The influence of Oscar Wilde in the field of opera has never been
solely restricted to Strauss’s
Salome. There are the two
one-act operas by Zemlinsky -
A Florentine Tragedy and
The
Birthday of the Infanta - which have recently been revived to
considerable acclaim. There have also been many others, including several
attempts at an adaptation of Wilde’s only novel
The Picture of
Dorian Gray. Wikipedia lists three of them (not including this one), and
the most recent version has been that by Lowell Liebermann given rather
appropriately in the hedonistic atmosphere of Monte Carlo in 1996. However
it has to be said that
Dorian Gray presents considerably obstacles to
operatic treatment, or indeed to stage presentation as a whole. It has a
wide-ranging plot stretching over a period of more than twenty years, and
there is a considerable paucity of dialogue in the central section of the
novel. Here Kox has made his own adaptation of the work, concentrating on
its opening and closing chapters, and although he has made a good job of it
there remain a number of loose ends - it is never, for example, made clear
what happens to James Vane. The resulting libretto - over 40 pages of A4
typescript - is however very wordy for a short opera of less than two hours,
and there is little time allowed for the music to expand.
It must also be admitted that Kox’s music, rushing at a
headlong pace to accommodate all of the Wilde text, lacks a sense of ease
with English prosody; he correctly sticks to Wilde’s original English
with its precisely placed
bon mots. In the opening scene we are
brought fairly quickly face-to-face with one of Wilde’s epigrams in
the phrase “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to
it.” But Kox’s setting of this line, conversational in tone,
produces entirely the wrong sort of emphasis on the words themselves with
the climax of the vocal line coming on the entirely inessential word
“of” (CD1, track 1, 10.30). Similarly Kox does not take any
advantage of the occasional references to music by other composers;
“That was at
Lohengrin”, sings Dorian, but there is no
expected hint of Wagner in the music at this point. To take just two
examples, Britten in
Albert Herring and Holst in
The Perfect
Fool had no problems in inserting sly quotations from Wagner into their
scores at appropriate points for comic or ironic effect.
The work was written over an extended period of fifteen years, but
it was apparently badly received and mauled by the critics at its 1974
première - the booklet is totally silent about this aspect of the
opera’s history - and was withdrawn for revision before this
production in 1982. The sound of the radio broadcast places the voices very
far forward. There is too much evidence also of some poorly tuned orchestral
playing especially from an under-nourished body of strings and some tuned
percussion that sound right in the ear. Appreciation of the music itself is
also not helped by the booklet. We are given a scanned copy of the
typescript libretto - complete with some manuscript amendments - but what we
hear does not correspond with the text supplied; this may have been the
result of the revisions following the disastrous 1974 première.
Scenes are swapped about - for example, the appearance of Sybil Vane is
delayed until the fourth scene, when the libretto indicates that this should
precede the third scene. This is not to the advantage of the music, because
it means that we hear no lyrical music at all until Sybil’s aria
Let me not to the marriage of minds which now comes only after over
forty minutes of extended dialogue where the words come rattling at the
listener with hardly a pause for breath. In the booklet note the composer
admits to the influence of Puccini and Wagner; but he lacks their sense of
melodic distinction and the strenuous vocal writing has more in common with
Berg, with the hero in particular continually straining away in the high
register and denied any of the personal charm which is surely an essential
part of his character.
It has to be said that the singing itself is very good indeed.
Philip Langridge manages to float some occasional quiet notes to good
effect, and both Timothy Nolen and Lieuwe Visser sing with lyrical intensity
when they are allowed to do so. Roberta Alexander’s diction leaves a
good deal to be desired, and she is not always steady of tone; but she spins
a beautiful line in her aria, and one regrets her early death even though
she is allowed a brief reappearance as a ghost in the final scene. The
singers, mainly Dutch, have no problems with the English language although
the unattributed mezzo-soprano - I presume it is Hélène
Versloot, who otherwise seems to have nothing to sing - who sings the part
of Lord Henry’s wife in the second scene is clearly not a native
English speaker.
As I have suggested the orchestra leaves quite a lot to be desired.
The strings sound seriously under-powered - most disastrously in the
would-be expressive interlude which begins CD2, track 3. Frequently their
playing is scrappy and ill-tuned. The wind and brass fare better, but they
and the percussion are frequently very far forward in the recorded balance.
The ‘book scene’ in the Second Act (CD 2, track 2) consists
entirely of electronically taped music with distorted voices, but the music
does not in itself explain what this is meant to signify; one would have to
return to Wilde’s novel to conclude that it describes the way in which
Dorian Gray’s mind is poisoned by a book lent to him by Lord Harry,
were it not for the fact that an uncredited narrator reads the relevant
passage from Wilde. This gives the impression of having been an expedient
employed in the live performance from which the radio relay was made or,
again, it may have been the result of the composer’s revision of the
score which is not reflected in the supplied text.
At the beginning of the penultimate scene Kox finally allows the
tempo to relax as Dorian and Lord Harry discuss the meaning of conscience,
which at last permits a greater measure of lyricism to enter the music; but
the final scene is set as pure melodrama, with Langridge resorting to
liberal helpings of
Sprechstimme as he confronts the ghost of Sybil
and finally destroys his own portrait. The expressionist gestures from the
orchestra play up to the horror of the scene, but there is no sense of the
music reaching a cathartic conclusion. Strauss did not make that mistake in
Salome, despite the horrific nature of the events he was depicting on
stage.
One is always grateful for the opportunity to hear new operas which
tackle Wilde’s visionary writing and very purple prose, but one must
confess that it is unlikely that this setting will establish itself in the
repertory; indeed, despite the composer’s revision of the score there
appear to have been no further performances subsequent to this one in 1982.
So this set preserves a document of some historical importance, but
unfortunately no more than that.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
