ABSURDITY AND SUBLIMITY
After the wonderful Parisian element of the revived Rigoletto right here , Johannes Schutz’ spare bland field with solely 4 flat doorways is an reverse tackle how one can set grand opera/. It’s a bit blinding-white at first (flip up the surtitle distinction above!) however Joe Hill-Gibbins’ deft and witty path of Mozart’s masterwork already confirmed its promise in the course of the overture. All the characters popped out and in of the 4 doorways, silently in character to pose, run, stare, meet, hi-5 and scuttle round in baffling patterns: a scene-set for da Ponte’s fiendishly sophisticated sex-comedy of improbability and misunderstanding, washed over by the glory of the music.
Moments later Susanna supplies the one decoration by hanging her wedding-dress between two of the doorways whereas Figaro measures their bridal condominium, and the story of predation, plot and disguise rolls into motion. An endearing directorial trick has the doorways popping open to disclose people throughout arias when one character , alone in soliloquy, refers to them: this serves each readability and, curiously, the emotional power of the second. When Cody Quattelbaum’s resounding Count Almaviva is complaining of this frustration when “all the servants” are in sexual romps, the doorways maintain flying open to vignettes of random snogging; extra touchingly, one in all Countess’ heartbreaking laments for the lack of her husband’s love sees him seem and stand shut by her, a phantom of her craving creativeness. Nardus Williams’ voice and emotional interpretation is, even on this world-class forged a shocking standout.
A extra sensible use of the doorways, after all, is for characters to cover behind, notably Cherubino: Hanna Hipp showing first in teenage-boy casuals, then pressured right into a supremely ridiculous army uniform with black shorts, a brilliant yellow shirt, necktie and knee-socks earlier than lastly being bundled into the all-important flouncy wedding ceremony robe. Those of us who soften into sentiment at that biggest of mezzo-airs, voi che sapete (in English right here after all) might really feel a second of delicate outrage at it being flawlessly delivered by Hipp on this horrible boy-scout outfit . But I believe all of us forgave.
What Hill-Gibbins achieves right here will not be to everybody’s liking – not a interval hairdo in sight, except you rely Quattelbaum’s man-bun, which at one level he releases right into a bathe of Russell Brand locks – however the emotion and body-language of each character is unusually, amost unoperatically, clear and actual. There are placing moments, as when David Ireland’s Figaro steps out of the set to conduct the refrain of family servants of their reward of the Count, and when Cherubino, wanting genuinely panicked, takes a Tosca-style leap out of the massive white field (it creeps up and down, typically revealing a inexperienced house under to symbolize the backyard, the place the refrain have obligingly laid a mattress to bounce off). Character issues, even within the absurdities of opera buffa. And Mary Bevan’s Susanna, in her final and most lovely aria within the backyard, took my breath away, floating over the fragile woodwind under.
This was, by the best way, one other phoenix second: 5 years in the past the brand new manufacturing opened for one evening earlier than each theatre, opera home and cinema was shut down for Covid-19. Practical loss and dismay from that blow, and the unforgiveably erratic jerking of reopening permissions, nonetheless reverberate in every single place. And for ENO there’s exta ache within the equally erratic current authorities calls for, plus the standard playhouse have to repay the Covid “loan” which ought to have been a grant. But for now, they go on providing world-class joys like this. Respect. Six extra reveals; value going…
eno.org. to 22 feb
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