Not Only Opera

Neither heaven nor hell: Le nozze di Figaro at the ROH

Le nozze di Figaro
Royal Opera
Royal Opera House
Balcony standing D30, £13 (moved for some reason to the Royal Box)
12 July 2019
ROH page

As with Bridge Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream earlier in the week, for the Royal Opera’s latest Figaro revival I have those around me in raptures and those around me in paroxysms of despair, and once I again I feel myself somewhere in the middle. I fear I maybe be becoming too tolerant in my old age, or too blasé.

This is that same old David McVicar production we’ve all seen a hundred times; the DVD with Erwin Schrott/Miah Persson/Gerald Finley/Dorothea Röschmann sits in about the same part of my psyche as knowing I need to remember my mum’s birthday. For some what blessed relief those words ‘David McVicar’ and ‘old’ bring – the designs are so pretty and historic! the story so simple and untampered with! – and for others what stultifying ennui. For me, it is still attractive but looking decidedly old, the sets and costumes worn, the blocking for the actors of a different era. Like with McVicar’s Zauberflöte, it’s probably the most successful production I’ve seen of this opera but I’m not overrun with excitement to see it for the umpteenth time.

So why see this revival? Simon Keenlyside, Christian Gerhaher and John Eliot Gardiner, all three as divisive to my friends and relations as the McVicar revival. Keenlyside is either extraordinary, superb – or hammy, OTT, embarrassing. Gerhaher is either exquisite, beautiful – or too old, too quiet, embarrassing. JEG is either alert, nuanced – or crusted, self-indulgent, embarrassing.

I’ll risk the scorn of the disparagers and admit rather to enjoying Keenlyside’s hamminess. He doesn’t half lay it on thick but what’s there is based always in the music and is perfectly timed. His voice, less gravelly than of recent years, is clean and sonorous, his musicality perhaps over accentuated but concrete nonetheless. And even if it does seem a lot from the Balcony, Keenlyside knows that every thought in every phrase in every gesture will read crystal clear at the back of the Amphitheatre.

I’m a bit less keen on Gerhaher, Gerhaher loon though I am. I contest the accusation he is too old for Figaro; Figaro and the Count are roughly the same age, after all, if the Count not slightly younger, and I think it works quite interestingly (if perhaps not ideally in this production) to have the two equals in age if not social authority. Gerhaher’s engagement with the text is pre-eminent as ever, and the beauty of his line particularly in the final act is glorious. But otherwise he seems to be dialling it in, perhaps deterred by Keenlyside’s sawing of the air or JEG’s fussing from the pit. His performance was professional rather than impassioned.

I have a fondness for JEG that originated in childhood experiences of Monteverdi recordings and sustains still, probably aided by never having met him. True to form, there is a neat, somewhat mannered and, if I were being blunt, rather bland quality to his Figaro here, which is pretty and, I would have thought, good enough. But I can deny neither the obvious differences in engagement from the cast, which must lie ultimately with JEG, nor the fact that those of my companions new to Figaro were much fatigued by the final two acts – signs that this time it really wasn’t good enough, no matter how much I enjoyed this ever beautiful music.

Asides from the music itself, the one element of this production that did provoke a strong reaction within me was that of Joélle Harvey as Susanna. She is of that generation where I have been able to track her career from solos with amateur choirs (including yours truly) to the present, and there aren’t many other rises I’ve viewed with such pleasure. She is a gorgeous singer and a finely judged performer, and is absolutely perfect in this role – even with the bears of Keenlyside and Gerhaher about her. What a treat for the soul.

Post scriptum
How could I have forgotten to write about the counter-tenor Cherubino? I find it tempting to get carried away about the significance of this decision. A counter-tenor does, after all, sound extremely different from a mezzo-soprano, and if you respect the composer enough to sing Figaro in Italian why not also follow his chosen voice parts? But while Figaro’s mainstream-ness makes it feel an unprecedented decision, it actually isn’t: we’ve had mezzos and counter-tenors singing castrato roles, and the tenor Domingo singing baritone roles, and of course the ROH has never made efforts to reimagine the likely quite different means of sound production of Mozart’s time.

So there is nothing to get agitated about, and instead the consideration should be whether Kangmin Justin Kim makes a good Cherubino or not. Certainly some in the audience seemed to think he did, and Kim obviously relished the opportunity. He has taken his lead acting-wise from Keenlyside, reasonably enough, and as with Keenlyside there’s a lot of thought, almost all of it rooted in the music, but delivered broadly. In voice Kim has a fruity high counter-tenor that is attractive and light, with the resonance but not the meatiness of, say, Franco Fagioli or Lawrence Zazzo. My main criticism is that he takes the verisimilitude of his acting to the detriment of the musical line: ‘Voi che sapete’ and ‘Non so piu’ are of course supposed to be excited, but the breathlessness Kim introduces plays against the strengths of his voice and edges him, unflatteringly and unfairly to himself, towards the alto hoot. Still, he’s an engaging onstage presence who holds his own in the ensembles and always makes a fun foil for Harvey’s Susannah.