Otello
Barbican
Die Zauberflöte
Royal College of Music
Verdi’s Otello has almost become a rarity since Domingo gave up singing the title role, so its inclusion in the LSO series of concert performances under Sir Colin Davis was most welcome, and all the more so when it was announced that, at extremely short notice, the young New Zealand tenor Simon O’Neill had taken over from the ailing Torsten Kerl. My first exposure to O’Neill was as Florestan at the Proms this year, where he electrified the proceedings with his intense and accurate singing and vocal acting. Otello demands even more than Fidelio, and he rose to all the challenges, from a quite magnificently authoritative ‘Esultate!’ onwards. Not only does he have the volume that I crave from heroic tenors and rarely get, but he never gives the impression that his voice might run out, though there is still an element of dangerous living about it. It is tightly focused, very un-baritonal, but without any of the bleating tendency that often goes with those qualities. And, even more astonishing, O’Neill can, and quite often does, sing quietly, to ravishing effect. Much of Otello’s role is ruminative, introspective, and, though there are subtleties in it which we didn’t hear at the Barbican, there is every reason to expect that they will come.
Actually, Davis wasn’t, at the first of the two performances, much in the mood for subtleties, it seemed. This was one of the most ferocious accounts of the score I have ever heard, and when the orchestra wasn’t playing fortissimo it tended to be fading away, rather as the conductor himself does with that very characteristic collapsing of the arms and torso that he has always practised. The LSO brass played with an abandon almost vulgar, while correspondingly Davis got the upper strings to play leanly, so that in such passages as Desdemona’s first plea for Cassio, after the Act II chorus, instead of the usual cushion of exquisite tone, we had a thin line, which may have been meant to help Anne Schwanewilms, but only made her own slightly pinched tone at that part of the performance more evident. In the first two acts she seemed ill at ease, but in the terrible confrontation with Otello at the start of Act III she fought back with unusual displays of temperament, and her defeat at the end of the scene was the more harrowing. In Act IV she delivered, at a fairly brisk tempo, a beautifully inward ‘Willow Song’ and ‘Ave Maria’.
In such an overall thrilling performance it is invidious to single out anyone, but I can’t resist a brief rave about Gerald Finley’s Iago. Whenever possible he suffused the part with bonhomie, making the trust the other characters place in him plausible, and making them seem less stupid than they so easily can. Without an enormous voice, but with a power of projection and an intelligence which render mere volume unnecessary, Finley made the character more rounded than any Iago I have seen, even Tito Gobbi. As often at these Barbican events, I wondered what would be gained by a staging, while being acutely aware of what might very well be lost. The smaller roles were all superbly taken, and bearing in mind the very idiosyncratic view that Davis takes of the score — a series of devastating explosions with periods of glassy calm in between — one could call it, all told, a classic performance.
The Royal College of Music staged, for their end-of-term opera, Die Zauberflöte, in German, and mainly good German. I saw the second cast, largely a strong one, with an outstanding Pamina from Paula Sides. It’s unwise to predict, from hearing a singer in so small a space as the Britten Theatre, what they will be like in the larger buildings where they will usually be performing, but I would guess that Sides is in line for a major career in classical opera. And she uses her voice expressively. In terms of sound alone her Tamino, David Webb, is just as gifted: but neither his singing nor his face betrayed any emotion the whole evening. Tamino is a difficult role, the courageous, aspiring hero beginning by fainting at the sight of a dragon, and elsewhere going in for wooden, obedient rectitude which is shocking. Webb didn’t make the part sympathetic. One would have felt more warmly for the Papageno of David Milner-Pearce if he hadn’t played the role as a junior Falstaff, and without a hint of pathos. The Queen of Night’s fireworks were stunningly delivered by Suzanne Shakespeare; but the Sarastro of Ross McInroy was quavery and almost voiceless.
With a production which staged the trials as a couple of figurines held over a flame, then dowsed in a fish tank, it was left to Michael Rosewell to inspire a noble musical performance, and he mainly did. In particular, the Overture contained so many revelations that I’d like to own a recording of his account. He is a conductor, too, who must give young singers confidence, with his precise understanding of their needs. So the production’s shortcomings did little to spoil yet another fine evening in that lovely theatre.
Comments