Mixed messages

The Enchanted Island is a baroque concoction at the New York Met which has been widely touted and last Saturday was relayed worldwide to cinemas, a transmission that went less smoothly than any I have seen before, with some sharp variations of volume and a temporary complete breakdown. On the whole, the sound level is very high, as if everyone is singing at the top of their voice; while it’s nice to have ample volume, it is clearly and disconcertingly a misrepresentation. Danielle de Niese, for instance, has a small voice which just about fills Glyndebourne’s house. Here she sounded like a Wagnerian on the make, with coloratura sounding like ‘Hojotoho!’. That could mean severe disappointment, or maybe relief, for anyone who hasn’t encountered her in the flesh and gets to do so.

De Niese was playing the pivotal figure, Ariel, in this adaptation by Jeremy Sams of some of the plot of The Tempest and some of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Sams’s idea was that there isn’t enough love interest in The Tempest, so he has Ariel incompetently shipwreck the wrong boat, on which the two pairs of lovers from Dream are on a honeymoon cruise. When they arrive on the island there follows a lengthy series of non-recognitions, mistaken infatuations, and the other ingredients which make me find Dream a tiresome play. Shakespeare’s language isn’t used, with the exception of a few celebrated quotations. One trouble is that though The Tempest might need more love interest — questionable — another two pairs of lovers makes for an awkwardly large cast, and guarantees a chaotic plotline. This in turn leads to an unsteadiness of tone, so that it becomes impossible to decide whether to take some of it seriously and regard the rest as a send-up, or to regard the whole thing as an amiably confusing parody of high baroque opera.