Problems with Pélléas

It's always interesting to read bad reviews, even if one cringes while so doing. But those that have attended the new Pélléas et Mélisande at Glyndebourne have come with such a dose of vinegar that it makes one super-curious to see whether they're justified, and it's always hard to believe that they could be.

Oh dear.

Das Wunder der Heliane meets the ghost of Pélléas?
Photo: Glyndebourne Productions Ltd, by Richard Hubert Smith

Perhaps Stefan Herheim's concept would play better in central Europe or Scandinavia, where productions are often more heavily dramaturged [yes, I know, no such word] than is usually the case here, and where audiences have arguably grown to expect controversy on stage plus abstruse references laid on with the trowel. And perhaps the setting of Glyndebourne's Organ Room - recreated with useful additions such as concertina-folding organ pipes and sliding walls - would have played better if habitual Glyndebourne patrons had not seen umpteen other productions of other operas also set within Glyndebourne itself, to the point that this jumps aboard the most massive of local clichés.

It is nevertheless a valid starting point: the action takes place in a grand, dark, oppressive old house/castle and, as my companion for the evening remarked, how many of us have not wandered through such a place and wondered what secrets it is hiding in its past? (Or is Herheim trying to tell us something about the age-old secrets of Glyndebourne? I sincerely hope not.) Perhaps part of the idea is about the Christies staging dramatics in their organ room. But what is inexcusable is to have Debussy's final bars obscured by audience laughter as actors clad as present-day Glyndebourne punters wander onto the stage, looking around. No. Just no.

Everyone seems to be blinding each other. Yes, the text makes ample reference to blindness, but nothing in this text is literal: must it be spelled out to that degree? If there is a benefit to the storytelling, it's eluded me thus far. And Golaud, Pélléas and Yniold all frantically mime painting on empty easels. Yes, Debussy was a contemporary of the great Impressionist painters, but that doesn't make this appropriate, insightful or comprehensible, even if perhaps excusable.

What's with the Christ-like figure that appears in the middle of the organ, just as Arkel tells Mélisande she must issue in a new era...with a sheep draped over its shoulders? Sacramental imagery, says a Twitter contact. Yes, we get that (and Herheim changes Yniold's shepherd into a priest), even if we don't necessarily get its point - but the bottom line is that it looks completely ridiculous and everyone laughed, and you don't want that to happen in the middle of Pélléas.

Or maybe you do...and that would be worse, because it means you are not taking the work on its own terms or presenting your audience with something conceived in its true spirit, in which case why should we go? Moreover, having Golaud rape his own son/daughter Yniold is a major misjudgment in a scene that is upsetting enough as Debussy and Maeterlinck created it - and leaves Pélléas novices seriously confused ("But why does he do that?" "Well, actually, he doesn't...").

Nevertheless, there's a sprinkling of wonderful ideas too. Mélisande is portrayed (by the excellent Christina Gansch) as a complete pre-Raphaelite beauty, overwhelming in her seductive presence, and she seems to have healing powers; also, she recoils when Golaud faces her with his sword presented as a cross. There's always a mystery about her; no reason she shouldn't be at least partly supernatural. Golaud (a tour de force from Christopher Purves) is a violent psychopath, as destroyed by his own malady as any Otello. Pelléas is under-characterised, though mostly well sung by John Chest. The division of body and soul for Mélisande at the start of the final scene works nicely, as does having the ghost of Pélléas lurking around, waiting for her to join him – though I'm not sure why he has to run her through with a sword when she's about to snuff it in any case. Some of these images come over more as Das Wunder der Heliane than Pélléas, and I can't really think of two more different operas.

As you'll have gathered, a lot of visual ideas are crammed in here, layer upon layer upon layer. Yet Debussy's music is so subtle, so delicate, so hinted-at, that it's completely overpowered by the on-stage shenanigans. By the end one feels exhausted by all the "WTF now?" moments, and might be longing for the privilege of hearing a concert performance instead – preferably with Robin Ticciati conducting it every bit as beautifully, intelligently and ineffably as he does here.

In the past few years Ticciati has had to take some time off for a back operation, which has somewhat disrupted his tenure as Glyndebourne's music director. But in that time, he has been reinventing his whole approach to conducting (as he told me in an interview last year) - and now the results are becoming more and more interesting. Something in him has deepened and darkened and opened out. I'm getting the impression that we may have here a very significant musician indeed, someone who has further to go interpretatively than some of the supposedly glitzier, more superficially exciting podium presences. I hope I'm still around to see where he is in 25 years' time.

Nina Stemme as Kundry, with ex-equine friend
Photo: Ruth Walz

Concert performances, meanwhile, have a lot going for them. I spent yesterday afternoon and evening holed up with the webcast of Parsifal from the Bavarian State Opera, this being the first summer in a number of years that I'm not going physically to Munich. (Hallelujah, medals and science prizes galore, please, to whoever created the technology that makes webcasts possible and quality sound available on the computer.) What a musical treat: Kirill Petrenko on fire with spiritual joy in the pit, the orchestra playing the living daylights out of the piece, Nina Stemme the most astounding Kundry - and Kundry the most astounding Nina Stemme - that I've yet had the joy of hearing, Christian Gerhaher a dream of an Amfortas, Rene Pape channelling Gurnemanz in person, and Jonas Kaufmann tracing Parsifal's growth and strength incrementally, with That Voice. The production, by Pierre Audi, is strong, straightforward and clear, never confused or confusing. The Grail is meat in act I and music itself at the end of act 3: we are saved by art alone. Bravi. But the visual art is by the great Georg Baselitz and though many images are effective, at other times one just has to look the other way. A concert performance would solve that in one fell swoop. This probably sounds uncharacteristically philistine, so blame the heat if you like.

