As I descended, then descended again, then again, to get to my seat in the subterranean, uncomfortable Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House, I thought gloomily of the number of miserable evenings I have spent there, and reflected that Philip Glass’s In the Penal Colony was probably all too apt a name for what I was about to experience.
As I descended, then descended again, then again, to get to my seat in the subterranean, uncomfortable Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House, I thought gloomily of the number of miserable evenings I have spent there, and reflected that Philip Glass’s In the Penal Colony was probably all too apt a name for what I was about to experience. Who could read Kafka’s perfect and terrible tale without feeling that there was nothing to add, that any attempt to make it into a drama or musical enterprise would be impertinent and de trop? In the event, this 80-minute realisation, put on by the enterprising Music Theatre Wales, was gripping, though it is still a watering-down of the original.
A major difference is that while Kafka merely reports everything in his invariable deadpan way, including the conversations, leading one to speculate on what reactions he thinks he might elicit, the Visitor, as he is called in this adaptation, is himself semi-narrator as well as semi-participant, and one does feel the action through him. On the first night Michael Bennett, who played this role, sang mainly too loudly, and since he, like the other singing character, the Officer, performed by the excellent Omar Ebrahim, was amplified, he sounded both aggressive and largely incomprehensible. Meanwhile, the onstage string quintet that provides the accompaniment did what Glass’s accompaniments always do, rising only towards the conclusion to a near-frenzy.
In this gruesome tale, the elaborate machinery, called ‘the Harrow’, described of course in loving detail by Kafka, is used to imprint on the body of the Condemned Man (silent role, brilliantly played by Gerald Tyler) the command against which he has offended, drawing copious blood as it does so; though the victim remains ignorant of what his crime was. The zealous Officer realises that he himself is outdated, and submits to the penalty instead. The Visitor goes off in a ship.
I suspect that a considerable part of my non-boredom was accounted for by wondering how Glass and his librettist Rudolph Wurlitzer would stage the tale, and feeling that they hadn’t done a bad job: but still that the job didn’t need doing. And without presenting episodes that would simply be too disgusting or horrific to bear, what we have is something less appalling, and less thought-provoking, than the original, though it still has a fairly powerful effect. Dedicated Glassians might feel themselves short-changed by comparison with the vast stretches of his more famous operas, but I was content to leave it there.
Far more tedious, to my incredulity, was Welsh National Opera’s new production of Fidelio. The only interesting question it raises is how something so manifestly inadequate to Beethoven’s masterpiece in all respects could possibly have been allowed to get this far. And this from the company, and the conductor who three months ago covered themselves with glory with their superb Meistersinger, a far more elaborate and tricky work. Reading the director Giuseppe Frigeni’s answers to questions in the programme, I was already cringing: ‘The approach is more choreographic; it’s closer to ballet …I ask [the singers] to be in touch with the way their bodies react to the music, how it makes them stand, how they fill the space around them.’ When the overture begins — an unusually vehement if coarsely played account — we have the main characters moving round the stage, at the side of which is a huge, spotless, stainless-steel cage with the prisoners inside, though it requires no effort for them to leave it. The characters light candelabra, to no purpose. While Jaquino and Marzelline are having their opening row, Rocco sits in, though takes no notice. In general no one takes any notice of anyone else, much. They merely stalk one another. Even at the climactic moment of the action, when Fidelio/Leonore cries, ‘First kill his wife!’ and draws a pistol on Pizarro, all she does here is lay a hand on his chest.
The most egregious fault, however, is the elimination of almost all the dialogue: about ten lines remain, so nothing provides continuity or narrative drive. Even the moving melodrama (in the strict sense), as Rocco and Fidelio descend to Florestan’s dungeon, is truncated. For any lover of the work this dialogue is treasured in every word; for anyone not knowing the opera, the omission leaves nothing but a series of unrelated arias and ensembles. And if that’s not bad enough, most of the singers seem to have given up hope. Lisa Milne is a lovely motherly or sisterly singer, but absolutely no Leonore, and her voice is far too small for this heroic role, while her clothes are beyond description. The best singing comes from the Rocco of Clive Bayley and the Florestan of Dennis O’Neill, unsubtle but forceful and intense. That is almost by the way. The only thing to do is scrap it and start again, showing some signs of respect for Beethoven’s genius.
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