Stormy Weather

Giuseppe Verdi: Otello, Thomas Adès: The Tempest, Met Encore in HD, Phoenix Picturehouse, 30 October, 13 November 2012.

The first of the 2012-2013 season transmitted from the New York Metropolitan Opera in high definition to be seen by me was the encore of Verdi’s late masterpiece Otello. Between the Saturday live transmission and the Tuesday repeat, Hurricane Sandy had struck, making more than usually immediate the opening storm of the opera. 

Any production of Otello has, for me, to stand comparison with the staging by Peter Stein for Welsh National Opera in 1986. With the same director’s Falstaff in 1988, this was the best opera production of any in my experience for fidelity to the composer’s intentions. The choreography throughout was superb from the panic turmoil of the crowds of the opening scene, accompanied by the WNO orchestra at its best under Richard Armstrong’s leadership, to the closing tragedy. Geoffrey Lawton sang Otello with Donald Maxwell as Iago. Helen Field sang Desdemona, matching the tenderness and emotional range, if not the vocal prowess, of Renée Fleming at the Met. A daring stroke was to have her sing the Willow Song combing her hair in front of a mirror, with her back to the audience. It worked! 

To the cinema audience the opening scene came over as rather a mess, repeating many of the faults which we thought had been eliminated since the first HD transmissions five years ago. The curtain rose on the set piece chorus of Cypriots expressing the fear of the tempest and for the ship bringing home the victorious Otello and his troops. The stage appeared overcrowded with little room for movement but the camera panned over the chorus in long shot and close up destroying any illusion that we were seeing the local populace instead of the Met Chorus in costume. Then, as the principals appeared, the focus switched to close up revealing perspiring faces and tonsils of the singers. The visual distracted from the magnificent orchestral portrayal of the tempest under the conductor Semyon Bychkov. Things settled down as the action concentrated on the principals. It became immediately apparent that Falk Struckmann’s Iago was to dominate the proceedings both vocally and dramatically. Starting slightly sinister gradually revealing his true malevolence, this Iago manipulated the rest of the cast like puppets, pulling the strings inexorably to the inevitable conclusion. They did not stand a chance!  It is not often that the likes of Johan Botha, Otello, and Renée Fleming as Desdemona are outperformed. Fleming gave a rather subdued performance until her last scene, for which she is famous. Again one wondered at her uncanny ability to turn herself in front of the camera into a young woman in love. Botha was somewhat stolid in manner but he was in top vocal form. Michael Fabiano as Cassio and Eduardo as Roderigo effectively played their roles as puppets unaware of the consequences of their behaviour.

This was a revival of the Elijah Moshinsky production from 1995. when it opened with the first use of Met Titles. Fleming first sang her role there with Placido Domingo in 1994. Unlike Fleming the production is showing its age, in some ways dated, but it was a great performance in all respects which, unusually, provoked spontaneous applause from the Picturehouse audience. Nevertheless it by no means effaced the memories – and in many ways it refreshed them - of Peter Stein, Geoffrey Lawton and Helen Field.

*** 

The next transmission from The Met, which followed a fortnight later, was the 2004 opera sensation, The Tempest by Thomas Adès, which immediately established itself in the repertoire in a way no British opera has since Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes in 1945. The juxtaposition with Otello was fascinating and raises interesting speculations about the adaptation of literary and dramatic works for the operatic stage. Both operas are based on William Shakespeare, both commence with a great storm. Otello is one of the greatest of all operas. How close does The Tempest come?

Turning a play or novel into an opera is like passing meat through a mincing machine. The output is recognisably of the same substance as the input but completely different in form. The composer and librettist determine the texture, discard what is not wanted and add their own ingredients of music and words. This is done to perfection by Verdi and Boito in Falstaff and Otello. Most others fall short either in staying too close to or straying too far from the literary source or in failing to produce music worthy of the material.

This production of The Tempest by Robert Lepage (responsible for the Met’s strange Ring Cycle) is shared with L’Opèra de Quèbec and the Wiener Staatsoper. It is staged in a replica of the Opera House in Milan, emphasising the pre-history of the plot, though the stage is covered by billowing cloths in a realistic representation of the shipwreck of the court of Naples. This is accompanied by a musical tempest which surely has a place among the greatest operatic storms. We are introduced to Prospero (Simon Keenlyside who created the role at the ROH in 2004), Ariel (Audrey Luna billed as coloratura but singing more as a female falsetto whose vocal swoops and swings were matched by her athletic acrobatics on and around a gigantic candelabra) and Caliban (sung by Alan Oke) whose natural underground habitat was represented by the prompter’s box. Miranda (Isabel Leonard) and Ferdinand (Alek Shrader) after a great falling- in- love duet spend most of the time off-stage, returning at the end of Act II to reveal their love to Prospero and his resulting loss of power and again towards the end of the opera to announce (nudge-wink) that they are now married.

In an intermission interview (a longer version of which can be found on Adès’ website), the composer, who also conducted, explained that the idea had been to rethink the play, retelling it in modern English fitted to the rhythms of the music, the chosen librettist Meredith Oakes. It has to be said frankly: the words are awful, no doubt exacerbated by having to read subtitles. It is partially near -rhyming couplets, partially rhyming penultimate syllables with some rhyming couplets and full of cringe- making sentiments such as that referred to by the parenthesis in the previous paragraph.

The amazing thing is that the power of the music and the depictions of each character contained therein transcend the defects of the libretto. Like Otello, it is conceived in operatic terms, paring down the plot and changing detail to suit the genre. A heavily tattooed and athletic Prospero is the right age to have fathered the teenage Miranda. The music for Caliban and particularly Ariel make them the co-principals. The drunken buffoonery of Caliban with Trincolo (Iestyn Davies) and Stefano (Kevin Burdette) is another great piece of composition, though subsidiary to the main plot (more so than in the original). The complexities of who is who among the shipwrecked Neapolitans were a little difficult to unravel at first hearing. One is left with the thought that Prospero’s island was the original setting for I’m a Celebrity … get me out of here. At the end of the opera all depart leaving the last words to Ariel, who then departs skyward up the stage curtain, and then to Caliban. who remains. 

The Tempest is a great opera, less immediate than Benjamin Britten, less cerebral than Harrison Birtwistle. If the Composer could find a Boito, they would be capable of even greater things!