director Robert Carsen to play the whole thing in terms of schoolboys and girls, along with the odd teacher.

Armida and her girls

Armida herself, wonderfully sung by Brenda Rae, was a stunningly attractive teacher in a tight black rubber dress. Her pretty brunette pupils in their short skirts and fishnet tights also appear in floor length grey gymslips and blond hair, and at the beginning are clad in black robes and veiled in niqabs. Magical transformations are part of the plot, and their appearance with blond hair matched that of Almirena, who was charmingly sung by Anett Fritsch — she replaced Sandrine Piau whose absence was due to an injury. Armenian mezzo, Varduhi Abrahamyan made a very handsome Goffredo, with Sonia Prina as an excellently schoolboyish Rinaldo. Ms. Abrahamyan sang beautifully, gaining strength during the performance, and Ms. Prina exhibited a fine heroic timbre.

Tim Mead as Eustazio

Goffredo’s brother Eustazio was strongly sung by counter-tenor Tim Mead who fitted the role to perfection in this production, looking very much a sixth former. A second counter-tenor, William Towers sang well in the relatively minor role of the Christian magus. Countering this range of soprano to contralto voices is the bass role of Argante, superbly sung here by Luca Pisaroni. In the orchestra pit, Ottavio Dantone provided excellent direction to thirty musicians from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conducting and playing the harpsichord.

Rinaldo and Armida

This was Handel’s first Italian opera for the British stage, performed in 1711, and though there was a revised version in 1731, this was the original. It’s hugely enjoyable, and Robert Carson’s production was full of surprises and clever ideas. I loved the chalkboard drawings and maps that altered in a magical way, I loved the designs by Gideon Davy, and the subtle changes in lighting, designed by Carsen himself along with Peter van Praet. What the director has done, above all, is to give enormous clarity to this fantastical story, loosely based on Tasso’s sixteenth century epic poem Gerusalemme liberata. The modern setting provides a fine background on which to play the conflicting emotions and amorous desires of the participants, which after all form the main point of this delightful opera.

Performances continue until August 22 — for details click here.

Ariadne auf Naxos, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Feb 2009

When this started, silently, with dancers in practice togs marking steps on stage, I thought it might be another disaster, like Salome the night before. But then an orchestra came in, and by the end I was in tears. Fortunately the applause went on for ages, allowing plenty of time to recover and cheer.

This imaginative and coherent production by Robert Carsen sets the opera in modern times, complete with a mobile phone at one point, and it’s the only time I’ve seen the richest man in Vienna actually appear on stage. He enters with the Major Domo and they take tea, watching the dancers practicing. When the Major Domo finally speaks he is the impresario ordering the entertainments to take place as he and his master desire, and things take on a very realistic feel. It gradually builds until Zerbinetta, gloriously sung and acted by Jane Archibald, charms the composer, beautifully portrayed by Ruxandra Donose, persuading her to go ahead with the farce that’s been ordered. This dialogue took place against a black backdrop at a 45 degree angle, with lighting from below focusing on the characters, and it provided a very effective turning point to events. After it was over the composer came into the auditorium, made her way along the front row, handed a copy of the score to the conductor, and went to the corner of the stage to follow events. A spot stayed on her for the rest of the performance.

With no interval, the second part went straight ahead. The performers were in black, except for some funny nonsense with wigs, masks, and changing clothes by Zerbinatta’s followers, and the dancers from the silent prologue reappeared in several ways, with the men doing a charming number with Zerbinetta. At one point she appeared in the auditorium and went to hug the composer, cementing the rapport they’d found at the end of the first part. Finally Ariadne and Bacchus sang in front of a completely white background, Zerbinetta crossed the stage with her final comments, the curtain fell, and as the last notes came out of the orchestra, the composer reopened the curtains to enter a completely blank stage. The audience were so stunned that the applause took a while to start. As soon as it did, the dancers came on to lift the composer and carry her forward to celebrate the success of her composition.

Ariadne was well sung by Violeta Urmana, Bacchus by Roberto Sacca, and I found Matthias Bundshuh particularly good as the Major Domo. The orchestra played with clarity and emotion under the excellent baton of Jacques Lacombe. This was a great performance of Ariadne.