Opera round-up: Mozart's Idomeneo, La Boheme and Donizetti's Les Martyrs

2 / 5 stars
Idomeneo

MOZART's opera gets a brutal kicking by Austrian director Martin Kusej; Jonathan Miller's La Boheme gets a well-deserved third revival at the ENO; virtuoso singing of Donizetti's work makes the upcoming CD even more exciting

opera, review, Mozart, Idomeneo, Puccini, La Boheme, Donizetti, Les Martyrs, Clare ColvinROYAL OPERA

MOZART's opera gets a brutal kicking by Austrian director Martin Kusej

As soon as the curtain rises on a gang of shaven-headed goons in dark glasses toting sten guns as they humiliate their prisoners, it is clear that Idomeneo is to be given a radical overhaul by Austrian director Martin Kusej, making his UK debut.   

Mythical Crete of the Trojan Wars is re-invented as a police state where different factions grapple for power.

I have no problem with exploring new interpretations, but Kusej gives Mozart’s opera a brutal kicking with a re-writing that is at odds with story and score.  After being saved by Neptune from drowning, Cretan King Idomeneo vows to the god that he will sacrifice the first living creature he meets on shore.  

It turns out to be his son Idamante, so the devastated King spends the rest of the opera trying to evade his rash promise.   When Neptune sends a sea monster to ravage the land, Idomeneo attempts to elect himself as sacrificial victim.  

Kusej substitutes for the sea monster, a band of goons who duff up the rebellious citizens. According to his take, it’s an ideological power struggle - Idomeneo had it in mind all along to kill his libertarian son, who has made efforts to create a peaceful society during his war-like father’s absence at the Trojan front.  

Crass stage effects, such as plastic fish being waved around by the chorus during an aria, distract from superlative singing by the cast and the score conducted by Mark Minkowski.   Matthew Polenzani’s golden-toned tenor Idomeneo tries to sound convincing, though hampered by the cross purposes concept.  

Swedish soprano Malin Bystrom’s dominating Electra and Sophie Bevan’s Trojan princess Ilia, in love with Idamante, are both in glorious voice. As Idamante, countertenor Franco Fagioli, who wowed us recently with his baroque acrobatics, seems ill at ease in a Mozartian role. A staging best seen from restricted view seats in the amphitheatre.  

Jonathan Miller is no traditionalist, yet his concepts enhance rather than conflict. His long-running Little Italy Rigoletto and Art Deco Mikado are a case in point.

opera, reviewPH

Jonathan Miller's production of La Boheme set in Paris of the 1930 s Depression

His 2009 staging of La Boheme, set in Paris of the 1930s Depression, is another that should remain a good few years more in ENO’s repertoire. The third revival, under revival director Natascha Metherell, is  well cast with rising soprano Angel Blue making her role debut as Mimi, and the promising British tenor David Butt Philip as Rodolfo.

Miller is always interested in detail - the life that goes on around the central characters. While the seamstress Mimi, in love with the poet Rodolfo, sits at a Cafe Momus table with her new friends, nearby there’s an old barfly with stockings adrift, puffing defiantly at a cigarette.

When Jennifer Holloway’s star quality Musetta ditches her sugar daddy and leaves with her lover Marcello (George von Bergen), a waiter runs after her with her shopping loot.  The final act, with Mimi dying and Rodolfo too poor to afford the medicines that might cure her, still brings a tear to the eye.

Not a concept in sight at the Royal Festival Hall concert performance of Donizetti’s Les Martyrs by Opera Rara and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Virtuoso singing by the cast led by Michael Spyres and Joyce El-Khoury as the Christians about to be thrown to the lions, with Sir Mark Elder conducting exuberantly.  

It’s out on CD early 2015 - I can hardly wait to hear Spyres’s jubilantly pinged E flat again.             

Mozart’s Idomeneo, Royal Opera House, London WC2 (Tickets: 020 7340 4000/roh.org.uk; £7-£163); Puccini’s La Boheme, English National Opera, London WC2 (Tickets: 020 7845 9300/eno.org; £12-£99); Donizetti’s Les Martyrs, Royal Festival Hall, London SE1 (one night only)

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