Page 46 - Ritz Issue 50

HENRY
TRETHEWEY OPERA
The Royal Opera House opened its doors on January Ist to a revival of DONIZETTl'S L '£/isir d'Amore (The Love-Potion). Enthroned in the Royal Box was MRS THATCHER, none other,
Ieplete with DENIS in attendance. Now, every good Ritzer knows that there's not a word printed in Private Eye but what's Gospel truth; and so we know from the Dear Bill column that DENIS is no friend of the Opera House and that after his last visit to the ballet there with Chairman Hu Flung Dung, he (Denis) "asked
STEV A RSE afterwards if there was any chance of pulling the whole place down as part of Margaret's cuts, but he got frightfully sniffy and said it would be over his dead body. Which is OK in my book, but I didn't say that."
Since then, now that STEVARSE has been demoted, the mind boggles as to what Mrs THATCHER was doing at the opera: eyeing up the place with a view to turning it back into a dance hall (as in the War) as soon as she'd put NORMAN in his place? Anyway, she and D. were there, and so elsewhere in the house was SIMON WARD (he of Young Winston and not much since).
The curtain rose on a semi-transparent drop with a heart, a Cupid plus bow, and the words L '£/isir d'Amore (This so as to remind Mrs THATCHER what it was she'd come to see, no doubt.) The •• production is just five years old, one of JOHN COPLEY's neatly mechanical affairs, with decor by BENI MONTRESOR in washes of pastel colours th"at make the whole opera look like a tasteful cartoon. It's all a bit twee and must have had DENIS frothing at the mouth; but it runs without giving undue offence until the last tableau when a giant nag descends
from above reading "Viva /'Amore!", fairy lights suddenly flash on all around, and the Garden stage resembles Clacton Pier gone ltaliana.
The opera itself is a delight, the comic sister to BELLINl's La Sonnambula (the words for both were written by the great Italian operatic librettist FELICE ROMANI). It's a good enough work for
COPLEY not to have treated it as so relentlessly funny: itsjokes don't come two- a-penny, and they grow naturally and without forcing out of the plot. There were one or two sillinesses I hadn't remembered from previous revivals: in particular the two men in the chorus who sang the opening scene with arms clasped very tightly round each other's shoulders. DONIZETTI didn't have that sort of love in mind. Mustn't all of DENIS's suspicions have been confirmed?
Why the Opera House imported an Italian singer ALBERTO RINALDI to sing the recruiting sergeant Belcore, is a mystery. Not a very arduous role, there are English singers who could have done it as well and better: RINALDI sang with strain and with little to recommend him in particular. A much better Italian import was the soprano DANIELA
MAZZUCA TO as Adina. It's a clean, light voice; and if the passage-work was full of aspirates, she's less vocally mannered than many in this repertory. NICOLAI GEDDA was the tenor Nemirino. When the production was new, the role was taken by the very handsome JOSE CARRERAS, one of those rare men of whom the word ''huggable" can be used fairly without giving alarm to the likes of DENIS. For him COPLEY devised a stance suitable to
the simpleton that Nemorino is - of turned in legs and slightly bent knees - that made him look dopey and forlorn. GEDDA is a tall man with a long torso and large head and in this affected position he looked all wrong. First RICHARD FAIRMAN suggested to me that he had rickets, then I suggested gout; then we hit on the answer that his Nemorino was simply affiicted by acute constipation. When his voice cracked as he embraced Adina as she finally admitted that she loved him, I whispered "He's shat himself at last".
