Billy Budd

by Benjamin Britten, libretto by E.M.Forster and Eric Crozier after Melville

seen at Covent Garden on 29 April 2019

Deborah Warner's production, designed by Michael Levine, seen also in Rome and Madrid, has its first showing at the Royal Opera, with Ivor Bolton conducting Toby Spence as Captain Edward Fairfax Vere, Jacques Imbrailo as Abe Seaman Billy Budd and Brindley Sherratt as Master-at-Arms John Claggart. This production uses Britten's revised two-act version, rather than the original four-act of the score. At three hours fifty minutes it is still lengthy by modern standards, but there is little that could be further cut.

In a Prologue the elderly Captain Vere looks back on a crisis that took place under his command in 1797, when nerves were jittery after mutinies at Spithead and at the Nore. The two acts of the opera relate the story. An eager young sailor, Billy Budd, is press-ganged onto the HMS Indomitable, where he is generally well-liked, though he arouses the ire of the martinet Master-at-Arms who becomes determined to destroy him. Billy's naivety protects him from a clandestine attempt to suborn him to mutiny, but unfortunately he is reduced to stammering incoherently under stress and so is unable to defend himself when accused before the Captain by Claggart. Instead he lashes out and kills Claggart with a blow to the temple. The Captain feels he has no choice but to let a court martial find Billy guilty of striking a superior officer, for which the penalty is death, and so the popular sailor is hanged from the yard-arm. In an Epilogue, the Captain tries to reconcile the paradox that he was unable to save a basically good and innocent man; he can only take comfort from the idea that Billy nonetheless blessed him.

Faust

by Charles-Francois Gounod, libretto Jules Barbier and Michel Carré

seen at Covent Garden on 11 April 2019

Dan Ettinger conducted this revival of David McVicar's 2004 production of Gounod's Faust with Michael Fabiano in the title role, Erwin Schrott as Méphistophélès and Mandy Fredrich as Marguerite - standing in for an indisposed Irina Lungu who in turn was replacing Diana Damrau. 

McVicar and designer Charles Edwards set their production in the heyday of the grand opera tradition, the Second Empire in France, rather than in the late middle ages. The result is that the dubious sexual politics of the time, and the casual exploitation of the poor woman by the rich dilettante, brings the often sentimentalised theme of Faust's seduction of Marguerite out of the quaint past into more recent and troubling times - it is the end of the Second Empire, with the Franco-Prussian War looming to the Marguerite's soldier brother away, and bring him back embittered and powerless to protect or avenge his sister. Faust and the Devil are invariably in expensive evening dress for much of this sorry tale, while Marguerite clearly lives in one of the working-class, not to say slum, areas of Paris. The point is hammered home even more sharply in the Witches' Sabbath sequence which becomes a parody of the tradition in the Paris Opera House of Jockey Club members turning up late in a performance to ogle the obligatory ballet dancers before going back-stage to demand (and pay for) their favours.

It's a clever conceit, well thought out with the fragment of an ornate proscenium arch on one side of the stage, and some gothic arches enclosing organ pipes on the other, providing constant visual reminders of the unhealthy mix of hedonism and religiosity surrounding much high-class 19th century hypocrisy. The danger is that the depiction of the Devil can be somewhat trivialised, and Erwin Schrott sometimes looked more of a melodramatic or pantomime villain than the embodiment of eternal corruption and evil.

Michael Fabiano sang lyrically in the great passionate outbursts of finer feeling, and was excellently complemented by the darker tones of Erwin Schrott as his nemesis. Mandy Fredrich, brought in at extremely short notice for this first night of the current revival, had a pure and clear voice ideal for the naivety of Marguerite, though perhaps lacking the strength to do full justice to the space of Covent Garden. The supporting cast and chorus were good, but the overall experience lacked the ultimate pitch of excitement that a truly great performance would create. It might be that first-night nerves were a bit further rattled by the emergency cast change.

La Forza del Destino

by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto by Francesco Maria Piave

seen by live streaming from Covent Garden on 7 April 2019

(This was actually a repeat screening of the live event from 2 April)

Antonio Pappano conducted Anna Netrebko as Donna Leonora, Jonas Kaufmann as Don Alvaro and Ludovic Tézier as Don Carol di Vargas, with Robert Lloyd as the Marquis of Calatrava, Ferruccio Furlanetto as Padre Guardiano and Alessandro Corbelli as Fra Melitone in Cristof Loy's new production first seen in Amsterdam, with designs by Christian Schmidt.

This is a long and gloomy opera, in which the best intentions of the would-be lovers Donna Leonora and Don Alvaro go woefully astray, not helped by the vicious code of honour espoused by Donna Leonora's father, the Marquis of Calatrava, who curses her as he lies dying from an accidental gunshot wound, and her brother Don Carlo, almost psychopathic in his pursuit of vengeance, who is determined to kill both the lovers. The Force of Destiny ensnares them all, and the pious assurances of the Padre who has protected Donna Leonora as an anonymous hermit and Don Alvaro as a monk (unbeknownst to each other until the last moment) are, to say the least, of ambivalent consolation.