Well at the end, there was tremendous applause for the cast, the conductor and the orchestra, but when the director, Barbara Horakova, and her team came onto the stage, there was a considerable amount of booing. And, sad to say, they deserved it.
A good director’s task, I have always believed, is to accept fully the intentions of the original composer and librettist and decide where something needs adding to enhance the understanding, appreciation and sometimesamusement of the audience. This also involves sensing when the pace of the story or the action on stage is flagging and adding something to keep the attention of the audience. What all too many modern directors do is try to impose their own political or social beliefs on the storyline or add something on stage that only serves to distract. Distracting directorial self-indulgence is what makes this production so irritating.
The plot of Luisa Miller is based on a play by Friedrich von Schiller with a tense, vicious and ultimately and tragic plot. Luisa is in love with a mysterious young man who calls himself Carlo, but is in fact Rodolfo, the son of the dominating Count Walter. The Count, however, is a highly ambitious social climber with other plans for Rodolfo involving his marrying a rich widow. Meanwhile, the Count’s personal aide, Wurm, also fancies Luisa and discovers that she has eyes only for Rodolfo. Wurm and the Count then hatch a vicious plan involving the arrest and torture of Luisa’s father saying he will only be freed if Luisa gives up Rodolfo and agrees to marry Wurm instead. It all ends badly, of course.
All this skulduggery provides a tense atmosphere that a good production will emphasize. Instead Horakova and her team give us balloon-toting dancers and chorus dressed as ghoulish clowns who cavort at the back of the stage, which only acts as an unwanted diversion from the intensity of the real story. Also, there is almost no scenery but a lot of daubing of black paint on the back and side walls and a curiously irrelevant pentagonal structure wheeled onto the stage occasionally to provide, for no clear reason, a sort of room divider for the ghouls to occupy.
While all this nonsense is going on, we are treated to some of the best singing I have heard at ENO. The soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn has not been seen at the Coliseum for several years and it was a delight to hear her powerful and clear voice again, even if her drab costume did make her look rather too mature to be Luisa. The Korean tenor David Junghoon Kim was in superb voice as Rodolfo/Carlo (though his acting sometimes seemed a little wooden) and Icelandic baritone Olafur Sigurdarson was excellent as Miller, Luisa’s father. The baddies were also very well represented with James Creswell in splendidly sinister voice as Count Walter and American bass Soloman Howard was perfect as his intimidating henchman Wurm. This excellent cast also included mezzo-soprano Christine Rice adding even more class to the production in the small role of the rich widow Federica. All the singers had beautifully clear voices and excellent diction producing the rare pleasure of actually being able to hear the words. The drawback of this was that it drew attention to occasional lapses in Martin Fitzpatrick’s rather mundane translation where the words did not fit perfectly with the music. I feel sure Schiller’s original play was more poetic.
With this rare opera including a string of superb duets, I feel sure I would have enjoyed it immensely had I kept my eyes closed and just listened, but the weird and inappropriate directorial additions just spoiled it. As I said at the start, a great opportunity missed.
Tickets: www.eno.org or 020 7845 9300 (until 6 March)