‘Tell a dream and lose a reader’ was one of Henry James’s most immediately practical if obvious pieces of advice to fellow authors. Dying in 1916, he didn’t have much chance to experience surrealism in its numerous manifestations, and one can’t imagine his responding positively if he had. For the abandonment of memory, of motive, of logic, of any of the categories by which we make sense of experience is gleefully embraced by surrealists — and by no one more thoroughly than Georges Neveux, in his play Juliette, or the key of dreams. It concerns Michel, a man who is so haunted by a song he heard a girl singing through an open window that he returns to the coastal town where he had that experience, only to find that no one there has a memory, that there is a fortune-teller who predicts the past, and more alarmingly that he is elected mayor of the town, only for everyone to forget that he has been. And so on.
To dignify this kind of thing with the adjective ‘Kafkaesque’ is completely to misunderstand that novelist’s achievement, which is to deduce conclusions rigorously from absurd premises. Where there is no memory or motive there can be no people, so nothing to be interested in. The most one can hope for is a series of sensational and almost wholly unrelated incidents that are fun or alarming in themselves.
Voices in St John’s Smith Square tend to acquire a halo, which makes spoken dialogue hard to follow
That is not what Neveux, or Bohuslav Martinu, who unwisely turned the play into an opera, managed to do or even showed any interest in doing. Sometimes, attempting to follow the appalling intricacies of a baroque opera’s plot, I have wished that it had been dispensed with and that the librettist and composer had settled for a series of more or less unrelated arias and ensembles. Julietta has taught me better. I have seen it three times, the first two in Opera North’s admirable production, and now at English National Opera. My first reaction was of boredom and irritation, and since then it has sunk. ENO’s production and performance are just as good as I recall Opera North’s being, which in a way only makes things worse.
Richard Jones, one might think, is the ideal director of this kind of thing, and so it proves, thanks to his and Antony McDonald’s staging. The main feature of the set is a vast accordion, first seen on its side, then in other positions. It sets the right zany tone, but unfortunately the music never shows a trace of genuine originality or inventiveness. Act I is mainly in a minimalist impressionistic mode, while Act II is considerably more lush, sometimes in a way reminiscent of movie scores of the 1930s, when it was written; but quite without their inspired kitschiness. Edward Gardner secures playing of precision from his fine orchestra, and the cast is one to savour, if only it were engaged in a worthwhile enterprise. Peter Hoare does everything possible to make Michel into a character, and such starry performers and veterans as Gwynne Howell, Andrew Shore and Susan Bickley, in multiple roles, ensure that justice is done to the work, so that one can confidently pronounce the verdict: worthless.
I’m not a great fan of precursors, or what Tovey called, in a once-famous expression, Interesting Historical Figures. Bampton Opera, however, is, and I went to its production of short operas by two IHFs at St John’s Smith Square with an open mind. The first work, by Philidor, didn’t do much for me, but the second, by Grétry, is charming and at about 80 minutes doesn’t outstay its welcome. Philidor’s Blaise the Cobbler is a predictable and laborious comedy about a couple who can’t pay the rent, and manage to lock the importunate landlord in a large cupboard. It mainly consists of short arias, written in a lingua franca style of the late 1750s, and gave its singers a chance to warm up for their larger roles in Grétry’s The jealous lover. The same sets were used for both pieces, and, as I’ve said, some of the same singers, young professionals of whom the most notable is Robert Anthony Gardiner, a tenor who acts as well as he sings; and Martene Grimson, a highly experienced artist with an appealing soubrettish voice. St John’s is ideal for listeners to broadcast concerts, which alas it is rarely used for any longer; but if you’re there voices tend to acquire a halo, which makes spoken dialogue hard to follow. Grétry’s pleasant idiom and ready melodic charm (Beecham adored him) are employed in this opera to dramatise a story that is startlingly like The Marriage of Figaro in respect of a surprise in who comes out of the closet, in the literal sense, and even in the pert music which accompanies that. Grétry’s strength seems to be in ensembles, the more the merrier, and I was impressed enough by this performance to want to investigate him further.
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