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Britten Peter Grimes Opera North at Sadlers Wells 26 & 27 February 2008 Three high profile productions during a good week for opera in London, all widely and highly praised. I am reluctant to duplicate the chorus of deserved approval and will restrict myself to providing links to click onto, plus drawing attention to a few points not generally emphasised elsewhere, though the causes of our small reservations (notably about Opera North's Peter Grimes) do surface en passant amongst the fully merited adulation. Sad to relate, we two - who like many in the audience had seen many productions of Peter Grimes for up to sixty years and more - were not "completely swept up", pace The Times, in this "properly radical interpretation" (Richard Mantle of Opera North) and were indeed troubled by the "self-conscious theatricality" of a small fishing community "evoked by means of little more than a back panel depicting a stormy sea and a lot of duckboard" (Telegraph). And too by the symbolic "giant fishing net and wooden pallets that comprise the set" (The Times), not to speak of the so-minimal "fisherman's hut" created before our eyes on stage for the so obviously wired-up apprentice to be launched to his death; more like a Peter Pan taking off in flight... And yes, we think the pre-Prologue post-Finale in which children find Grimes's dead body ia big mistake, as it was for Phillida Lloyd to "over-stage" the orchestral interludes, and offer no release from her "relentless vision". In today's TV age, in which the primacy of eye over ear is all pervasive, it is only a few of us from older generations who hanker for the respect shown originally to the composers of Pelleas Melisande and Peter Grimes, both of whose Orchestral Interludes (including Peter's gratuitous sobbing whilst cradling John's body - illustrated) were conceived as self-sufficient meditations demanding intensive, undistracted listening, preferably before closed curtains... Yes, "the drama in the music needs no further elucidation" (Telegraph). The one recent innovation which for us should be irreversible is that of surtitles for opera (not excluding Opera in English), spurned by Opera North. No problems with audibility of the text in Jonathan Dove's setting of Alistair Middleton's Pinocchio libretto, aided by the well worn device of Handelian repetition. And, certainly deserving preservation equally is ENO's "radical" Lucia di Lammermoor (which had a chequered start with seasonal illness amongst the singers) but by the time we saw it, the fifth performance was all-round superb, a thought-through and consistent vision of David Alden and his colleagues. We were swept up indeed by Paul Daniel, Anna Christy (recovered from bronchitis), and Barry Banks. Donizetti is not our specialism, and we did not bring with us a baggage of historical expectation ("of course we miss Joan" said a fellow bus passenger afterwards, who had also seen the Opera North Peter Grimes seventeen times...). A word of particular praise for all three lavish programme books, mines of information about the makings of the three operas and these particular productions, and there are plenty of images to be found on the Web. Peter Grahame Woolf |
Much of the text, notably Giselle Allen's soprano, was indecipherable; of course, when Peter Grimes was new it was usual for operagoers, whether at Bayreuth or in England, to study libretti in advance...
by a team of quick-changing singers, some of whom took on as many as five roles each. The score, for large orchestra, will reward rehearing, and I look forward to a DVD of The Adventures of Pinocchio for Christmas?