Gloriana at ROH

22/06/13

What an amazing show. Having seen it twice now, I think this may turn out to be the revelation of Britten's centenary year - not just this great production, but that Gloriana is a viable, and actually exceptionally beautiful opera. One hopes on the strength of this showing it will get more outings in the other productions on offer in the other companies and at the very least a revival of this one. (It seems to get revived approximately every decade in the UK: ENO 1984, WNO 1992, ON 2002, ROH 2013)

Gloriana's rarity in the opera house makes one suspicious that it is going to be distinctly second rate, but an actual encounter with the work constantly confounds expectations; in fact there are delights and surprises at every turn. It was not successful during its première in 1953 and famously Queen Elizabeth II was not very taken with it (it was written for her coronation), but now with the benefit of 60 years distance in time the reasons for its original failure seems uninteresting and unimportant. Instead, in the context of his entire career, we see that it comes at the centre of Britten's most fertile period, and also that he does so many things here that he chose not to do again in his operas. It emerges not as a homage to Elizabeth, but as a homage and love letter to England and it's people, via the music of this country. A bewilderingly wide array of English music is touched upon - we get references to mediaeval music, Tudor/Elizabethan music including Tallis and Byrd, Dowland, Purcell, and there are even Holstian and Vaughan Williamsesque resonances, although perhaps only because of their debts to the aforementioned early masters. It's not just "Brittenised" pastiches either - this music seems to be infused in every bar of the score, such that the whole edifice seems to grow out of and is saturated with this old music. Orchestral colours are bright, light, tinkling, layered, open, sonorous. The music has a genuine grandeur without irony or bombast, humour without bitterness, lyrical sweetness without darkness. It's as exuberant and generous as Britten ever got, and it's surprising that it's so convincing given what fruits self denial and Apollonian restraint also brought him and suggests a path not travelled. After this opera, only A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960) touches on similar ground, though is already much more restrained.

Richard Jones sets the production in the 1950's but as a stage within a stage which is in Elizabethan era dress, presumably intended as some fictional early performance of the work at Aldeburgh or somewhere slightly provincial like that. I can hear the groans already - that's two opera clichés in one go: 1950's, and a stage within a stage. BUT(!) it never interferes with the dramatic content of the music, and simultaneously makes us reflect on what Britten was trying to do here. At first you wonder what it's actually adding, but soon we realise that Jones is not taking the piss out of the piece, and actually is rendering Britten's stylisation more understandable - we're not seeing echt Elizabethan drama, we're seeing Elizabethan drama filtered  through the eyes of 1950's England. This is of course true of any opera not set contemporaneously to the period in which it was written (e.g. Donizetti is "Elizabethan" through the eyes of the 1830s) but it's particularly meaningful to draw attention to this in this opera, because Britten is actively doing this in the music (in a way that say Donizetti just isn't attempting at all) - we're seeing Elizabethan music through the eyes of a 1950's composer, and the libretto too is "1950's Elizabethan". What I like about this staging is that it constantly leads us back to Britten's music, highlighting its beauty, its place in history, its purpose in being written, and intended effect, while giving it air to breathe in its originally intended context. It's done with a lot of love, and for once Jones' obsession with the 1950's is a poignant and entirely apt addition to the opera at hand.

Additionally, we're given beautiful vignettes of England in 1953 - the sets and costumes for once actually capture the era's drabness without caricature or cartoonishness. The Elizabethan costumes really look like the ones from films and stage of that time, the harpist plays a harp that looks like its from the era. (Incidentally it's a lovely touch having the harp on stage for the harp/lute song - the instrument is so often central to Britten's sonority and even compositional method - no one in the 20th century understood or wrote for it better.) Britten's obsession with pre-pubescent boys manifests itself in this opera by Britten's inclusion of boy-pages with spoken lines (well you knew he was going to include them somewhere, and there's only the tiniest bit for treble choir this time!). Happily Jones doesn't dwell on the perversity of this aspect of Britten's life - we know about that already, it's been done to death, and it's not relevant to this opera. Jones has the boys (all of identical height as a reflection of Britten's ultra stringent requirements) prominently holding up the name of the place where every scene takes place. It's enough, and actually genuinely helpful on a dramatic level.

The portrait of Elizabeth I as a real woman, powerful, loving, yet flawed, is fascinating. She has fun at the dance, flirts with Essex, and cruelly humiliates Essex's wife Frances, but you also see that she cares deeply for her subjects and is a woman of great standing who is very aware of her duty and largely sacrifices herself to it. She has a heart shaped headpiece during the masque when she says that she is a sovereign of love, and you believe her, so don't judge her later actions.

