Opera north

Thursday

Michael Tanner

ENO’s Rodelinda: near-perfect singing, perfectly gimmicky direction

I wasn’t going to write about Handel’s Rodelinda, wasn’t even intending to go, but thanks to the kindness of the press office at ENO I did, and it was so marvellous that I can’t resist expressing my delight. Not that it was ideal — no production of Rodelinda is, or, I’m beginning to suspect, can be. The musical side of things, actually, was close to perfect, but Richard Jones seemed to be in several minds about what kind of work it is, and indulged in an orgy of director’s gimmicks, gleefully abetted by the set designer Jeremy Herbert. Set in fascist Milan, the show was redolent of Glyndebourne’s 1998 production,

Friday

Michael Tanner

The state of opera today (it’s not good)

I’ve been hoping that in this, the last of my weekly columns on opera, I would be able to strike a positive, even cheerful note on the present and future of the art form, but honesty compels me to say that I don’t think it is in very good shape. Not, probably, that it has ever been, or at least only for brief periods. Owing to its mongrel nature, there has usually been a tendency for one or other of its ingredients to lord it over the others, so that the ideal balance of music and drama, spectacle and action, personalised in the collaboration of singers and conductors, stage directors

Thursday

Michael Tanner

If ‘Greek’ is playing within 200 miles of where you live — watch it

This week chanced to give me a fascinating study in contrasts and comparisons: Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek at the Linbury Studio, Britten’s Death in Venice at the Grand Theatre Leeds. Two English operas from the latter half of the 20th century, both with mythological undertones and overtones, one of them the noisy announcement of his presence by a young composer, the other the last testament, a dying fall, of the ultimate Establishment figure who contrived also to be seen as an outsider; one full of profanities and vicious humour, the other both subversive and genteel, without a trace of irony or laughter. Death in Venice, the opera, has never much appealed

Thursday

Michael Tanner

Opera: I am dreading the thought of Götterdämmerung if Opera North maintains the standard it has set with Siegfried

Siegfried is, everyone agrees, the hardest of the Ring dramas to bring off. The first and almost insurmountable problem is that the title role is one that almost no one can sing, and one of which even on recordings there are very few wholly satisfactory accounts. Lauritz Melchior, the only tenor with the adequate size and beauty of voice, and the sensitivity, when he could be bothered, to employ them to the full, never recorded the role complete, his only ‘live’ preserved performance being heavily cut. The most one can hope for is a more-or-less decent account, and they are rare. The other chief problem with Siegfried is that, coming

Thursday

Michael Tanner

Joshua, Opera North, Don Carlo, Royal Opera House

Why stage a Handel oratorio, or anyone else’s for that matter? The recent urge to do it, with Bach’s Passions — even, I’m told, with Messiah — suggests a further incursion of TV into our lives, the inability to absorb anything that isn’t partly or primarily visual. At least Handel’s Joshua, which Charles Edwards directs and designs in a new Opera North production, is bellicose so there is a fair amount of action, though the most indelible parts of it are the choruses, some of them, strangely, sung with scores in hand, some not. The setting is post-second world war, yet another production with an excuse for dressing the characters