A cheeky series of signs raised at the start of Phelim McDermott’s new Così fan tutte for English National Opera promise “Big Arias”, “Intrigue”, “Lust” and “Chocolate” (among other things). Big pledges, all. And almost all delivered by this witty, exuberant and quietly revisionist production of Mozart’s challenging comedy.
It’s been a bloody week on the London stage. First Titus Andronicus maims and mutilates at the Globe, and now at English National Opera Frank McGuinness and Julian Anderson bring us a distillation of Sophocles’ three Theban plays, complete with eye-gouging and assorted hangings. But while Lucy Bailey found eloquent meaning in Shakespeare’s brutality, could Anderson do the same in this, his first opera?
The opening gyrations of Thomas Adès’s bluesy, schmoozy overture to Powder Her Face beckon you into a world of cheap sensation and excess. Accordion, saxophones and sizzle cymbal add their indecent, after-hours suggestions, and you have a microcosm in moments. Almost 20 years on from its premiere, Adès’s opera about the scandalous “Dirty Duchess” still has all the moves. What a shame then that these are obscured in the baggy, cavernous space of English National Opera’s latest field-trip venue – the University of Westminster’s Ambika P3 concrete bunker.
If they asked me, I could write a book about the way one number in Richard Jones’s ENO production of Handel’s Rodelinda – the only duet, after 18 arias, and nearly two hours into the action – looks, sounds and moves.
Old sins, the saying goes, cast long shadows. These are nothing, however, to the shadows cast by old productions. Jonathan Miller’s Mafia Rigoletto looms larger than most in this regard – a lowering giant of directorial inspiration, with 30 years in rep and as close to cult status as opera gets. As Christopher Alden’s new Rigoletto made his way through the darkened streets yesterday more than just assassins lurked in the shadows.
“Mind that door.” With the hurricane howling outside it’s no wonder the locals gathered in Auntie’s pub are yelling... but there is no door. Instead, a stage-wide sheet of corrugated iron rears up to let in Stuart Skelton’s storm-tossed Peter Grimes. Enlarging naturalistic, close-up detail into full-blooded, expressionist drama is typical of this frankly electrifying revival of David Alden’s revelatory production of Britten’s masterpiece.
This is great news. It should have been great news back in 2006-7, when Wigglesworth – Mark, not to be confused with the young, photogenic Ryan, composer and, when I last saw him, barely competent baton-wielder - was among the contenders for the post of Music Director at English National Opera. As it happened, the then relatively unknown Edward Gardner sailed into the job with precocious assurance and versatility.
The brightly coloured flyer promises all manner of activities. Improvised jam sessions, performance poetry, and philosophy discussions. Oh, and an Indian dance workshop. On an obscenely cold Sunday night I find myself braving not only the cold, but an unprecedented evening of “genre-defying artistic collaboration”, courtesy of English National Opera’s outreach arm – ENO Baylis. I ponder whether I’m really ready to have my inhibitions and preconceptions stripped from me in front of a bunch of earnest strangers. Welcome to Satyagraha Remix.
When the going gets tough, wheel out a crowd-pleaser. Even by its own volatile standards English National Opera has had a poor start to its autumn season, with productions of Fidelio and Die Fledermaus that seem destined to join the company’s ever-growing chamber of unrevivable horrors. ENO’s cash-strapped board must therefore be lighting another candle to the late Anthony Minghella, whose glacially delicate Madam Butterfly is always good for an outing.
Rich, racy, randy and irreverent: such were the R words gathered up by a Canadian critic to capture the essence of Christopher Alden’s production of Johann Strauss’s cork-popping operetta when it premiered in Toronto last year. Other R words, alas, came to my mind, like rubbish, reprehensible, risible, even rigor mortis.