Fidelio
Cadogan Hall
Vita Nuova
Royal Festival Hall
Birtwistle and Benjamin
Linbury Studio
Fidelio is an opera which, in my recent experience, almost always overwhelms me in a concert performance and almost always leaves me embarrassed or indignant when staged. Embarrassed, because the transvestite necessities of the heroine would almost never convince anyone, as Cherubino or Octavian can, or Handel’s galaxy of emperors sung by mezzos. Indignant, because the naïve assumption of the plot, that there is a Providence which ensures that things will turn out well for those with courage and conviction, is simply false, and that is much more manifest when acted out than when only sung. The climactic dungeon quartet is thrilling to listen to, almost always absurd to look at. At the Cadogan Hall last week the new London Lyric Opera did mainly just sing, though with movement; but Pizarro drew a dagger on Fidelio and she responded with a pistol — and it was not effective, because it was clear that all she needed to do was to shoot. Unfortunately the Pizarro was James Hancock, who is behind this whole noble enterprise, but who sloped on to the stage looking rather like a Hitler who was having second thoughts about his policies, and sang with a voice to match. Certainly on the vocal side he didn’t stand a chance against the formidable Fidelio of Elizabeth Connell. Though her voice can be harsh now, she sang her great aria most movingly, as she spoke her lines; and her presence galvanised everyone else.
The Florestan of Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts, most celebrated for his Peter Grimes with Opera North, lived up to all my hopes. Surely here, at last, we have a heroic tenor who has the kind of fervent commitment to his roles, and the means to convey it, that Jon Vickers had. His aria, too, was extraordinarily moving — though the clap-happy audience managed to applaud it despite Beethoven’s evident attempts to prevent that. It was partly the fault of the conductor, Madeleine Lovell, a young director of music from Cambridge, who left a long gap between each item, even though it early became abundantly clear that many members of the audience would clap after any Shakespeare monologue. Her idea of theatricality seems to be to gallop through the music and then stop dead for a break. Her mainly rapid tempi were often exciting, sometimes excessive. She shaped the finales to both acts well, and the closing chorus wonderfully gave the impression that Beethoven felt that, however much rejoicing there has been, more is required. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was on fine, if occasionally slapdash form. It was an exhilarating evening, and one hopes for many more from this young company.
How often I have thought that I had reached absolute zero in operatic terms, and how often a new opera has popped up to show me that even worse things are possible. But I’m prepared to stake my all on Vladimir Martynov’s Vita Nuova being the most terrible opera that ever has been or ever will be written. In his introductory talk in the Festival Hall, Vladimir Jurowski, in charge of the execution, told us that it is ‘music about music’, that it is universal, ranging from plainchant to late Romanticism (read: a large body of strings playing turns very slowly, with gooey harmonies), but managed to abstain from using any evaluative terms about it. Wisely, or his reputation might be in tatters. This is another brand of holy minimalism, desperately reaching for credentials from its associations with Russian Orthodoxy and an assortment of recent outworn devices. A huge orchestra, a trio of choirboys, white-clad and singing excruciatingly while wandering round the Festival Hall, a chorus that constantly regrouped without reason, and distinguished soloists including Mark Padmore and the radiant Tatiana Monogarova, were able to do nothing to prevent — one hopes — this world première from being its dernière, too.
At the Linbury Studio, the Opera Group and London Sinfonietta put on a double bill which, though brief, made for a meaty evening. Actually, Birtwistle’s Down By the Greenwood Side of 1969 has not weathered well. It is clearly closely related to his Punch and Judy which we saw and were exhilarated by last year, but here the aggression against the audience seems less motivated, the point of the intermixing of folk tales opaque. The performance seemed altogether beyond reproach, though the production, using only a ring left over perhaps from a 1970s cycle of Wagner’s dramas, wasn’t helpful. This was 1960s modernism wearing thin, and a stark contrast to the grave mastery of The Minotaur.
But George Benjamin’s Into the Little Hill, though it, too, took a spooky folk tale — ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ — and obscured it, was altogether a more rewarding listen. Where Birtwistle has it in for his listeners, Benjamin can’t help beguiling us, and with two singers as marvellous as Susan Bickley and, especially, Claire Booth, we became eager seducees, happy to be led wherever the composer chose to take us, not even minding, if, at the end, we had no particular idea of where that might be.
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