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Welsh National Opera On Tour. Autumn 2008: Theatre Cymru (North Wales Theatre), Llandudno, 24 – 29.11.2008 (RJF)

Giuseppe VERDI: Otello (1887). Tragic opera in four acts. Sung in Italian.

Leos JANÁČEK: Jenůfa (1904) Moravian music drama in three acts. Sung in Czech.

Gioachino ROSSINI: Il barbiere di Siviglia (1816) Melodramma Buffa in two acts. Sung in English as The Barber of Seville.


When Welsh National Opera open their autumn season in Cardiff’s Millennium Centre, the usual three productions on offer are reasonably spaced allowing patrons to organise their lives and finances. When the Company goes on tour to Liverpool, Bristol, Southampton, Birmingham, Llandudno and Oxford, as they have done this autumn, opera buffs need to organise their finances to take a concentrated dose of their drug. I noticed, when covering the parallel tour by Opera North, that compared to autumn 2007 audiences were considerably depleted. Of course it is too simple to ascribe that to the so-called credit crunch. Matters such as the more recent revival of a production, as well as the popularity of the work or composer, also play their part. I do not know about the other venues visited by W.N.O. this autumn, but although the Venue Cymru had more empty rows than usual, attendance was far better than I had observed of their sister company. I also noted that many people attended all three productions. With the Olympic Games calling on great amounts of finance, Arts Council subsidy will be a likely loser. This makes the maximising of ticket sales of even greater importance than usual. It is highly commendable that W.N.O. has not gone for easy options of replaying the ever popular in this autumn’s programme, but has subtly mixed the operatic genres. Also, it has balanced a new production with revivals of previous shows; sound economic sense.

In the W.N.O. Spring tour this year (see review), the spirit of two comic operas was balanced by one tragedy. If that was intended to set the audience up for a jolly summer, the weather let the side down. What of this autumn’s trio? First up was a case of jealousy, wife abuse, followed by uxoricide with the perpetrator committing suicide. Next was a nasty case of power, jealousy and infanticide with the perpetrator handing herself in to justice. It was as well for the operatic nervous system that the trio included a further revival of Giles Havergal’s production of Rossini’s Barber of Seville. Firmly set in the comedia del’arte tradition, this production is an ideal romp through a masterpiece of comic opera.

It is Verdi’s penultimate opera, Otello, his twenty-seventh, that involves wife killing and then suicide. When premièred at La Scala in February 1887, Verdi was seventy-four years old and unquestionably the greatest living opera composer. He really thought he had given up opera composition after Aida sixteen years before, and he didn’t need the money. However, his publisher, Ricordi, thought the great man had more music in him and brought Verdi into contact with the younger Boito, a composer in his own right as well as a librettist for his own works and those of others (La Gioconda). Working together they revised Verdi’s earlier Simon Boccanegra, (1857) which the composer believed deserved a better fate than neglect. The revision was premièred to acclaim at La Scala in 1871. During that revision, Ricordi, having laid the groundwork, brought up the idea of another Shakespeare opera from Verdi. The Stratford bard was a great favourite of the composer, his works having a place at the composer’s bedside. Boito sent the composer a scenario. Although Verdi was reluctant to make a definite commitment, and there were long periods of seeming inactivity, in reality he was encouraging Boito to make changes in the libretto. Boito dispensed with Shakespeare’s Venice act and focused the whole of the action in Cyprus. Confronted by Boito’s consummate efforts that reduced Shakespeare’s Othello by six-sevenths Verdi, in secret, composed the new work.

