No Lulu: Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel at ENO
Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel
English National Opera
London Coliseum
Upper Circle J49, £18
12 April 2019
ENO page
For some reason I resisted seeing Iain Bell’s new opera Jack the Ripper. Maybe it was hearing librettist Emma Jenkins casually diss Berg’s Lulu with the implied confidence that she and Bell had done better. Maybe it was the memory of the last new opera I saw at ENO, Ryan Wigglesworth’s woeful The Winter’s Tale. Maybe it was the presence in the cast of a battalion from the female gentry of British singers, a battalion I feared possible past their prime. But I overcame my curmudgeonliness and just in the nick of time picked up a ticket for the last performance.
I’m kind of glad I did, in the same way I’m kind of glad ENO commissioned this opera and kind of glad Bell wrote it. New operas ought to be commissioned, written and seen, especially by those who profess a passion for the art form. An art form that rests solely on existing works is only half there; and new operas can be extremely exciting. Jack the Ripper isn’t one of them, but that’s ok: you don’t get good operas without some bad ones.
Not that this is bad, or at least, not very bad. Bell clearly has a tugging fascination with how voices can be layered, and while that might get a bit old after three hours that interest nevertheless yields some intriguing, beautiful passages. And he and Jenkins are clearly conscientiously committed to finding a different way of telling stories of women through music (unlike that naughty Berg). Personally I think I might have looked for a more optimistic vehicle for such a commitment than Jack the Ripper’s victims, but there we go.
It’s in this sense the opera ends up dooming itself to mediocrity. Bell and Jenkins don’t want to show us Jack, as everyone gets too excited about the killer and forgets about the victims. But while it’s not good to forget about the victims, I think there is a legitimate and non-creepy reason to be interested in the killer. Let’s take some mainstream opera examples: what would Carmen be without Don José, or Tosca without Scarpia? You might say, both those villains have longer relationships with their victims than Jack. I’d say, that’s probably what makes them better plots for a mainstream opera. You might say, maybe Bell doesn’t want to be mainstream. I’d say, just listen to it, will you?
Bell is not avant-garde, he is not wanting to change the abstract form of music, and that’s ok – but it makes it more difficult for the end result not to be mediocre. Having got trapped there with the libretto, Bell tangles himself yet further with his music. Britten set a certain standard of how to incorporate English folk song with dramatic movement in group scenes, but Bell’s effort in a pub ditty seems utterly unaware, reaching for me the opera’s nadir. Aside from that pretty layering thing there’s not a whole lot else musically to pay attention to.
So I’m not digging the story, I’m not digging the music and I don’t feel particularly enriched by yet another Jack the Ripper tale, even if it is ‘about the victims’. What else? The singing is excellent from Natalya Romaniw as Mary Kelly and the men (Nicky Spence, William Morgan, Alex Otterburn, Alan Opie, Robert Hayward and James Cleverton, all impressive), and variable at best from that old battalion. Designs from Soutra Gilmour are dark and gloomy, but then what else could she do. The orchestra sounded fine, and I certainly enjoyed their performance more than in Satyagraha. But I don’t think this is one for the ages. Unlike Lulu.
No comments yet.