Royal Opera: Ariadne auf Naxos

[From OPERA, September 2014, pp. 1149-50]

Ariadne auf Naxos

Royal Opera at Covent Garden, June 25

With this revival of Christof Loy’s 2002 Ariadne auf Naxos—the third of three of the Hofmannsthal operas presented in the 2013-14 season—the Royal Opera’s modest celebration of the Strauss year came to a conclusion. The performances also marked something of a celebration for Antonio Pappano, returning to the first production he conducted as the Royal Opera’s music director, not long after having announced the extension of his contract at Covent Garden. 

It remains a smart show, and Loy himself was back to direct this fourth revival, keeping much of the comedy sharp. Yet I wonder how much of a hand he had in directing Karita Mattila, who was singing Ariadne for the first time, but in large part, one felt, simply playing herself. The result was a fascinating performance from the Finnish diva, whose haughtiness in the Prologue was deliciously funny, but who in the Opera never quite shed the Prima Donna character, creating an unusual continuity between the evening’s two parts. But while there was a compelling intensity and charisma, of course, there was little sense of vulnerability and insecurity, or, as a result, of the character’s all-important transformation. Vocally, too, there were rough edges at the top and bottom, and signs of wear and tear could occasionally be heard all through the range. Artistic generosity is what Mattila’s Ariadne offers, not cool serenity and purity of line.

She was well supported by the rest of the cast, not least by a Bacchus from Roberto Saccà whose slight dryness of tone was more than compensated for by rare elegance and stamina. Jane Archibald was impressively on top of Zerbinetta’s notes, too, rattling through ‘Grossmächtige Prinzessin’ with considerable virtuosity, even if the voice might ideally have had a little extra sparkle and ping. Ruxandra Donose was impassioned and impulsive as the composer should be, and sang with spirit and commitment, but her mezzo is maybe a touch small for the role in this house. Sofia Fomina (no mean Zerbinetta herself, by all accounts), Karen Cargill and Kiandra Howarth made an unusually fine trio as Naiad, Dryad and Echo; Ed Lyon and Thomas Allen were well contrasted as a mischievous, mincing Dancing Master and pragmatic, mellow Music Master. Markus Werba’s Harlekin lacked charm, but Christoph Quest brought an authentically Austrian superciliousness to the Major Domo. 

In the pit, Pappano coaxed extremely fine playing from the reduced Royal Opera orchestra, and conducted with pleasing flexibility, keeping the to-ing and fro-ing of the Prologue, in particular, light on its feet. On the first night, though, not all the transitions between the comic and serious were as seamlessly handled as they might have been, and I missed some of the magic in the final pages. One further gripe: the surtitles—more simplistic précis than translation—felt a touch insulting to the intelligence of both the librettist and the audience.

Opera Holland Park: La fanciulla del West

[From OPERA, August 2014, p. 1025]

La fanciulla del West

Opera Holland Park, June 19

With Aletta Collins’s Opera North production behind us, and Richard Jones’s at ENO in the autumn still to come, Opera Holland Park’s take on Puccini’s Western became the filling in a Fanciulla sandwich that the increasingly numerous fans of this great score will be keenly—if, perforce, slowly—devouring in 2014. I’m not sure the details of Stephen Barlow’s production will last long in the memory: his relocation and updating of the action to Las Vegas in 1951, with soldiers from the ‘Atomic Testing Camp’ taking the place of Belasco’s and Puccini’s miners, presents predictable inconsistencies and difficulties. The Polka bar becomes a room in a casino, with plenty of women around besides Minnie; Minnie’s special relationship to the men isn’t strongly established enough to give the final redemption the shred of plausibility it needs; Minnie herself becomes half Valkyrie, half Dolly Parton—a brightly-garbed, rootin’-tootin’ cowgirl  in the outer acts, arriving to save the day on the back of a Harley-Davison.

It’s often a bit silly, not least the sudden appearance, thanks to a clever lighting trick and a concealed door in a panoramic back panel (through which Minnie also makes her first appearance in Act 1), of an aeroplane and air-hostess to whisk the couple off into the sunset. But Yannis Thavoris’s designs display plenty of ingenuity, with a decent log cabin for Act 2 whose two walls were closed together to provide a feature for the final act, during which a rickety signpost also served as an optimistic improvised gallows.

Musically the performance I attended—with the young conductor Timothy Burke taking over from Stuart Stratford, who was in charge of the rest of the run—was highly persuasive. Burke drew sweeping, impassioned playing from a City of London Sinfonia on fine form, and clearly enjoying itself; the aching nostalgia and powerful vistas of the music came across with power. The principals made an impressive fist of their roles, too. Susannah Glanville’s soprano doesn’t have the steely power up top, but she nevertheless filled out Minnie’s phrases effectively, and produced a convincing character, despite the challenges imposed by the updating. Similarly, Jeff Gwaltney’s voice is some way off the Dick Johnson ideal, lacking the necessary robustness and heft, but he also managed to convince by clever employment of his resources, and excellent acting—matters weren’t harmed by the fact he looked the part, too. As Jack Rance, Simon Thorpe didn’t make quite as strong an impression as he might have, but he held up his part of the love triangle reliably.

Barlow, too, deserves praise for managing the large cast well, creating a tangible sense of community—among the secondary roles, Nicholas Garrett’s nuanced Sonora and Graeme Broadbent’s upstanding Ashby merit mention. As so often at Holland Park, though, it was the sense of a company giving a performance its all that made this Fanciulla so enjoyable and satisfying.