There’s been a few grumblings around recently about operas
being set in museums. Chicago’s new Elektra,
if one’s to trust the reviews, is a case in point. Closer to the land of
Walter Scott’s Lammermoor, one thinks back to John Fulljames’s faintly ridiculous Harris Tweed-sponsored
Donna del Lago at Covent Garden. I
saw a few more examples mentioned on Twitter, too.
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| Pretty Yende as Lucia at the Deutsche Oper (Photo © Bettina Stöß) |
The Deutsche Oper’s Lucia,
however, is a genuine museum piece. It dates from 1980, but Filippo Sanjust’s
designs seem already to have been deliberately old-fashioned even then. Tromp
l’oeil curtains frame the stage, and a drop curtain features an illustration of a
waify stray with windswept hair and white dress rushing across some barren
landscape.
The stage itself for the first two scenes is pretty
rudimentary: a backdrop with a distant castle, a couple of unimpressive two-dimensional
outcrops of rock, one featuring a static waterfall. Things get a little more concrete in subsequent scenes as we
get into some impressive-looking interiors, but there’s no escaping the
essential fustiness of it all.
The costumes continue the trend, with flouncy
frocks and ringlets for the ladies and, for the men, austere period outfits
whose manifold details, I suspect, could be named only by historians of dress. (There were hints of tartan, but at least no anachronistic kilts.)
The edition used, too, was a period piece, with the loss of
both the Enrico-Edgardo scene at the start of Act 3 (we went straight into the
‘D’immenso giubilo’ chorus) and a final scene that began with ‘Tombe
degli avi miei’. Fans of the glass harmonica will have been a little
disappointed, too, since Lucia’s mad scene was accompanied by the then traditional
flute (excellently played, though, by Robert Lerch). Ivan Repušić conducted
straightforwardly and dutifully, and certainly could have done more to enliven the
recits.
Then again, with direction at the basic end of the
spectrum – it was notable how Pretty Yende’s Lucia manoeuvred herself to prime
centre-stage position for the start of ‘Quando repito in estasi’ – this was
Donizetti less as drama than as bel canto
showcase. It was also a showcase for the 2011 edition of Plácido Domingo’s
Operalia competition: Yende and her Edgardo, René Barbera, shared the top prize
that year.
Happily they both delivered the goods. Yende’s voice is pearly
and seductive, bright but never strident, and beautifully controlled. It also
extends with apparent ease right to the very top of the range – she tossed in a few top notes beyond the standard embellishments. Dramatically she
doesn’t necessarily plumb the depths, and I wondered even if her irrepressible
likability as a performer and the inherent sunny optimism of the voice actually detracted from the tragedy. I suspect that a strong directorial hand in a less
somnambulant production would have helped a great deal in that regard, though.
Barbera was similarly left to deliver a stock dramatic
performance. But it’s a pleasingly clean voice, light in both colour and size, and he sang with real elegance, focus and lovely legato. His great final scene was beautifully delivered – with some fine work from the orchestral soloists. There was
an impressive, suitably unstinting Enrico from Noel Bouley, a Deutsche Oper ensemble
member with a notably stentorian top range. Riccardo Zanellato deserves a
mention, too, for his consoling tones as Raimondo, about the only even half-decent
male character in the whole show.
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The last production I saw of this work had been Katie
Mitchell’s for the Royal Opera House in London, a staging I disliked but which
was at least interesting for attempting to give the opera’s heroine some
agency, to make her more than simply a passive victim. This production, though, presents her as just that,
in pretty frocks that only pick up the merest hint of blood in the dainty off-stage murder of her husband.
It underlines the irony,
too, that the character’s passivity was traditionally contrasted with editions of the score
that placed her musically centre-stage, at the expense, particularly, of Edgardo. As such, though, this museum piece does at least offer an
interesting glimpse into the operatic past. It also just let its cast get on with it, offering a great showcase for some
outstanding singers of the present – and future.
