Although I was, I must
admit, only at school I can just about
recall the televised performance of
Owen Wingrave in 1971. It received
a rather poor press, I remember. Nevertheless
the music made an impression, at least
on me, so when it finally came to the
Royal Opera House I went to see it on
May 12th, 1973. It was conducted by
Steuart Bedford with Benjamin Luxon
as Owen and Peter Pears as Sir Philip
and the Narrator. Suddenly the real
drama came alive and the work scored
quite a success, although, in truth,
it has not quite ranked as one of Britten's
best operas. Seeing this, stunning DVD
however, I am now entirely won over
and I feel that the work has been much
underestimated.
The libretto by Myfanwy
Piper is excellent and utterly singable
being based on a curious ghost story
by Henry James whose ‘Turn of the Screw’
had been used by Britten well over ten
years previously. Piper had been responsible
for that libretto too.
The plot concerns a
family of lower aristocratic stock who,
for generations going back to Cromwellian
times, had always fought and died when
their country needed them. Owen is at
military school when he realizes that
this way of life is not for him and
returns home to find himself ostracized
by family, friends and fiancée
Kate. He is a typical Britten character
- the outsider within an enclosed society.
A room in the house
is haunted by a vengeful ancestor and
Kate wants to test Owen's true mettle
by daring him to spend the night there.
Owen agrees and allows himself to be
locked in. The next morning Owen is
found dead on the floor and Kate blames
herself; the ancestor has taken his
revenge. In this DVD the action is updated
to the 1950s from the original Edwardian
era. I find this unnecessary and not
all that helpful.
There is nothing 'stagey'
about the production. We are in a real
live, slightly decaying, country home
where the camera is free to roam inside
and out. The characters were filmed
singing live to camera, neatly allied
to an orchestral backing track. The
differences in acoustic between singing
in the hall and singing outside may
seem odd at first but for the most part
it works. In any event you soon get
used to differing echo effects. Oddly
enough Britten's orchestration allows
for these geo-physical alterations.
The lighting can be very atmospheric
especially in the scene on the upstairs
landing between Owen and Kate when for
a few moments they seem as if they might
be reconciled.
This DVD offers a very
strong cast. It is as strong as the
one I saw in 1973 which also included
Janet Baker as Kate, played here in
a wonderfully strong and determined
manner by Charlotte Hellekant. Mrs.
Coyle, originally played by the much
lamented Heather Harper, is sung by
Anne Dawson, surely Harper’s equal.
I am enormously impressed by a strongly
dignified Gerald Finley as Owen, who
I have not seen before. Martyn Hill
is also memorable in a cameo that brings
focus and a lead. Hill’s make-up, by
the way, is very impressive.
I have never thought
of Kent Nagano or the Deutsches Symphony
Orchestra, for that matter, as Britten
proponents. However Nagano’s direction
is ideal. He and his orchestra demonstrate
real sensitivity to this at times rather
fragile music, typical of the sound-world
of late Britten.
In addition to the
opera there is a 57 minute Britten documentary,
'The Hidden Heart'. This concentrates
on Peter Grimes, the War Requiem and
Death in Venice and has interviews with
those who knew Britten and Pears. The
counter-tenor James Bowman famously
describes the couple as ‘entirely respectable’
... ‘Prep school masters’. Rostropovich
and Galina Vishnevskaya are also interviewed.
Incidentally the subtitles, which I
particular needed during the Russian
language interviews, were a bit tangled
up. The English one came out German,
the German as Spanish and the Spanish
as French!
Margaret Williams takes
a strongly active approach in direction
with quickly moving camera angles, singers
singing to themselves to reflect thought
processes, voices off and other tricks.
Although this might irritate some viewers
it should not detract from such an excellent
project which might well resuscitate
the opera’s fortunes.
Gary Higginson
Deutsches
Symphony Orchestra, Berlin/Kent Nagano 
ARTHAUS
DVD 100372 [150 minutes] 