Boito’s libretto did not loose the essence of the destruction of the erstwhile hero by the genie of jealousy aided by the evil machinations of Iago. Iago’s Credo in act two is Boito’s invention. But Verdi takes on a distinctly different, more seamless, compositional style than that in his previous works; a style that is also present in the Council Chamber scene of the revised Simon Boccanegra. There are few formal arias and no cabalettas. This more seamless compositional style has always appealed to musicians whilst the public has been more equivocal. This may well be due to lack of familiarity consequent on the scarcity of performances as much as formal arias. This scarcity can also be attributed to Verdi’s vocal demands on the title role that is beyond some of the greatest of tenors. Whilst Manrico in Il Trovatore and Radames in Aida can be sung by a strong voiced and full toned lyric tenor with vocal heft, the role of Otello calls for a voice of more dramatic and heroic quality not far short of that of a Wagnerian Heldentenor. It is not without significance that whilst neither Bergonzi nor Pavarotti, who had no difficulty with either Radames or Manrico, never sang the role in staged performances.

This production, by Paul Curran, opened in Cardiff with Dennis O’Neill, Welsh National’s favourite tenor of the last thirty years in the demanding title role. I have watched his development from the most Italianate lyric tenor that the UK has produced for a generation or three, into the spinto repertoire and saw his recent Manrico on tour (see review). I missed his more recent Radames, the production only being toured to Birmingham after its Cardiff run. O’Neill has been singing Otello for around ten years and this production was an ideal opportunity for him to present his interpretation to his fans before he finally brings down the curtain on an illustrious career. He was only scheduled for one of the two performances in Llandudno, but illness was casting that in doubt as I left the town, O’Neill having had to withdraw from earlier carded performances on the tour. On the evening I attended, the demanding role was sung by Terence Robertson. A graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music he also studied with Bergonzi and has sung widely in the U.K. and Europe, taking on increasingly heavier roles including Manrico for English national Opera. His is a strong lyric tenor with heft. If he hasn’t got the trumpeting vocal power of Domingo in this role – who has? - Robertson’s singing of the big declamatory phrases, such as the opening Esultate against the strident orchestral chording Verdi wrote, were tightly controlled, with his best singing coming allied to his acting in Otello’s interactions with Iago. Having safely surmounted the other vocal obstacles that Verdi laid along the way, Robertson left his best to the final act when, confidently over the earlier vocal hurdles, he really let the drama draw out his strongest singing voice and most committed acting.

This production has been David Kempster’s first shot at Iago and his portrayal was the vocal and histrionic strength of the performance. He was the evil, vile and nasty schemer personified, his acting backed up by expressive and powerful singing; his rending of Iago’s Credo made the flesh creep. Amanda Roocroft played a fragile, besotted, Desdemona, there on the quayside worrying as Otello’s ship was riding out the storm and dead by the matrimonial bed at the end killed by her husband. Always a convincing actress she excellently conveyed the emotional roller coaster that living with the tempestuous Otello involved. Vocally she was at her best in the love duet and the Willow Song with varied tone and expression in the reprised Salce, salce. However, at the vocal peak that followed in act four she exhibited some unsteadiness. Having watched her career since her student days and acclaimed Alcina and Fiordiligi, I am not convinced of her strengths in Verdia. Of the lesser parts, David Soar sang sonorously as Lodovico and Wynne Evans sang strongly as Cassio, although his costumed appearance did not make him appealing as a possible lover, his figure and costume being ill matched. The augmented chorus, a little crowded at times on the small stage, were vibrant whilst Michal Klauza, having taken over from Carlo Rizzi, did Verdi’s music both dramatic and sensitive justice as appropriate; not always the case with some famous maestros I have heard who over drive the composer’s carefully contrasted and drafted music in this opera.

