Magnificent: The Mask of Orpheus at ENO
The Mask of Orpheus
English National Opera
London Coliseum
18 October 2019, Balcony B30, £10
7 November 2019, Stalls G8, £30 (secret seat)
13 November 2019, Balcony H14, £25
ENO page
I feel very fortunate to have seen Birtwistle’s The Mask of Orpheus three times. Even once is something to be grateful for. There aren’t many ways you can experience such sounds as these; indeed, I can’t think of any way other than The Mask of Orpheus, and at the present rate that only comes round once in a generation. I wasn’t around for the last one, and I dearly hope I’m still here for the next.
I’ve had numerous arguments about Daniel Kramer’s production, exclusively with people who elected not to see it. Perhaps if I’d been in their lucky position of having seen the premiere I would have made the same decision. Maybe that was the one true Mask of Orpheus, the memory of which is worth safeguarding over the chance of experiencing those sounds again. I think I can well understand Birtwistle himself not liking it, as apparently he did not, as it’s unquestionably true the production does not follow the opera. But to me Kramer’s production is absolutely consistent with the unfathomable, overwhelming ambition of The Mask of Orpheus, and that this piece happened, in this way, at this time, dwarfs into insignificance the indignities of Kramer’s reign at ENO.
I should no doubt laud conductor Martyn Brabbins before Kramer. The score is of such vast, webbed magnificence that I find it next to impossible to imagine it being rehearsed, of being in any state other than its complete, eye-watering whole. This is, of course, thanks to a huge amount of preparation. The orchestra is unrecognisable as a corps of individuals and becomes instead some great and mysterious machine that produces sounds beyond the ken of man. Excellent sound design by Ian Dearden merges the acoustic and electrical parts of the score such that they speak as one, and makes a virtue of the occasional use of amplification of the cast. At the score’s most awe-inspiring moments the Coliseum seems to shake, we all about to be sucked into hell, my heart responding by banging a hole in my chest, my brain utterly at a loss for how such sound can be. This is music it is worth waiting for.
The almost entirely British cast is well chosen. Peter Hoare as Orpheus Man struggled a little against the demands placed on him in the first night; it was good to see him perform with his usual mastery in later performances. I continue to be hugely impressed by the young mezzo Marta Fontanals-Simmons, who sings Eurydice Woman. The other singers were exactly as I would wish them: accurate, bold, up for it.
Kramer’s production goes in a lot of places, and for sure not all of it works. Lizzie Clachan’s half-hearted set designs, suggesting the ageing rocker Orpheus’ Soho pad, look like an idea from early on in the creative process from which everything else has moved far, far on. But Kramer has a get-out-of-jail-free card in costume designer Daniel Lismore, whose bafflingly beautiful designs seem tailored precisely to the music, be it the threateningly corpuscular men, the waterfall of forsaken Eurydices in Act II or the Boschean parade of jangling creatures in Act III. Lismore’s brilliance constructs a bridge, for me firm enough, on which to follow Kramer’s flights.
There is no particular coherence. The simplest idea is to relate Orpheus and Eurydice to Adam and Eve, the basis of which presumably started in the opera’s relation of Aristaeus to a snake. We do not follow Birtwistle’s synopsis, except vaguely, but instead see images that explore masculinity and femininity, of aggression, jealousy, desire, cruelty, childbirth, where power is subverted, where tropes of male and female sheer harshly against experience. With this cast, the dancers Alfa Marks, Matthew Smith and their uncredited colleagues, and Lismore’s visual fervour, it felt to me a completely legitimate response to this most mysterious and magnificent of operas.
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