Ticciati is out of Glyndebourne's Meistersinger

Sad news from Glyndebourne that its music director, Robin Ticciati, has had to withdraw from conducting Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at this summer's festival. He is recovering from surgery from a herniated disc in his back.

Robin says:

“I’m incredibly disappointed to have to withdraw from what would have been my first ever Wagner opera. I was so looking forward to being reunited with David McVicar for the production and would like to wish the company all the best as they start rehearsals. It is my great wish to continue with my second engagement at this summer’s Festival, Béatrice et Bénédict; I’ve been advised that this is a realistic prospect and my attention is focused on achieving a swift recovery to fulfil this.”

They'll announce a replacement conductor "in due course".

Le nozze di Chico?

Supposing the Marx Brothers had got hold of The Marriage of Figaro? It would have been perfect for them: Groucho as the Count, Chico as Figaro and Harpo as Cherubino, aided and abetted by Margaret Dumont as Marcellina and Kitty Carlisle as Susanna. Of course, they didn't. Yet...just look at this poster for A Night at the Opera. There's Susanna on the left, the Count behind her, Figaro taking her hand, Cherubino dreaming alongside...

It's no coincidence. The Marx Brothers, Fawlty Towers and The Marriage of Figaro all share the same root: Commedia dell'Arte. The Count, Basil and Groucho could be seen as derivatives of Pantalone, Chico and Figaro as Harlequin or Pulcinella, Susanna and Polly as Columbine, Harpo and Cherubino as Pierrot, while Fawlty Towers's Manuel is straight from the 'Zanni' character - the immigrant worker - and Sybil is, in certain ways, not all that far from Mozart's Countess...


It's perhaps one of the strengths of Glyndebourne's much-vaunted new production of Le nozze di Figaro, directed by Michael Grandage, that through a series of apparently zany juxtapositions it makes clear the archetypal, timeless nature of its drama - and the connections it leaves in the brain keep clicking into place for days afterwards.

It's a tad startling at first. The scene outside the mansion that accompanies the overture is relatively timeless - hustle, bustle, cleaning and gardening - and it's only when the Count and Countess swing into view inside a magnificent red vintage sportscar that we twig we're in the sixties or early seventies. The sets throughout are so Sevillian that they could be the Alcazar itself (pictured, left - almost certainly the model for the final scene in the garden...)

A medieval Moorish palace; 18th-century music on period instruments; action in an era in which menswear was seriously naff. Yet Grandage focuses intensely on the relationships and their nuances - which could have been taking place five centuries ago or last week. We live, we die, but the nature of love doesn't change. Strange how such an apparently post-modern approach with supposedly clashing eras delivers this indication so much better than the old Glyndebourne production by Graham Vick, apparently set in a rehearsal studio and now often referred to as "the one with the radiators". The stumbling block is, of course, the 'droit du seigneur' - all we can do about that is suspend disbelief.

The highlight of a fine cast was in many ways Sally Matthews's Countess. Her voice and her artistry just keep on growing. Now, equipped with considerable amplitude, a wider vibrato and terrific emotional intensity, she sounds almost Violetta-eque (though there's no actual sign of her singing Traviata any time soon). Lydia Teuscher's ideal Susanna ran her a close second, becoming better and better as the evening went by. Luxury casting, too, for Marcellina - Anne Murray, no less; and Don Basilio - Alan Oke, who despite popping up to fabulous effect in everything from Mozart to Anna Nicole, remains a bizarrely well-kept secret on the British opera scene. He should be better recognised as the consummate star he is, for his warm tenor tones, his magnificent acting and the best diction on stage.

Plaudits all round to the remaining cast, and if the Count appeared unconvincing from time to time, that was not the fault of the excellent Norwegian baritone Audun Iversen, but more that his costuming made it difficult to take him seriously.

At the helm was Robin Ticciati, crown prince of Glyndebourne - he takes over in two years' time when Vladimir Jurowski moves on to pastures new. Young he may be, but this was a thoroughly personal statement. The tempi are characterful and not too fast; there's enough space around the rhythms to hear everything fully; and from time to time the whole ensemble combined to produce a few moments of quiet and radiant tenderness: true Mozart magic.

The OAE did everyone proud, though I can't help wondering whether the decision to play at a pitch of A=430 is all that useful. It may have been the nature of the wind instruments of the correct time and place, but it isn't necessarily the nature of singers of today. During the recitatives, several of them were starting to drift up the teeniest notch, during the unaccompanied passages, towards the level to which they are presumably more accustomed, especially in the early part of the opera (it settled as the work progressed). Perhaps there are now apps to help singers to prepare with tweaked tuning, but you can't practise your recits with a bog-standard piano if everything has to be a quarter-tone flat. If the woodwind sounded truly revelatory, that would be another matter. But they don't.

On balance, then, a beautiful and fascinating evening in which the marriage of Figaro to this legendary tradition adds an enriching dimension. I'm going to clock off now, because otherwise we are going to end up matching the Ring Cycle characters with Fawlty and Harpo and co, and then goodness knows what will happen.