One knight is enough

Robert le diable - Royal Opera House, 6 December 2012

If this staging has one positive result, it will be to silence once and for all any pleas for more Meyerbeer at the Royal Opera House. The best efforts of all involved do little to disguise a limp plot, flimsy characterisation, vapid melodies and rote composition. Presumably the Parisians who hailed its 1831 debut were taken in by the superficially pretty orchestration and some spectacular vocal gymnastics. It's hard to imagine anyone staying awake otherwise.

Daniel Oren offered Meyerbeer no cosmetic enhancement in his pacey but unvariegated reading, though the orchestra played immaculately.

Laurent Pelly's production echoes the crudeness of the music and the stupidity of the story with bold primary colours and camply choreographed routines. If he sometimes seems unsure whether to make us laugh or cry, all I can say is I understand.

After all the comings and goings and cancellations, it's hard to imagine a cast better than the one finally assembled. Patrizia Ciofi was the heroine of the hour, skipping through her flashy coloratura and finally delivering the opera's one truly moving moment, Isabelle's fourth act aria. Marina Poplavskaya and John Relyea sang their best-ever Covent Garden performances as the forces of good (her) and evil (him). Bryan Hymel's painfully-extruded tone wins no points for vocal glamour, but he lasted the course and hit all the notes, which in a role as difficult as Robert is perhaps all you can expect.  The sweet and easy high tenor of Jean-François Borras, in a small but notable ROH debut as Raimbaut, only gained by comparison.

One big letdown was the ballet of the dead nuns, raised from their graves by the devil himself to tempt Robert. I'd been hoping for some hardcore zombie action; instead we got ballerinas twitching gracefully in filmy gowns. Conceivably not a million miles from the version that thrilled the 1831 audience, it was timid in comparison to the orgies that the like of David McVicar have led even the most conservative audiences to expect.

Everyone should see this once to understand what they're not missing, but please, ROH, no more Meyerbeer.

Production photos here.

Thank you Kyoko for this curtain call video:

Comments

[Steveatgigs]

I really enjoyed the matinée of this today, but they do bus me in on a coach, lol. A wonderful rarity. And I even enjoyed the lascivious zombie nuns, which one dour woman described as "that awful sex stuff."

As a matter of interest, they announced at the end of the second interval that Poplavskaya had been struggling with laryngitis since the first performance and was still struggling with it this performance, but that she was willing to continue, as long as we all knew that. She did continue, and I thought she was great, and couldn't detect anything wrong with her voice (like I said, they bus me in). So when curtain call came, she got enormous cheers, just as big as for the other principals. :)

[Faye]

Saw it this afternoon and nearly slipped into a coma. I wouldn't wish this show on my worst enemy.....

[bdouphol]

She's been suffering with laryngitis all her career, yet theatres seem to ignore that...

[Justin Chapman]

I've returned my £8 Upper Slips ticket for next Saturday as I've been invited to a Xmas party where there'll be lots of men with beards. I have made the right decision.

[Pushed Up Mezzo]

Ditto. Your full name isn't Morgan-le-Faye by any chance?
The singing was a big surprise. Hymel was at his limits, but very exciting vocally: Relyea much more sonorous than when I last heard him live as Banquo; Ciofi a vocal sorceress and an unusually committed Poplavskaya conjuring some rounded tone and bel canto phrasing. All concerned got little help from Oren.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

There are lots of men with beards in Robert Le Diable, too, if that's any help....

[sjt]

Decisions, decisions.....

[sjt]

Oh, and I've been told that both Pretty Pelly and the choreographer wanted the zombie nuns naked: but that said chorines weren't prepared to do muffin for nuffin without extra cash, not forthcoming (all spent on the indispensible day-glo horses, of course).

[Rannaldini]

There's never a naked nun when one needs one.....

[cunningfox]

Q.: What is the occupation of your mother? If nun, write 'none'.

(Copyright: Sellar & Yeatman 1930)

[cunningfox]

I went to Christmas parties when I was a child, and there was always a man with a beard there. Is yours the same kind of thing?

[Rannaldini]

Two nuns were sitting on a park bench and a flasher came-up and exposed himself. One nun was shocked and had a stroke - the other one couldn't reach.

[John Marston]

Your comment 'please, ROH, no more Meyerbeer' is proably (and regretfully) right. But a blanket condemnation of his operas performed anywhere...I think not. Les Huguenots at the Monnaie in 2011 won the European critics prize for best production of the year. I managed to hear this twice on internet radio, and I saw no reason to contradict this verdict. It's a very strong piece musically and dramatically, even if the drama is the kind of thing we expect to see nowadays as a film. Meyerbeer's condemnation of religious violence is a message that remains all too relevant.

Robert le diable has a central theme of good and evil existing in a single body that vacillates between these polarities. This could make a good subject for a drama, but unfortunately Meyerbeer and Scribe dramatize it as a Gothic tale, a type of story that essentially went out of fashion a long time ago, and surround it with the cumbersome apparatus of Grand Opera. As M Pelly seems to have realised.

