Mini-Opera Fest
17 October
Given my passion for opera, it's a wonder we've gotten to mid-October and I'm only now writing about my first operas of the season but, frankly, there's not been a lot that I've wanted to listen to. Either I'm becoming more discriminating or the palette really has become jaded.
Anyhow Opera North rolled into town this week bringing with the Mozart's Don Giovanni, Verdi's La Traviata and Janacek's Katya Kabanova. With a Saturday matinée scheduled, it was possible to do all three operas within just over 24 hours. Which is what I duly did. I also experimented with the stage-side slips seats at Sadler's Wells. When I last visited the theatre, I sat in the upper circle, which was precipitate, uncomfortable, over-priced and remote from the stage. I can honestly say that these seats are a godsend and I will use them again.
The three operas on offer would all find a place into my top ten faves of all time. I've already seen Giovanni ten times in nine different productions including the one that I directed myself; Traviata I've seen an amazing twelve times in nine different productions and even Katya I'd seen six times previously in five different productions (and, even though that's been over a more than 20 year period, that's still an incredible statistic). My card index has given me all these details.
You might ask - do I remember anything about all of these occasions? And to be true there are some that I don't. What was the lacklustre 1982 WNO production of Giovanni like? I don't seem to remember too much about the touring ENO Traviata that I saw in Liverpool in 1980 either. However, the rest; the rest I can give you some impression of the cast or the staging or the impact about each and every one. Buy me a drink some time. I'll bore the socks off you with the information.
So, let's tell you about it all. Opera North decided to make a frugal budget into an artistic challenge with three linked productions pared down. There was supposed to have been thematic linkage but, frankly, apart from a Brechtian approach to staging and a couple of props used across productions, there wasn't much to talk about.
Friday evening gave us the Janacek. I was looking forwards to this most of all but, in the event, it was the show I liked least. The production was full of the tired clichés of Eurotrash style productions - people writing on sets, chairs used for everything - but some of the physical direction was good.
Gillian Knight sang well in full mezzo richness as Kabanicha. Her mother in law was a martinet with a deep well of repressed sensuality running through her. Vivian Tierney was game as Katya. The revelation of the evening for me was Andrew Forbes Lane as the downtrodden son and husband, Tichon.
For the first time, I understood the character. Instead of being a complete cipher, here was someone who was weak and put upon but angry and resentful at the same time. It made more sense of his resorting to drink. Musically, the evening was unrewarding. I love this score but it was all smoothed out with none of the tremulous sense of nature and human passions dangerously surging.
Saturday afternoon gave me one of the great operatic experiences of
my life. Oh, to be sure I could quibble about all sorts of things but I lived the
whole experience from within the characters.
Janis Kelly's Violetta had the full measure of the rôle vocally and spiritually. Her flirtation with Alfredo was challenging, her discovery of love was affecting, her forced renunciation of that love was desolating, her death full of anger and bitterness that it should come to this.
Tom Randle's Alfredo was a young man of wealth and aspirations going through a first love. He was tumultuous and passionate and deeply wounded by the perceived rejection. On finding Violetta in the last act, he discovered a person closer to death than he had expected. There was a hollowness in his protestations of love which he knew had no future. And the desperate look on his face as he held her and didn't know what to do was unbearably real.
It wasn't a surprise to read in the programme that he was dedicating his performance to the memory of his mother. Here was someone who clearly knew what it was like to hold a body close to death.
Keith Latham was vocally fine and dramatically adequate as Père Germont. He did stiff autocrat and embarrassed adult well enough but, as a performance, it wasn't in the same league as the other two principals. The music flooded out of the pit in great waves. I was in tears through most of Act Two and inconsolable by the end of Act Three.
The Giovanni was a different matter. I wasn't aware how used I'd become to fleet performances of Mozart which are guided by the theories of Early Music practice. Here was a performance in the old style. Tempi were leisurely. The orchestra was large and offered a ripe sound. Every possible aria and most of the recitatives were included. The whole event did not finish until close on eleven o' clock. It was like attending a sort of standard Middle European performance in the mid 1950s.
After my afternoon enervations, I was close to not staying for the second half but I am glad that I did. It was well done. Majella Cullagh had all the notes and presence for a very splendid Donna Anna. Paul Nilon had both Don Ottavio arias and, lone among principals, embellished the vocal line of each second verse.
Garry Magee gave us a Giovanni who was a definite chancer and knew it and who also believed that he simply had to twinkle and everyone would do as he pleased and, in any case, he had the power of his caste behind him. And yet, charmingly despicable as he was throughout, by the time it came to his final confrontation with the Commendatore, he achieved an heroic status by his refusal to avoid facing his future.
Some reflections on the trilogy. Cruelty and passion seemed to emerge from them all. The suffocating provincial life and the overbearing character of Kabanicha which drives Katya demented. The harm done to Alfredo by the agreement between his father and Violetta and the anger and scorn with which he throws money at her in public humiliation. The desolation felt by Donna Elvira during Leporello's catalogue aria and later when she is duped into believing he is Giovanni.
In many ways Giovanni is the more structurally sophisticated and tonally adventurous of the three; Katya is the most raw and melodramatic; Traviata is the most direct and heartfelt.
All in all, I had an absolutely brilliant time.