Death in Venice - further thoughts

Having just seen Covent Garden's new production of Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice, I referred to the ENO production in my review, which I saw before I had started this blog. I decided to look at the older production again on DVD. It was directed by Deborah Warner, with Edward Gardner conducting, and the DVD featured John Graham-Hall as von Aschenbach, Andrew Shore taking the multiple parts, Tim Mead as the Voice of Apollo, and Sam Zalvidar as Tadzio.

What I remembered of the ENO production was the wonderful use of lighting and the fluid screens and billowing curtains which set the various scenes with the minimum of fuss. The final image of Tadzio silhouetted against the great but also hazy disc of the sun was the culmination of these brilliant effects. I think the scene changing at Covent Garden was by comparison a little more intrusive. The Guardian's reviewer used the word 'earthbound' which seems apt.

I had forgotten the nuances of interpretation, which reflect a difference of approach by the two directors. It is not easy to make a direct comparison between John Graham-Hall's performance and Mark Padmore's, since the DVD provides close-ups impossible to attain by a member of the audience, so that the former's facial expressions are much easier to read; in terms of singing each is strong, though Padmore is more austere in bearing.

The focal point of interest is of course the relations between the ageing writer and the young boy. In Warner's reading, the boy is barely aware of the man's attention until the fateful moment when he smiles, whereas McVicar has directed his Tadzio to glance at von Aschenbach much earlier, though of course still enigmatically. Von Aschenbach's comment 'you notice when you are noticed' refers at the Coliseum to Tadzio's interaction with his playmates, whereas at Covent Garden it is a response to one of these glances of recognition and even challenge.

The choreography for Tadzio emphasises the different levels of awareness proposed in the two productions. Sam Zaldivar is less self-conscious in his boyhood, happy to accept the approbation of his playmates, grinning at their praise. There's a motif of him teasing his sisters, and he is exuberantly tossed in the air by his companions. By contrast Leo Dixon, a taller and more reserved youth, seems more introspective when alone, and more deliberately graceful in company. Zaldivar, even in the 'Games of Olympus' scene, is always dressed in shirt and knee-length trousers, whereas Dixon has more formal dress for meals, but a striped body swimsuit on the beach; for the 'Games of Olympus' he removes the top part of this suit (as do the other boys theirs). I thought at first that he was too tall for the part, but soon ceased to notice.

In general, then, McVicar's vision enters into the sensuous fascination which engulfs von Aschenbach  more directly than Warner's; she presents a more chaste version of the infatuation, reflected also in the climactic struggle between Dionysus and Apollo. Only three people are on stage for Warner - von Aschenbach, asleep and twisting in nightmare, and the two gods. At Covent Garden, the nightmare is visualised with Dionysus managing his revels, and Tadzio himself suddenly emerging from the bed (a motif shared with the emergence of swans in the Prince's bedroom in the final act of Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake). As a counterpoint to the aesthetically refined games on the beach, and Tadzio's final dance as von Aschenbach dies, this is extremely powerful.

A further point of interest lies in the allusions to the impulses personified by the two gods. Though he does not sing until the last scene of the first act, Warner had Tim Mead occasionally but unobtrusively present on stage, usually when one of the seven characters sung by the baritone was influencing the action. Thus, for example, he was also preparing for a journey when the strange traveller first inspires von Aschenbach to go south; he was another person on the beach before it became clear that he would be the master of the games. This subtly underscores the point that many of the baritone characters may be seen as manifestations of the Dionysiac spirit which, in the direct appearance of the god in his nightmare, ultimately tempts von Aschenbach towards his final degradation. In McVicar's view, the seven characters are more clearly themselves; whereas Andrew Shore often removed a disguise - for example, the Elderly Fop's wig - or repeated a characteristic gesture at the conclusion of a part, Gerard Finley allowed the connections to be made through the music alone, where the rising tones convey a mocking inflection common to all the parts.

Watching both productions so closely together showed the great but differing strengths in each of them-  it is only a shame that there will be no recording of McVicar's production as I have seen it. Even if it is filmed in a revival, the casting will no doubt be different (the cast for ENO as filmed in 2012 was quite different from that in the original production several years earlier).

Death in Venice

by Benjamin Britten (libretto by Myfanwy Piper)

seen at Covent Garden on 6 December 2019

Richard Farnes conducted Mark Padmore as Gustav von Aschenbach and Gerald Finley as the seven characters who influence him, with Leo Dixon dancing the role of Tadzio, in David McVicar's new production of Britten's last opera, based on Thomas Mann's novella Der Tod in Venedig.

This work, the distillation of Britten's life-long fascination with the nature of artistic inspiration and its relation to the beauty of innocence exemplified in adolescent males, runs a number of risks: the subject matter; the episodic nature of the story; the intense interiority of the novella on which it is based (it has very little dialogue). Britten resorted to a generally austere orchestration, with log passages of expository or ruminative recitative on the part of von Aschenbach, while dramatising the enigma of Tadzio by making the role entirely silent, personified by a dancer. 

Peter Grimes

by Benjamin Britten

seen a the Royal Festival Hall on 30 November 2019

Edward Gardner conducted the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, with additional choirs, and with Stuart Skelton as Peter Grimes, Erin Wall as Ellen Orford and Roderick Williams as Captain Balstrode, in a semi-staged performance of Britten's great opera. The choir and soloists were not exactly in costume, but not formally dressed either; the men looked more homespun than the women. The soloists performed in front of the orchestra, in a line which made inter-action minimal, with a few barrels as props.

This meant that the music was the focus above all, and the result was splendidly powerful. The large choral presence made for an overwhelming town of gossips when their blood was up, and yet at times they sang with rapt quietness. The Sunday service in Act Three was particularly effective as everyone turned their backs on the audience and followed an associate conductor standing beside the organist. This muted the acoustic, emulated a church service, and showed in the starkest visual form how the township could be deliberately unaware of what was happening to the major characters. The terrifying result, of course, is that the townspeople, thinking themselves so morally superior, could leap to the worst conclusions when judging someone already seeming to be an outcast.