Wonder of wonders,  the production was set and dressed in period. This put me in a good frame of mind from the start. I am sick of the sight of balaclavas and armalite rifles, not to mention punks and rockers gliding on blades, on operatic stages. Regrettably, with too many quirky American, European and also some British directors and their abstruse concepts, composers would far too often not recognise their work from what appears on contemporary British operatic stages. If the width of the stage at Theatre Cymru limited the audience seeing the whole of the mighty lion that heralded act three and the arrival of the Venetians, it perhaps also stopped the silly serpent that I gather had emerged from the side stage rocks in Cardiff. Yes, there was the occasional production quirkiness, but it was rare and at least I could figure out what the apple tree and serpent were meant to represent as Iago set up Otello in act two without having to spend the next week thinking about it or read the directors explanation in the programme. Paul Curran has had few opportunities in the U.K. to show his directorial skills, which are widely recognised abroad at some of the best operatic addresses. He told the story simply and effectively, allowing Verdi’s music to do the rest. Isn’t this what directors are supposed to do rather than putting their egos, puzzles and concepts before the music? The costumes were quite magnificent in act three. I guess gold braid will be at a premium at the theatrical costumers for a year or two! This production is a worthy successor to Peter Stein’s earlier, but rather fussy one, for the Company, of twenty years, or so, ago. With the presence of a tenor capable of singing the demanding title role it will serve W.N.O. for a similar period. 

In Llandudno the new production of Otello was followed by the revival of Katie Mitchell’s production of Leos Janáček’s Jenůfa. Whilst the story might be considered equally, or even more harrowing than Otello, and premièred a mere twenty years after Verdi’s opera, the musical idiom is completely different. Again the set, different for the three acts, would have been recognised by the composer, with only the costumes updated to late twentieth century. The story does not unfold in the same manner as with the Verdi, where melody and mood are paramount to the drama. This makes the producer’s job more challenging. It says much for the work of Katie Mitchell’s direction, and the singing of the soloists and chorus, that the performance was as dramatically convincing, even overwhelming, as any I have experienced for many a year.

Although the title role is important, the representation of the stepmother, Kostelnička, is surely paramount. Susan Bickley a tall woman used her height and austere stature to great effect in portraying the character’s steely inner being. Her Kostelnička was a woman who had been annealed in the coldest of the waters of life’s harshest of experiences and was determined that the illegitimate child would not thwart Jenůfa’s life as her own had been by the arrows of fate and misfortune. Her outstanding strong singing and acting was matched elsewhere in the cast, particularly by both tenors, Peter Hoare as Laca, the bitter disinherited and would be lover of Jenůfa, and Steva, the dilettante rich boy who gets the inheritance over his elder half brother. It is Steva who Jenůfa loves and who gets her pregnant. Sung by Stephen Rooke, the feckless Steva thinks his paternal responsibilities can be settled by money rather than commitment to mother and child. Rooke expressed this character well in his singing and acting, the only incongruity being his grey hair, making him look significantly older than Laca, his disinherited younger half brother. Peter Hoare’s singing of Laca’s jealous rant at his grandmother over the passing of the inheritance of the mill had the required strength to ride the composer’s thick orchestral textures, but was somewhat monochromic. Eddie Wade was a well-portrayed and sung Foreman of the mill.

This production was Nuccia Focile's first shot at the title role. As with her Tatiana in last spring’s Eugene Onegin hers was a committed sung and acted performance. The manner of her variation of tone as she first spurned Laca and later accepted his declarations of love and acceptance of her condition was impressive as was her vocal and acted response to her stepmother, Kostelniča, as Jenůfa realises the truth of the death of her child.  Nuccia Focile has an extensive repertoire of roles, not least with W.N.O., and has seemed to have consciously moved away from the traditional Italian lyric soprano roles into more dramatically challenging repertoire. Hers was an excellent realisation of one such challenge. I only hope that she has not moved irrevocably away form her admired singing in those earlier roles and that repertoire. 

As I have indicated the set for each act was clearly defined and appropriate although the last tableau, an elaborately flowered garden tended by a young boy, not something that could be attributed to Janáček, left me confused. It did not, however, spoil my feeling at having experienced a great music drama fully realised by the production and lighting team, an experience and effect not often achieved on the operatic stage.

