by Giuseppe Verdi
seen 6 January 2015
A new production at Covent Garden directed by Katharine Thoma with Joseph Calleja as Riccardo, Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Renato and Liudmila Monastyrska as Amelia.
The piece exists in several versions occasioned by the objections of various Neapolitan and Roman censors at the time that the opera was being composed. Sometimes the male leads are called Gustavo and Anckarström to reflect the fact that the opera's plot is based on the assassination of King Gustavus III of Sweden. This production uses the 'American' names (the accepted original version was set in Boston), but in this production the court is European - not to say Austro-Hungarian - and it is set just prior to the First World War.
The curtain opens on Riccardo sleeping, with his dream evidently being played out in a gloomy cemetery as a visualisation of the prelude. He almost appears to be sleeping in the cemetery, but it is suddenly blacked out and when the stage is lit again it is full of courtiers. However the space remains cavernous and unsettling, a mixture of old fashioned archways and steel girders, with large metallic light fittings which are never switched on, but which are reminiscent of those used in factories. The interior scenes of the opera (Ulrica's room, and Renato's house) use the downstage area with walls to shut out the larger space, but it is always there in the background, and it comes into its own in the cemetery scene of Act Two and the climactic ball scene in Act Three.
There is a strange tone about the opera - or perhaps it is just the production. Riccardo displays a sort of larkiness about the presentiments of doom, ignoring the warnings of conspiracies, and attending Ulrica's seance as a bit of amusing slumming. The fact that her predictions turn out to be true for him is totally undercut by his scepticism, reinforced by the fact that he promotes the sailor promised promotion only because he has overheard the prediction and it seems like a sort of joke to him to fulfill the prophecy so swiftly. The general impression is of superficial self-indulgence, which raises questions about his infatuation with Amelia, and about whether he should be taken seriously as a tragic figure. It is only in the moment of his downfall that his stature is revealed. Joseph Calleja began somewhat lamely in his first act aria, but gained more power in his singing as the evening progressed.
The cemetery is an odd place, its spookiness emphasised by the fact that some of the statuary starts to move and underscore the dramatic tension. In their steady almost stately progress they have a strong effect, but it is weakened by there being nowhere for them to go when the point has been made. Also, prior to their movement, a child (namely Amelia's child) has inexplicably walked across the stage, with cross lighting from the side. This cannot really be happening at midnight, so are we entering Amelia's fevered consciousness? And, speaking of midnight, the clock (or bells) definitely did not strike twelve; but neither was it clearly just the regular signal of a full hour.
Later, when Amelia reveals herself in response to the jibes and threats to Renato from the conspirators, it is not clear whether we are to understand that the conspirators know that they have been cheated of seeing Riccardo, and are thus taunting the couple out of pique, or whether they really think that Amelia and Renato themselves have been having a weird tryst. The leering at Amelia is deliberately distasteful, but the mockery in the singing seemed heavy-handed and plodding rather than sinister.
Amelia is far more convincingly a conflicted figure, as both her strained admission of love to Riccardo at the cemetery and her earnest pleas for compassion from her husband Renato at home amply demonstrate. Liudmila Monastyrska sang with great power and conviction, but the staging of her plea to Renato was somewhat broken apart by having Renato remove himself to their child's bedroom. Though this was visible as part of the set, it strained credulity that he was actually still listening to his wife.
In fact, a whole series of interactions with the boy were potentially distracting, as Amelia played with him while Renato was also left alone in the main room (more plausibly) to pour out his soul and swear vengeance, finely sung by Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The culmination of all this business involved the boy being offered (presumably in the early hours of the morning) as a hostage, and then (presumably once the day had really got going) evidently just being sent off to school.
There are, then, interesting ideas in this production, but the slight blur between reality and imagination is not always helpful, and there are distracting loose ends in some of the stage business. The final arming of Oscar, the hitherto insouciant and rather engaging page, by the conspirators to be ready for trench warfare is too blatant a piece of symbolism to be entirely apt as the conclusion of what we have witnessed, which is more of a catastrophic love triangle than a political statement of decadence.
