Death in Venice at ENO

26/06/13

I find it fascinating that so many of the major opera composers went a similar way for their final opera - that is in the direction of thinning out, stripping back, concentration on the essentials. Strauss and Verdi slip into twinkling humour and ravishing delicacy in Capriccio and Falstaff, Mozart into a clarity, reserve and even austerity in La Clemenza di Tito, Janacek into skeletal grittyness in From the House of the Dead, Wagner into soft washes and infinitely nuanced sound clusters in Parsifal. Only Puccini stands out in trying to outdo himself on every level in Turandot. Britten then is completely in line with the main group in his final opera Death in Venice (1971-73) which comes after a period of artistic exhaustion; the etiolation and thinness of the operas of the late 60's (The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966) and The Prodigal Son (1968) and Owen Wingrave (1970)) is transformed, recast, recrystalised into a quietly masterful score that remains "thin", but lives up to the quality of his greatest operas.

(c) Johan Jacobs/ENO

Director Deborah Warner did very well to work with set designer Tom Pye and lighting designer Jean Kalman as this is an exceptionally beautiful show to watch. An idealised Venice is conjured with the simplest of means - a few side lit curtains, some basket chairs, jetty poles, a semi mirrored floor and a backlit cloth that does for an endless expanse of sky. These bright vistas are alternated with the gloomiest, most opaque representations of Aschenbach's artistic constipation - his words are projected into the cavernous dark and are barely legible as he wanders amongst them. Disarmingly simple is also how this staging deals with the canal scenes. The sense of Venice slowly drifting past as it does from the vantage point of a gondola is achieved using large rectangular buildings which calmly glide across the stage whilst the gondolas remain stationary. The other thing the production does well is in how it deals with the dance sequences. Death in Venice in my opinion features one of the most successful uses of dance of any opera. The ballet not only dramatic function (for once) but its use also has a psychological underpinning too: ballet's mysterious silence and ambiguity of  meaning maps perfectly on to the character of Tadzio, Aschenbach's unattainable and unknowable muse. As Tadzio, the young Sam Zaldivar dances beautifully, as do the rest of the boys, the choreography by Kim Brandstrup always apt and inventive.

Thomas Mann's novella seems like an obvious, almost clicheed choice for Britten to adapt and operise (operate?) given his obsessions and predilections, but it's particularly poignant for the artist at this stage of his life, and for Britten, working within his repressions seems to be almost a necessity. Aschenbach's social standing, artistic credos, and dilemma is obviously very close to Britten himself: by 1970 a hugely acclaimed artist, but at a stage of life where he was artistically exhausted and so is in desperate need of a project, a stimulus, the "deep desire" the Aschenbach talks about, to revitalise him. The opening monologue is essentially autobiography:

My mind beats on
and no words come.
Taxing, tiring,
unyielding, unproductive –
my mind beats on.
No sleep restores me.

I, Aschenbach,
famous as a master-writer,
successful, honoured,
self-discipline my strength,
routine the order of my days,
imagination servant of my will.

My mind beats on,
why am I now at a loss?
I reject the words called forth by passion,
I suspect the easy judgement of the heart –
now passion itself has left me,
and delight in fastidious choice.


The boys appear soon enough of course, and even Apollo, Britten's artistic/spiritual master, makes a showing. The work is in some ways a paean to Pears as well, and through him, through the voice that Britten writes with such unerring expertise for, he crafts one of his most intimate and starkly revealing roles, though the palpable eros in the music is at all times suppressed, subsumed, submerged in the hazy gloom and twinkly mist of the score. The piece unfolds mostly as a monologue, Eschenbach narrating his mental state, and his interactions with other people feeling like painful interruptions to his flow of thoughts. The result is obviously very psychologically driven, and the line between inner and outer world is very blurry indeed.

Unfortunately, Warner really doesn't delve into these complexities very satisfyingly at all, and doesn't build an effective dramatic arc through the material. As an example, repetitions in the libretto and music are noted and dutifully staged, but not remarked upon, and we're left in the dark as to what they might mean. Both acts could have finished at any point after the half way mark and it would have felt like a legitimate ending. It just about sustains because it's beautiful to look at, but the insights are few, and dramatic momentum muddled.

Aschenbach must surely be one of the most demanding lyric tenor roles in the repertoire dramatically, physically and musically - he carries the entire piece in all ways. John Graham-Hall barely looks 40 as Aschenbach and presents a more spritely vision of the character than we are used to. Vocally he is very detailed in his approach, every word sensitively wrought, but the character doesn't emerge fully and the basic sound is not beautiful enough to forgive the lack of characterisation. It's a very decent attempt at the part, but overall the figure that is drawn is not compelling enough. The rest of the cast are more than decent and support ably. Tim Mead sings particularly beautiful as the Voice of Apollo. It seems at the moment that Edward Gardner can do no wrong. After his superb Wozzeck he tackles Britten's score with equal aplomb and sensitivity - another great evening for him and his orchestra.

except where noted, photos copyright Hugo Glenndinning/ENO

Glyndebourne III: Rinaldo

02/07/2011

I have to admit: early Handel is a bit of a blind spot for me (and much late Handel for that matter). Whereas with Puccini I at least understand what people are getting out of it, with Handel I'm not quite so sure. The plots are so thin, the characters so stock and lacking in depth, the action so slow moving. In my Meistersingers review I complained of the dangers of directors "doing stuff" to Wagner, whereas in Handel you basically have to "do stuff" to it directorially in order to make it viable as drama. The music too is so predictable, and aside from the very obvious highlights that most scores have, so much of it seems churned out and done by rote. I have often wondered why I adore Bach so much and then am so indifferent to Handel (excepting a few arias), when superficially they are quite similar. Someone recently (I forget who) defined the difference for me: whereas Handel always does what's expected, Bach always does something unexpected. This alone doesn't explain my feelings towards each, but captures something very significant I think. I wasn't much moved by this performance so I wont be able to write anything too interesting. But here goes.

