Simon Boccanegra
Royal Opera House, in rep until 15 July
Manon
Royal Opera House, in rep until 10 July
The Royal Opera’s latest revival of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra is notable above all for Plácido Domingo’s assumption of the title role, that is, his British debut as a baritone. It is also notable for his rapid recovery from serious illness, and his giving every appearance of being in fine fettle. Those combined circumstances made it difficult, at any rate for me, to decide just how artistically successful his transformation, and thus the whole revival, actually was. There had been a great deal of wise head-shaking before about the ill-advisedness of Domingo’s attempting a role which is short on high notes, one of his greatest strengths, even in his later years, and long on notes lower than he has usually been accustomed to singing. Furthermore, the role of Boccanegra, Verdi’s most sustained study of melancholy old age, going with a weary determination to bring peace to warring factions of Italians, of all hopeless endeavours, intersects complicatedly with Domingo’s coming to terms with the end of his career as singer of many of the greatest tenor roles. It would be foolish of a critic to pretend that he could discount those considerations.
By the interval the head-shakers were still hard at it, and one has to agree that comparatively unimportant words or phrases received more than their fair share of emphasis, thanks to the strength, still, of Domingo’s upper register, while the depths of gloom, resignation, anger and so forth were not so fully plumbed as they have been by some of the previous great performers of the role. Yet it would be wrong as well as churlish to deny that Domingo made a great and stirring impression, even if a part of that was due to his being who he is, and the weight of the occasion. He is a master of the stage, as was shown when Boccanegra hears the crowd that has moments before been shouting for his blood change to ‘Viva il Doge!’. Domingo’s shrug and cynical smile as he heard that cry were as eloquent as any actor’s would have been; and a few minutes later, his impassioned appeal for harmony, though it may have lacked the last degree of weight, was so fervent and so superbly phrased that only a withered critical sensibility could fail to respond to it wholeheartedly. So though Domingo might not be one’s Boccanegra of the ages, his dignity, pathos, and the sheer beauty of most of his singing are surely cause for celebration, so long as that doesn’t encourage him to explore the low baritone repertoire further.
Otherwise this revival is decent without possessing distinction, though Antonio Pappano’s conducting is one of the best things he has done here. Boccanegra’s enemy down the decades, Fiesco, whose daughter Boccanegra loves and has a child by, is taken by Ferruccio Furlanetto, a singer whose merits have always largely escaped me. He has a more gravelly voice now than ever, and hardly seems interested in legato singing, which one had always taken to be the basis of the Italian style. Dramatically he is forceful if unsubtle, but not much subtlety is called for. His grand-daughter, Boccanegra’s daughter, the only significant female presence in the opera, is sung by Marina Poplavskaya in the pallid, and sometimes uncertainly pitched, way that we have become familiar with, since she is so regularly employed at Covent Garden. The role of Amelia is not strongly defined, and her aria at the opening of Act I has an accompaniment that characterises her maritime surroundings more than it does her.
In fact, Boccanegra is not big on characterisation anywhere, with the exception of the loathsome villain Paolo. More even than in most of his operas, and certainly more than in his other major operas, what Verdi seems most interested in is strong situations rather than in the development of character. Each scene has an emphatic profile, but we hardly develop an interest in the overall story, which is messy and ill organised to a degree unequalled in the Verdian oeuvre. Amelia’s lover Adorno, sung with ardour and excitingly tight tone by Joseph Calleja, is nothing more than the occupier of the required niche, a vaguely sympathetic figure for Amelia to be in love with, and for Boccanegra to pass on the dogedom to with his dying breath. The hateful Paolo, most vivid of the main figures, is performed with intensity and firm tone by Jonathan Summers, who made his debut with the company in 1977, but remains one of their best comprimarii. So was it a great evening? It was an evening of powerful feeling, and, as Boccanegra’s strength ebbed in the last act, one had the sense of being present at an historic occasion.
The Royal Opera tends to conclude its seasons these years with an orgy of revivals and the odd new production, and this year, as last, they have been mainly highly impressive. Massenet’s Manon is above all a major triumph for Anna Netrebko, who takes the title role with utter and justified confidence in her ability to do justice to all its aspects. This is the most dazzling performance I have seen even from this phenomenal artist, whose achievements match her reputation.
I read an interview with her in which she said she was going to play Manon as a ‘wicked’ character, but this suggests, what one might find a little surprising, that Netrebko has a rather prim view of things. For she plays Manon just as she should be presented: there is no place in the action where she can be described as anything more than unwise, and her unwisdom isn’t to be wondered at, destined as she is at the beginning for a convent, for which she doesn’t at all have the right temperament, and whisked away to lead a life of shallow pleasure, for which her temperament is exactly suited. Massenet has in her a figure whom he can delineate with complete sympathy, as he doesn’t, so far as I’m aware, in any of his other operas, not even the touching Don Quichotte. He gives Manon great and numerous opportunities, which Netrebko takes up with full realisation of what can be made of them, and of the fact that she has all it takes.
The same can be said for her Des Grieux, the thrilling young Italian tenor Vittorio Grigolo. He has the looks, acting ability and above all voice to give this rather insipid character some of the testosterone that Manon craves and deserves. They make a great pair, which adds to the misery we feel as her sticky end approaches. Pappano conducts with a zest which some irritatingly tasteful conductors abjure in Massenet, though he lacks the specifically Gallic rubato which this score ideally needs. The production, by Laurent Pelly, and the sets, by Chantal Thomas, are odd but failed to detract from the pleasure of the evening, though I had the strong feeling that it is just this pair of singers, and no others, that would lead us not to mind.
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