I Capuleti e i Montecchi
Royal Opera
Education Double Bill
Glyndebourne
Of all the painfully premature deaths of composers, there can’t be any doubt that Schubert’s is the least endurable. Shatteringly great as his finest works are, one can envisage him striking out on new paths and taking his place beside his adored Beethoven. Mozart is the other most obvious candidate in this macabre competition, but he composed so many supreme masterworks, and there is even a sense of completeness about his oeuvre which there isn’t about Schubert’s. I imagine few music lovers, outside the highly specialised group of bel canto fans, would nominate Bellini even in the first ten, but it always strikes me, witnessing the giant strides he made in the course of a career that ended when he was 33, in 1835, that the impressiveness of his last work, I Puritani, is so much greater than that of any of his previous ones, including Norma, wonderful as that is, that if he had gone on for a few more years he might not only have been the greatest Italian operatic composer, but he might have realigned the position of Italian opera vis-à-vis the musical traditions and practices of other countries. One can certainly imagine Wagner’s being far more influenced by him than he was able to be in the light of what Bellini actually achieved.
I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Bellini’s version of the Romeo and Juliet story, comes from five years before his death, and on the rare occasions when I have heard adequate accounts of it I have felt that its finest passages are not only dramatically masterly, but that the music which conveys the drama is so individual and so moving as to put Bellini into quite a different class from his contemporary countrymen. On the other hand, the weak passages are as routine, almost, as much Donizetti. The heroic side of his music was developing more slowly than the lyric-melancholy and ecstatic sides. There is notable progress in Norma, and in I Puritani he is getting all the way there. But in Capuleti there is, beginning with its perfunctory, endlessly forgettable Overture, altogether too much generic bellicose noisiness, and that recurs in the confrontational scenes later. What we go to it for is the scenes for the lovers, and they can rarely have been more poignant or more nearly joyous — Bellini is careful to deny them any real present joy — than the pair in the latest revival of Pier Luigi Pizzi’s 1984 production at the Royal Opera, but so far as I remember hardly changed, by Massimo Gasparon. Since I developed a severe migraine during Act I, I had, agonisingly, to leave in the interval — I shall be returning — but I had already been bowled over by the Romeo of Elina Garanca and still more by the Giulietta of Anna Netrebko. Even more than the excellent pair on the 1984 recording, Gruberova and Baltsa, these two have voices which blend in a way that provides a unique sensuous, almost erotic experience. With the characteristically sympathetic conducting of Mark Elder this resulted in some of the finest music-making at the Royal Opera for a very long time. The rest of the cast, none of whom has especially distinguished music, didn’t suggest that they would have done a lot with it if they had had. The settings, austere and statuesque, and the costumes which chime in with them well, are just what this opera needs. There is grandeur and passion in Bellini, but it is almost concealed by a pervasive sombreness, which this production catches.
Glyndebourne did its duty on a freezing evening last week — the opera house was as cold inside as out — and hosted an Education Double Bill in which many children and parents, carers, etc. took part. There were two 40-minute items, the first of which gave little pleasure, though it is a collaboration among eight UK opera companies, and so will appear nationwide. Called On the Rim of the World, the music is by Orlando Gough and the lyrics by Jehane Markham. Most of the huge chorus enunciated so poorly, and anyway didn’t sing out, that this piece ‘about going to bed, and all that that implies’ was hard to discern. Perhaps more confident performers elsewhere will make a more positive impression. After the interval spirits were raised sharply, and immediately, by a kind of choral opera A Shadow Awaits, with music by John Barber and James Redwood, and words by various groups of schoolchildren responding to Hansel and Gretel — the story, though the gorgeous opening tune of the overture from Humperdinck’s opera is quoted in full, so he should be credited, too. The result is 15 attractive songs, this time delivered with far more confidence, with Rebecca Askew as the evidently inspiring Musical Director. The thread of the narrative was projected, and Ciara Hendrick was Mother and Witch. Though this idea of collaborative music making is still embryonic, this constituted a promising start.
Comments