When you see two of the undisputed masterpieces of the repertoire in one week in one of the world’s leading opera houses, competently performed, and remain largely unmoved, you’re bound to ask yourself the question: have I been to these things, and heard them on record, too many times? It is, after all, possible to get tired even of the greatest works if you have experienced them regularly in the same productions, and without any special ‘magic’ ingredients, such as can bring back to life, or sustain, a standard work.
It was a question I found myself asking with special poignancy this week, after seeing two of Mozart’s greatest works in the space of four days at the Royal Opera House: Don Giovanni on Tuesday and Così fan tutte on Friday. Forty or so years ago Don Giovanni was taken by many leading commentators to be the greatest Mozart opera, or the greatest opera tout court, and Così was still a rather controversial piece, quite a few people feeling that the music was too good for the text. Now the position is almost reversed: no one doubts that tutte, and indeed tutti, fan così; while it’s hard to know how to take Don Giovanni, since he is the kind of guy who would be a Men’s Health hero if enough of its subscribers knew who he was.
Probably if you were seeing these Royal Opera revivals for the first time, you would find them, if not striking, at any rate not overwhelmingly tiresome. Francesca Zambello’s Don Giovanni has come round several times since its unveiling in 2002, and some distinguished performers have, in my view, been sunk by it. With ugly scenery, constantly on the swivel, and the fires of hell blazing fiercely at the end, it seems devoid of ideas, and the characters are no more determinate than they ever were.
The Greek conductor Constantinos Carydis took the Overture at an insane pace, so even this orchestra produced some smudged playing, but then he put on the brakes when the action started, and mainly kept them on. The result, for me, was a virtually featureless evening, the most distinguished singing coming from Hibla Gerzmava as Anna, and Matthew Polenzani as her unfortunate betrothed Ottavio. Polenzani sang with uncommon ardour, even if no singing can conceal the fact that Ottavio is pathetic. Gerald Finley reprised the role of the Don, but delivered an understated performance, more convincing in his relationship with his servant Leporello than with the three women with whom he is involved. Finley has always seemed to me to have the makings of the ideal Giovanni, but each time I’ve seen him in the role he has been inhibited. Perhaps the second cast, which takes over on 16 February, will find some conviction. Really it’s time this production was retired.
And I feel the same, only more intensely, about the celebrated Così of Jonathan Miller, with its drab drapes and lack of any kind of atmosphere. Six designers, incredibly, are credited with the sets, where one might have imagined that half that number of scene shifters had just been asked to get some seating onstage. It seems that the idea may still be, as it originally was, to concentrate on the way the characters are dressed, but that too has lost its point.
The male lovers, in their ‘Albanian’ disguise, sport hippy costumes so extreme and grotesque that it’s unimaginable that the girls would take pity on them, however much they appeared to suffer. Actually Charles Castronovo and Nikolay Borchev are a fetching pair in their suits, even in their combats, which makes their transformation into figures of broad farce — dragging the opera with them — all the more irritating. Malin Byström is a moving, mobile Fiordiligi, and Michèle Losier a giddy Dorabella. The whole thing is dominated, though, by Thomas Allen as Alfonso, ubiquitous and hyperactive, inventing new business for himself at each revival, to a distracting extent. Rosemary Joshua makes a suitably subversive and bossy Despina. The performances, vocal and acting, are competent if not memorable.
What made the first night of the revival into something of an ordeal was the ever-slower tempi of Sir Colin Davis. He has been responsible for almost all the most thrilling operatic Mozartian experiences I have had since 1956, when he stunned me with the Chelsea Opera Group in Figaro, and until now has always convinced and compelled me, however much his approach may have changed. All the more painful, then, to report that on this occasion he, like every other conductor, showed that he was capable of an off night even in the works he loves most. There were wonderful things, and the two great duets of seduction went well. But many arias seemed endless, and the characteristic fire and energy that we associate with this conductor, even at slow speeds, were sadly lacking.
Comments