Considering how close, if mysterious, the links are between being gay and loving opera, it could seem surprising that there are almost no operas explicitly on gay subjects. Many of Britten’s operas heave with homoerotic subtexts, but his only opera to come out is his last, Death in Venice, and that’s paedophiliac. Tippett, always wackier and more courageous, has a gay couple in The Knot Garden, but they’re tangential. There is Harvey Milk, but that is best forgotten. Perhaps it isn’t so surprising, since what seems to appeal most to the gay sensibility is the suffering diva, suffering preferably both in life and art. Hence the uniquely high — and deserved — ranking of Callas, whose life was wretched and whose repertoire in her great years was almost exclusively 19th-century Italian, where there is the largest concentration of mad or dying women.
Still, it seems a good idea to try adapting one of the great standard operas, and clearly the one to go for is the rampantly straight Don Giovanni. That is what the distinguished playwright Ranjit Bolt has done, producing a clever and witty set of lyrics, which sound well even in the cavernous spaces of the main space in Heaven, London’s most famous gay club. The book, that is the complete text and adaptation of Da Ponte’s plot, is by David Collier, and is intended to be a critique of consumerism and the commodification of sexual partners: but obscurely that is blamed on the then Mrs Thatcher, whose image and voice open and close the opera, and seem to me quite irrelevant. Late capitalism may be to blame, but she hardly invented that.
The Don retains his sex, or gender if you prefer that: all the other characters reverse theirs, even the Commendatore, who becomes Petra, the mother of Alan (Donna Anna). That particular swap is a mistake, I think, since so much of the confrontation at the end depends on two voices in the same register battling it out. The other transpositions go extraordinarily well, and particular triumphs are the great Act I quartet and Act II sextet. There is a small orchestra, of ten superb players, and the conductor, who seems not to be named, achieves feats of co-ordination with the singers, who may be anywhere on Heaven’s dance floor. The idea is that the action should move around and so should the audience; but since on the first evening the place was packed (we stand throughout) no circulation was possible, so that anyone of average height wasn’t going to see a lot of the goings on.
It was, even so, an exhilarating occasion, especially if, like me, you have seen half a dozen Don Giovannis in the past few months. How it strikes neophytes is an interesting question; but the reception was enthusiastic. The cast of young singers was mainly impressive, though Don Giovanni’s victims tended to have better voices than their betrotheds. Don himself has been hard at it in the gym, so was able to strip to the waist with impressive results. As far as the action goes, it is positively decorous compared with the standards set by contemporary European directors; the text contains a few expletives. The opera has, wisely, been severely but ingeniously cut, though Zac (aka Zerlina) is awarded both his lovely arias, which he sings in unremitting fortissimo.
The New York Met’s season of HD Live relays has regrettably come to a close; but next season, of which we were given a foretaste, looks most promising. The last two operas of this season were two of the most celebrated torturings of women, Massenet’s Manon and Verdi’s La Traviata. I have tried hard to enjoy Massenet’s most famous operas, but I just can’t succeed. I find them padded, addicted to dramatic irrelevance, happy to stick to stereotypes, and, worst of all, musically patchy. The Met does its best to divert notice from these failings by indulging in vast heavy sets, which take ages to move — though we in the cinema get the opportunity to see how efficiently the huge operation of changing sets is conducted.
The Manon was Anna Netrebko, delightful, though her voice is hardening, and she made an unconvincing ingénue. She is an artist one can warm to — thousands do — but when, a week later, we saw Natalie Dessay as Violetta we were powerfully reminded of what real identification with a role is like. Dessay is no longer young, and has a presence reminiscent of Piaf. Her voice is not very beautiful, and if it were she would make sure that much of the time one didn’t notice. Truth is her aim, and seeing her as Violetta was a wrenching experience.
Willy Decker’s production, outrageously unorthodox by Met standards, was helpful to her in some ways, not at all in others. Her antagonist, Germont père, got a heavily self-regarding performance, adored by the Met audience, from Dmitri Hvorostovsky, his aria creamy and meaningless. Fabio Luisi conducted with distinction — one of his 20 evenings in the Met in the past month. He is usually fine; but Dessay is more than that, she is the greatest singing actress of our time.
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