MacMillan : Inés de Castro
Chorus of Inés de Castro
Orchestra of Scottish Opera
James MacMillan
Inés de Castro was James MacMillan's first full-scale operatic work, commissioned by Scottish Opera and premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 1996. I certainly saw that original run when it transferred to Glasgow later in the season, and I saw the TV broadcast a couple of years later, but while some images of the production remain with me, I cannot honestly say I remember any of the music. This new staging by Olivia Fuchs, therefore, might as well have been that of a completely new work, as far as I was concerned.
That said, I think that it is still noticeably "early MacMillan", dating as it does from the first major flowering of MacMillan's creative output, along with all the other important works that really stamped him on the international musical map. He has stated that this revival gave him the opportunity to revise his score - one major excision, and a certain amount of minor work, particularly (if I've understood him correctly) geared to improving the clarity of the text, in which I would have to say he has generally succeeded. We did have surtitles, but on the whole Jo Clifford's libretto (from her own play) came across quite distinctly.
Like rather a lot of modern opera, in my experience, the actual vocal line is rarely as interesting as what is going on in the orchestra, and with the composer himself at the helm, the orchestra was deployed to tremendous effect. It's a sombre score, but with passages of considerable lyrical beauty; it's just a pity these weren't always matched vocally. MacMillan has, in particular, one habit that frustrated me on several occasions; just when a vocal line seemed about to bloom into something really intense, he writes a little twiddle, a vocal melisma on a word, that suddenly seems fussy and irrelevant, undermining any tonal colour the singer could have brought to the phrase at that point. On the other hand, when he gets it right, the whole is very striking. Perhaps the strongest moment, for me, was when Death (as the Old Woman - Kathleen Wilkinson, excellent) comes for Inés, a monologue for the contralto with an ethereal off-stage female chorus that carries just the faintest echo of Brünnhilde's Todesverkündigung in its other-worldly solemnity.
Unlike the first time around, Olivia Fuchs's staging does not adhere to the action's original time period. Although Inés de Castro is about as historically accurate as any other such type of exercise - which is to say, not much at all - it is based on actual events that took place in 14th Century Portugal. However, this version is set in an indeterminate time and place, that may be somewhere around 1930 and probably in Europe, but other than that is wide open to interpretation. It therefore becomes something of a meditation on the dismal fate of women and children in war-torn territories, underpinned by a recurrent use of the Stabat Mater hymn. The grand guignol element that was very much a part of the original staging is still there - impossible to avoid, given the text at some points - but seemed less grotesquely highlighted than my vague recollection would have it, which was all to the good.
Stephanie Corley sang the title role, sweet-voiced, somewhat naive, touchingly vulnerable for the most part, but was a little upstaged, in my opinion, by Susannah Glanville's Blanca, the abandoned wife, who managed to be simultaneously noble and embittered, to great effect. Paul Carey Jones was the villainous Pacheco, more of a flippant gangster than the Iago-type he could be, but still dominating Brindley Sherratt's vacillating and impersonal King, while Peter Wedd's Pedro was vocally a little stretched by the end of the evening, but dramatically quite solid.
On the whole, I don't find the piece especially engaging, emotionally, and no doubt anyone with knowledge of the actual historical events would find much of it exasperating, but there was more than enough, particularly in the orchestral score, to remind me that I do appreciate MacMillan's music.
[Next : maybe 25th, otherwise 29th January]
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