This is Susan Bullock's show, and she is magnetic. The identification with and commitment to the character is palpable in every phrase and motion- you see her living through Elizabeth's conflicts, joys, pains, with nothing half baked or overdone. Vocally she's in control, and extremely expressive within the range that her sometimes harsh vocalising allows - there's the occasional wonderful piano, but mainly what's impressive is that the intention is always so clear. Her spoken declamation and singing in the final scene is electrifying, poignant, sad, dignified, and very moving.

Toby Spence takes on the "Pears" role of Essex very well, singing his lovely harp/lute aria with great beauty - very pleasing to hear him on such good form after his recent throat surgeries. Other than the central role, this really is an ensemble opera and there are no weak links - Benjamin Bevan, Mark Stone, Clive Bayley, Jeremy Carpenter, Kate Royal, Patricia Bardon, Brindley Sherratt all are obviously committed dramatically and in very good voice.

Conductor Paul Daniel and the ROH orchestra conspire together to give a revelatory and very loving reading of this score that brings to light the extraordinary wealth of Britten's aural imagination at this stage in his career. Textures are precise and sensitive, the humour is rib-tickling, the score's understated lyricism and grandeur beautifully rendered. The ROH chorus play a huge role in this opera and are in their element here - you can't imagine any other opera chorus being able to do it better.

Well worth going to see, one of the best things the ROH have done this season.

Two days, two opera houses, two operas

Last Friday I saw the final dress of Lucrezia Borgia at the ENO - an interesting production, but one that ultimately I think doesn't work particularly well. The idea to bring in a director from the film industry to sex things up is a standard opera gimmick nowadays, and it seems that Mike Figgis was brought in for just such a purpose. He incorporated four short film sequences into the opera which try to provide the opera with a darker and more disturbing feel than is perhaps inherent in the libretto and score - we are presented with the depraved background of the Borgias (Lucrezia's rumoured incestual relationships with her father and brother), there are murders, sex scenes, writhing animalistic girls, and lots and lots of breasts. While these were mostly quite well done (with one exception - see below), there was too much of a disjunct between the naturalistic, action filled films and the opera itself; in fact Figgis hardly seemed to know what to do with the actual opera which lead to a very static Prologue and very little interaction between the characters throughout. For example, characters that hate each other and are telling each other so just sit down next to each other rather placidly before the end of the scene. Almost all of the arias are just delivered still - in short just very old fashioned and it made for a poor realisation of the drama. Claire Rutter's Lucrezia, in stark contrast with the Lucrezia in the films, is never sexy, which is perhaps the most critical discontinuity between the opera and the films and makes the films seem like an obvious ploy to sex the evening up, rather than putting a darkly sexual undertone to the whole production which was surely the intention. The confrontation scene was at least visually rather striking, and there was a nice touch later where two famous paintings were unwittingly recreated by characters (the feasting plotters arranged as Da Vinci's Last Supper was particularly effective). Not a complete failure then, and frustratingly so because one senses that it could have been very good.

Also for no good reason, in one of the films which fills in the background, her illegitimate child Gennaro is a terrible plastic model, replete with visible moulding lines and periodic mechanical spasms. Ridiculous.

Though acting was subtle to non existant, the singing was really excellent throughout, especially from the rising star tenor Michael Fabiano as Gennaro, just 26, who apart from a few slightly strained notes in the top showed off a fantastically developed voice, genuinely beautiful and of quite some power. But for me the absolute star was the mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong as Orsini - a truly gorgeous voice, beautifully even across the range, with the bottom so richly coloured and full that she sounded like a true contralto in parts. Apparently she sings the composer of Strauss' Ariadne too which is at the other end of the mezzo range. I just can't wait to hear more from her.



The Royal Opera House's beautiful production of Die Zauberflote made a return with a great cast, and was generally a success. This production really is a visual delight with costumes, props and sets all just about perfect - I'm sure most people have seen pictures of it already so there's not much need to comment. Jessica Pratt spuffed some notes in "Der Holle Rache", but a soprano friend reminded me that this was a morning dress rehearsal and I should give her a break. Actually it was about 1pm by the time she must have sung the notes, but we'll give her the benefit of the doubt, shall we. Kate Royal made a beautiful (vocally and physically) if slightly weakly characterised Pamina, and Joseph Kaiser as Tamino was vocally disappointing, but luckily Christopher Maltman's Papageno amply served as the linchpin of the production - very well sung indeed, well acted and genuinely funny. Diction from all was generally very good and most people were easy enough to understand, pronunciation ranging from good to excellent.

Another thing which has to be noted is the children in this production - all are unbelievably cute and add a real joyousness to so many scenes. Monostatos' cronies include a couple of bewigged kids which bestow an impish devilishness on his troupe. The little girl dancing around with the wild animals, and then the kids all jumping on the bed after the Pa...pa...pa... duet - all delightful touches and makes explicit the implicit celebration of human love and life that this opera offers.