Opera
Mutual, I'm sure
Rodney Milnes
"We don't really seriously do it for the audience, we do it for ourselves." Thus spoke the general administrator of Glyndebourne on Radio 3 last week, an admission of artistic onanism that would have been better left unspoken. It may be a slap in the chops for those solid citizens who pay good money for the peculiar pleasure of watching the festival artists doing it for themselves, yet so warm is the welcome to persons of the press that voicing the smallest criticism seems like abusing hospitality or betraying friendship.
Nevertheless, the opening peeduction, a re-hash of the Enriquez/Luzzati Magic Flute, might indeed have best been done in private. There's not much anyone can do with the sets and costumes, which fit the music like a tea cosy the Himalayas. They allow for few of the stage directions to be followed, and this, together with the drasticrutting_of the text, means that little of the complex but tightly logical content of the work can be conveyed. Anyone who still doubts this logic should read Jacques Chailley's illuminating analysis (published by Gollancz).
An out-of-voice Tamino, a sadly miscast Speaker and a Pamina who picks her way through the notes with enormous artistry rather than sings them are little help. The evening is saved from disaster by Thomas Allen, who sings Papageno's music as beautifully as I have ever heard it, and after a fairly mirthless first act manages to get some laughs. The contrast between such hard work and the effortless success of his English, or rather Geordie, Papageno in Cardiff two years ago was saddening. The Sarastro (Robert Lloyd), Queen (Edita Gruberova) and Monostatos (Brian Burrows) are good, but comic black slaves are, I think, out — especially as there is no authority for making them black. And I know snagging 3cenery and tumbling trucks can happen to the best of performances, but should they happen quite so often on the opening night of a Glyndebourne Festival? Bernard Haitink's conducting was worthy, but a tiny bit dull.
The UK premiere of Gottfried 'von Einem's The Visit of the Old Lady was in happy contrast. Closely based on Dtirrenmates play, the one about the rich lady who, unlike Lorelei Lee, goes back home in her fancy clothes (by Hardy Amies) and known by the biggest banks, not to thumb her nose or to give her thanks to the one who done her wrong in Little Rock, Central Europe, but to offer its citizens untold wealth in return for his execution. The libretto is a cleverly condensed version of the play by the dramatist himself, translated into English, and begs the question "so why music?' Einem's score has received short shrift from the heavy press. Yes, maybe it could have been written any time in the last thirty years, yes, there are echoes of Strauss, Puccini, Orff et al., but Einem uses his musical references to 'add and ironic aural commentary to the play. His lyricism makes it more of a creepy love story than a straight revenge• tragedy or simple moral allegory, his quasi-operatic treatment of the townsfolk is as witty as it is chilling, and has motorised rhythms keep up a crackling pace. It is damned good drama, and immediate, too, which is more than can be said of many musically classier modern operas. You can write for posterity or for an audience, or, if you are a genius, for both. Einem veers towards the latter choice and I for one am grateful.
Tonstant weaders, if I may borrow from the late, incomparable Mrs Parker, will remember -that intricate, stage-filling sets make me fwow up, and Michael Annals' designs, clever and apposite though they are, at times leave the cast not an inch in which to move, which, in operas in general and in John Cox's equally intricate production in particular, they clearly need. The first two acts are played straight, grip the audience. -In the thir, the manifestations of material well
being bought on credit, death knell to the Lady's victim are overstate, I think. Skyscrapers rear, supermarkets burgeon. At the nastiest moment of all, when the victim's family itself acquires fur coats and a brand new car,
slyly accompanied by Einem with the Richard Strauss waltz to end
them all, the audience was able to laugh happily and applaud (they even laughed at the offer of the suicide weapon) as the car drove off into the wings. The tension, already compromised by the dinner interval, was released. With the
final scene of trial and execution, the townsfolk dressed even more grandly than for a Glyndebourne premiere, fantasy had taken over and the audience were able to disaccociate itself from the the ghastly implications of DtIrrenmatt's fable. The danger of doing it " for ourselves?"
The calculated risk of casting kerstin Meyer in the title role paid off. She is a beautiful woman and a brilliant actress — her make-up was stunning — but her English diction is only 50 per cent audible. Despite this, hers is a rivetting impersonation of this first cousin of Elena Makropoulos, a truly tragic figure ravaged by obsession and weighed down by time. Donald Bell caught the equiequivocal nature of her victim with much skill, and Edgar Evans, Rae Woodland and Derek Hammond-Stroud stood out from the large, well-rehearsed cast. John Pritchard and the LPO extract the drama from the score. Questions of overall interpretation apart, this is a well thought-out production, smoothly executed and very well worth seeing.
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