Idomeneo
ENO, in rep until 9 July
Lohengrin
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Mozart’s Idomeneo remains, despite the best efforts of its proselytisers, a connoisseur’s piece. For all its beauties and its emotional power, it is a predominantly static work, and one in which one can’t really care all that much about what happens to the central sympathetic characters — think of the Da Ponte operas and of Die Zauberflöte, by contrast, and the point is made. Katie Mitchell, who directs the new production at ENO, ‘places Idomeneo’s timeless dilemma in a contemporary context’, according to the programme. She would. One wonders, first, if Idomeneo’s dilemma is timeless. How many people today promise Poseidon to sacrifice the first human they see if he grants them a safe sea passage? And if it’s a matter of taking Poseidon, rash vows to the gods, and so forth, as metaphors, what are they metaphors for?
Anyway, of course what happens when the curtain rises is that the characters sit on a contemporary sofa, or dine at an immense table, while suited executives and other undesirables, and waiters, shoot into and out of doors at a rate suggesting Feydeau, and to no purpose, except to deliver drinks to the evidently alcoholic principals; Electra is particularly thirsty, and when Room Service appears in Act II she behaves in a way closely modelled on the Duchess of York or possibly of Argyll. By that time, too, couples are shuffling in the background in a vague simulacrum of ballroom dancing. The restlessness around the characters got to the point of inducing hysterical laughter in a fair proportion of the audience, the ones who weren’t silently screaming.
The modality of the production changed in Act III, which was contrastingly still and solemn. But that isn’t the way Mozart’s opera goes, and by then one was reconciled to any pleasures being exclusively musical. Just to emphasise the point: this was the silliest, most irritating production I have seen, even more so than Mitchell’s Dido and Aeneas. Could ENO please not use her any more?
Edward Gardner conducted a spirited account of the score, so far as it allows that, with a curiously very subdued Act III quartet, which was effective, suggesting that the characters are already exhausted by their multiple dilemmas. Thank God Gardner dispenses with the dancing at the end. The singing is mainly of a high standard, with Emma Bell outstanding as Electra, though she has to play her in so absurd a manner that several of her lines drew guffaws. Paul Nilon, whom I last saw in the title role in a disused rubber factory on the outskirts of Birmingham, is his reliably expressive, hangdog self; and Idomeneo’s son Idamante, well sung by Robert Murray, has a strikingly similar voice, which made the scenes between them the most affecting in the opera. The weak link is Sarah Tynan’s Ilia, produced here as a complement to Electra in an unusual way: soubrette versus tart. Her piping voice does some of Mozart’s lovely music little service, and she and Idamante together seem bound to produce hopeless wimps. The chorus is thrilling, by far the evening’s most exciting contribution, together with a stunning storm at the end of Act II.
In the centre of Birmingham, in Symphony Hall, there was a tremendous performance of Lohengrin last Saturday, with minimal acting, apart from the wonderful imprecations and insinuations of Ortrud. So yet again the most memorable performance of any opera for a long time was not staged at all, and left the audience to do its own interpreting — a sheer blessing. This was a trial run by Andris Nelsons for his Bayreuth debut next month, and suggested that there is a very exciting new Wagnerian conductor on the scene at long last. He took the prelude extraordinarily broadly, but just as I thought it was about to fall apart, it surged slowly on to its vast climax, and we were all locked in the world of this masterpiece.
The CBSO covered itself with glory from start to finish, but even more the CBSO Chorus and Youth Chorus sang their mainly glorious music to overpowering effect. They made a frame into which a decent set of soloists fitted smoothly, though it is remarkable that the title part of this opera can be sung so inadequately with so little damage to the whole. Lance Ryan, who I had gathered is the white hope among Wagner tenors, was as stiff vocally as he was of manner — he entered as if he were being operated by a barely competent puppeteer. Tight-voiced, seemingly unaware of the meaning of what he was singing, his great Narration in Act III was the one serious let-down of the event. That sounds pretty crucial, but the other singers were interesting and intense enough for it to matter less than one might think. Hillevi Martinpelto, no spring chicken, successfully conveyed innocence and vulnerability by the sweetness of her voice, and she was matched by the redoubtable Lioba Braun as Ortrud, a villainess in the grand manner; while Ortrud’s consort Telramund was the (rightly) impotently raging Eike Wilm Schulte. All told it was a triumph — now I look forward to more of the same kind of thing.
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