Opera
Myth and trauma
Rodney Milnes
Rusalka (Coliseum)
Parsifal (WNO, Birmingham)
well, Andrew Porter reviews perfor- mances sung in his translations — he has done so many that he can hardly avoid it — so why shouldn't I? I can think of a dozen reasons, but never mind. Those con- fused by nomenclature need only know that, like the ladies in The Seven Deadly Sins, 'we have one heart and one bank ac- count'
Dvorak's penultimate opera (1901) is set to a symbolist libretto by Jaroslav Kvapil (1868-1950) based primarily on Hans Andersen's The Little Mermaid. In a fit of bad temper soon after having finished translating what seemed like an awful lot of words, I suggested in the ENO Friends' Magazine that the prolixity of the libretto was probably the reason for Rusalka's failure to win a place in the repertory out- side Czechoslovakia. Having seen the work on stage I realise I was wrong. The text does indeed tend to wordiness, but its symbolist content is persuasively and fascinatingly laid out, and it is also placed squarely in its time in the exceptionally intelligent ENO programme, with illustrations from Ma" gritte and Delvaux and quotations from Apollinaire, Proust and, in a chilling envoi) Peter Pan.
There is more than enough in the waY that Kvapil tells the tale of the water nyrnPb who aspires to human form because she lias fallen in love with a mortal — the harping on her childish innocence, her waterY coldness and, creepiest of all, her dumbness when human — to justify David Pount- ney's decision to set the action not around an 'operatic' lakeside glade but in an Ed; wardian nursery. For humanity rea", maturity. Rusalka is a young girl troublea by the first stirrings of adult sexuality; the Water Sprite, whom in Kvapil she addresSes as Grandfather, is just that; the Witch who grants her adult/human form becomes her governess; and so on. Her love for the Prince founders on her inability to cOnl- municate with him at various levels and hY the terms of the bargain with the Witch she is sentenced (after the repentent Prince has returned for a passionate Liebestod) to eter- nity as a disembodied spirit suspended be" tween life and death. Pountney's logically thought-throue metaphorical approach is faithful in spirit to Kvapil, not to mention Andersen; sorne listeners have wondered whether it is true to Dvorak. I believe it is: there must have been many a worm gnawing away at the heart of that apparently bluff old train-spotter. In, addition to the lyricism and eroticism 01 what is par excellence a musician's score, there is an abundance of fear and an ele- ment of cruelty that will surprise only those who do not know the series of gruesoine late tone-poems inspired by Karel Erben. Whether or not Dvoiik knew what he Was up to with the hideously jaunty, almost lip" smacking wedding hymn about deflowering that sends Rusalka scurrying back t° Grandfather Water, I cannot decide, but he certainly did in the scene when the Witch --- who may not be as other women are -- mocks Rusalka for failing to keep her gleefully orders her to kill him in order t° save herself, and when she refuses lays the curse of frigidity on her. This whole episode freezes you in your seat with its sheer musical malevolence.
The greatest strength of Pountney's proai duction — quite apart from the technic skill with which it is executed in Stefano Lazaridis's atmospheric surrealist decor, In by Nick Chelton with a beauty that More, than makes up for the loss of theatrical rusticity — is its sly refusal to be t°°_, specific. Some commentators have assunleu that the Prince and the Foreign PrinCess who destroys his infatuation with Rusalk8 are Mummy and Daddy: a straight Fren dian view that never once occurred to Ine, over the past year. Others have mutterea darkly about paedophilia, which did- 1,1) fact it is a case of selecting your ow,' trauma from the many proposed arl‘ci Pountney's production will probably se'
each member of the audience back to that Painful, private, half-forgotten moment When they were forced to realise that real life sadly has nothing to do with childhood hopes and dreams.
In the circumstances it would be im- proper to praise the singers as extravagantly as they deserve, but Eilene Hannan's slow, hunched walk up-stage at the final curtain to face an eternity of misery is something that will haunt me as long as I live (as will her plaintive phrasing), and John Treleaven's fleshing-out of the Prince's Character (what is he after? Ask J. M. Bar- rie) is as impressive as his full-throated sing- ing. Sarah Walker's Witch is brilliantly fun- ny and absolutely terrifying at one and the same time. Mark Elder communicates his love for the score with boundless elo- quence, and the orchestra plays magnificently. But the big surprise is that a Work so often approached as a purely musical treat for which excuses have to be Made has emerged, thanks to Mr Pountney, as a profoundly disturbing dramatic masterpiece. There is now reason enough for it to become a repertory opera. We all know that Parsifal is a masterpiece, I think, and the new WNO Production, although born in sorrow with the loss of both conductor (Goodall) and Producer (Rudolf Noelte), is by a very long Chalk the most probing and challenging I have yet encountered. Mike Ashman sees it as a sex- and psycho-drama rather than a Primarily religious meditation, and very Purposefully directs it as such. Amfortas's Wound is placed, as in the mediaeval sources and Wagner's original prose sketch, in the groin instead of the side, which results in a hair-raising first-act finale (and,
quite honestly, in a less than convincing on- stage bathing scene, which looks disconcer-
tingly like one of those consultations in a Clap clinic that we know about only at second hand). Visual references in Peter Mumford's decor range wide: the grail, handled with calipers, could be a radio-active isotope; Masonic symbols lurk, if I am not mistaken; Klingsor is Nietzsche; the Flower- Maidens are Burne-Jones (lovely); Kundry is 1,aneY Morris; Parsifal, in an astound- t.",glY physical interpretation by Warren t'llsworth, is Mowgli; the deceased swan Prefer not to describe in a family maga- zine.
usically the evening is extremely UIVIlstinguished. Anthony Negus's serenely Paced conducting is entirely worthy of his nientor Goodall without in any sense being ar,carbon copy, and the playing is excellent. o'freat care is taken with the placing of the b f-stage choruses. The cast is dominated Y 130nald McIntyre's authoritative, clearly Pctojected Gurnemanz, and Linda Esther r,nY (Kundry) makes up for slight lack of ifiour in her lower register with her thrill- 8 top (her 'lachte' is stunning) and her Pressive acting. This provocative yet sihhoroughly responsible Parsifal can, and ould, be seen in Bristol and Oxford next tnonth.
Previous page
