ABSURDITY AND SUBLIMITY
After the glorious Parisian detail of the revived Rigoletto here , Johannes Schutz’ spare bland box with only four flat doors is an opposite take on how to set grand opera/. It’s a bit blinding-white at first (turn up the surtitle contrast above!) but Joe Hill-Gibbins’ deft and witty direction of Mozart’s masterwork already showed its promise during the overture. All the characters popped in and out of the four doors, silently in character to pose, run, stare, meet, hi-5 and scuttle around in baffling patterns: a scene-set for da Ponte’s fiendishly complicated sex-comedy of improbability and misunderstanding, washed over by the glory of the music.
Moments later Susanna provides the only ornament by hanging her wedding-dress between two of the doors while Figaro measures their bridal apartment, and the story of predation, plot and disguise rolls into action. An endearing directorial trick has the doors popping open to reveal individuals during arias when one character , alone in soliloquy, refers to them: this serves both clarity and, curiously, the emotional strength of the moment. When Cody Quattelbaum’s resounding Count Almaviva is complaining of this frustration when “all the servants” are in sexual romps, the doors keep flying open to vignettes of random snogging; more touchingly, one of Countess’ heartbreaking laments for the loss of her husband’s love sees him appear and stand close by her, a phantom of her yearning imagination. Nardus Williams’ voice and emotional interpretation is, even in this world-class cast a stunning standout.
A more realistic use of the doors, of course, is for characters to hide behind, notably Cherubino: Hanna Hipp appearing first in teenage-boy casuals, then forced into a supremely ridiculous military uniform with black shorts, a bright yellow shirt, necktie and knee-socks before finally being bundled into the all-important flouncy wedding gown. Those of us who melt into sentiment at that greatest of mezzo-airs, voi che sapete (in English here of course) may feel a moment of mild outrage at it being flawlessly delivered by Hipp in this terrible boy-scout outfit . But I suspect we all forgave.
What Hill-Gibbins achieves here may not be to everyone’s liking – not a period hairdo in sight, unless you count Quattelbaum’s man-bun, which at one point he releases into a shower of Russell Brand locks – but the emotion and body-language of every character is unusually, amost unoperatically, clear and real. There are striking moments, as when David Ireland’s Figaro steps out of the set to conduct the chorus of household servants in their praise of the Count, and when Cherubino, looking genuinely panicked, takes a Tosca-style leap out of the big white box (it creeps up and down, sometimes revealing a green space below to represent the garden, where the chorus have obligingly laid a mattress to bounce off). Character matters, even in the absurdities of opera buffa. And Mary Bevan’s Susanna, in her last and most beautiful aria in the garden, took my breath away, floating over the delicate woodwind below.
This was, by the way, another phoenix moment: five years ago the new production opened for one night before every theatre, opera house and cinema was shut down for Covid-19. Practical loss and dismay from that blow, and the unforgiveably erratic jerking of reopening permissions, still reverberate everywhere. And for ENO there is exta pain in the equally erratic recent government demands, plus the usual playhouse need to repay the Covid “loan” which should have been a grant. But for now, they go on offering world-class joys like this. Respect. Six more shows; worth going…
eno.org. to 22 feb
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