"I never understood why anybody could think opera was boring: it's the most spectacular theatre you ever see."
As Glyndebourne revive their 35 year old production of The Rake's Progress, its designer David Hockney talks to Michael Church of the Independent.
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Robert Lepage's Hollywood-themed Rake's Progress returns to Covent Garden no more impressive than it was first time round, so I won't bother describing it in any detail again. The concept - fame corrupts - is superficially interesting. But it sits awkwardly atop the Londonian specificities of the libretto, and the production remains constricted by its static tableaux, a substitute for real dramatic action.
All its wow-factor technical gimmicks can't disguise a lack of depth. Of course that's a criticism you could level at almost any Lepage venture. Intellectual profundity is neither his aim nor his result. He's the 21st century Zeffirelli - overwhelm the audience with spectacle, and hope they don't peer any deeper.
In his theatrical work, an emotional resonance compensates. It can make his best efforts utterly compelling. But in the theatre his actors pretty much devise their own performances from scratch. Not here of course. In opera you have to work with what you're given - a fixed text and performers whose training is more musical than theatrical. This production's characters and situations lack sympathy, empathy - any kind of fellow-feeling at all. And I don't blame the singers, because it was exactly the same last time round, with a different cast. The revival 'direction' seems to have done no more than reproduce the original blocking.
Ingo Metzmacher's pacing, perhaps dictated by the technical demands of the projections and sets, seemed as sluggish as Tom Ades's had in the first run. And in deference to the placement of the singers frequently miles upstage, the volume was far too low. It's telling that the haunting solo harpsichord accompaniment to the graveyard scene had more impact than any of the more complex and clever writing. The clarity of the orchestral sound was perhaps its greatest strength.
The singers seemed bathed in an air of defeat from the first note, though Rosemary Joshua's Welsh-inflected Anne Trulove battled hard to win hearts. Toby Spence undoubtedly has the voice for Tom Rakewell, but he too often lacked focus and, more surprisingly, projection, only really coming to life towards the end in the graveyard scene. Kyle Ketelsen's Nick Shadow and Patricia Bardon's Baba the Turk were decently sung, but strangely muted and anonymous presences. Even Frances McCafferty's Mother Goose - surely a gift of a role for a singer of McCafferty's vocal power and physical dimensions - lacked the expected impact.
The general impression was a lack of confidence, despite a surprisingly enthusiastic audience who laughed and gasped at the visual trickery and couldn't wait to applaud at every possible opportunity. Perhaps this production will come together more as the run progresses, but at the moment it's considerably less than the sum of its well-cast parts.
***** more photos on next page *****
Continue reading "Royal Opera's Rake's Progress proves a Trial" »
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Whatsonstage.com is kindly assisting London's opera companies to flog some of those seats regular marketing ploys alone cannot shift.
They're offering a handsome discount on Rake's Progress stalls seats at the Royal Opera House on 26 and 28 January and 3 February - £66 (40% off) plus free champagne. Details here.
And there's an outing to Jonathan Miller's new production of The Elixir of Love at ENO on 23 March with a top-price ticket, programme and drink included in the price of £40 (more than 50% off). Details of that one here.
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As kindly tweeted by the Royal Opera House. Rear and side amphitheatre tickets for The Rake's Progress are reduced to £15 for performances on 26 and 28 Jan and 1 Feb.
Book online in the normal way here; you will see exactly which tickets are reduced when you hover over them.
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Booking for Covent Garden's Winter Season (December to March) starts today for Friends, and 20 October for all you other people.
Not much is massively tempting, though the first of Plácido Domingo's appearances this season is a must-see. He's already sung in Madrid - and been immortalised on DVD
Also worth catching - if there are any tickets left - is Plácido 'In Conversation' in the Linbury Studio on 26 February.
Kirill Petrenko is the conductor for Der Rosenkavalier, a dust down for the 1984 John Schlesinger production. A promising cast is headed by Soile Isokoski, Sophie Koch, Lucy Crowe and Thomas Allen.
