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Paul Nilon (centre) gave his all as Aschenbach in Death in Venice.
Paul Nilon (centre) gave his all as Aschenbach in Death in Venice. Photograph: John Snelling/Getty Images
Paul Nilon (centre) gave his all as Aschenbach in Death in Venice. Photograph: John Snelling/Getty Images

Death in Venice; A Pierre Dream; The Cure / The Corridor – review

This article is more than 8 years old
Garsington Opera, Wormsley, Bucks; Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh and ROH Linbury Studio, London
A zestful staging of Britten’s final opera grips Garsington and Aldeburgh bows to Boulez and Birtwistle

White billowing curtains concealing and revealing a painted backdrop of lagoon, sands and distant campanile: how better to conjure the fetid atmosphere of the Venetian Lido in high summer under the shadow of cholera. With canny thrift, Garsington Opera has created a staging of Britten’s Death in Venice (1973) free from that usual whiff of stale cologne, alive with zest and intensity. A top cast, full of promising young talent, and excellent orchestra show Britten’s final opera in its sharpest light.

Based on Thomas Mann’s novella to a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, the work has taken time to establish itself. Odd, stifling, discomfiting, it is also emotionally draining: an ageing novelist, Aschenbach, travels to Venice to confront his writer’s block only to become infatuated with a young boy he sees but never meets. It can feel both the best and worst of Britten, a mixture of repressive, oppressive and dazzlingly expressive. The score is sensuous and spiky, coloured by tuned percussion and harp, but can drag. Coming so soon after Visconti’s 1971 film classic starring Dirk Bogarde, with the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony as the unforgettable soundtrack, it had an awkward birth.

Celestin Boutin as a knowing Tadzio in Death in Venice: half the audience could barely suppress their drools. Photograph: John Snelling/Getty Images

Time has eased its passage, thanks in part to singers such as the late Philip Langridge turning Aschenbach from indulgent fop to figure of pathos. Paul Curran’s new Garsington staging, designed by Kevin Knight and choreographed by Andreas Heise, reminded us how gripping the work can be. Steuart Bedford, who conducted the premiere as a young man when Britten was too ill to do so himself, was back on the podium, fresh as ever, to lead an incisive and mercurial performance. The elegant 1911 setting – parasols, bustles, sailor suits – is given edge with a small group of highly acrobatic and muscular male dancers. The boy Tadzio (Celestin Boutin) is older and more knowing than in the novella, which makes the fiction less credible, but he is a winning choice. At least half the audience could barely suppress their drools.

Leading the large ensemble cast, the baritone William Dazeley nimbly switched between several roles, now crisp, now smarmy, now ingratiating. As Aschenbach, Paul Nilon gave his all, vocally and dramatically. He retains his dignity and never quite succumbs, even when the barber darkens his hair and adds rouge to his cheeks, to the self-pity that can weaken this role. Finally he throws himself against the curtain, with Tadzio an elusive shadowy figure behind. The impact is desolate and shocking.

Britten’s opera had its world premiere at Snape Maltings, where the fortnight-long 68th Aldeburgh festival comes to an end today. Among the events I caught – I’ll pass quickly over the first of the Mosaïques Quartet’s Beethoven concerts, in the hope that the second was better – was the fascinating tribute to Boulez at 90, A Pierre Dream. One of the French composer-conductor’s favourite words is “labyrinth”. As a pioneering supporter of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Beyond the Score project – musical and theatrical explorations of particular works to enhance audience understanding – Boulez has now become its subject.

Gerard McBurney, artistic director, has conceived an absorbing, unlinear narrative, with filmed conversations with Boulez from the 1940s to the present projected on panels to a design by Frank Gehry. Players from the Royal Academy of Music’s Manson Ensemble and soloists, conducted by Susanna Mälkki, demonstrated Boulez’s glittering and potent range, from the early Sonatine to Incises and Dérives I and II. As Boulez has always said: “The music speaks for itself.” Events such as this help you grasp the language, even one as complex and heavily accented as that of postwar European modernism.

Equally superb: Elizabeth Atherton and Mark Padmore in The Cure. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer

Aldeburgh opened with the world premiere of The Cure by Harrison Birtwistle and David Harsent, a companion piece to their 2013 work, The Corridor. Each piece, taken from Ovid, has two singers, the equally superb tenor Mark Padmore and soprano Elizabeth Atherton, and ensemble of string trio, flute, clarinet and harp. The Corridor, in which musicians interact on stage with the performers, returns to Birtwistle’s favourite Orpheus subject, specifically the moment the poet-musician looks back at his dead wife, Euridice, in the underworld.

The Cure, more mellifluous in mood, takes the story of Jason and his ailing father, Aeson. The witch Medea gives Aeson a rejuvenating potion, with terrible consequences. It makes a powerful case against eternal youth if one were needed. Directed by Martin Duncan, with a brilliant abstract design by Alison Chitty lit by Paul Pyant, this double bill had further performances at the ROH Linbury Studio. I enjoyed both the Suffolk and London stagings, but the addition of surtitles at the Linbury almost doubled enjoyment and clarity. Harsent’s limpid text deserves to be heard. Everyone benefits. Yes you can manage without, but why would you? Birtwistle’s score, melancholy, vivid, exquisitely lyrical, marks yet another advance in his distinctive compositional process. His fingerprints are all over it of course, but somehow he has discovered yet new ways to make music theatre on this intimate scale.

There’s a mythology about Aldeburgh and Birtwistle: that Britten and Pears, the festival’s founders, walked out of the younger composer’s expressionist music theatre piece Punch and Judy (1967). Birtwistle remembers no such event and doesn’t much care: it was an unlikely rumour that hardened into “fact”. We shall never know. Now at 80, nearly two decades older than Britten at the time of his death in 1976, Birtwistle shares many of the same honours and acclaim heaped on the senior composer. An ever-inventive chamber opera composer himself, Britten would surely have stood to join the wild applause last week.

(Star ratings out of 5)

Death in Venice ****

A Pierre Dream ****

The Cure / The Corridor *****

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