Intermezzo

Sweaty Eddie's La Clemenza di Tito at the Barbican

La Clemenza di Tito - OAE/Gardner - Barbican, 26 July 2008

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment immediately sounded a lot better on this outing than they do at their native South Bank, confirming my suspicion that however questionable the Barbican acoustics might be, the Royal Festival Hall's are (despite the refurb) still worse.

As for the rest of the evening, this concert performance knocked the spots off David McVicar's recent ninja yawnathon for ENO (in which conductor Ed Gardner and Alice Coote also featured).

The OAE were immaculately prepared - perhaps a repeat performance this weekend at the Lincoln Center , marking Gardner's New York debut, justified a little extra rehearsal time. They were on thrilling form, playing as if their lives depended on it.

Even though the daily ENO grind is turning Gardner prematurely grey, his floppy-fringed cuteness endures. If only that was enough to move orchestras. I've found his ENO efforts patchy - too often pallid and uninspired - but he surprised me tonight, working up a sweat on the podium and a fire on the stage.

Tito seems to have built up a chorus of apologists recently, all ready to proclaim that it's unjustifiably sidelined, one of Mozart's finest, etc. But it's not. Unlike Die Zauberflöte, so eminently resistant to even the most cack-handed of treatments, when Tito's given a second-rate performance, it sounds like a second-rate opera. This is the first time I've heard it dispatched with the sort of passion and commitment that do it justice.

Of course the soloists played a huge part in this, none more so than Alice Coote, who gave so much more than just singing. In the central role of Sesto, agonisingly torn between self-destructive love for the selfish, ambitious Vitellia and loyalty to the Emperor Tito, she inhabited her part fearlessly and totally.  This was a concert performance, but nothing except the music stand gave a hint that this was anything less than Coote would deliver on the opera house stage. She looked utterly spent as she sank back into her plastic chair at the end of each aria.

Toby Spence as Tito was dressed for St Moritz in January with his white polo neck and thick velvet jacket. But this was London in July, with British (i.e. rubbish) aircon. When he whipped the jacket off and sat astride his chair (to the apparent surprise of the other performers) as he started to interrogate Coote aria-style, I wondered if it was a spot of heat exhaustion. But no - dramatic licence (and very effective) - he put it straight back on again afterwards.

There was a range to his performance that suggested experiment as much as expressive breadth. Not all of it came off - in particular I felt he stressed Tito's benevolence at the expense of his authority - but it was clear he has an ever-growing range of vocal tools, not to mention the ability to keep an audience on the edge of their seats.

Next to the white-hot intensity of these two, Hillevi Martinpelto's studied and refined portrayal of Vitellia inevitably paled a little. Vitellia's mean streak needed a harder edge. But she sang beautifully, every note appropriately shaded, the voice still lustrous and almost girlish. It was 'Mozart singing' in the classic sense, and a pleasure to listen too.

Sarah Tynan was wonderfully cast as the sweet Servilia, the plaintive innocent, and Fiona Murphy too as the doughty Annio.

Matthew Rose's Publio seemed rather lugubrious in comparison to the spirited performances elsewhere, but there's something of that in the character anyway, and his sonorous bass was impressively mobile in the faster passages. 

The Clare College Cambridge Choir were enthusiastic and crisply drilled - a textbook rendition, if not an especially sensitive one, to nitpick.

This concert was announced relatively late, and the Proms always provide stiff competition at this time of year. Even so, it surprised me, given the casting, that it was far from sold out - the whole balcony closed, and empty seats here and there elsewhere. The Barbican sometimes offers up some rather dodgy programming in its annual summer Mozart festival, but this was an overwhelming exception.

Here's one she made earlier: Hillevi Martinpelto sings Deh seh piacer mi vuoi for Charles Mackerras:

La Clemenza di Tito Dress Rehearsal

La Clemenza di Tito (dress rehearsal) - ENO, 5 June 2007

Photo: Laurie Lewis

I didn't catch this much-hyped production when it debuted a couple of years ago. But I came away today feeling I hadn't missed much.

Not at all the fault of the singers - although it was only a dress rehearsal, there was little to criticise here. Alice Coote's impassioned Sesto was a highlight despite the fact that she was recovering from a cold. The part of Vitellia demands a broad tessitura, and poor Emma Bell was forced to growl the deepest notes in an otherwise thrilling and lucid performance. Paul Nilon brought a human side to the rather baldly drawn role of Tito, though he didn't have that truly imperial charisma, and was vocally rather constricted at times. And the secondary roles were handled with energy and conviction. The orchestra too, led by Edward Gardner, were elegant and precise, with some beautiful clarinet work. Only the chorus, singing from the pit, sounded rather limp.

The design was more problematical. It begins with a nearly bare set in shadowed gloom. Curved orientalist panels are cleverly set into the stage revolve and periodically slid and twisted into various configurations. These surround a stunted little garden centre tree. The construction is ingenious but the concept ultimately too banal to retain interest for the entire performance. And I loathe a darkened stage, so I was dying for someone to turn the lights up, but it never happened.

The only visual break from the tedious glide of panels across stage were a couple of strange dancer interludes. In the first, the imperial guard in the form of a gang of baton twirling ninjas prance across the stage in formation, then disappear. They pop up again later, this time a portentous plod with a tray of nightlights. Immaculately executed and admittedly entertaining on both counts, but really nothing to do with the music or the drama.

The crepuscular minimalism of the design should have at least focussed attention on the performers, but they were largely static and often inadequately spotlit, holding attention only with the quality of their singing. A couple of nights back I saw Cheek by Jowl's Cymbeline at the Barbican, where a lot more is done with a lot less, simply by keeping the action moving fluidly and intelligently, and, most importantly, framing it in an overall structure. This Tito had nothing to say - it was just a moment we'd walked in on and walked away from. Mozart gave it a clear beginning and end, moments of great drama and moments of intimacy, which simply weren't reflected in David McVicar's one-note production. Only the fabulous musical performances made it worth seeing.