Seen and Heard Opera
Review
Handel, ‘Jephtha’
English National Opera: dir. Nicholas Kraemer, 12 May 2005 (ME)
‘How dark, O lord, are thy decrees! All hid from mortal
sight!...Whatever is, is right’ sing the chorus at the close
of the second act of Handel’s last great work, and this
acceptance of divine ruling is not only poignantly ironic in view
of the composer’s encroaching blindness as he wrote this
music but also indicative of the distance which today’s
audiences must travel in terms of acceptance of that which seems
unbearable; a similar distance has to be crossed between the straightforward
nobility of oratorio and the banality of staging it as a family
crisis played out against a World War II backdrop. When this production
was first shown by Welsh National Opera it was showered with intemperate
ravings, in which words like ‘heartbreaking’ and ‘astonishing’
were freely used both of the singing and the staging: on this
hearing, some of the singing was very fine indeed, and some of
the production details were illuminating, but there was also much
that seemed to need re-thinking.
Half of the cast were returning to their roles from the WNO production,
and the best singing from an ‘original’ cast member
came from the Iphis, Sarah Tynan, whose bright, ringing voice,
fluency and clarity of diction gave constant pleasure. ‘The
smiling dawn of happy days’ and ‘Tune the soft melodious
lute’ were both genuinely touching despite all the gallimaufry
with which the singer had to cope, and ‘Welcome as the cheerful
light’ was perfection – as warm, heartfelt and beautifully
expressed a welcome as could ever be given a returning hero despite
the silly white bunting she had to wave. Indeed, this was one
of the most beautifully composed stage pictures of the production,
with the bridally – clad child singing to her father’s
rigidly set form as her fond mother looked on from the curving
staircase. Sadly she was not so well served as her story progressed,
but more of that anon.
The ubiquitous Mark Padmore was the tormented conqueror, and he
sang with his customary musicality and commitment, whilst never
impressing with any great agility in the coloratura: mind you,
anyone would be hard pressed to do so given that ‘Waft her,
Angels’ was sung crouched over on the stairs and ‘His
Mighty Arm’ had to be tackled whilst surrounded by ‘reporters’
taking notes (‘now, tell us again, just how haughty was
that foe? Can we quote you on that?) Mr Padmore seems to look
more like Tony Blair every day, and this production’s notion
of Jephtha as a 20th century politico drew on that: making those
air-cutting gestures he was given to use to denote annoyance and
/ or despair, you half expected him to say ‘Look, ok, wull,
um. I’m a pretty straightforward kinda guy – those
Ammonites, now…’ He presents a vulnerable, attractive
hero who fits well into the production’s concept of him,
and as the run continues his singing will surely grow in confidence.
Susan Bickley’s Storgè experienced some problems
during the evening: this very fine singer, much loved by audiences
for her Juno and Cassandra, was not in her best voice –
‘In gentle murmurs will I mourn’ was so subdued as
to be difficult to hear, and the very taxing ‘Sweet as sight
to the blind’ had singer and conductor parting company and
not quite meeting up again: however, she, too, had to contend
with much unnecessary fussing about.
Of the new members of the cast, Neal Davies was an efficiently
blustery Zebul, although his placing on stage often rendered his
pronouncements less striking than they needed to be. However,
he sang his music with commitment and he was touching in his comfort
to the afflicted hero, another lovely stage picture being created
when he shares what he thinks is Jephtha’s joy on being
greeted by Iphis. Robin Blaze displayed a lovely voice as Hamor,
although I think it is a small one for this size of house, being
more suited to, shall we say, ‘My Ladye’s Chamber’
than a vast auditorium, but no one could fault his articulation,
his passage work or the sweetness and beauty of his tone in ‘Up
the dreadful steep ascending,’ and ‘These labours
past’ was pure delight, his and the soprano’s voice
intertwining mellifluously despite all the superfluous stage business.
I very much liked the idea of having the Angel present throughout,
especially in the form of Sarah–Jane Davies, a young singer
whose bright future I confidently predicted when I saw her in
many superb performances at the RCM – she sang her one aria
‘Happy, Iphis, shalt thou live’ quite beautifully,
with a steady tone and shapely phrasing. Of course, how to deal
with the Angel is a knotty problem for any production of this
tale: Donne could write that ‘Just such disparity / As is
‘twixt Aire and Angells’ purity / Twixt women’s
love, and men’s, will ever be’ and assume in his readers
an acknowledging understanding that there were such things as
angels, but for the 21st century audience some other accommodation
must be made. However, moving and meaningful though it is to have
the silent Angel hovering throughout, her moment of glory needs
emphatic staging, and here it went for nothing - instead of a
great central cry of ‘Rise, Jephtha, - and ye reverend priests,
withhold / The slaght’rous hand’ causing wonder and
amazement in the assembled crowd, we had the Angel pushing her
way through and being manhandled as an intruder (!) so that her
opening line was lost – instead of ‘Oh my God! An
Angel! How incredible!’ the feeling was ‘Oi! Yew,
Angel, move it before we chuck yer out!’ Oh dear.