With all the murders, jealousies and deaths out of the way it was time for something more light-hearted, which came with Rossini’s evergreen Barber of Seville. Of Rossini’s thirty-nine operas Il Barbiere di Siviglia is the only one to have remained in the repertoire since its composition. When the composer met Beethoven in Vienna the great man told Rossini to only compose buffa operas like Il Barbiere. Verdi was also a great admirer of the work as he was of Rossini’s opera seria and particularly his William Tell. Il Barbiere was one of the works Rossini squeezed in during his contract as Musical Director of the Royal Theatres at Naples and where he was supposed to present two new works every year. In the first two years of his contract he composed no fewer than five operas for other cities, including four for Rome. It was while in Rome for another new work to open the Carnival Season at the Teatro de Torre Argentina he signed a contract with the rival Teatro Valle for a comic opera to be presented during its Carnival Season, the score to be delivered by mid January! After one unsuitable subject was put aside, and by now in some haste, it was decided to base the new opera on Beaumarchais’ Le Barbier de Séville. To avoid any offence to the widely respected Paisiello, who had already composed an opera based on that story in 1782, the opera was presented as Almaviva, ossia L’inutile precauzione (the useless precaution), later reverting to the title we now know it by.

I say this was Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, but not really! It owed as much to the producer Giles Havergal, that of the translation and cast, particularly Eric Roberts as Bartolo, as to Rossini. I saw Roberts in W.N.O’s previous staging of the work three seasons ago and also in that by Opera North who share this production. Each time he has added more character and business to his consummate and highly entertaining portrayal, albeit that his voice no longer has the ideal colour or cover at the top. But he is the epitome of the irascible old roué in every movement, gesture and facial expression. For his portrayal to really work he requires excellent colleagues as singers and actors. In that last staging at Llandudno, the carded singer of Rosina was ill and substituted on the day by the young Arlene Rolfe. In my review I noted how well she fitted into the production, particularly reacting and singing to and off Roberts’s Bartolo. I felt this was a product of good stage preparation. This time the role was sung by the soprano Laura Parfitt, new to the role. Personally, I prefer a mezzo for the role and was somewhat surprised that her voice was a little stretched at the very top but very secure at the bottom. Like her predecessor she was well into the fun of the production and reacted and acted well. It was also a pleasure to see and hear Colin Lee again as Almaviva. His fluent even tenor and consummate coloratura is recognised worldwide and seems only to be second to the more famous Juan Diego Florez. His assumptions of Almaviva in this production, and also as Romiro in the earlier La Cenerentola (see review), are examples of strength of casting that many would envy. It was a pity this did not extend to the eponymous role. The young American John Moore, who was a Lindemann Young Artist at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, and had sung Fiorella there, is not yet fully into the role as singer or actor. He will return home to repeat his Figaro next summer. He needs to bring more vocal and acted brio to his portrayal as well as more variety of colour and nuance to his singing. These were facets of portrayal that were present in abundance in Tim Murfin’s tall, slinky and sleazy Basilio, replete with firm toned sonority in his slander aria. In the relative small role of Fiorello, David Lloyd Evans sang strongly and conducted, literally sometimes, the business around the stage within a stage. Naomi Harvey repeated her portrayal of Bartolo’s housekeeper Berta, popping her master’s pills into his mouth when his blood pressure looked to be getting out of control, and singing her aria with character and expression. She will get better opportunities to shine next year as Mimi.

Whilst some of the fussy activities of the offstage audience still irk me, the overall performance left me highly amused. I do prefer the work sung in Italian as the prosody of the language fits the music that much better. With the benefit of the surtitles present in English and Welsh in Llandudno, the added lines about handing onto Mozart could have been included in English or Italian. It was an addition to Rossini’s scintillating score, and Ferretti’s libretto, well realised by the conductor, orchestra and singers in a scintillating finale that I, a purist about unwritten additions to operatic scores, readily forgive in this case.

This autumn season from Welsh National Opera indicates a company in good health using its existing productions alongside new one that promises longevity.

Robert J Farr


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