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3Replacing the ailing Simon O'Neill at just a few days notice, Stuart Skelton was magnificent as Parsifal, wielding his powerful tenor with colour and nuance to show the progression of an innocent “fool” to enlightened redeemer. His best singing came in Act 2: when the seductress Kundry’s cajoling and pleading became almost unbearable, Skelton countered with a beautiful and thrilling outburst of high notes to assert his freedom. Parsifal’s final declaration of Amfortas’ redemption and his own assumption of the Grail Knights’ leadership was sung with tenderness and sympathy as Skelton modulated his voice with pianissimo.
In London, Fleming’s colleagues were less consistently good than Fleming herself. Reiffenstuel’s dresses for Alice Coote’s Octavian and Mariandel were not the most becoming the mezzo-soprano has worn on this stage, where she has thus far specialized in male characters. Coote’s singing was often ungainly, frequently with a discomfiting rawness to the tone. The finest exponent of the three main women’s parts was Sophie Bevan, who sang the ingenue role of her namesake to perfection, with a top register to die for.Steinberg’s family-sized sets looked too big on the Covent Garden stage; the Princess’s bedroom and its mammoth collection of dynastic paintings dwarfed the characters. A troublesome feature of Act II was a collection of enormous field guns and an obsession with rifles: in his desire to underline the militarism of his redesignated period, Carsen decided, without any specifics in Hofmannsthal’s text to back it up, that the army supplies that provide the basis of Faninal’s fortune were, in fact, armaments. Act III swapped the original’s dubious suburban inn for a palatial, populous brothel, where Ochs’s assignation with Mariandel almost got lost in the wider sweep of hedonistic goings-on. Overall, Carsen’s direction lacked the detail and focus that can make Der Rosenkavalier profoundly moving. Supplying some, at least, of the missing magic was the conducting of Andris Nelsons, whose enthusiasm for Strauss has already resulted in persuasive Covent Garden performances of Salome and Elektra. Once again his ability to balance super-enriched textures and provide dramatic momentum in a score that needs to be kept on the move paid rich dividends. The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House responded keenly to his confident direction.
German soprano Ricarda Merbeth, whose approach to the overwhelming role of Emilia Marty merits great recognition. A hugely demanding task, Merbeth surmounted this challenge to deliver a stunning performance, filled with seduction, power, frenetic emotion and, ultimately, redemption. However, the role of Emilia draws its power equally from the relationship with the story’s principal roles, Albert Gregor (tenor Kiss B. Atilla) and Jaroslav Prus (baritone Vincent Le Texier), two men both caught in the seductive snares of the bewitching Emilia. The relationship between these three was convincing to say the least, with Albert driven to a compelling emotional insanity by Emilia’s charms, and Jaroslav’s sorrow and heartbreak upon discovering the cost of his actions as the opera comes to its ultimate climax. In addition to such a compelling performance, there was no hint of a linguistic barrier from any of the singers. Unsurprisingly, a Czech opera requires a significantly greater amount of preparation with regards to the text and its pronunciation. With this in mind, German soprano Ricarda Merbeth (and many of the cast) took a year to fully prepare for the role, an effort that has quite clearly paid off, given the utterly persuasive rendition from all the singers involved. In the final moments of Janáček’s masterpiece, the audience is closed in by off-stage horns and a male choir, creating one final moment of sublime power as the story of Emilia Marty, and this epic production, is brought to its climactic finish.
