Peter Grimes
English National Opera
L’elisir d’amore
Royal Opera House
Norma
English Touring Opera, in Cambridge
ENO’s advertisement for its new production of Peter Grimes under David Alden, and the front of the programme, is of a surly, even aggressive youth with ropes coiled behind him. I wondered whether Alden had decided, in characteristic fashion, that the Apprentice, a silent role, was the malevolent centre of the work, manipulating Grimes and the townspeople into regarding him as a victim. No such luck. The Apprentice we get is considerably older than usual, as tall as anyone on the stage, and certainly sullen, displaying his bruise to Ellen with defiant hostility. Otherwise, he seems to be just a bored teenager, lying down whenever possible and evoking no sympathy whatever. I’d probably have been less patient with him than Grimes is.
It is characteristic of this alienating production, the most that can be said of which is that it offers a new perspective on everyone in the action, except for the curiously blank Grimes himself, that though it is often striking to look at, impressively rehearsed and detailed, it is very rarely moving. I am, admittedly, still under the sway of Opera North’s evisceratingly powerful production, which I have seen many times with growing emotion, but it can be and has been argued that it does heavily tilt things in Grimes’s favour by having the interludes acted, in a way that earns him our sympathy, as well as having a heart-breakingly moving Apprentice. Grimes is such an indeterminate work dramatically, thanks to Britten’s miserably ambivalent attitude towards his ‘outsider’ status, though he was actually at the centre of English musical life for a very long time, that it is tolerant of conflicting interpretations, many of which convince. But Alden manages to go beyond any that I have seen, by stylising character and behaviour and working in that area of perversity which is what he seems to enjoy most. Auntie, for instance, is a club-footed, trouser-suit and fur-coat wearing young lesbian, who seems to be a refugee from Lulu. Her ‘nieces’ are ludicrously dressed, act identically at every point, and spend most of the time in one another’s arms. Swallow the lawyer is a bit of a tv, coming in to the dance with a tutu over his suit. Almost no one except the transcendent Ellen of Amanda Roocroft behaves naturally.
So what contrast is being made? Are these townsfolk not only narrow-minded and prurient but merely acting? Is Ellen, and up to a point Grimes, the only person who has decent feelings, or anyway some feelings, and isn’t ashamed of them? Even the Balstrode of Gerald Finley, wonderfully sung, as one can take for granted, makes strange hieratic gestures, and speaks his concluding lines to Grimes very badly indeed, a tricky moment handled worse than I have known.
Musically, standards are extremely high, and I very much look forward to the Radio Three broadcast (11 July). Edward Gardner gets playing of extreme polish and precision from his orchestra, and whips up thrilling climaxes in the interludes. He has a superb cast, with Stuart Skelton, both in appearance and occasionally voice, recalling Jon Vickers. Roocroft, who seems to be in the early stages of a second, really great career, has tenderness, volume, warmth to make her a great Ellen. The smaller roles are as well cast as in Opera North’s production, and the chorus is tremendous. But that doesn’t prevent almost all their efforts from going for very little, thanks to the weird things they wear and the weirder ones they are expected to do. Even the stunning climax of the manhunt, with the reiterated yellings of Grimes’s name, makes little impact dramatically, since there is no context of involvement. Go, shut your eyes and don’t allow yourself a sneak peep, and you should have a great evening.
The perennial mystery of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore is how a comedy can be so relentlessly good-natured without being annoying. The Royal Opera has revived for the first time Laurent Pelly’s 2007 production of this evergreen, harmlessly updated to the late 1940s, with the famous high-rise of hay, the Lambrettas and the rest of it, and, though it is far from the most enchanting production I have seen, it is still a winner. I am less of a fan of Diana Damrau than everyone else, finding her tone shallow and a bit hard, but she is endearingly bossy. Giuseppe Filianotti is a decent, unmemorable Nemorino, Anthony Michaels-Moore a Belcore who doesn’t even pretend to be a charmer, merely bullies and struts. The star is the Dulcamara of Simone Alaimo, with an ingenious trailer of tricks. Bruno Campanella, the conductor, is not wasted on this piece.
Though I have been a loyal and usually a favourable supporter of English Touring Opera for many years, they don’t invite me to their productions, so I went to Norma under my own steam. It was a concert performance, in Cambridge’s West Road Concert Hall. The results were deafening, Michael Rosewell giving the excellent orchestra its head from the word go. What is remarkable is that Yvonne Howard, whom I had seen as the Second Norn two evenings previously, can sing all the notes of the fiendish title role, though she too was always loud, and mainly without expression. ‘You tremble…and for whom?’ she asked the treacherous Pollione pleasantly, where Callas makes the earth open. Justin Lavender replied in kind. This marvellous opera was a noisy romp.
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