Intermezzo

La traviata - Ermonela Jaho returns

La traviata - Royal Opera House, 17 January 2012

Four years ago to the day, a barely-known Albanian soprano named Ermonela Jaho made an unexpected Covent Garden debut in La traviata. Anna Netrebko had pulled out sick at short notice. With just hours to prepare, Jaho charmed, moved and placated the disappointed audience. Last night, with Netrebko sick again, Jaho was called in to repeat her coup - or more accurately, to extend her already-scheduled run.

L'Heure espagnole and Gianni Schicchi at the Royal Opera House

L'Heure espagnole / Gianni Schicchi - Royal Opera House, 20 October 2009

This Richard Jones double-bill blew me away on its debut a couple of years back. I'm surprised to see it has faltered at the box office on this first revival (see here for half price tickets offer). I can only assume it’s the lack of star names and well-known titles that are keeping people away, because it’s one of the finest things in the current ROH repertoire.

Richard Jones is always at his best when he's showing human nature at its worst. Here he gets to play with lust, greed and deception - all shot through with wicked humour. Garish wallpaper and charity shop kitsch frame a pair of frenzied sitcoms. Ravel's has a certain French charm with its macaroon colours and gentle farce. A crudely-painted pair of Beryl Cook bewbs in a polka dot bra is spread across the curtain as the opening image. It sets the tone immaculately. For the darker humour of Gianni Schicchi, the wallpaper's stained and the opening shot is a plate of writhing spaghetti. Secks for the French, food for the Italians. Perfect.

Revivals can be shoddy affairs bearing little relation to the original - perhaps that's why Jones likes to direct his own. But this time he was gettin’ roped up and shot down elsewhere, so the task fell to staff director Elaine Kidd. A brilliant job she's done too. It looks better rehearsed than some revivals, and with most of the previous cast returning characterisations are rounded and performances assured.

Comic opera often isn't really that funny, however much we will it to be, but in the clock-stuffed L’Heure espagnole the timing is so acutely finessed the laughs are genuine. Ruxandra Donose is perfect as the frustrated housewife who baits her unsuitable suitors with barmaid bewbs and the sort of simmering allure I wish Elina Garanca had been able to muster up for Carmen. Yann Beuron as the self-obsessed poet she wants, Andrew Shore as the clapped-out banker she doesn't, and Bonaventura Bottone as her unsuspecting husband are all superb. But it was the happiest of endings when she went for Christopher Maltman, a golden-voiced revelation in a vest.

OK, it sags here and there, but that’s down to the composer not the production. Ravel’s strengths are more pictorial than dramatic. The inventiveness of the score is enhanced by Pappano’s delicately evocative interpretation, but the dramatic pacing, or lack of it, is something even he can do nothing about.

Gianni Schicchi is a different matter. There’s as much action as a full opera, but it’s telescoped down to a fat-free sixty minutes. The music is trimmed to the bone and supports the text without cliche. If story telling is what matters, it’s Puccini’s finest creation. The misanthropy which sometimes strikes a sour note in his work is turned to advantage in darkening a cynical portrayal of the family who'll stoop to anything to get their hands on their recently-deceased relative's fortune.

Thomas Allen sings the title role as though born to it. Looking like he’s stepped out of a round of Super Mario Bros, he favours rude over beauty of tone – and his quivering impersonation of the dying man is a bonus. The young lovers weren't quite as perfect. Stephen Costello (Rinuccio) has a fine voice, but it's not consistently focussed. And he ran out of wind at a couple of critical moments, notably the final bar of Avete torto. On this showing, he's still a work in progress. Maria Bengtsson sang prettily though tentatively, and undermilked the big tune, Lauretta's O mio babbino caro. But this really is the quintessential ensemble piece, and all the cast (especially Gwynne Howell and Elena Zilio) revelled in the sheer awfulness of the grasping family.

OK, so it doesn't pack the emotional punch of Loy's remarkable Tristan und Isolde, and Richard Jones's ironic appraisal takes us even further away from empathising. But a little light relief is always welcome.

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Linda di Chamounix opens Royal Opera House season

Linda di Chamounix - Royal Opera House, 7 September 2009

The preposterous plotting and cardboard characters of Linda di Chamounix might explain why the Royal Opera House haven't exposed us to Donizetti's alpine tale of imperilled virginity before. It's easier to swallow in concert though. And the reduction in the lederhosen bill must be a bonus.

It wasn't even fashionably 'semi-staged'. Recorded over two nights (the second is 14 September) for release on the Opera Rara label, the priority was the sound. So the cast were nailed to the floor, scores permanently at the ready. Only Alessandro Corbelli, as Linda's amiably lecherous pursuer the Marquis, made his entrances in character or chanced any facial expression - and in the only comic role, he had a pretty good excuse. The major drama of the evening was a pause while Mark Elder stooped to gather a cascade of cards that slipped from the score of Eglise Gutiérrez (swaddled in a frock not built for bending) on her entrance. Yes it really was that exciting.

So this time it really was all about the music - over three hours of it, so I’m guessing we got the uncut version. The ROH orchestra didn’t sound at their best liberated from the pit, and with vibrato limited to the top string, some suspect intonation was exposed. But Mark Elder’s pacing was sprightly and his dynamics attentive to vocal needs.

The only really well-known aria in this opera is Linda’s O luce di quest'anima. It’s the first thing she sings and it’s devilishily tough, even more so from a cold start. Eglise Gutiérrez was no swooning heroine, but a woman with a job to do and a recording to make. Her veiled tone and accurate but thin top notes spelled caution (though they weren’t weak enough to merit the isolated and very rude outbreaks of hissing from the stalls - is this where the loggione visit when their natural habitat is poisoned by the management?). Linda’s madness as she believes herself alone and ruined was hard to deduce from Gutiérrez’s tightly-controlled depiction. Perhaps her corset was too tight. She didn’t reach out and touch in the way a full-fledged dramatic performance might, but I bet she’ll sound impressive on the CD.

*UPDATE* - listen to the live O luce recording - and more - on the iPlayer here - it starts at 1:12 (thanks Hariclea for the tip!)

Stephen Costello’s presence and charisma and his bright, ringing tenor bode well for his full debut in Gianni Schicchi later in the season, and he could be forgiven for tiring a little towards the end.  Ludovic Tézier played Linda's father in a very attractive voice, big, rich and steady, but he wasn’t particularly expressive, or particularly Italianate for that matter.

Alessandro Corbelli was perhaps predictably a cut above the rest of the cast with his immaculate patter, but Marianna Pizzolato in the trouser role of Pierotto was a surprise hit too with her warm, characterful singing.  Elizabeth Sikora, Luciano Botelho and Balint Szabó gave quality support - I've been to a few of these Opera Rara recording/performances now, and top to bottom this must rank amongst the finest.

So, not a vintage start to the season, but really not bad either.

Interview with Mark Elder

Interview with Stephen Costello

Interview with Alessandro Corbelli

 

 

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