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The Spectator, 30 March 2019 |
Richard Bratby |
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Verdi: La forza del destino, London, ab 21. März 2019 |
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The most glorious singing anyone born after 1970 will ever have heard
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To stage Verdi’s Il Trovatore, they say, is easy: you just need the four
greatest singers in the world. The Royal Opera has applied this principle to
La forza del destino. Jonas Kaufmann sings Alvaro, Anna Netrebko is his
beloved Leonora, and Ludovic Tézier her brother Carlo, with the mighty
Ferruccio Furlanetto completing the set as the priest Padre Guardiano. The
results have been pretty much as you might expect, ranging from the
now-traditional speculation about whether Kaufmann would actually show up
(he did) to reports of tickets changing hands privately for £5,000 apiece.
And yes, it was extraordinary: a four-hour rush of some of the most
glorious singing anyone born after 1970 will probably ever have heard in one
place. Netrebko’s voice is phenomenal, capable even at its softest of
floating luminously over a full orchestra, and seemingly controlled by an
internal dimmer switch that can turn a phrase from a diaphanous whisper up
to a searchlight blaze. Netrebko was the evening’s knockout (and her raucous
fanbase made sure that we knew it), gleaming brilliantly against
Furlanetto’s austere, dignified bass, and the bronzed declamation of Tézier,
who grew ever more clenched as his character pursued his vendetta. Tézier
has said that Carlo represents ‘everything we hate’, leaving us with the
paradox that an artist can give a towering performance without, apparently,
understanding fundamental aspects of his role.
Kaufmann was the
weakest member of the central cast. The patchiness of his voice — especially
in quieter passages — was particularly noticeable in such company, for all
the obvious sincerity of his performance and his golden ability to knock a
high note for six, at least once he’s worked up to it. That was the hairline
crack that admitted cold reality to the evening’s glamour. In truth,
Kaufmann and Netrebko made a fairly stiff couple: not much romantic spark
there. Alessandro Corbelli (a droll, soup-slurping Fra Melitone) and
Veronica Simeoni’s sultry Preziosilla seemed more at ease within their
characters.
The problem is that La forza, of all operas, demands a
comprehensive suspension of disbelief, and I never quite felt the
soul-shaking, full-body thrill that opera alone can deliver when all of its
elements truly coalesce. Christof Loy’s staging is a vanilla affair, with
the usual shabby-chic empty room serving as bedchamber and monastery alike.
Loy’s notion that Leonora has suffered since childhood from religious mania
is interesting, but the way that Alvaro practically assaults her during
their botched elopement violates the meaning of both character and plot.
Huge back-projections showed the cast gurning in close-up: an embarrassing
distraction.
Antonio Pappano, however, was heroic, marshalling grand
brooding paragraphs and sombre cello and trombone tones into the most
gripping interpretation I’ve heard from him: less a blood-and-guts melodrama
than a long, doom-laden roll of thunder. The chorus was on fire too. This
Forza might yet shake down into something great; let’s hope so, because
opera can — should — be more than an expensively acquired collection of star
performances. The critic of the Daily Telegraph described it as ‘the biggest
event of the current operatic season’, and that’s probably true, though
coming one week after Graham Vick’s Birmingham Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, I
wish it wasn’t.
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