Not Only Opera

Almost suitably bonkers: Semiramide at the ROH

Semiramide
The Royal Opera
Royal Opera House
Grand Tier Box 63, general rehearsal
16 November 2017
ROH page

Semiramide is a case in point of that old opera rub: great music, crap story. The superlative cast the Royal Opera has assembled takes care of the first half; David Alden’s bonkers production sometimes makes up for the second, and sometimes doesn’t.

The singing though. Oh my goodness the singing. The singing is so good I literally drooled. The last time I saw Joyce DiDonato was in Werther, and I didn’t think that rep was quite the best use of her talents. Semiramide is her demesne and then some. Her voice is pitch perfect, her sound thrills with the throbbing rich quality that great singers have, her breath control is nothing short of miraculous. She is matched almost inch for inch by the masterful Daniela Barcellona as Arbace: the control, power and beauty of these voices combined is a wonder. Add in Antonio Pappano in the pit, the orchestra tautly with him every step of the way, and you have opera gold.

The rest of the cast is strong. Lawrence Brownlee as Idreno was substantially quieter than the leading ladies at this rehearsal, but he sings all the notes at the right time and at the right pitch, which is no small feat in this almost entirely pointless look-at-me role. Michele Pertusi as Assur sings well but looks slightly nonplussed on stage (though he is partly a victim of the staging). Bálint Szabó, majestic as ever, is a little wasted in the role of Oroe, but that’s a luxurious complaint. And then Jacquelyn Stucker as Azema and Konu Kim as Mitrane, each in the first year of the Young Artist Programme, distinguish themselves absolutely – particularly Stucker, whose investment in Alden’s crazy ideas for her character is complete and essential.

Crazy ideas are not in short supply. I spent the first scene of the opera in utter bewilderment. Alden has cast Semiramide’s kingdom as a modern Eurasian dictatorship (emphatically and magnificently pinned down in glorious designs by Paul Steinberg and Buki Shiff). He’s also made it a theocracy and personality cult, the dead Nino both king and god; around his steely earthly vassal Semiramide power is uneasily shared by the militaristic Assur on one side and on the other by Oroe and his malevolent band of worshippers. This is all very well and supported by the text. Alden goes yet further and seems to want to bed us in reality, incorporating explicit visual cues to usher in Xi Jinping (and Trump, no doubt serendipitously) for Nino and his family, and IS warriors for Oroe’s priests. Heavy stuff.

But Alden seems also keen to foreground the opera’s ridiculousness. So in that opening scene the turbaned IS warriors scuttle about on their knees in time to Rossini’s chirpy music; they’re later joined by the chorus of oppressed masses in what becomes a complexly choreographed knee dance complete with cheesy head turns, just one shade short of jazz hands. And in one corner of the stage we have Azema. Alden has taken the idea of a trophy wife and run off a cliff with it: she is dressed as a golden caterpillar, completely bald, a tight skirt restricting her movement, her hands amputated behind six-foot long sleeves, shuttled on and off the stage in a fireman’s lift by a no-nonsense stage hand: a prize weevil, terrified and useless and alien, a grotesque and bizarre complement to an already nuts mise-en-scène.

Once I recovered from my confusion I decided Alden’s approach to Azema, and his implicit mockery of this opera stereotype, is inspired. It certainly spices up a role that has little consequence for the story, and the same is true of his characterization of Idreno as a glitzy bastard, taken on with relish by Brownlee. Other ideas work magnificently well, and reach an apex in the final scene of Act I. The seriousness and silliness of Alden’s tincta, heightened through gloriously ludicrous set and costumes, here seem the perfect match for Rossini’s ghastly ghost scene: the excitement when the suited Nino stumbles horribly from his nonsensical coffin is an immediate high entry in m opera experiences hall of fame.

Alden can’t keep it up for the opera’s whole (and considerable) length. While sensational singing rescues much of the second half, the final two scenes fail completely: Assur’s mad scene is barely marked, cruelly hanging Pertusi out to dry, and in the closing tomb scene Alden seems to give up in face of the serious credulity asks made of him by the libretto. It’s a shame, in no small part because it makes it more difficult to forgive his apparent readiness throughout to distract from the excellent work of the singers. But excellent work there is, and to have one scene in which music, voice and direction come together to glorious effect is not a bad hit rate.