Not Only Opera

Sensuous savagery: Lessons in Love and Violence at the ROH

Lessons in Love and Violence
Royal Opera
Royal Opera House
8 May 2018, Grand Tier Box 63, complimentary (general rehearsal)
10 May 2018, Balcony standing D32, £7
15 May 2018, Stalls C11, £15 (staff offer)
24 May 2018, Stalls A29, £15 (staff offer)
ROH page

I saw Lessons in Love and Violence four times and would readily see it again. This must be indicative of something. At the same time I could see why some of my guests yearned for the straightforward admirability of Written on Skin. Loveable Lessons in Love and Violence is not. But then it is called Lessons in Love and Violence.

This was almost my overriding response by the end of my first viewing, of the aptness of a title the ungainliness of which had made me roll my eyes when it was first announced. The piece, I realized, makes the title not ungainly but austere, its cold description a mirror of the work’s immovable detachment. The opera, I thought, is alive to the tragedy of its tale, as wayward, selfish passion and disproportionate violence are taught by one generation to the next – alive to that tragedy but in no way moved by it; a brutally clear-eyed view of the innate horror of humanity with no allowance for redemption.

I was fortunate to see further performances which revealed far deeper nuance than the grimness of that initial view, and raised enticing thoughts of how the work could change with a difference director, a different conductor, a different house. All three combine to accentuate the coldness, the inhumanness that is part of the work but not necessarily so dominant, in a way that I wonder may impact on the piece’s short-term longevity. Maybe such worries are absurd for a composer of Benjamin’s supremacy; there are probably new productions already in the works. But the disappointment with which Lessons was met obscures its intrinsic character and urgent tension, the integrity of the former and the tight concision of the latter I think each representing remarkable progressions in Benjamin’s operatic voice.

The simplest manifestation of that character is for me the orchestration, which on first listen almost bordered on the parodistic. Benjamin makes extensive solo use of the cembalom, and separately of a bongo-led suite of hand percussion instruments, textures both so simplistically ingrained in my mind as nearly exclusively Middle Eastern that I was bemused, like a 19th-century ‘taste of the Orient’. Further listens eroded this prejudice to reveal an entirely idiosyncratic use by Benjamin that captures a kind of seedy headiness, a drowsy temptation that is part of the works’ consideration of art and industry. It is a bold and intoxicating idea.

Why is this obscured? I’m usually sceptical of Katie Mitchell and went into the first performance with a certain amount of pre-annoyance. This was borne out in a few elements: the casual use of guns seems silly and incredible; every scene taking place round a bed just doesn’t make sense for some of the action. But in most ways this is a very smart production, almost ruthlessly so. Vicki Mortimer’s set is ingenious, complex scene changes managed neatly within each interlude, each curtain raise giving us a new perspective on the same room gradually degrading, reflecting a claustrophobia and nepotism crucial to the drama. The direction to the singers is savage and sensuous, remorselessly sad.

The opera is segmented into short scenes separated by interludes, portioning the drama into glimpsed chunks. Mitchell responds sensitively by bringing the blackout drop curtain swiftly down with each interlude. I say sensitive because I think it’s a sensible response to the score but the combined effect is often of a reset button, where the emotion that has built up in the scene must be halted, boxed up and compartmentalized away. It is decisions such as this, combined with the ashen precision of Benjamin’s conducting, that make these performances analytically detached rather than empathic. My guess is that another production, less constrained, less deliberate, could bring a more human colour – could emphasise the yearning, the sweetness.

The cast, around twice the size of that for Written on Skin, is mixed, perhaps another reason reception has been cooler. I was delighted by Stéphane Degout’s Golaud at Aix a few years ago but here his beautiful tone is pushed unpleasantly as he urges to sing above the level of the orchestra – which is odd, as Benjamin seems so sensitive to singers as both orchestrator and conductor. Gyula Orendt as Gaveston is a wonderful stage presence, sinister and vulnerable, but consistently sings beneath the note – oddly again, as his musicianship has seemed so strong in previous performances, such as the intonationally challenging Orfeo. Jennifer France in a supporting role sounds wonderful most of the time but is strained in a brutal piece of upwards writing in one of the large ensembles – oddly a third time, given Benjamin is so famed for tailoring his music to his premiere singers.

By contrast, Samuel Boden as the Boy is deployed perfectly, his extraordinary light and upwardsly flexible voice a heartbreaking thing to experience, especially in the work’s final moments; Benjamin miraculously scores a brutality that is yet tender and soft, Boden carrying the weight of its horror through his slender timbre. Peter Hoare is superb as ever, he and Benjamin together finding a colour of self-righteous ambition that never falters. And Barbara Hannigan. After the first performance I wondered if I was bored with Hannigan, with her depiction of the neurotic high soprano, the self-hating Gertrude. By the fourth performance there was still some of that – but for commitment, musicality, imagination and breathtaking accuracy she is simply unparalleled.