So why did Covent Garden decide to stage it? And what were they hoping to get out of the exercise?

[cunningfox]

Two nuns in the bath. One asked, 'Where's the soap?' The other replied, 'Yes, it does, doesn't it?'

I'm here all week...

[Vecchio John]

I was fortunate to see Les Huguenots at La Monnaie twice and it was one of the most memorable events of the last decade for me. A hugely long evening but an epic drama based on a very bloody actual event.The production took the piece seriously and cleverly filled in the historic background of the French religious wars, with reference to more recent persecutions.

The music and characterisation are more developed and particularly in Act 1V and V as impressive as anything in the grand opera genre.

La Monnaie's staging was more fluid with none of the annoying scene changes (did we really need to see the stage hands as they pushed around the toy castle)especially in comparison to Covent Garden with very limited technical facilities and a much smaller stage.

La Monnaie also double cast all of the principals, with singers of the calibre of Eric Cutler and John Osborn as Raoul.

The long evening was helped by a full on male orgy in ACT 1 and a nude ballet in Act 2!

If it is ever revived or , an unlikely event, staged at another theatre it would do more for Meyerbeer's reputation than the vapid travesty at the Royal Opera.

[Rannaldini]

SO listen Cunning Fox – I’ve the best joke of-all. No really; this one’s a killer.

So – there’s this really big, famous, world opera house, and it has like loads of staff, and a huge profile, and it plans years in advance, and can chose almost any singer in the world, and it receives loads of public money and it – now wait for it, no really – you’ll laugh yourself to sleep – it decides of all the operas it could mount, to spend a fortune and many thousands of hours of staff time resurrecting a useless old warhorse that no one likes, that is critically panned, then can’t decide on singers. The original singers sign-up but then all think better of it, the replacements are agreed but then chicken-out, but are then bribed big time to come back, then the one of the replacements is fired and the replacement is replaced with another replacement. The whole thing ends in a critical savaging and everyone repairs to the bar to get pissed on Christmas spirit.

Yes – this is the most expensive Christmas panto in the Northern hemisphere (aside from the European parliament which costs just a fraction more at 600 billion euros.)

It’s a cracker – the way I tell’em to be sure…...

[Mr Bear]

Has anyone spotted a special offer for stalls seats yet?

[Justin Chapman]

Probably not :-)

[Justin Chapman]

I think I'll pass...

[Hugh Kerr]

well I enjoyed it great music,good singing silly plot and production loved the nuns and better this than interminable repeats of Boheme!

[amac]

Surely a few murkins would not have broken the bank !

[amac]

Two nuns riding bicycles down a cobbled street - one says "well Sister Martha, I have never come this way before"

I'm here all next week ...

[amac]

I consolidated 2 smaller tickets into one larger disappointment last night !

For the life of me I could not think why this was revived - simply did not appear to be very much you could do with it.

By this stage of the game pretty much everything has been said - although I could not help thinking Poplavskaya was miscast. Every aria seemed to be saying "I really should be doing Verdi" - I think you have to go back to the 1st revival of the Hytner Don Carlo to hear her better.

I think problem was that Pelly's production wasn't flippant or inventive enough ! If you are going to do Spamalot/Monty Python and the Holy Grail you should probably get Terry Gilliam. If he did half a good a job as Faust at ENO it would have been better.

From this outing it is probably self evident why Meyerbeer's operas faded away - musically they were eclipsed by Wagner and others. Dramatically they were eclipsed by Verdi.

Of course if you want to see a really good Meyerbeer opera - try Rienzi - as Von Bulow once said. Having said that I will would quite happily do it again it another 120 years. :D

[operagooner]

I went on the 18th and Poplavskaya was struggling most of the time. She looked upset at the end and took a very short bow. Patrizia Ciofi was terrific, all the other singers were fine (including Hymel I thought, unlike some around me).

It's not a very good opera, but it's interesting to see something that was so popular in the 19th century, and I only paid 8 quid for the slips so I'm not complaining.

I agree that the production would have been improved by being more outlandish, but I did like the sexy zombie nun dance. Perhaps it could be done with a Star Wars theme, as it already has a genuine 'I am your father' moment, and knights and princesses.

Where in Warwickshire are people always hungry?
Nuneaton.
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Intermezzo replies - If you went on the 18th you didn't hear Patrizia Ciofi - she was replaced by the excellent Sofia Fomina on that night. I didn't notice Poplavskaya struggling, but then I left after Act 2.

[operagooner]

Oh, thanks, the cast change insert in my programme was wrong - I see now it's dated the 15th. Is Sofia Fomina coming back to ROH in Ariadne auf Naxos?

[John]

I second the comments about Sofia Fomina - a very impressive performance last night from a rising star. Several people around me gasped with amazement as she went for a Sutherlandesque top E! Ciofi had greater individuality but she was excellent nonetheless. Poplavskaya was as wayward as ever, Hymel equally dependable, and the production less grating than the first time round.