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Enchanted forest

Michael Tanner

Wednesday, 26th November 2008

Hänsel und Gretel
Royal Academy of Music

Jenufa
Birmingham Hippodrome

Pelléas et Mélisande
Sadler’s Wells

At the Lilian Baylis Studio at Sadler’s Wells, Independent Opera, which supports young singers early in their careers, put on an orchestrally reduced version of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, the orchestration the work of Stephen Metcalf. Whatever its merits, the main thing was that in that small space the opera came across with great force. It’s hard, always, to rid oneself of the idea of Pelléas as a twilit piece, whispered by orchestra and singers alike. That view couldn’t survive five minutes of this production, in which the performers, both the singers on the two ramps that were the stage and the orchestra in its Nibelheim, were so close as to seem noisy, giving the impression that Wagner used to be accused of, of constant overdrive. That made it hard to judge Metcalf’s success, since the orchestra sounded so unlike what it does usually, for that reason. The singers’ youthfulness — Mélisande appeared to be the oldest — was not disguised, making Arkel, Golaud and Pelléas seem the same age; even ‘le petit Yniold’ seemed a worrying case of delayed puberty. Yet such is the power of Debussy’s transformation of Maeterlinck’s trying drama that the opera made a quite unusual impact, not only stronger than usual, but of a different kind. And these singers, whom I regret having no space to mention, were, at any rate in this environment, most striking, with the secure support of the conductor Dominic Wheeler. As with Hansel, it went to show that you can have a great time operatically in London without needing to spend a lot of money.