L’assedio di Calais
Guildhall School of Music and Drama
This is the time of year, before the long hibernation of opera companies sets in, when there is sometimes a choice of several operas per night, many of them performed by the schools of music, which often seem to adopt the unintelligent course of having their performances on in the same week. This year, however, it is possible to go to the Guildhall School this week, the Royal Academy next week, with Semele conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras, and the Royal College the week after that to see The Magic Flute.
The Guildhall School’s choice of Donizetti’s L’assedio di Calais was a brave one: many opera-goers, myself intermittently included, tend to think of Donizetti’s historical operas as virtually interchangeable, and only to be borne if there is a star soprano in an important role. One of the many interesting things about L’assedio (The Siege) is that there is no important soprano part. Still better, so far as I am concerned, is that there is no place for vocal fireworks from anyone. In fact, one could list any of the salient characteristics of the typical Donizetti opera and look for them in vain in L’assedio. While that makes it, to me, an attractive proposition, it may well have been what prevented the opera from having much success in 1836, when it was first performed, and from being revived much since. Julian Budden, writing in the New Grove Dictionary of Opera, claims that it is ‘a patriotic opera on the French model, with which Donizetti hoped to “introduce a new genre to Italy”.’ Unfortunately, he failed, the Italians showing their recurrent preference for trivial showpieces, which the composer was prepared and able to supply them with by the dozen.
As Budden also says, ‘the fact that the juvenile lead is a mezzo-soprano allows a play of 6ths and 3rds in his duet comparable to Bellini’s “Mira o Norma”’, and this was indeed the first time that Donizetti has ever reminded me of his greater contemporary for a sustained stretch of the music. Equally Bellinian is the fact that, in this relatively short work, there are no passages in which music takes precedence over drama. The action is tight, the music almost consistently intense, much of it choral or in ensemble.
All that means that it is highly suitable for production by an opera school, and the GSMD’s account of it was the best thing I have seen there, and by such a big margin that I wonder whether the conductor, David Angus, should take much of the credit, for the orchestra played with exceptional discipline and refinement, and the first night manifested a rare all-round confidence.
The story is that of the Burghers of Calais, threatened by Edward III and his English forces, until they send six citizens to be sacrificed for the safety of the city, It is of course most familiar as Rodin’s largest and most ambitious work, with its many attendant individual figures. They were taken as the basis of this production, which was on a nearly bare stage, with blanched figures in striking poses. The director Alessandro Talevi took the risk of introducing comic elements into the opera, or rather of emphasising the librettist Cammarano’s ineptitudes by turning them into gags, so that the English spy in disguise in Act I was absurdly unmasked, and the pompous Edward in Act III leant on his herald, to the latter’s acute distaste, while he delivered his windy ultimata. It was the kind of bright idea which a more experienced producer would try out and scrap. For it isn’t a work which permits much variety of tone, and that is one of its impressive features.
The son of the Mayor of Calais was sung on the opening night with impressive power by Máire Flavin, his wife Eleonora by Lucinda-Mirikata Deacon (there are two casts): their duet, referred to above, is the emotional highpoint of the score, but one reason that the opera is so compelling is that it is essentially about a community, so that each of the soloists emerges from and retreats into the crowd, whose common fate is what concerns us, thanks to the passionate music of anxiety, fear and finally of relief, which they share. There is no point in denying that Donizetti’s inspiration seems to have dried up abruptly at the end of Act II, and apparently most of the not numerous productions of the work have stopped there. Edward III and his Queen are a tedious pair, introduced, one feels, only to keep the opera going for its required length. Yet they are worth putting up with for the sake of what goes before, and I count this, thanks to the GSMD, as a real addition to my operatic experience.
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