Past Production Reviews
11The set looks airy and minimal, Káťa’s sense of imprisonment and desire for freedom achieved by Alessandro Carletti’s intense use of lighting and high white walls that shut out the world. Three standard visual motifs, drawn from references in the libretto, are brought into play: bird, cage and angel. Magritte’s disturbing birdcage paintings, one of which he pointedly called The Therapist, come to mind. By the end, these symbols have multiplied to the point of distraction. This might irritate more had musical standards not been so outstanding in every quarter, steered by Glyndebourne’s music director, Robin Ticciati.
Michieletto’s production is symbolic and psychological first and foremost. The white set designs by Paolo Fantin suggest an abstract dream space – there is no village or river, only the interior of Kat’a’s mind. Their acute angles are redolent of the kinds of vitrine-like structures that so fascinated Francis Bacon in his paintings; these walls close in on Kat’a at the end of Act one, trapping her in the room with Kabanicha, which then ingeniously segues uninterrupted into the beginning of Act two.
Ninguna versión de concierto con tenor y barítono detrás de un atril y en medio de una orquesta puede satisfacer del todo el significado de este momento. Aquí se necesita una escena como la propuesta por Kramer: semi vacía, cubierta de nieve con una tumba abierta y un coro tímidamente intrusivo a los costados, y dos hombres mirándose primero con asombro y angustia, después con tierna admiración y finalmente tomados de la mano. Hasta este momento, el barítono y el tenor se habían movido no solo como enemigos el uno de otro, sino con una perplejidad que traicionaba la enemistad interna, la que cada uno tenía consigo mismo.
ENO’s excellence with technology, demonstrated on multiple occasions, is once more on display here. Massive screens display anti-war propaganda, an appeal from Srebrenica (fleshed out by an essay, ‘Kada Hotić – Seamstress of Srebrenica’ in the exceptionally lavish programme booklet) alongside scenes of the utmost violence mirrored by the blind violence of today’s football hooligans. Nature also plays a huge part in the visual display, as do Tilmans’s photos of Coventry Cathedral (for whose re-consecration the War Requiem was written; as was, of course, Bliss’s Beatitudes).
Le chœur d’adultes et d’enfants de l’English National Opera se réunit, soudé, entraînant et solidaire sur scène. Le résultat vocal est joyeux et rassurant. Enfin, l’orchestre symphonique, dirigé par la cheffe italienne Valentina Peleggi, dynamise et propulse dans la musique de Bizet dès l'ouverture brillante, à travers ce sombre et cruel road-tripe espagnol.
Driving the drama is ENO Mackerras Fellow Valentina Peleggi. Her conducting is dynamic yet detailed; rarely if ever at ENO have the lines of the orchestral contribution been so finely honed, and the orchestra clearly loves her, on top form throughout. Chiselled rhythms, a full realisation of the colourful orchestration, a deep grasp of the ongoing dramatic thrust were all in evidence, as was a willingness to relax into the lyricism where appropriate (as in the José/Micaëla passages in the first act around what in French would have been ‘Parle-moi de ma mère’); and now the run has settled in, ensemble problems were minimal. The wonderfully reedy bassoon at the beginning of the second act particularly merits mention.
Mimi’s sickbed is the floor of her transit van. Rodolfo sits hunched against a wheel outside, the closest he dare get to his dying lover. Musetta makes her showy arrival in a convertible Merc, and an old ice-cream van serves as the Cafe Momus. Trailer-trash stagings are nothing new – many an old camper van has been rolled on to an operatic stage – but here we’re in a proper car park, this unparalleled season’s venue of choice for high art.
A feature of this La bohème is that some characters come up or down from the stage or roam around the parked cars and indeed Rodolfo’s first entrance is when he cycles back from his part-time job delivering takeaways. He hopes to be a playwright but earns additional money writing newspaper reviews. Home isn’t a Parisian garret but a Volkswagen campervan in a car park much the same as the opera was being performed in. It is surrounded by a couple of others and appears to be part of a commune of some sort peopled by those at the fringes of society.
It tells the tale of the 16th century Russian tsar Boris Godunov who seized power after the death of Ivan the Terrible, allegedly after supervising the murder of Ivan's son, and went on to be almost as terrible as his predecessor. In the opera, he is plagued with guilt and ends up going mad, so the whole thing becomes a case history of increasing derangement. Most unusually, there is no major role for a woman singer, so there are no great soprano arias to liughten the musical mood, and it is Boris who dies at the end after the plot has meandered through the darker realms of insanity. The credit for the power of this scene goes equally to Terfel and the director, Richard Jones, and his team, whose striking design and costumes provide a visual treat matching the power of the music. Jones does, however, rather overdo a repeated vision tormenting Boris of the murder of Ivan's son which brought Boris to power.With Bryn Terfel as Boris dominating the show, all other roles are reduced to bit parts, but it is worth mentioning John Tomlinson as a drunken monk, who provided a much needed comic interlude to interrupt the sombre tale. As always, however, Bryn Terfel is well worth seeing and the intensity drawn from the orchestra by Antonio Pappano is magnificent.