Andris Nelsons makes his Royal Opera House debut in December conducting an even more ancient production, John Copley's 1974 La bohème, with Maurizio Benini and Paul Wynne Griffiths substituting in January. Though once should be enough for anyone. Mix'n'match casting includes Piotr Beczala, Hibla Gerzmava and Christopher Maltman. Yards of curtain fabric, acres of creaking boards, smocks akimbo, and even a spot of artistic nudity not mentioned on the ticket (in case you're taking granny).
Last year's disappointing Robert Lepage production of The Rake's Progress makes a swift and brilliantly-cast return. Toby Spence (the best Tom Rakewell in town - he was made for this role) is joined by Kate Royal, Kyle Ketelsen, and Stephanie Blythe as Baba the Turk. Lovely Ingo Metzmacher conducts and tickets are a bit cheaper than usual, with a top price of £110.
Even cheaper, with a top price of £50, is Prokofiev's The Gambler. Covent Garden take a step into ENO territory with a new English language production by Richard Jones. The cast includes Roberto Sacca, Angela Denoke, John Tomlinson, Jurgita Adamonyte and Kurt Streit, and Pappano conducts. No doubt intended to draw in a new audience, as is a half day education event An Introduction to Opera on 20 February.
It's hard to make Mozart dull, but Jonathan Miller's painfully misguided assault on Così Fan Tutte does the trick. Not half as happening as it thinks it is, and it's doubtful if Charles Castronovo, Troy Cook, Sally Matthews and Nino Surgaladze can salvage it. Julia Jones waves the baton for female conductors.
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Summer is nearly over, and at last the concert calendar is filling up.
Proms and alternatives
The Proms seem to have gone on forever, but it'll all be over for another year on 12 September.
Remaining highlights include Mariss Jansons with the Concertgebouw, Riccardo Chailly with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Vienna Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta and Franz Welser-Möst (replacing the scheduled Harnoncourt).
On 4 September there's an unmissable double header - first Matthias Goerne and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester in Mahler, Ligeti, Schoenberg and Strauss, then a late-night George Crumb special.
Incidentally, operatic highlights for the 2010 Proms - you heard it here first - are expected to include Die Meistersinger with Bryn Terfel, Glyndebourne's Don Giovanni, and a substantial chunk of Tristan und Isolde from the Orchestra of the 18th Century with Ben Heppner.
If you want to skip the ghastliness of the last night - something I cannot recommend too highly - alternatives include the Wigmore Hall season opener which is Die schöne Müllerin from Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis.
Or there's a FREE screening of the 1929 silent movie Piccadilly on an outside wall (don't blame me if it rains) of the Royal Festival Hall accompanied by a new score from composers Suki Mok and Ruth Chan. Following the screening, the score "will become the lynchpin of a cross-artform work incorporating dance, drama and video against a backdrop of the original silent movie".
Opera
The Royal Opera House season opens on 7 September with two concert performances of Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix conducted by Mark Elder and featuring Alessandro Corbelli alongside the hotly-tipped Eglise Gutiérrez and Stephen Costello.
Don Carlo has started rehearsals and promises to turn out even better than first time round. Semyon Bychkov conducts, Jonas Kaufmann is in the title role, and the rest of the cast is much the same as it was first time round, with Marina Poplavskaya, Simon Keenlyside and Ferruccio Furlanetto reprising his definitive Philip.
Don't expect much on stage except the singers in born-again minimalist Christof Loy's new production of Tristan und Isolde. Tristan is Ben Heppner and Isolde Nina Stemme, with Matti Salminen, Michael Volle and Sophie Koch completing the cast. Pappano conducts.
English National Opera's season opens with the much-travelled, highly-praised production of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre by La Fura dels Baus.
The Arcola Theatre's variable but occasionally brilliant (and cheap) Grimeborn opera festival continues until 5 September. Handel, Poulenc and Mozart are included amongst the mostly contemporary works.