The piece exists in several versions occasioned by the objections of various Neapolitan and Roman censors at the time that the opera was being composed. Sometimes the male leads are called Gustavo and Anckarström to reflect the fact that the opera's plot is based on the assassination of King Gustavus III of Sweden. This production uses the 'American' names (the accepted original version was set in Boston), but in this production the court is European - not to say Austro-Hungarian - and it is set just prior to the First World War.
The curtain opens on Riccardo sleeping, with his dream evidently being played out in a gloomy cemetery as a visualisation of the prelude. He almost appears to be sleeping in the cemetery, but it is suddenly blacked out and when the stage is lit again it is full of courtiers. However the space remains cavernous and unsettling, a mixture of old fashioned archways and steel girders, with large metallic light fittings which are never switched on, but which are reminiscent of those used in factories. The interior scenes of the opera (Ulrica's room, and Renato's house) use the downstage area with walls to shut out the larger space, but it is always there in the background, and it comes into its own in the cemetery scene of Act Two and the climactic ball scene in Act Three.
There is a strange tone about the opera - or perhaps it is just the production. Riccardo displays a sort of larkiness about the presentiments of doom, ignoring the warnings of conspiracies, and attending Ulrica's seance as a bit of amusing slumming. The fact that her predictions turn out to be true for him is totally undercut by his scepticism, reinforced by the fact that he promotes the sailor promised promotion only because he has overheard the prediction and it seems like a sort of joke to him to fulfill the prophecy so swiftly. The general impression is of superficial self-indulgence, which raises questions about his infatuation with Amelia, and about whether he should be taken seriously as a tragic figure. It is only in the moment of his downfall that his stature is revealed. Joseph Calleja began somewhat lamely in his first act aria, but gained more power in his singing as the evening progressed.
The cemetery is an odd place, its spookiness emphasised by the fact that some of the statuary starts to move and underscore the dramatic tension. In their steady almost stately progress they have a strong effect, but it is weakened by there being nowhere for them to go when the point has been made. Also, prior to their movement, a child (namely Amelia's child) has inexplicably walked across the stage, with cross lighting from the side. This cannot really be happening at midnight, so are we entering Amelia's fevered consciousness? And, speaking of midnight, the clock (or bells) definitely did not strike twelve; but neither was it clearly just the regular signal of a full hour.
Later, when Amelia reveals herself in response to the jibes and threats to Renato from the conspirators, it is not clear whether we are to understand that the conspirators know that they have been cheated of seeing Riccardo, and are thus taunting the couple out of pique, or whether they really think that Amelia and Renato themselves have been having a weird tryst. The leering at Amelia is deliberately distasteful, but the mockery in the singing seemed heavy-handed and plodding rather than sinister.
Amelia is far more convincingly a conflicted figure, as both her strained admission of love to Riccardo at the cemetery and her earnest pleas for compassion from her husband Renato at home amply demonstrate. Liudmila Monastyrska sang with great power and conviction, but the staging of her plea to Renato was somewhat broken apart by having Renato remove himself to their child's bedroom. Though this was visible as part of the set, it strained credulity that he was actually still listening to his wife.
In fact, a whole series of interactions with the boy were potentially distracting, as Amelia played with him while Renato was also left alone in the main room (more plausibly) to pour out his soul and swear vengeance, finely sung by Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The culmination of all this business involved the boy being offered (presumably in the early hours of the morning) as a hostage, and then (presumably once the day had really got going) evidently just being sent off to school.
There are, then, interesting ideas in this production, but the slight blur between reality and imagination is not always helpful, and there are distracting loose ends in some of the stage business. The final arming of Oscar, the hitherto insouciant and rather engaging page, by the conspirators to be ready for trench warfare is too blatant a piece of symbolism to be entirely apt as the conclusion of what we have witnessed, which is more of a catastrophic love triangle than a political statement of decadence.
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