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Friday 18 July 2008

Iron Lady

Macbeth
Opera North

Punch and Judy
Young Vic

The Minotaur
Covent Garden

Don Giovanni
English Touring Opera, Cambridge

What has amounted to Birtwistle month for me continued with a second production of his brilliant, and in the opinion of many best, opera Punch and Judy. This was the second, too, of ENO’s collaborations with the Young Vic, and drew the kind of audience that the operatic suits make all their noises about. Where WMC’s production at the Linbury was predominantly dark and unsettling, as I think the work is, ENO’s was a riot of colour and of casting. It was in fact an all-star cast in a show which hardly needs any — but they were marvellous, though whether, under Daniel Kramer’s direction, they led one deeper into this extremely complex work, or created a surface so dazzling that one hardly cared what might lie underneath, is an unsettled issue. Bright circus lights revolved above us, we were entranced by the exuberant costumes, the added dancers, the ceaseless ingenuity. Punch was Andrew Shore, Bayreuth’s current Alberich and the most effective member of its Ring cast, but here he was in more genial mood, however much baby-burning and general bashing he indulged in — his enjoyment of what he was doing made him more of a rogue than a villain. Gillian Keith’s Pretty Polly, periodically appearing as a kind of manic kitschy vision, was again enormous fun but didn’t encourage one to think along the richly suggestive lines indicated by the librettist Stephen Pruslin, about Punch being the proto-opera before and behind all actual ones. If the work were done more often, such a pyrotechnic version of it would be great; as it’s a rarity, it needs more of the WMC’s type of account.

I revisited Birtwistle’s new opera The Minotaur at the Royal Opera, was just as impressed as I was on the first night, and while I admit that there’s much about it that remains obscure, that is equally the case with much of the greatest art. What I did mind, as I did in Punch, was the deplorable lack of clarity in pronouncing the words. Christine Rice sings Ariadne fabulously, but without surtitles one would be lost. This is more of an English malaise than a German or Italian one, and vocal teachers at the opera schools should direct their whole attention to it until things have improved. The Theseus of Johan Reuter, possessor of an excellent voice, was also vague in enunciation, but he is a Dane, and the figure itself seems pretty undercharacterised. The theatre was full, and we must hope for a revival as soon as that is possible — if only because John Tomlinson can’t go on for ever, and the part is unlikely to be incarnated so fully again.

I was only able to see Don Giovanni in English Touring Opera’s visit to Cambridge. As usual Michael Rosewell’s conducting was admirable; the staging was tolerable, the female singers rather good. But with the male singers, Leporello and Don Ottavio in particular, I’m relieved to have no space to deal.

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