Not Only Opera

An opera of two halves: The Merchant of Venice with WNO at the ROH

The Merchant of Venice
Welsh National Opera
Royal Opera House
Stalls D2, £15 (staff offer)
19 July 2017
ROH page

I keep harping on about Otello. But WNO's production of Tchaikowsky's The Merchant of Venice did make me think of the Verdi, not least because Merchant and The Royal Opera's latest Otello share a director in Keith Warner.

I don't think Merchant was ever on Verdi's Shakespeare wish-list (someone please correct me). But I think that the evidence of Otello and Falstaff suggests that if it had been he would have cut the play back a lot more than Tchaikowsky and his librettist John O'Brien do. It's one of the play's most challenging ambiguities that so much happens after Shylock's great humiliation. A theatre production may dwell on the motif of forsaken rings (as this opera production attempts to), and find other ways to remind us of Shylock's subjugation through the ensuing romantic hooha. Watching the fourth act of Tchaikowsky's opera my feeling was that in this art form there would be freedom to do away with that stuff all together, which here would allow the piece to end on Tchaikowsky's visceral, deeply upsetting presentation of the trial.

So I found the opera too long. This was no doubt exacerbated by the opera's unsympathetic attitude towards the lovers, itself in turn exacerbated by the production's near-repugnance for them. I know its a favoured tack to contrast the merriment of the lovers with the anguish it causes Antonio and Shylock, but when it's done with such facetiousness and with so many notes it becomes a serious vibe-killer. Acts one and three are electrifying; acts two and four had me crawling up the walls.

What are main contributing factors to this division? I think Tchaikowsky's dramatic sensibility is more of a candidate than his music. Throughout the opera he displays a great fondness for added sevenths, for reeds and harps, and for interesting orchestral textures that are flirted with and quickly discarded (most frustrating of which is a quartet of recorders and bassoons squandered on an aggravating minstrel song). His vocal writing is occasionally inspired and often awkward. My impression (remember based on a single hearing) is that the effectiveness of his opera music is tethered to his interest in the dramatic current of that moment.

Another factor is the production. I was amazed by act one. Warner elects for an interwar setting – fair enough, but its success here lies in what designer Ashley Martin-Davis does with it. Acts one and three are shaped by enormous, gleaming walls of safety deposit boxes, which crush and corral the characters, which viciously reflect the open flames wielded by pogrom ring-leaders, which imprison Antonio and then more horrifyingly Shylock. It is simple, aesthetically striking, dramatically potent, and all in all a great idea. The other acts have nothing like this clarity.

Another factor is the singers. The cast is patchy, with the lead roles shared by some wonderful singers and some less wonderful. Chief of the first group is Lester Lynch as Shylock, whose glorious voice can be admired even as he suppresses it first in Shylock's bitter anger and later in his profound mistreatment. The ever-reliable Mark Le Brocq is stalwart through Tchaikowsky's merciless writing for Bassanio. David Stout, for whom I've long had a soft spot, is a robust Gratiano. Lauren Michelle as Jessica and Bruce Sledge as Lorenzo both do well with the deeply unlovely material they're given. The other singers all have their good points (well, almost), but for a spoilt hedonist such as myself too often trespass into screechy/warbly territory. WNO's excellent chorus is underused. The orchestra plays very dutifully under Lionel Friend, sometimes inspired to greater things when the music allows.

So to my mind we have an opera of two halves. On this first listen I came away wishing that Tchaikowsky had more confidentially followed what I think was his primary inclination, of out-and-out sympathy for the tortured souls of Antonio and Shylock, and more confidentially thrown out what didn't interest him. Perhaps he would have done had he lived longer. But that's about as useful a thought as wondering what Verdi would have made of it.