Even more misguided, in my opinion, was the concept of Iphis after
she has been condemned to die. Handel’s glorious music is
abundantly clear as to how she reacts – and no one could
possibly have been unmoved by Sarah Tynan’s truly heart-breaking
singing in the lines ‘Jephtha hath triumph’d –
Israel is free!’ and ‘…the blessings still /
Pour on my country, friends, and dearest father’ - she is
nobly, heroically stoical and self – sacrificing, and that
reaction does not alter even at what she thinks is the last moment.
Such a notion obviously proved too much for this director, so
we had Iphis ‘going mad’ in the now-conventional stage
way, complete with bare feet, aimless scratching and inturned
toes; I half expected her to start babbling about Rosemary and
Rue. The lines ‘…the call of heav’n with humble
resignation I obey’ are not ironic, but here they were made
to seem so. In the lovely aria ‘Farewell, ye limpid springs’
the music breathes serenity and poise, it radiates acceptance
and fortitude - and yet the stage was frantic with scrabblings.
When Iphis sings ‘All that is in Hamor mine, Freely I to
heav’n resign’ the music shows that she means it.
There are some concepts which may be alien to oneself, but sometimes
you just need to accept them if that’s what the composer
– remember him? – is telling you.
Handel opera – or staged oratorio – is centred around
a structure in which the arias illuminate crises in the lives
of the individuals concerned, and since those arias are mostly
of a florid style, their flamboyance calculated to make vivid
the nature of the crisis involved, they are best performed with
minimal interference from stage business, this being one area
of opera where a modified ‘stand and deliver’ is appropriate,
the challenges to the director being mainly concerned with how
to integrate such moments into the overall action. The characters
enter, they sing of one crisis, they depart, that crisis being
over. This style of production was spectacularly successful in,
for example, ENO’s ‘Xerxes,’ where the singers’
needs were paramount yet the overall production was witty, original
and gave that elusive sense of being a complete dramatic whole.
The conductor Nicolas McGegan once remarked to me that his heart
sank when he was told brightly ‘We’re having someone
who has never directed opera before – won’t that be
fun?’ to which his reply was ‘Well, no, in fact, it
won’t – not at all’ and although Katie Mitchell
has a couple of opera productions to her credit, one would hardly
have known it from this evening.
I’ve already given examples of stage business
interfering with singing, so I will just mention one glorious
moment which went for nothing: when Hamor finds out what Jephtha
has vowed, he heroically steps forward (or he should!) and says,
in music of melting beauty and tenderness – ‘If such
thy cruel purpose, lo! Your friend offers himself a willing sacrifice
/ to save the innocent and beauteous maid.’ If ever a singer
needed a prominent stage position, then Robin Blaze did here,
yet his plea was lost behind the trenchcoats. But how wonderfully
he sang it, and the ensuing aria – happily for me I was
in the front stalls, but had I been a first- time visitor in the
balcony I doubt if I would have known what was going on.
The orchestral playing recovered from a rather sluggish overture
to provide lively, sympathetic accompaniment, with Nicholas Kraemer’s
harpsichord a fluent presence. The ENO chorus, as always, sang
superbly, particularly in ‘How dark, o Lord.’ The
lighting (Chris Davey and Paule Constable) was subtle and the
sets (Vicki Mortimer) worked well as a backdrop to the negotiations
– I especially liked the curving staircase and the trestle
tables. Should you go? Of course you should: whatever qualms I
have about Mitchell’s production are insignificant compared
to the fact that she has staged this glorious work, and if you
don’t know such music as ‘Take the heart you fondly
gave,’ ‘Tune the soft melodious lute,’ ‘In
glory high, in might serene’ and of course, most of all
‘Waft her, Angels, through the skies’ then you are
the poorer. If you’d like to hear the work on record, there
is no better recommendation than the ‘Brilliant Classics’
99777 version, with John Mark Ainsley’s stunningly virtuosic
Jephtha and Christiane Oelze’s poignantly lovely Iphis,
and if you want to hear ‘His Mighty Arm’ and ‘Waft
her, angels’ sung with the kind of skill and expressiveness
that makes your jaw drop, then I highly recommend a visit to the
Proms on Tuesday 2nd August, when Ainsley will sing those very
arias from this wonderful work.
Melanie Eskenazi
ENGLISH NATIONAL OPERA
HANDEL'S JEPHTHA
FIRST PERFORMANCE 12 MAY 2005
NEW PRODUCTION
CONDUCTOR NICHOLAS KRAEMER
DIRECTOR KATIE MITCHELL
SARAH TYNAN(IPHIS) MARK PADMORE(JEPHTHA) SUSAN BICKLEY(STORGE)
NEAL DAVIES (ZEBUL)
COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPHER NEIL LIBBERT