It's not as if GEDDA sang so well as to redeem his appearance. The tone is still fine - GEDDA has been in international opera well over 25 years now - but the phrasing is effortful, full of gulps and scoops. The inter-relation, to boot, wasn't forlorn so much as pathetically aggressive. Embarrassing to see, tedious to hear.
purpose GERAINT EVANS ~- _ ~ interpretation, which consists of rolling his button-bright eyes, stroking his stomach, walking a la Monty Python or standing, knees bent, as if entrenched and leaning back in complacent idiocy. His career has spanned since the War; and that, sorry to say, is how it sounds. "What a one" murw.urs the audience enthusiastically as the old dear runs through his bag of buffooneries; and, more's the pity, there are critics who won't admit in print that Anno Domini has taken its toll of him. Still, while I was complaining that his voice was
just one long groan to RICHARD, he pointed out quite fairly that it's still a very distinctive voice. There's quite a lot of tone to the groan.
The conductor, CLAUDIO SCI MONE, was en debut: his sense of tempo was excellent, his mastery of ensemble less so. I gather that later performances had even more orchestral and vocal confusions.
Everyone has been talking of the scandal
attending this January's revival of Verdi's
Un Ba/lo in Maschera (A Masked Ball) also
at the Opera House. First, the tenor
LUCIANO PAVAROTTI was unable to
perform the opening night - for reasons of
illness within the family. No sooner had .
that been announced than the baritone
RENATO BRUSON was indisposed.
People ask "What do you think of it, what do you make of it?" and I simply say that no one should be surprised in the least. It's true, as some critics have remarked, that both before and after her interruption CABALLE was singing indifferently. To that I would add that she also sings indifferently at most of her Garden performances. She is not a bad singer, far from it. She has one of the great voices of today; and when the occasion prompts her not to be lackadaisical about her art, (as at several concert performances and in many recordings) she's one of the great singers of today too. But in the opera house I've never known her give a satisfactory performance.
It's known that in between CABALLE's performances she will rehearse in other countries or fly home to Barcelona. But when it's remembered that she's paid for one performance more than some people earn in a year and that seats for her performances have now risen to £30, then you begin to wish she'd fit rather less into her working week. A singer in those circumstances owes much both to the expectations of her audience and to her own reputation. And it's not as if the Press night of Ba/lo was an isolated instance. It wasjust more extreme and more publicised
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that people wanted to attend. Though tickets were like gold dust to obtain, it became the thing to try for ones for performances as late in the "run" as possible.
The second performance became the Press one, with PAVAROTTI reinstated and the baritone MATTEO MANUGUERRA installed in lieu of the ailing BRUSON. But lo, disasters further. In the middle of Act 11,MONTSERRAT CABALLE walked off into the wings. When it became apparanet that she wasn't in a hurry to reappear, down came the red curtains, And hey presto, SIR JOHN
TOOLEY to announce that la diva was labouring under an indisposition, ".¥asin her dressing-room, would endeavour to recommence as soon as she felt able. Which was about ten minutes later. As DESMOND SHAWE-TAYLOR
remarked in The Sunday Times, The British public likes "nothing better than disaster narrowly averted (think of Dunkirk!)". She received an ovation. Well, well.
been known since her first appearances in '73 in Traviata to make visits, even during major numbers of hers, to the wings.
And she's given a good many "off' performances here since then: indeed, it's less simple than that ~ most of her performances actually alternate between "on" and "off' in the course of single numbers or:even single phrases. A schedule as punishing as hers hardly helps her to keep up consistent concentration. The management should be asking itself wh~ther its love of artistry js stronger than its love of great names: and if it is, then it should also ask whether it's worthwhile to engage CABALLE again. Presumably it has asked itself the question before - and come up with the wrong answer. (Wasn't it in '77 that SIR JOHN had to announce at
short notice that she would be unable to sing and would be replaced by another, far less celebrated, soprano? and a voice from the Amphitheatre cried out "She's always
doing this - Never engage her again".) • Of course, when one's also booking for a
SUMBRY or a COSSOTTO, a
Not ini°ported were YVONNE
who in a few phrases demonstrated
was singing better than ;my of th·em, and SIR GERAINT EVANS in the usual all-
KENNY, that she
Suddenly the first night was the last night , than many others. At Covent Garden she's