Robert Carsen's production deals with the problems of Rinaldo in a rather bold way - he has fun with it, and while not quite taking the piss, definitely plays it for laughs and creates comic situations out of moments in the libretto that aren't meant to be comic. I heard people grumbling in the interval about "directors not being able to just present the piece as intended", but really this opera would be unbearable if all that was presented was what the libretto gave us: the characters are about as deep as a puddle, and the plot is completely feeble. What Carsen does is set the whole thing in a public school, with people dressing up as knights (the Furies are goths), and while this initially seems to cheapen the thing by lowering all the crossed love stories to schoolboy/school girl crushes, the approach actually vindicates itself later, when the characters start doing things so ludicrous, that even the best "serious" production wouldn't be able to render such a crass plot believable or engaging. I don't want to ruin too many of the jokes, but it is often quite funny. In the end it all turns out to be the school boy Rinaldo's day dream, which is the most sense it could possibly make (and explains the teacher in leather bondage gear!), and rather than being an irritating revelation actually paradoxically allows you to accept the events of the evening.

It's not an unqualified success though. It's all a bit grey and bare to the point of being unfinished looking. And Carsen doesn't quite manage to stem the tedium of large tracts of the opera - apart from anything, its hard to think of enough for the characters to do during the arias, because the text gives you so little!

I wasn't too enamoured with the cast in general. Goffredo and Rinaldo were both cast as mezzos (Varduhi Abrahamyan and Sonia Prina, respectively), and neither had a particularly beautiful voice - both sounded very similar, with extremely fast, wide vibratos. Nor was the sound at all big, and timbrally, I wondered at first whether they were affecting their voices to sound more like countertenors. Neither voice was particularly flexible either, with some of the most heavily aspirated coloratura I've ever heard coming from both of them, though Prina's was particularly bad. There was almost no note at all in the most demanding passages, the machine gun like rattle of the coloratura becoming really quite unpleasant and ugly.

Just an aside about coloratura and aspirating. For those that don't know, it can be confusing when it's mentioned so I'll briefly explain it here. It is much, much easier to articulate fast coloratura passages by aspirating them. This means doing rough breathing at the start of every note so that (say) a fast scale to "Aa", becomes "ha ha ha ha ha ha ha". It is not at all necessary however to do this, and the result is far less beautiful than the much more technically challenging feat of maintaining the legato line and changing note without this interruption in the breath: Callas, Sills, Horne, Fleming and Battle are all examples of singers who wonderfully prove this and manage the hardest coloratura passages without aspirating. The classic (and probably most influential) case of aspirating in current singing is Cecilia Bartoli and I don't like it when she does it, but of course the timbre of the voice is so extraordinary and beautiful that its hard not to forgive her. But in general it's a lazy and easy way to execute these passages (try it yourself: sing a fast scale to "ha" and then to "aa" making sure that not even a hint of "h" is creeping in, and you'll see how easy the former is compared to the latter), and it's just not as good.

The other girls were better. Brenda Rae was a sexy Armida (the one with bondage gear) and has an interesting voice - it's quite a pretty youthful lyric instrument, with a lovely top, though weak lower register. Her opening line, "Furie Terribili" was delivered with incredible force and fire, though in the rest of the evening she only shone when she ascended powerfully above the treble stave. One to watch. Anett Fritsch had stepped in late as Almirena, Rinaldo's love interest, and she clearly also has a nice voice, again lacking in power, but she delivered Lascia Ch'Io Pianga very nicely indeed. Tim Mead sung the smallish part of Eustazio, a counter tenor role, and he clearly possesses a very beautiful instrument - why didn't they hire him as Rinaldo? I've liked Luca Pisaroni in things before at Glyndebourne, but the timbre was rather harsh tonight and the coloratura was horribly muddied by his vibrato.

After the incandescent performance of Don Giovanni they gave under Robin Ticciati (who it turns out is going to take over from Jurowski as principal conductor of the festival in 2013 - woo hoo! Both are great, but so glad that the replacement is so wonderful), The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in this felt a bit disappointing - none of the energy and passion was there this time, and the sound lacked the body, colour and bustle that I enjoy from Baroque orchestras. Much of the scoring for Rinaldo is very thin with just two string lines as well as continuo, so this might have been the issue, but either way, it didn't quite do it for me. And there was some truly awful oboe and bassoon playing - horribly out of tune, and flubbed solo lines.

There was something a bit odd about the evening as a whole musically - like something was missing. Part of the problem was that virtually all the roles are in the mezzo range, but I think the lack of orchestral warmth of blend with the singers also contributed to it. Luckily I went back the next night to see some Donizetti...