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Music
Lorin Maazel
Lyrics
J.D. McClatchy
Lyrics
Thomas Meehan
Conductor
Lorin Maazel
Director
Robert Lepage
Performers
Winston
Simon Keenlyside
Julia
Nancy Gustafson
O'Brien
Richard Margison
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Royal
Opera House
Covent
Garden
03
- 19 May 2005 |
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Many
problems beset the idea of
setting George Orwell's chilling
picture of a totalitarian
society as an opera. Though
the human story of Winston's
hopeless defiance of an all
pervasive system through his
illegal love for Julia is
ostensibly the plot, the most
memorable part of the novel
is the detail it provides
of how a state can govern
every aspect of a person's
life, thought and action,
often without his, or her's,
knowing ho, or that, it was
being done. The book is a
polemic, but opera can only
really make these points incidentally,
out of human action and responses
as Brecht and Weill found
out. So the opening scene
of the opera with its slogans
with the massed choir arranged
in a square is devoid of dramatic
interest. How to translate
Orwell's ignorant obedience
was not achieved, and it left
for the whole evening the
question whether any of the
novel could really be transferred
from the page to the operatic
stage.
Lorin Maazel is not only the
composer, but the entrepreneur
behind his adaptation of 1984.
The commission originated
in Munich, but has been realized
in London through a company,
entitled, I suspect without
irony, 'Big Brother Productions'
that was founded in 2002 by
none other than Lorin Maazel
himself. The libretto has
been written by J.D. McClatchy
and the award-winning musical-book
lyricist Thomas Meehan, whose
credits include Hairspray
and The Producers. The opera
was directed by Robert Lepage,
making his ROH debut, and
the set was designed by Carl
Fillion with costumes by Yamina
GiguËre and lighting by Michel
Beaulieu, all of whom received
warm applause on the opening
night from Lorin Maazel himself.
1984 was graced with a number
of strikingly good performances.
Simon Keenlyside sang the
principal role of Winston
Smith powerfully and expressively.
From my seat, some hundred
or more yards away from him,
it was difficult gauge how
well acted or characterized
the role was, but it sounded
good. Winston needs a sense
of struggle against the overpowering
and all-pervasive system,
but there was little verbal
expression of this antagonism.
All he really wanted was love.
This was provided by the equally
well sung Julia performed
by Nancy Gustafson. In their
first act bedroom scene they
achieved what passion the
music could allow, and their
diction (thankfully supplemented
by surtitles) was excellent.
Apart from the two characters
that have the best chance
of presenting rounded and
interesting characters there
were a number of cameos and
vignettes, offering the opportunity
for some spectacular singing
and apt portrayals. Notable
amongst these was Diana Damrau,
whose athletic voice and comfortable
stratosphere nicely caught
the primness of the Gym Instructress
and the salacious second act
drunk whose hands and body
were everywhere until finally,
and wittily, dumped on the
ground. Richard Margison as
O'Brien is stolidly subversive
and the treacherous Charrington
was convincingly sung by Graeme
Danby.
Good as the performances were,
the crucial question remained
as to whether their efforts
were of any avail. The answer
is no. However lavish the
money and talents spent on
this work nothing could rescue
it from its multiple weaknesses.
The first problem is that
Maazel has no distinctive
musical language. His style
is monochrome and derivative
in the extreme, and from where
I was sitting lacked any interesting
orchestral colours or vocal
details. The music never made
any of the text seem enhanced
or interpreted by the music;
it seemed more like a play
set to coincidental music.
Most of the text-setting was
syllabic and rested on a relentlessly
surging but unconnected orchestral
bed. Though some lines of
the text seemed promising,
in the end it was difficult
to imagine why any of it had
been set to music instead
of being spoken. In fact,
Maazel resorted a good deal
to singers speaking lines.
Even the first act love duet,
for which Maazel borrowed
a rather Berg-like style was
unconvincing. The characters,
when emotionally charged,
climbed up and down to their
vocal stratospheres without
ever reaching the stars. No
setting ever got near the
kind of passion that Winston
and Julia's passion would
justify. The only moment when
the music fell almost silent
was at the beginning of the
second act when it became
so silent most of the audience
near me failed to notice the
act had begun.
Peppering the opera were pastiches,
but in the hands of a good
composer like Henze or Stravinsky
these can have a striking
'alienation' effect. Maazel
opted for just this effect
when the complexity of the
Winston/Julia bed-scene was
perceived through the mundane
actions of a Prole Woman (beautifully
sung by Mary Lloyd-Davies)
singing a 'popular tune' and
cleaning a window, but ineffectively.
It was surely a miscalculation
to make her song sound like
a love-tune from a musical:
the wrong demotic signal.
Its result was to make the
central love scene descend
into banal sentimentality.
It should have been bleak
like Hopper: instead, it was
like a large spoonful of sugar.
Given the thinness of the
music the opera is far too
long. An hour or less would
have been enough. Mercifully
the second act was much shorter
than the first, which dragged
on and on.
The history of conductors
composing is honourable, and,
in some cases, distinguished.
Most however start as composers
and become conductors, and
their conducting is informed
by their compositions. Boulez
is the great present-day example
of great composer and conductor,
but before him Furtw”ngler
and Klemperer composed, though
less distinguishedly and innovatively
but not badly. Maazel has
come late to composing, so
has both the benefit of absorbing
all the tricks of the trade
from the multiple scores he
has memorized and performed.
As a composer he needs to
detach himself from these
to find a voice of his own,
which maybe at seventy is
too late. His personal fortune
obviously seduced the Royal
Opera House, and no doubt
other venues, to stage his
work, which reflects badly
on them and their reading
panel, as there are many works
by more talented composers
that deserve an airing and
the funding a platform as
such as Covent Garden can
provide.
There was much pre-performance
interest in 1984, so tickets
for critics and their journals
were at a premium. Your critic
from onlinereviewlondon was
initially offered a restricted
view seat in the balcony,
but on protest this was exchanged
for one halfway back in the
amphitheatre. The amphitheatre
is a good place to hear an
opera, but not to review it,
as too much of the action
and the musical detail is
lost through the distance.
It shows a lot about whose
critical opinion the opera
house values. However, I grew
up going to the amphitheatre,
and it is good to place from
which to write reviews as
one can mingle with genuinely
enthusiastic and knowledgeable
opera lovers, and see works
from the kind of seat that
few conductors or producers
deign to ascend to. I was
a member of a part of the
audience that should not be
ignored. The performance is
as much for them in their
cheaper seats as those in
the stalls. They deserve better
than this opera.
As I left amidst the predictable
cheers and catcalls, I heard
one man bawling out his explicit
opinion, "Rubbish!" It was
hard to disagree.
Roderick Swanston |
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