There's an opportunity to hear Rossini's rarely-performed Il Signor Bruschino and La Scala di Seta as well as The Rake's Progress from British Youth Opera between 4 and 12 September.
And Valery Gergiev conducts the LSO in a concert performance of La Damnation de Faust on 22 September, with a cast including Joyce DiDonato, Michael Schade, Thomas Quasthoff and Florian Boesch.
Concerts
The LSO's season opener is on 20 September, with Gergiev conducting Debussy, Dutilleux and Ravel.
At the Royal Festival Hall, Bernard Haitink conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on 23 and 24 September. And on 25 and 26 September Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO tackle Mahler's 2nd Symphony. Anne Sofie von Otter visits on 30 September with songs from her Theresienstadt CD.
At Wigmore Hall, Matthias Goerne continues his Schubert marathon on 18 and 20 September (a different programme on each night).
And on 28 September it's Imogen Cooper's bus-pass birthday concert. She'll be joined by Wolfgang Holzmair, Mark Padmore, Sonia Wieder-Atherton and Paul Lewis.
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The Rake's Progress - Royal Opera House, 7 July 2008 (first night)
Stravinsky may not have been the molten core of Hollywood's golden age - indeed he never even wrote for the movies - but he was at least resident in '50's Los Angeles when he composed The Rake's Progress.
That's the jump-off for Robert Lepage's production, which makes Nick Shadow a diabolical director who lures Tom Rakewell down the movie star path, then demands his soul in payment. Each scene is modelled on an iconic movie image - the opener sees Rakewell as James Dean in the oilfields of Giant, Mother Goose's brothel is Destry Rides Again, the swimming pool of Sunset Boulevard is Rakewell's salon, and Bedlam becomes the mad house of The Snake Pit.
It's neat, it's fresh, it moulds readily to the plot and the production photos look terrific. The appropriation of classic visual imagery neatly mirrors the extensive musical borrowings in Stravinsky's score. Indeed the use of images is in itself a nod to the genesis of the opera in Hogarth's print series The Rake's Progress. How very clever. Aesthetes, intellectuals, popcorn munchers and jaded operagoers, there's something there for everyone. So why doesn't it work?
The main problem is that Lepage's vision is essentially photographic, not cinematic.
Each scene is visually splendid but painfully static. It takes more than iconic images to make a great movie, and the same goes for opera.
Unlike Hogarth's Rake's Progress sketches, the images Lepage has selected are not exactly busting with narrative content. Translating two dimensions into three, the minimal scenery often leaves acres of stage bare, as crudely exposed by the prison camp lighting. It's no surprise that the most truthful and engaging scene, the one set in the mad house, is the busiest one.
And some of the most stunning ideas - a bed that sucked Tom and Mother Goose down into the floor, a full size inflatable trailer that burst forth from the ground - were just badly timed, and overwhelmed the music instead of supporting it. I don't mind a joke - but it's got to be in the right place.
Amidst all the unadulterated Americana, it was odd to hear everyone singing in a cultivated English accent, but the quaint anglicisms of Auden and Kallmann's libretto don't really permit anything else. (Kudos to the North American cast members for getting it spot-on though.)
Do they wear socks with sandals in Hell? Probably. John Relyea's Nick Shadow paired these with a hideous baldy wig and glasses perched on top of his head, in a Stravinsky lookalike style that inevitably didn't quite come off >>>>>
It was a crime against hawtness that combined with a physically understated performance left Relyea's blackstrap molasses voice to provide devilish seductiveness and charisma.
I couldn't fault Charles Castronovo's intelligently thought-out and well-sung Tom Rakewell. But I couldn't really warm to his portrayal either, at least until the touching vulnerability of his final mad house scene.
Sally Matthews as Anne Trulove had a radiance and charm that was sorely lacking elsewhere, and a tdf Grace Kelly wardrobe to boot.
