Glyndebourne Festival Opera (HD broadcast), 08/06/2014

Strauss : Der Rosenkavalier

The Glyndebourne Chorus
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Robin Ticciati

I had booked my tickets to see this live broadcast from Glyndebourne long before the media storm erupted; after, however, it became imperative to see exactly what all the fuss was about, and what had been passed over in the interim.  Quite a bit, in my opinion, mostly to do with what I consider to be a rather indifferent production.

Indifferent, because superficial, void of emotional weight, and if there's none in the staging, it's difficult to demand it of the musicians and singers.  The setting was very approximately 1920s, the costumes a bit of a mishmash through two centuries, though there was a distinct flavour of George Barbier in the panniered three-quarter length dresses (especially the Marschallin's Act 3 gold-and-black creation), the decor was frankly garish, with eye-watering wallpaper designs in every scene.  However, Richard Jones's approach to the action was pretty much first-degree throughout, seeking to play only to the comedy of manners, and with a great many inconsistencies creeping in.

It seemed, for example, wrong to have a photograph of Sophie prominently displayed for a good part of Act 1, where Octavian can easily see it, when much of the impact of Act 2 depends on the impression of love at first sight.  The lightning strike of the Presentation is defused when you suspect Octavian has already made up his mind.  Then again, though, the see-sawing of the Presentation was rather ridiculous, even if the audience seemed to find it amusing.  I also felt that the mayhem of Act 3 lacked spontaneity; while the carefully choreographed preparations were entertaining, the outcome, and its impact on the Baron, didn't convince me.

Musically, this was a very tidy performance, well-played and well-sung, but largely missing that extra dimension until, thank goodness, the last twenty minutes when, all funny business on stage put aside, voices and orchestra soared into an achingly beautiful trio, conductor Robin Ticciati finally pulling everything together for that all-important moment.  For that alone, one can forgive all other lacunae, especially when they're not at all bad, just a little under par.  This was a pleasantly young cast.  Teodora Gheorghiu delivered a fresh-voiced, clear Sophie, her nervous babbling in Act 2 rather delightful.  Tara Erraught was a bright timbred Octavian, maybe not quite contrasted enough to the two others, but pleasing, with certain provisos I'll come to later.

Kate Royal was an elegant Marschallin, her vocal line secure and the vocal quality attractive, but again, not quite conveying any real sense of bitterness at the encroachment of passing time.  Lars Woldt's sonorous Baron Ochs, on the other hand, was very near perfect.  He doesn't quite have that floor-vibrating bass for the very lowest notes of the part (try Peter Rose for that, these days), but the characterisation, physical and vocal, was spot-on, pretension and vulgarity beautifully graded, with the added advantage of superbly idiomatic German.  Of the many comprimario roles, Michael Kraus (Faninal) and Scott Conner (the Police Commissioner) stood out, while Andrej Dunaev acquitted himself very honourably as the Italian Singer, despite being saddled with a singularly horrible pink outfit.

And so we come to the infamous 'Taragate'.  With all due respect to all those (including the professional singers) who have said that opera is 100% about the voices - you wish!  Where audio only is concerned, I agree; the listener can supply the perfect physiques and settings from imagination, and all that matters is the sound.  Once in the theatre, however, or the cinema, there is a visual element that cannot, and should not be ignored.  It is quite possible to shut your eyes and just listen, but what's the point of going to a staged performance then?  One might as well sit at home with recordings or the radio.  Then again, there are those artists who are actually superior dramatically to vocally - Gwyneth Jones comes to mind.  I can't bear to listen to her, but she was a phenomenal actress to watch.  We go because we want to see, we want our imaginations to be stimulated by someone else's vision, perhaps to gain other insights, certainly to gain fodder for our own fancies.  What is also true, however, is that as an audience, opera-goers are visually very tolerant, especially if the performance rings true musically.

What I saw on screen today was not an Octavian, but it was really not Tara Erraught's fault, save perhaps in that she may not yet feel ready to play the diva in order to protest against some dreadful costume choices.  She had/has two problems in this context; one is a roundish, very feminine face, and the other is a simple lack of vertical inches - she was the shortest of all the adult leads on stage today, and the character ended up looking unnecessarily childish.  Despite the unconvincing sideburns and five o'clock shadow (and really, Ochs may be undiscriminating, but how could he possibly have missed that?), I was seeing Cherubino, not Octavian, when Octavian is what Cherubino is going to become three or four years down the line.  She had also not been assisted by the director, who neglected to insist she do something about her walk, which was distinctly unmasculine.

Tara Erraught as Octavian (© Alastair Muir, Glyndebourne 2014)

By the time of the broadcast, the appalling wig - better suited to a pantomime Captain Hook (see above) - had been tamed into something a bit less outlandish, and her costumes looked a better fit, so it's good to know somebody was paying attention.  However, as an Octavian with a brighter, rather than darker mezzo timbre, and no extraordinary purely vocal acting ability (unlike, say, Janet Baker, whom I did see a couple of times in this role), although this was a very nicely sung performance, it was not one I'd go out of my way to hear again.

Of all the singers, it's Woldt who held my attention the most and the best, but what was otherwise a decent, but tame, performance was redeemed by its closing scenes, when both orchestra and the three female leads finally touched a state of grace beyond the trivialities of the production, and the clean but impersonal direction of the conductor.

[Next : 15th June]