With its new production of Janácek’s last and in some ways most intractable opera, From the House of the Dead, Opera North shows once more that it is the most intelligently adventurous company in the UK, using its money where it is most needed: not on elaborate and perverse staging, but on high-class soloists and a small but excellent chorus, and an orchestra that can rival any in the country.
With its new production of Janácek’s last and in some ways most intractable opera, From the House of the Dead, Opera North shows once more that it is the most intelligently adventurous company in the UK, using its money where it is most needed: not on elaborate and perverse staging, but on high-class soloists and a small but excellent chorus, and an orchestra that can rival any in the country.
The rise in standards since Richard Farnes took over as music director has been astonishing. As soon as the harsh, weirdly scored introduction to House began, it was clear that he has mastered Janácek’s idiom, or more precisely the idiom of this particular opera, as completely as those of all the other works he has conducted. The production, by John Fulljames, is almost flawless, too, and the only complaint I have is with the surtitles.
The opera is sung in David Pountney’s English translation, but the composer’s vocal lines are not sympathetic to comprehension, so surtitles are indispensable — all the more so since the prisoners are an intensely garrulous crew, and there is no plot. However, the larger part of the opera, and virtually the whole of Act III, is taken up with lengthy narrations by three of the prisoners telling the others of their crime; but when each of them begins, the surtitles migrate from the sidescreens on to the scenery, and furthermore give the impression of faint, handwritten printing, uneven and too transient, so that one’s efforts are nearly completely absorbed in trying to follow them. Could Opera North please think again about this, which threatens to ruin the evening.
The almost all-male cast has, at its centre, the upper-class political prisoner Goryanchikov, beaten at the start, freed at the close. His dignity and agony are conveyed with extraordinary power by Roderick Williams, one of our most versatile and charismatic singing actors. But the long-haul prisoners are awarded portrayals almost as memorable, with Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts a stunningly painful Luka, whose expiring cries punctuate the vast narration of Robert Hayward’s Sishkov. The eagle which, wounded, is tended throughout by the prisoners and which flies away at the end, an apocalyptic moment, is badly miscast as a dancer, Philippe Giraudeau. I remember vividly the WNO production, in which what appeared to be a live eagle took wing, to overwhelming effect.
I was compelled throughout this performance, as I rarely have been by this opera; but I was very rarely moved, and that, I think, is the fault of Janácek. The older he got, the more he insisted on finding the least appealing subjects and ‘transfiguring’ them. The point of this opera is that ‘Within every man there is a spark of the divine’, alternatively ‘A mother gave birth even to him’. The latter is no doubt true, but does it imply the former? Don’t we have to accept that some people are without any quality which we can latch on to with hope, and that they are best dead? — though we may not know which ones they are. There is a species of sentimentality in which people, or one person, is portrayed as an utter monster, maybe a mere monster of unfeelingness, yet is felt to be inscrutably redeemable. Janácek thought that he could do it by the radiant power of his music, and the sheer attempt unquestionably inspired him to some of his finest flights. But the ‘message’ only comes across if you stop thinking.
In the other opera I saw this week divine impenetrability is, by an odd chance, also at the centre. But where House is gruelling, James MacMillan’s Clemency is ingratiating. It is staged at the Linbury Studio of the Royal Opera, but will be widely seen. The story is from the Book of Genesis, about Abraham and the barren Sarah, a contemporary couple in an ordinary house (but depicted as a triptych). Three travellers drop in on them, singing in close harmony, and tell Sarah she will have a child.
They go on to say they are headed for two evil cities which they intend to annihilate. Abraham bargains with them, as in the Bible, though he beats them down to an agreement to save the cities if they can find one good man in each, so he is more successful than his archetype. The angels take flight. We have witnessed divine mercy and divine retribution, and are left to ponder on the mysterious nature of the Almighty.
It’s surprising, given how ghastly the story is, that the opera, a 50-minute-long piece which speeds by, should be so agreeable. The voices are all first-rate, and are accompanied by a string orchestra, contemplative for the first half, then mainly playing in agitated, wide-intervalled unison for the second. I suppose the nearest comparison is Britten’s ‘Church Parables’, but MacMillan’s new piece was, for me, much more enjoyable if ultimately baffling.
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