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

Fidelio, Holland Park Opera, OHP, July 2010

Beethoven’s only opera is a plea for justice, an idealistic cri de coeur from a composer who originally wanted to dedicate his third symphony to his hero Napoleon, only to be vastly disappointed when the general declared himself emperor. In this story, Florestan has been secretly imprisoned for two years by Don Pizarro, simply because he had exposed him as a rascal. When Pizarro hears that the Minister of Justice will arrive the next day he decides to murder Florestan and bury him before the visit. That all goes vastly wrong owing to the intervention of Florestan’s wife Leonore, who has been working at the prison under the assumed name of Fidelio.

Florestan and Leonore, photo by Fritz Curzon

Yvonne Howard as Leonore/Fidelio started gently and built up power as the evening progressed, performing well in her role as a man. But what really brought fire to the evening was Tom Randle as Florestan. As soon as he opened his mouth to sing in Act II, we had some real emotion and his voice was a powerful and welcome addition to what had gone before in Act I. At the start of the opera, Nicky Spence had given a rather vicious portrayal of an immensely frustrated young prison warder, Jaquino, desperately wanting Sarah Redgwick as Marzelline, the daughter of Rocco the jailer. She, in love with Fidelio, sang well, more strongly in my view than Stephen Richardson as Rocco, who was engagingly human, but a little underpowered. Phillip Joll sang strongly as the corrupt prison governor Don Pizarro, but portrayed a rather insipid character, not helped by the production where the movements of the guards on his first entrance looked very contrived. The prisoners chorus in Act I was the high point of that Act — powerfully sung.

The prisoners, photo by Fritz Curzon

However, the production’s main weakness was in Act II. When Njabulo Madlala entered as the Minister, foreshadowed by two goons with shades, he had entirely the wrong body language for such a powerful man, behaving more like a police community support officer new to the beat. But what really made this 2003 production by Olivia Fuchs so unsatisfactory was the inconsistency of having microphones and photographers accompanying the Minister, showing an open society, whereas Pizarro can apparently imprison someone for merely personal reasons. Was there a coup? I think the story has been perverted, and if the essay in the programme that mentions Guantanamo Bay reflects the producer’s intentions then this is not the opera it’s supposed to be. Are Pizarro’s prisoners supposed to be terrorists? I think the original idea has been lost in this rather incoherent staging, where the Minister pretended to glug down red wine straight from the bottle, and the nasty prison warder who had beaten everyone with his stick handed round loaves of bread. At the end the audience booed Don Pizarro in true pantomime style.

Fortunately the City of London Sinfonia played well under Peter Robinson, giving Beethoven’s music the serious tone it deserves.

Katya Kabanova, Holland Park Opera, August 2009

This dark and intense Janaček opera is based on a nineteenth century Russian play, The Thunderstorm by Alexander Ostrovsky, that takes place in a village on the river Volga. An excellent essay by Robert Thicknesse in the Holland Park programme magazine describes the background to Ostrovsky’s play as being an “old-fashioned feudal [society] governed by superstition and immemorial custom and ruled by a particular breed of uneducated violent despots from what was known as the merchant class”. This was a Russia quite different from the polite society portrayed by writers such as Pushkin, Turgenev and Tolstoy. The story is essentially very simple. A daunting matriarch called the Kabanicha keeps her son Tichon in thrall to her whim, while emotionally abusing his wife Katya. When Tichon goes away on business, Katya begs him to take her along, as she fears her own attraction to a young man named Boris. The household also contains a young woman named Varvara, the Kabanicha’s foster daughter, who is in love with a man named Kudrjaš. Varvara makes the running in arranging night-time meetings between the young women and men, and when Tichon returns home, Katya cannot bear not to admit her guilt. The opera ends with her suicide, drowning herself in the Volga, after which her husband manages to blame his mother the Kabanicha for driving his wife crazy, and she simply thanks the many people who have come to witness the death.

This performance was a team effort, led with great emotional sensitivity by Stuart Stratford in the orchestra pit. The young men, Boris and Kudrjaš were very well sung by Tom Randle and Andrew Rees, with Patricia Orr very convincing as Varvara, and Jeffrey Lloyd Roberts as Tichon. The Kabanicha was portrayed with calm dignity by Anne Mason, and Katya was beautifully sung by French soprano Anne Sophie Duprels. Altogether a wonderful performance of this gripping drama, which Janaček’s music so ably brings to life. Hearty thanks to the Korn/Ferry opera for putting it on stage with such a fine cast, mainly reassembled from those who were in the production of Jenufa two years ago, particularly conductor Stuart Stratford, and Anne Sophie Duprels who was Jenufa herself.