Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

When the curtain rises on David McVicar’s new production of Berlioz’ masterpiece Les Troyens, promoted as a highlight of the Royal Opera House season in London, my immediate thought was, here we go again. The audience is immediately greeted with that sort of monstrous pile of darkly lit, post-apocalyptic rubble and walls mixed with somber costuming straight out of the Crimean War. (It’s always the Crimea isn’t it?) If you’re one of those people still wondering if McVicar is running out of ideas, his short-sighted muddled vision of Les Troyens should settle that once and for all. It’s not the updating of the action or even the now predictable visual look of the show that is so much the problem, it’s a lack of interpretation and often a plain understanding of some events in the libretto that can sink this very long performance over and over again despite some wonderfully coordinated musical performances.

Of course, going in to the run, the big story was Jonas Kaufmann. Originally booked to sing Enée, Kaufmann pulled out due to health issues weeks before the show was to open. His image is still festooned all over the house and town as his appearance was a major calling card for the company this Olympic summer, and ads show him in the corner of a boxing ring dressed in a tuxedo. Oddly enough, as much as I love to hear him sing, in the end, his presence on this team wasn’t missed as much as one might have thought it would be. The reason why is tenor Bryan Hymel, a rising American lyric tenor. He’s had bigger and bigger assignments lately, including the role of Gounod’s Faust at Santa Fe in 2011 and an appearance in the ROH’s recent run of Rusalka. Something big has clicked for him in the last year, and on this particular Sunday afternoon he sounded amazing, with easy top notes and big volume for the house. He’s not in an easy corner of the vocal repertory to pull it off all the time, but admittedly his bright, light voice in the end was preferable, I’d argue, to the kind of darkened baritonal sound Kaufmann is known for.

Hymel did much more than keep up and hold a place in the show. Which is saying a great deal for the quality of performances given by the two other major principals in the show. Eva Maria Westbroek continues to startle world audiences and she did again with the her grounded, accessible take on Didon. She kept her stamina up in this long sing right through the concluding aria. Granted, the chemistry between her and the other principals in the cast could be iffy, but vocally it was a solid, admirable performance. Meanwhile the Cassandre, Anna Caterina Antonacci, demonstrated why she has such an ardent following for a singer who is careful about vocal assignments and how much she travels. The intensity she brought to the first two acts of the evening was up in the Waltraud Meier range. Cassandre’s rage and resolution was captivating and frankly her singing alone made the whole show worthwhile. She was well paired with the Chorèbe of Fabio Capitanucci, although again they weren’t always acting together as much as alongside each other. All these superstars got a performance from the ROH Orchestra and music director Antonio Pappano that was nothing short of spectacular. He dug in for rich, solid, warm sound throughout that rivaled anything I’ve personally heard him conduct in the house despite some indulgent tempi here and there.

That the cast was let down by the production is an understatement. There are so many distressing elements, it’s hard to know where to begin. Perhaps the surest sign of weakness were the numerous poorly choreographed and dramatically ignored ballet sequences. I’m not intending to lay blame on choreographer Andrew George, although he could let things get a bit silly at times. The issue is that McVicar treats them as dramatic time outs resulting in endless moments of goofy sailors, amorous slaves, and happy peasants jumping around the stage for minutes on end. Berlioz intended the dance sequences to move the story forward in the way that everything else musically in the opera does, and McVicar’s repeated sloughing them off is a disservice. There is a giant replica of Carthage used in Act III onwards that Didon walks about on and then in subsequent acts is lifted above the scene and finally destroyed. It’s tired and heavy handed symbolism that didn’t look so great when Francesca Zambello used it, if my memory serves, in her own vision of the opera many years ago. There is also that Technicolor happy, happy, joy, joy business in Act III which appears as a set from Disneyland’s “It’s a Small World After All” ride only this time the audience is not in motorized fake boats. As the opera wore on, the production’s inability to maintain a consistently dramatic tension became more and more of a problem. And when a giant mechanized figure, which I assume was Hannibal as referenced in Didon’s concluding passage, rises above the stage, you can already envision the stage hands struggling to get the flames out on cue with the darkened stage at the final note that you know is just around the corner. The audience shouldn’t be thinking about that, and the fact that McVicar hasn’t put something like that out of everyone’s mind after over four hours of music and a performance by hundreds of people is a sign of the underlying mediocrity of it all. But you’ll be able to judge for yourself in the near future at both Vienna and La Scala before arriving at some point eventually in San Francisco. Don't get me wrong, if I were here through the end of the run on July 11th, I'd be seeing it again. This is a big show and not an everyday occurrence with a remarkable cast. But one hopes by the time it arrives in San Francisco, the kitsch factor will be dialed down a wee bit.

Labels: Out of Town, Royal Opera House

The omnipresent La Traviata continued its drive through the 2011/2012 Royal Opera House season on Monday with its third cast since the fall. It’s not unusual for repertory opera companies to switch things up along the way in a long run of a warhorse like La Traviata especially in a production as old and familiar as ROH’s 1994 Richard Eyre staging! which has already been filmed twice: once with Angela Gheorghiu in her breakout performance early in her career and more recently with Renée Fleming. This season’s Violettas have included Ailyn Perez and Marina Poplavskaya thus far. Anna Netrebko was scheduled for two performances later in January until she dropped out recently due to a reported foot surgery. Her likely replacement will be Ermonela Jaho, the Albanian soprano who is already scheduled for all the rest of January’s performances alongside Stephen Costello as Alfredo and Paolo Gavanelli as Giorgio Germont. (Vittorio Grigolo watchers may note that he is still scheduled to sing two of the Alfredos at the very end of the run.)

