Antonio Pappano is the best thing that has happened to the Royal Opera in its lifetime. His 22 years as music director, notching up 700 performances – making him the Alan Shearer of Covent Garden – have not just been a record stint, studded with highlights. They also came at precisely the time they were most desperately needed.
By the force of his musicianship and commitment he has done more than anyone to turn it from the haunted and defensive place of the millennium into the happy company it still succeeds in being, in defiance of so many anti-musical headwinds, today.
None of this, though, means that this week’s celebration gala – aimed shamelessly at the Royal Opera’s richest supporters – was automatically a five-star artistic occasion. True, there were golden threads that spoke to the outgoing conductor’s achievements. The playing of the Royal Opera orchestra was superb, oozing rapport, especially in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut intermezzo. Covent Garden’s treasurable chorus got its place in the spotlight too. More than anything, there was the spring of Pappano’s conducting, always gripping and dramatic, never self-admiring.
He was on home territory with the evening’s mainly Italian repertoire too, largely duets and ensembles, with not a solo aria to be heard. But in the 18 item programme Pappano steered clear of works he has conducted most often here, so no Wagner and, of Mozart, only the Figaro overture, busily dispatched at the start. Not a single note all evening was written after 1910, a regrettable choice which does not do justice to Pappano’s openness to new scores. It left only the Rosenkavalier trio representing the 20th century. Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini shared most of the honours.
Inevitably, such an episodic evening had ups and downs. Vocally, some of the more established stars who had gathered for the event were eclipsed by some of the younger ones. But not Bryn Terfel, still viscerally malign as Baron Scarpia in the Tosca Te Deum. Nor Gerald Finley, exemplarily incisive in his Massenet duet with Ermonela Jaho’s fragile Thaïs, and again at the close, leading the choral hymn to freedom that closes Rossini’s Guillaume Tell.
Jonas Kaufmann, on the other hand, in excerpts from Die Fledermaus with Diana Damrau and from La Forza del Destino with Sondra Radvanosky, could only give occasional glimpses of the dark tenor sheen that made him the Pappano era’s most outstanding singer.
Pride of place among the younger singers went to the mezzo Aigul Akhmetshina and soprano Nadine Sierra, and to the tenor Xabier Anduaga. All three again showed why they are special artists for the post-Pappano era too. Perhaps Freddie De Tommaso, whose ringing and open-hearted tenor is very hard to dislike, should also be on that list, though he lacks the others’ subtlety. Akhmetshina underlined her versatility by singing Rosina from The Barber of Seville and Octavian from Rosenkavalier, where she was joined by a radiant Lisette Oropesa as Sophie and a disappointingly unexceptional Damrau.
The evening, though, was all about Pappano, and the affection in which he is so rightly held. Compered by Petroc Trelawny there were affectionate video tributes from Covent Garden bigwigs and spear-carriers alike. And, at the close, the king came on stage to shake the maestro’s hand and even to take a bow himself.
