When I interviewed Antonio Pappano in Rome in 2011, he jokingly admitted to being a bit of a cultural traitor. “I’ve done productions of Wagner, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Britten and Birtwistle at Covent Garden,” he said, “but maybe not as many of the Italian classics as they expected me to.” During his second decade as music director of the Royal Opera he made amends, with new productions of works by Bellini, Rossini, Verdi and Puccini, and now he bows out with a revival of Giordano’s red-bloodedly Italianate Andréa Chenier, which he conducts with both stormy energy and tender empathy, abetted by three singers who provide their own firework display of ballistic B-flats and blazing high Cs.
The characters are operatic archetypes, ricocheting between heaven and earth, metaphysical rapture and convulsive despair. Chénier, a poet guillotined in 1794 during the Terror, is here a grandstanding tenor whose role mostly consists of lyrical tirades which he claims to be improvising on the spot. His soprano partner, the aristocratic Maddalena, writes him anonymous letters which are unsung arias, then consummates their abstract affair by sacrificially joining him on the scaffold. The doctrinaire Gérard occupies a lower terrain, specialising in baleful rages that suit the baritone’s vocal register. The drop cloth in David McVicar’s 2015 production quotes Robespierre’s justification for executing Chénier: Plato, it declares, also banished poets from his republic. Here, however, it is these obsessively impassioned, high-flying opera singers who question the revolution’s egalitarian creed and have to be eliminated.
Chénier’s first aria, in which he denounces the ancien regime at a rococo party, presents such a perilous vocal challenge that once at Covent Garden I saw Plácido Domingo open his mouth to begin it and then abruptly stalk offstage. The curtain flopped down, a panicked call was put out for a doctor in the house, then after 20 tense minutes Domingo returned, having suffered – we were informed – a spasm of indigestion, not nervous qualms about the imminent high notes. After cancellations in two previous seasons, Jonas Kaufmann on this occasion stands his ground and thrillingly hurls out defiance, with some refined diminuendos to vouch for the character’s poetic finesse. Kaufmann is also a subtle actor, whose responses always seem to beg for a closeup: see for yourself when the production is relayed to cinemas.
In a typically telling detail, Kaufmann’s Chénier falters on his way to the tumbril in the opera’s last triumphal bars, stumbles, and is raised up and conducted to a heroic death by Sondra Radvanovsky’s stalwart Maddalena. Radvanovsky is always best when most imperious, for instance as Donizetti’s Elizabeth I in Roberto Devereux, or the sorceress in Cherubini’s Medea; here her voice ignites at the revolutionary tribunal where Chénier is condemned, and she ends the scene with a wild but precisely tuned shriek of protest. Gérard is Amartuvshin Enkhbat from Mongolia, a stolid actor but a stunning vocalist, whose lament about his lapse from political rectitude to sensual rapacity prompts an ovation halfway through. Enkhbat has a star’s expectation of deference, and after his agonised outcry he staidly retreats to his desk in the courtroom and waits for a stagehand costumed as a lackey to bring him a glass of water, with which he moistens his throat for the next stentorian solo. He deserves the refreshment: Italian opera is sport as well as art, and this is a championship match.
Rossini’s The Barber of Seville shows off a jauntier version of the Italian operatic temperament, made audible by Figaro who arrives to open his barber shop bellowing “Lalalalera”, a string of nonsensical syllables that are synonyms for enjoyment. At Opera Holland Park, conductor Charlotte Corderoy uses the clamorous overture to wake up a town whose residents slump in the streets recovering from last night’s revels. Waiters bustle about collecting empties from cafe tables, fruitsellers attuned to an orchestral crescendo play juggling games with Seville’s famous oranges, and on his way to work Figaro pauses to titivate the hair of unkempt audience members seated on the aisle.
Cecilia Stinton’s production turns Dr Bartolo and his ward, Rosina, into Victorian tourists, respectively dismayed and elated by the torrid south. He is a fusty academic with a flaming case of sunburn who loyally salutes a portrait of the matronly old queen, which he has brought with him on holiday. She frets to cast off corseted restrictions and is excitingly flustered when a local exhibitionist unbuttons his clothes to cool off in a fountain and preens for her delectation. Almaviva, wooing her, adds some pelvic thrusts to the early morning serenade he sings outside her hotel. Equally avid, she beckons him to a sofa for sex before their planned elopement at the end of the opera. In a fine cast, Heather Lowe’s Rosina is outstanding, fearlessly tossing off coloratura flourishes while she dashes about in a frenzy of rebellious desire.
Holland Park last Tuesday was damp and cold, but it takes more than dour English weather to douse the manic vitality of Rossini. This new Barber of Seville exudes brio and bravura, words too innately Italian to have any equivalent but themselves in our sober and unmellifluous language.
Star ratings (out of five)
Andrea Chénier ★★★★★
The Barber of Seville ★★★★
