Benjamin Britten’s last opera is perhaps his finest: a work which, although it embraces aspects of discordant modernism, also contains some of opera’s most hauntingly melodic music. Deborah Warner’s production brings out the opera’s eerie beauty, its internal struggle between sensuality and repression, and manages to almost palpably convey the atmosphere of a decaying, pestilent and ‘ambiguous‘ Venice.
If the music can be challenging, the opera’s theme is even more so. Gustav von Aschenbach (John Graham-Hall) is an uptight middle-aged writer whose creativity is blocked. Hoping a sojourn in the South will revive him he travels to Venice where – and there’s no easy way to put this – he becomes obsessed with a pretty teenage boy. (I’d half feared – and half hoped – for an updated production with its protagonist a ’70s DJ.) But the exact nature of this obsession is every bit as ambiguous as the city it takes place in. Aschenbach feels, or at least says he feels, ‘a father’s pleasure, a father’s warmth‘ when contemplating Tadzio. In the same way that most of Venice is underwater, so could this simple explanation be the most easily comprehended extent of murkier, subconscious desires.
Graham-Hall’s interpretation of Aschenbach is revelatory. As written there is a danger he can come across as pompous, vain and almost comically self-important. Graham-Hall manages the not inconsiderable feat of making the opera’s hero entirely sympathetic, a man whose obsession takes him to the edge of madness. Occasionally there is something vulnerable, almost childlike, in the way he tries to explain to himself his feelings that he fears would shame his ‘decent, stern’ forebears. A rather leadenly written piece of recitative in which Aschenbach assesses his critical reputation is now something read in a newspaper article. Under Warner’s direction the evaluation that he has ‘accepted, even welcomed the austere demands of maturity‘ is delivered with a wonderfully self-deprecating irony.
Andrew Shore gives equally good performances playing a number of characters who Aschenbach meets on his journey. Amongst his seven roles his Elderly Fop, Old Gondolier and in particular the cackling leader of a troupe of players, are either marvellously comic, strangely sinister, or both. These roles are in a sense the backbone of the opera, a series of chance encounters which seem to presage humiliation and death.
For pure vocal brilliance Tim Mead’s Apollo is perhaps the show’s highlight. His delivery of the aria ‘He Who Loves Beauty‘ genuinely gave me a thrill of pure pleasure as he perfectly seems to realise the voice of an ancient God.
Visually Warner’s production is flawless. With its immaculately costumed cast, its evocative ballet sequences, its grand hotels represented by giant billowing curtains, its subtle projections of sky and sea, this is as good-looking an opera as I’ve seen in ages.
Continues at the English National Opera, London Coliseum, St Martins Lane, London.
Performances: Tues 18, Fri 21, Mon 24 and Weds 26 June.
For more information and tickets click here.
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