She sang brightly, if not always quite in tune, and enunciated very clearly by soprano standards. It was still useful to have the surtitles though - the ROH chorus, usually so solid, were scrappy and weary-sounding, often drifting away from the score too.
Patricia Bardon's hysterical Baba the Turk and Kathleen Wilkinson's saucy Mother Goose were strongly characterised. They usefully raised the production's energy levels, compensating for the generally torpid conducting of Thomas Ades.
He achieved something few conductors manage, in bringing a greater humanity and delicacy to this opera, so often seen as chilly and unyielding. Many passages appeared with an eye-opening clarity and transparency.
But in doing so he neutered its wit and bite, and apart from the graveyard scene, any real sense of drama. On balance, I'd have preferred cold and heartless - The Rake's Progress is after all the allegorical triumph of stupidity over evil, dressed up in a love story, not the other way round.
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.....as a ballet. At least that's what the Royal Opera House website thinks. How long till they spot this one do you think?
(***UPDATE*** the eagle eyed ROH webmites have corrected it now)
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The Rake's Progress - Opéra Garnier, Paris, 5 March 2008
I have no idea whether Parsifal director Krysztof Warlikowski and Rake's Progress director Oliver Py had a quiet chat at some point, but there were an interesting couple of coincidences in their productions.
Firstly and critically, the underpants issue. Christopher Ventris only dropped his trousers once in Parsifal, but Toby Spence could barely keep his on here. Again, what was revealed were sensible M&S whities, of the type the Parisian imagination can readily accomodate to all English tenors. And it wasn't gratuitous either - without the benefit of curtains here, Spence's numerous onstage trouser swaps provided a neat transition between scenes.
Py, like Warlikowski, also invented a child, absent from the libretto. In the year and a day of Tom Rakewell's 'progress' there was a rupture of the time/space continuum that in England would bring Daleks flying from the ceiling. Instead here it allowed Anne Trulove to spawn a six year old child in the space of little over twelve months. This enabled an heartwarming ending around the family table, a curious echo of the similarly engineered finale to Warlikowski's Parsifal.
But Py's main theme was rather more basic. In the ingeniously adaptable scaffold-like set, the one constant was the frequently-used bed, home to a succession of cavortings, and eventually to Rakewell's final insanity.
Py really milked every possibility of the second act brothel scene. The chorus, wigged and suspendered like Crazy Horse dancers, were supplemented with an array of top shelf flesh. Unlike the Royal Opera House, which issues nipple alerts at the faintest whiff of nudity, there was no warning at all the Paris Opera programme information. The two Japanese children I saw going in with their parents seemed to have disappeared by the interval, so who knows what happened there.
And just for good measure, he introduced an acrobat, a pair of strongmen and a painted dwarf to illustrate the cornucopia of London life. Just like Covent Garden on a Saturday afternoon, minus the human statue.
An unfortunate consequence of the staging was that the singers were often performing from high on the scaffolding, far back on the stage. The acoustic made it difficult to hear even strong singers like Toby Spence from this perspective, although all were clear from stage level.
It was a shame, because there were no weak performances here, starting with Laura Claycomb's cool and crystalline Anne Trulove. Laurent Naouri was a dark and powerful Nick Shadow, perhaps more camp than truly menacing, but then that was the tone of the production. And his English diction (he's French) was absolutely flawless. As Baba the Turk, Jane Henschel opened all the stops and let rip with a fearless and hysterically funny portrayal that made full use of every colour in her voice.
With an efficient, if rather pallid, performance in the pit from Edward Gardner, ill-matched to Py's high-octane farce, it was Toby Spence's Tom Rakewell who really held the performance together. He negotiated every step, from farce to pathos, with honesty and commitment. In the past I've sometimes felt he's allowed his natural vocal gifts to compensate for less than total preparation and application, but this role fits a singer of his versatility like a glove and every moment was truthful. Py's splashy stage-cramming theatrics lent spectacle to the production, but Spence cracked its brittle chill and gave it a heart.
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