Opera

Good news at Glyndebourne

Rodney Milnes

Man condemned to hell-fire for abusing women at Glyndebourne (on stage, I hasten to add); man saved from lynching by mother-love at Covent Garden. It has been a good week for ladies in the audience. It has also been a good week for opera: two superb new productions directed at adults, full of provocative and constructive thought, and both, I hope and pray, with considerable staying power.

It is hard to know where to start with Glyndebourne's new Don Giovanni.

Seldom have the components of a produc tion team seemed so utterly inseparable. John Pritchard has the initial advantage of a

house in which Mozart sounds right almost without any help from a conductor: internal and external balance can be achieved without any of the compromises sometimes.

necessary in a larger theatre. Yet I can think of no other conductor (Bohm perhaps?) who meets both the musical and the • dramatic demands of Mozart with such a complete lack of self-conscious striving after effect. Such love for and trust in a • composer are all too rare. There are moments of danger in the second act when the string of arias gets under way (more of them than Mozart ever intended, but who would dare cut one today?), when even the most committed devotee's fingers can start to drum, but not here, and that seems to me Pritchard's greatest achievement, one that must be shared with Peter Hall's unerringly original direction of the singers. There was nothing dainty about the accompaniment to 'Vedrai carino': it set the seal on what is going to be a warm and satisfactory marriage. The maximum pathos was wrung from `Mi tradi'. 'II mio tesoro', sung with melting tenderness by Leo Goeke, for once seemed neither out of place nor a bar too long. 'Non mi dir', instead of interrupting the natural flow towards the climax of the opera, almost became the climax itself in a production as much about the effect of Giovanni as about Giovanni himself.

John Bury's decor illuminates the action with blinding clarity, The set comprises a classical false proscenium, with doors and balconies, that ' forms a perfect square to frame the rear stage. Having not been there, I don't know whether the sombre colours and texture, and those of the costumes, have anything to do with Seville, and what is more I don't care a damn. The costumes run the gamut of around thirty years of early nineteenth-century fashion, from Regency breeches to Trollope trousers, from Wesleyan shovel hats to Victorian wigs. Giovanni himself sports side-burns and a moustache that makes him look the very image of the Prince Consort — an odd visual reference for a rake-hell, but one that places him firmly inside respectable society rather than comfortably outside. The vital point is that Bury's decor places the conflicts of the opera — social and moral — in an immediately recognisable visual context, more so than any fancy-dress-Fairbanks staging ever can.

• Peter Hall's production, free of the smallest whiff of tradition, is extremely simple in outline. No extras, no spectacle, just single-minded concentration on the characters and their interplay. There is one

big surprise when the first act ends without any chase or chandelier-swinging escape. Double surprise: there is none in the text either, which simply remarks that the band-players `e gli altri' depart, and that is that. Indeed, fidelity to stage directions is a hallmark throughout, though he does take the image of the gathering storm from the text and give it physical presence to great effect (umbrellas to the fore, and much flapping of curtains). Otherwise, the detailed conflict of classes (a couple of clenched fists from the resentful, beclogged peasantry chance perhaps) and moral stances is given direct, unfussy expression. The simplistic finale, with fiery cross and picture-book demons, is entirely apt: that is how Giovanni's antagonists see the choice. They then point the morale with the house lights up: that's how wicked people end, and to the postlude they make gestures of 'it is, isn't it?' followed by moments of browwrinkling doubt.

The cast is without exception excellent, but there are two dazzling interpretations. Benjamin Luxon's Giovanni is just dashing enough to engage our interest, but he is also a fish-eyed, whey-faced, calculating psychopath. The mandoline serenade is beautifully sung, but without the slightest extra-musical feeling — it is purely utilitarian, and when the lady duly appears, he almost shrugs with the boredom of it all. Zerlina is violently, purposefully abducted — her screams come as no surprise. And this cold fish would have stabbed Leporello on the spot had Ottavio not pulled his pistol (it's in the directions). Perhaps the most chilling moment of all is the end of 'Fin ch'han dal vino', sung with that growing, insistent sense of violence characteristic of the production as a whole. As he finishes, Stafford Dean's sardonic Leporello bursts out in a merry laughter; Giovanni doesn't .twitch a muscle. We froze in associated guilt in the face of that cold, unblinking stare.

The second winner is Joan Carden's Donna Anna, which is sung as perfectly as I ever hope to hear it. But her acting is something else again. By locking her seducer in

the courtyard, she feels as much responsible for her father's death as the murderer himself and becomes a hatchet-faced fury, hell-bent on revenge. 'Or sai chi l'onore' — the moment of realisation was one of stomach-turning terror in Pritchard's hands — is taken steadily and precisely: not hysteria, but with clear-headed, steely intent. The process of unfreezing, so cunningly indicated by make-up and costumes as well as by Miss Carden's wonderfully expressive features, is marked by 'Non mi. dir'. This is at first sight a formal 'operatic' aria, but the way she squirmed in her chair, or used her hands and restless pacing to the point the coloratura in the allegretto section made it seem the most naturalistic of effusions. Move heaven and earth to see this Giovanni, whether at Glyndebourne or during Hall's Don Juan Fest at the National Theatre. It is truly masterly.

In the context of this cerebrally stimulating evening it would be tempting to dismiss La Fanciulla del West as so much glorious hokum. Exhilaratingly glorious it is — a compendium of every Western cliche from almost before the movies were invented. Piero Faggioni's production in Ken Adam's sets is an object lesson in verismo right down to the last spittoon (but no blood dripping from the rafters — shame). Zubin Mehta's incandescent conducting shows that the score can stand with the rest of the oeuvre and more often than not rise above it. But hokum, no, at least not in the context of Puccini's output. Having spent so much of his operatic life humiliating, tormenting and destroying women, Puccini here turns his attention to the other sex.

Dick, the stranger who rides into town, takes water with his whisky. 'We'll curl his hair for him,' says earth-mother Minnie, and spend the succeeding acts doing just that. He turned bandit to support his mother, and gives it up for the sake of a mother-substitute. Having deserted her children, Minnie will, I fancy, set up an adult bible-education class, and her Dick will spend the rest of his days at the harmonium. That the hero whose unconscious head is fohdled by his saviour as she prepared to fish a full-house (aces-high) out of her garter, or who cowers beneath the gallows as she bargains for his life, should be the machismatic Placido Domingo (in wonderful voice) added spice to the confection.

I could not quite believe in Carol Neblett as a professional noli-me-tangere about to be melted by her first kiss — hips too swingy — but I liked the way she donned red shoes, inserted flowers in her hair and then put on her gloves to receive a gentleman caller. She sang with infectious abandon. Silvano Carroll was a highly efficient sheriff. But the glory of the production was the playing of Minnie's ragazzi, the real losers in this hapgy-end, and those responsible for establishing the unlikely atmosphere at the opening. Too many to name here, but Jonathan Summers and Gwynne Howell stood out. This is a life-enhancing joyous opera.