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Thursday 4 December 2008

Birtwistle’s brilliance

The Minotaur
Royal Opera

What is characteristic of this opera, however, is its lack of self-consciousness, the impression it gives, from the start, that it is the result of the necessity of communicating an urgent vision; or, more accurately, of having an urgent vision but only finding out what it is in the course of the work, as perhaps with many of the greatest pieces. For the opera’s heart is in the Minotaur, and he is not allowed to be articulate until the final minutes, by which time he has displaced, in our interest and sympathy, not only Ariadne and Theseus but also all the innocents whom he has raped, killed, left for the fearful Keres to devour. A figure both grotesque and horrific, he is incarnated by John Tomlinson so alarmingly that if I were him I’d be afraid I had become a man–bull myself. His impotent frustrations are conveyed with miserable grunts and kicks in Part I, and his murderousness seems more of an expression of his unwilling beasthood than of his inhumanity. His realisation, when dying, that he is actually no different from other humans in his divided and tormented nature, is the heart of this opera, realised in music whose tenderness is all the more desolating for emerging from the vast preceding orchestral upheavals.

At the opposite extreme is Ariadne, a brilliant portrayal by Christine Rice, rich and ample in voice and now in figure too. The opera opens with a huge monologue for her, as she sits by the rolling waves and meditates on the imminent arrival of the youths-bearing ship. This is an unforgettable beginning, as infallibly effective as any by Mozart or Wagner. Rice brings Ariadne’s many miseries, desires, huge resources of information, to vivid life, so that her disappearance from the work is a great but cunning shock. Theseus is a more shadowy figure, though that is no fault of Johan Reuter, the magnificent Danish baritone. A mere hero, Theseus has nothing to teach us about the human condition.

The other roles are less significant, but no less strongly cast, with a bravura performance of Hiereus, the Oracle, from Philip Langridge. His son Stephen is the director, concentrating on the maximum clarity of narrative line, and working with the designer Alison Chitty to create images that stamp themselves on the mind, to be thought about if not fully understood for as long as one remembers them. But every last sacrificed youth and maiden performs their role with fanatical zest, and the whole is welded together with staggering impact by Antonio Pappano. This is unquestionably his moment of glory. However subject to criticism on many scores the Royal Opera may be, when it achieves this exalted level one wonders whether there is anywhere else in the world that could equal it.

More articles from: Michael Tanner | this section

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