The Glyndebourne season continues with a new production of The Merry Widow, wonderfully conducted by John Wilson, less successfully directed by Cal McCrystal, and with Danielle de Niese as Hanna Glawari and the superb Mexican baritone Germán Olvera as Danilo. It’s an oddly unwieldy evening, affecting, funny and irritating in equal measure, by no means serving Franz Lehár’s masterpiece as well as it should, but paradoxically also reminding us on occasion why it really is one of the great works of the 20th century.
McCrystal, often an excellent director, misjudges tone and pace here too frequently. A new English version by Stephen Plaice and Marcia Bellamy pads the work out with reams of extra dialogue that add some 40 minutes to the originally projected running time. There are double entendres a plenty, where something more discreet might actually have been sexier, and interruptions and interventions abound, with Tom Edden’s Njegus cracking jokes with the audience before the show starts, and inviting us to play “Restaurant versus Picnic” after the dinner interval, though he is so delightfully camp and entertaining that he gets away with much of it.
Gary McCann’s designs, modelled on 1950s Hollywood’s re-imaginings of the fin de siècle, are all retro glamour, and the chorus, on wonderful form, have great fun with the big numbers choreographed by Carrie-Anne Ingrouille.
What we lose sight of, however, is the operetta’s emotional subtlety. The Merry Widow is a grown-up and wise work that understands the complex distinctions between love and desire, but McCrystal cramps its range by playing the relationship between the adulterers Camille (Michael McDermott) and Valencienne (Soraya Mafi) for laughs, sending up their duet with sight gags that detract from the beauty of their singing and fatally get in the way of the music’s eroticism. The great Thomas Allen as Valencienne’s cuckolded husband Zeta, in contrast, gives us an object lesson in how to balance absurdity with sympathy.
Where it works, however, is in the relationship between Olvera and De Niese, who are entirely credible as a couple rediscovering a past love they both had believed to be irretrievably lost. De Niese’s voice is by no means what it once was, and she now lacks the high pianissimos the role ideally needs, but she remains compelling on stage. Olvera is magnificent as Danilo, witty, utterly charismatic, constantly swivelling between awareness and self-delusion. It’s a performance of great insight and finesse, equalled in the pit by Wilson, who is as good as anyone you will ever hear in this work. The London Philharmonic sound gorgeous throughout. And when that great waltz finally steals in that unites Hanna and Danilo in awareness both of past sadness and eventual joy, you forget McCrystal’s faffing and just surrender, completely.
• Until 28 July, and on BBC TV later in the year.