But while multiple cast changes can keep an oft repeated show fresh, it can also create problems. One of the most common of these is not enough rehearsal time for a new cast in a show that is already up and running, which seemed to be the major problem on Monday. Many of the cast had difficulty staying in synch with conductor Maurizio Benini and eyes were glued to him throughout. His pacing could turn plodding at times. The blocking appeared unfamiliar to some of the cast and there was virtually no chemistry between any of the principles throughout the evening. The revival's direction this month is credited to Paul Higgins but if he had anything to contribute to this performance, it appears he didn't have enough time to do it in.

The good news is that some of these issues may get better as the last set of these performances comes along. Jaho has a compelling enough voice with adequate power and agility. Her acting was stiff in the first two acts and it wasn’t until the big finale that she seemed to show up dramatically. Act III Violetta’s aren’t uncommon (Fleming is one as well) but it goes without saying that one can’t spot them the first time around until that home stretch. She handles the dying well but never really gave us a sense of Violetta’s fragility before then, even when Alfredo confronts her in Act II. It sounded like she was coming at everything vocally at full-bore, and I often wished she could have delivered a little more in the way of dynamic range sound-wise. The most satisfying performance of the night went to Paolo Gavanelli. He’s a treasure (and will be performing alongside Placido Domingo in L.A. next month in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra), and, although no one in the cast was particularly interactive with him in this rather stoic performance, he was a pleasure to hear. Stephen Costello meanwhile is having a very high profile season following appearances opposite Netrebko’s Anna Bolena in New York. I like him a lot as a singer, but he lacked a certain darkness of tone here and instead emphasized Alfredo’s more youthful attributes. And while there’s a place for that in Traviata, I felt the lack of direction and chemistry between him and Jaho left me puzzled through much of the evening as if Alfredo was trying to convince himself he loved Violetta as much as he was trying to convince anyone else of it. Overall it is not a necessary La Traviata to see at this point, but if you’re a big Gavanelli fan, things may solidify to a better state later in the run, which continues through January 25.

Labels: Out of Town, Royal Opera House

Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is an opera that takes readily to modern interpretation and reinvention. There’s that strange unfunny “comic” plot and the weird holy German art business at the end. Directors all over Europe have taken various cracks at this opera in recent years with varying results not the least of which is Katarina Wagner’s production for Bayreuth in 2007. So one might think the atmosphere would be ripe for something a bit more subtle like Graham Vick’s 1993 production of Mesitersinger for the Royal Opera House, which was revived in December with conductor Antonio Pappano under the direction of Elaine Kidd this time around. Unfortunately, as seen on New Year’s Day in London, Vick’s staging looks startlingly naïve. Critics here have focused on the excesses of the Brueghel-inspired costumes complete with cod pieces. But frankly I found those much less concerning than the cartoonish characterization of just about everyone in the production. Thank god Sixtus Beckmesser doesn’t have a moustache here or the audience would certainly have gotten a chance to watch him twirl the ends of it while laughing fiendishly. Not that the show isn’t colorful, but it’s bland with very few moments of visual invention over the course of a long nearly 6 hours. Those moments would include the topsy-turvey Act II riot with villagers popping out of the walls and ceiling in response to the noise Hans Sachs and Beckmesser are making.

The revival is not a total wash, though, thanks to the orchestra and the conducting of the newly-knighted Antonio Pappano, who entered the pit for the first time since receiving the honor late last week. Pappano gave an energetic, brisk take of the score that eschewed a feeling of grandeur and ceremony. (This may have compounded the production's weaknesses that cried out for something more processional than active.) Pappano did give the show a sense of motion when events on stage were essentially static and listless. Besides the excellent chorus though, he got little help from the stage in terms of vocal performances that ranged from uninteresting to mildly unpleasant. The two exceptions to this came in smaller roles with the always dependable Toby Spence as David and the legendary John Tomlinson as Veit Pogner. Simon O’Neill who was announced as sick before the show but performed anyway played Walther von Stolzing. As advertised he looked all but green by the end of the evening and often sounded strained and pinched. Emma Bell’s Eva could also sound harsh and was broadly acted. Peter Coleman-Wright was the aforementioned Beckmesser who wasn’t opposed to chewing what little scenery was made available, although vocally he was certainly competent. And then there was the matter of Wolfgang Koch’s Hans Sachs. Although not announced as sick, Koch also looked rather pasty and green at the end of the evening. He seemed rather absent in the first two acts, but then came on strong in Act III with increased projection, and clarity of tone. Yet his concluding music was overshadowed by the superb ROH chorus which had been there all along giving the highest-quality performance. But this production has long ago passed its sell-by date and is undercooked in a way more reminiscent or recent failures of new productions like Don Giovanni and Anna Bolena in New York. There are two more Mesitersinger performances in London through the end of next week.

Labels: Out of Town, Royal Opera House