Making the best of it
Rodney Milnes
Don Giovanni, Der Rosenkavalier, The Barber of Seville (Glyndebourne)
Munich and Glyndebourne are not really comparable — the one a repertory festival, the other a compressed stagione but that is not going to prevent me making generalised comparisons. Heavily state- subsidised Munich engages the best singers available, with vocally scrumptious results. Privately and comparatively slenderly fund- ed Glyndebourne engages the best singers it can afford; ears attuned to emerging talent and willingness to take risks often produce satisfying results, though the hard-hearted could point to some under-casting in Rosenkavalier and Don Giovanni this year. But it is what the singers appear in that Points the difference. Highest vocal stan- dards could not disguise much indifferent Production and design in Munich: the painstakingly ugly Meistersinger decor; the horrid sets for Frau ohne Schatten in the ink-blot or Rorschach Test school of design; thoroughly lazy production of the latter; and an otherwise fair performance of the Ponnelle Cenerentola scuppered by an interpretation of intolerable vulgarity from one ugly sister; and so on.
Inattention to production detail and to visual style in general suggested institution- alised carelessness born of huge subsidy and confidence in vocal supremacy. Glynde- bourne works the other way round. The engagement of ambitious young staff pro- ducers and — Christie policy right from the start — first-rate repetiteurs ensures a remarkably even standard of performance throughout the three-month season, and in- deed in revivals from year to year: Glynde- bourne makes the best of what it can afford.
On the design front, whatever one may think of the Sendak Oranges or the Erte Rosenkavalier, both are strong visual statements confidently executed. You know exactly where you are with them, which you don't with Munich's gauzy ink-blots. It was refreshing, then, after ten performances there only two of which were decently designed (both by Ponnelle), to return on 25 July to the Glyndebourne Giovanni, With John Bury's sets and costumes making a powerful contribution to, or rather deter- mining the style of, the production as a Whole. After a gap of four years, Peter Hall's production was as fresh and challenging as ever: the personal, moral and social conflicts are presented, you feel, in exactly the way Mozart and Da Ponte in- tended them to be.
The casting was Glyndebourne at its near best. Keith Lewis's beautifully and positive- IY sung Ottavio, Elizabeth Gale's unsettl- ingly sexy Zerlina and Richard Van Allan's coolly relaxed Leporello are familiar and marvellous. The new Donna Anna, Carol Vaness, is a real find, a fine-looking American soprano with a huge voice ('Or sai chi l'onore' transfixed the audience) and firm control of it: the allegro section of `Non mi dir', which defeats so many, was confidently voiced. The new Elvira, Elizabeth Pruett, lacked both weight at the bottom of the range — the wide leaps that characterise Elvira's hysteria were too often open-ended -- and a truly definable centre to her tone, but at least she presented a dignified and sympathetic character.
Despite Hall, Bury and so much im- pressive singing, the evening belonged to Haitink. It was one of those occasions, like last year's Fidelio, on which he seemed possessed. The musical violence of the opening was physically frightening, as was the epic grandeur of the finale. In between his musical response never faltered, whether in the compassion, free of sentiment, shown to Elvira, in Zerlina's and Masetto's hedon- istic enjoyment of each other or, sig- nificantly, in the way he used the music to make Ottavio a vital and decisive character.
This magnificent performance proved a hard act to follow when Jane Glover took over in the pit for the last six performances. Much of the Haitink-imbued orchestral ex- citement was still there on 5 August, but not all, certainly not the tuning of the wood- wind (it was a hot evening). There was energy a-plenty in an early-Solti sort of way — i.e. some breakneck speeds — but what one missed was underlying dramatic tension in ensemble: the first-act quartet and se- cond-act sextet, both in strict tempo, failed to find the danger lurking behind the notes. Still, as I say, an unenviable task.
The comparative lack of dramatic resonance allowed fearful doubts about Thomas Allen's Giovanni to surface, doubts that had nothing whatever to do with the beauty and brilliance of his sing- ing. At the earlier performance he was still recognisably the Hall psychopath, fish- eyed, pasty-faced. A certain heroic roman- ticism of demeanour from the graveyard scene onwards I took to be cunning manipulation of the audience, a subversive bid for sympathy scuppered by his uncouth table manners and crude treatment of Elvira. But at the later performance this Fairbanks romanticism threatened to take over throughout: Giovanni was no longer an unholy terror, but a Flashman-like bounder no more morally reprehensible than most ladies' men of one's acquain- tance. It was a perfectly valid approach to the role, but not one that quite fitted the Hall staging.
The second-series Rosenkavalier saw the
return of Rachel Yakar and Donald Gramm as the antagonists. Mr Gramm, not obvious.
casting in that he does not have a real Ochs voice, brings a positive innocence to his characterisation, which is helpful. His Ochs, a sort of Licht-Giovanni, is neither stupid nor insensitive. By contrast, Miss Yakar's Marschallin is for those who have doubts about the opera: a cool, predatory woman (if she were a man she would of course be in prison) whose husband might well be an industrialist rather than a field marshal, hinterwarts von Essen, not Essig. There is self-awareness, self-disgust almost, in Miss Yakar's performance. This pairing works well, illuminating the juxtaposition of innocence and experience. Felicity Lott's Octavian continued to conquer all hearts, and Simon Rattle to delight with his con- ducting: it would need a physiologist to do justice to his interpretation of the prelude.
The Barber was graced by Maria Ewing as Rosina, as ever past-mistress at using Rossini's music as the basis of her glittering comedy performance, and by Claudio Desderi's Bartolo, a fully rounded imper- sonation at once faintly ridiculous and curiously sympathetic, like all amorous old men (I'm told). Mr Desderi is also a marvellous singer: his account of 'A un dot- tor', together with John Cox's direction of the aria as a duet (at one point both Bartolo and Rosina are in tears) was the keystone of the performance. Ugo Benelli, a tenth-hour substitute as Almaviva, gave his own ver- sion of Don Alonso, which unfortunately was much less funny than the producer's. Sylvain Cambreling's conducting was rather livelier than earlier in the season; not that he had much choice since, having listened politely to his introductions, Miss Ewing and Mr Benelli sang their arias at their own speeds. Singers rule, even at Glyndebourne.
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