Speranza
It was in Wetzlar, in 1772, that Goethe first meets Carlotta BUFF and falls half
in love with her while still reserving a good deal of affection for himself
and his own romantic image.
Wetzlar was also the setting for The Sorrows of
Young Werther, published two years later, in which Goethe scarcely bothered to
disguise the people he walked and talked with that summer — Carlotta BUFF even keeps
her own name.
Henry Bardon's sets for the Glyndebourne Werther snap up the very essence of Central German provincial
life.
The tall, gabled houses, ochre in the sunset, lean over a stream which
might very well guard those ecrevisses celebrated in Atto I—or were they a
wishful French touch by Massenet's trio of librettists?
The two town topers,
Johann and Schmidt, guzzle away the morning service in the sunshine at the
Raisin d'Or, not, alas, listed under Wetzlar in the 1969 Michelin—the Wetzlarer
Hof and the Euler- Haus take pride of place, although the Lotteham receives a
star and is considered sehenswert.
The more respectable burghers, excellently
attired by David Walker, promenade under the market arcades in their Sunday
finery.
Carlotta BUFF herself has a dress quite close to the 'white frock trimmed
with pink bows' worn by Goethe's own CARLOTTA at the ball where he first saw
her.
It was attention to such details that made Werther so impressive to look
at when we first saw it three seasons back.
Detail, too, is what marks Michael
Redgrave's production, and happily he is back to direct this revival with the
same care he devoted to the original.
As night falls in Atto I, and the clair de
lune theme swells up from the orchestra, Werther searches for the only strut of
the balcony free of roses and creepers and clutches it impulsively as
CARLOTTA BUFF (who is much of a prig and something of a tease in these first two
acts) turns away into the house.
The same automatic gesture of grasping at the
nearest solid object comes with his return to Albert's house six months later: a
marvellous moment this as the door is thrown open at the back of the stage and a
patch of light picks out Werther's pale face and a white cuff in the
darkness.
Redgrave, Bardon and Walker all have complete faith in Werther,
which is not altogether easy at a time when Massenet is a little short of both
friends and supporters.
So, too, has Jean Brazzi, back to sing the title
role.
Brazzi has the face of the tortured poet.
The black ringlets set
across the forehead, the deep eyes, the beaky nose forever sniffing out some new
lacerating personal experience fit him superbly for the large gestures of French
romantic opera.
And he has never ducked im- passioned effects.
The melodramatic
cry at the end of Act 1—`Un autre, son epoux!'—was delivered with total
conviction and no hint of embarrassment.
The same went for the Act 3 return,
which finds MM Blau, Milliet and Hartmann at their most bathetic: 'Oui, c'est
moi! . . . je reviens.'
Brazzi can get away with that sort of line because of
the intensity and lack of inhibition in his acting.
Vocally he can be an
uncertain performer and he is rarely at his best on first nights.
Sunday found
him short of tone and strained at the top: Ve ne sais si je veille . . .' was
awkward and too full of effort, less good than it was three years ago and
lacking the full, forward flow that a singer like Luccioni brought to it on
record.
But then in the next act 'Un autre est son epoux' and, later, `Lorsque
l'enfant revient' had all the feeling and grace of line that he can command.
The Ossian song, which as "Ah non mi ridestar" generations of Italian tenors
have turned into a lullaby instead of an outburst of emotion — and one of the very
few in the opera delivered face to face — was superb.
At Wexford two seasons ago
Brazzi's final Romeo was far better than the ones earlier in the week; those
seeing the later Werthers at Glyndebourne may well find an outstanding
interpretation.
Werther is very much a tenor's opera and I am surprised to
find Josephine Veasey listing Charlotte as one of her favourite -roles. Miss
Veasey has sung the part in Europe and else- where before, but not in England.
The interpretation is superficially as fluent as the voice: Charlotte
changes abruptly at half-time from a prim little miss into a romantic heroine.
Both characters are caught in turn, but despite the glowing voice used for the
Air des larmes and the last act duet, they were not fused into a single person.
The fault, I suspect, is not Miss Veasey's. - The dependence of Werther on its
pro- tagonist can be seen from the relative lack of interest generated by the
other characters, even when they are strongly cast as in this re- vival. Peter
Gottlieb is suitably stolid as Albert, Charlotte's chosen (or rather chosen for
her), but he might vary his tone a little more. Richard Van Allan and Hugues
Guenod articulate drolly and clearly as two unusually gaunt boozers—ah, the
German Tourist Board will say, not an ounce of extra flesh when you drink good
Hesse wine. Stafford Dean is the gruff but friendly Bailli. Only the
insufferable Sophie, professionally chipper at every moment of personal grief,
is weakly sung—Sadler's Wells had the right idea in their 1952 produc- tion when
Marion Studholme took the part.
Myer Fredman did not coax the same lush- ness
from the orchestra as in the performance I heard Carlo Felice Cillario conduct
in 1966, but opted instead for a dramatic approach. The sounds from the pit
were' not always sweet but they were usually stirring.
Last time Werther
took
some while to get going and in a few performances' time this could well be an
out- standing revival; the next evening it was fol- lowed by an expertly
balanced Cosi, which I hope to discuss next week. So Glyndebourne has got off to
its best start in several, years.
There is an excellent revival, too, at
Covent Garden of Peter Grimes. The timing should not surprise students of Royal
Opera House form which, over the past two or three years, has been very close to
that of certain racing stables—Captain Threadneedle will tell you their
names—who can be relied on to start pro- ducing winners two thirds of the way
through the season. The spring months tend to be the successful ones at Bow
Street and recently we've had the Jones/ McCracken/ Glossop Otello, the
Klemperer/ Silja Fidelio, the Soltil Nilsson , Elektra which Charles Reid was
describing here a couple of weeks back, and now the finest-- sounding Peter
Grimes I've heard in WC2.
Much of the strength of the performance - comes
from the orchestra and chorus, and since Colin Davis, musical director-elect,
was in the pit the omens are encouraging. The tug of the sea runs through this
revival, as it must through any decent staging of Grimes. There is the feeling
of sea calm and of sea turbulent. of sea seductive and of sea deceptive, and
finally, in the last scene, of the sea claiming its own. There is the same
remarkable identifica- tion with the work by the chorus—remarkah!,: because they
have not sung in the opera for seven years—who appear wrapped up in their own
tiny world, distrusting and resenting any- one who does not conform to
type.
Jon Vickers has sung Grimes at the Met with Colin Davis, but neither
has appeared in the opera here before. It is a racked and de- liberately craggy
interpretation, physically anJ vocally much larger than Peter Pears's. The
powerful body of this odd man out can with- stand just so many blows and then it
will jus. give up. Vickers, with a little connivance from the pit, takes some
liberties with the vocal line notes are drawn out or punched harder than usual,
`Now the Great Bear and Pleiades lacked its top notes. But the reward is the
image, which will stay for some time, of :1 strong man being crushed by general
opinion.
This revival is cast right down the line at strength, from Geraint
Evans's Players Medium Navy Cut Captain Balstrode and Heather Har- per's sweetly
sung Ellen Orford to Auntie's two teasing nieces (Elizabeth Robson and Josephine
Barstow). It is not to be missed.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
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