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Mark le Brocq as Gustav von Aschenbach with an arching Antony Cesar as Tadzio. Pictures: Johan Persson Death in
Venice Welsh
National Opera Birmingham
Hippodrome *****
Thomas Mann's most famous and acclaimed novella,
Death in Venice
(Der Tod in Venedig)
had its origins in a story relating to a true-life experience that
befell the author, then in his mid-thirties, upon a visit to the seagirt
Italian city. While there, he became increasingly and troublingly aware
of, and soon attracted to and enraptured by, a Polish boy aged in fact
little more than 10. He believed
the boy's name to be 'Tadzio' - Thaddeus. Ironically in the opera he
first recalls the sound as 'Adjiu', which in fact was correct. The true
name of the youngster, as has since been revealed, was 'Adziu', the
shortening for the common Polish name Wladysław; the boy, Wladyslaw
Moes, was from an aristocratic Polish
family, and even with his young years was acutely conscious of a man in
middle age who seemed to take a repeated interest in him. Mann's story, and Visconti's celebrated film,
made 60 years after Mann's intimate and not entirely unerotic
experience, and likewise Britten's last opera, deliberately unconnected
with the film, thus all in some sense conceal an unnerving actual
circumstance. The subtly differentiated ways Britten deploys
three main characteristics in his music - there are of course several
separately engineered Leitmotifs - is well documented: the
incredibly alluring Balinese gamelan elements first given prominence in
his 1950s ballet The Prince of the Pagodas following an intensely
memorable visit to Indonesia, here providing material for his
extraordinary, unexpected, freshly inspiring music for the dancers
(Tadzio and his friends, here presented in fits of astonishing skill and
dexterity by not dance but acrobatics); or the almost blasting,
certainly full-bodied use of the complete orchestra, particularly in
several dramatic build-ups towards the end, are two of those idioms on
which the score depends. But what especially captured the imagination in
this presentation, and revealed the potential to come, came right at the
start, in the two first evolving scenes, perhaps overlong yet the more
welcome for the accompanying detail. This was Britten's inspired use of
woodwind - often paired, but particularly solo. Oboe, clarinet, and with
particular dexterity and irony the bassoon. The refinement of these intermittent instrumental
comments, as Mark Le Brocq's superbly, most touchingly characterised
Gustav von Aschenbach, later so close to his object of pursuit yet
tragically isolated throughout, was astonishing, teased out with such
delicacy and refinement by conductor Leo Hussain (his masterly control
and intimacy with the entire score obvious throughout).
Alexander Chance as The Voice of Apollo, Mark le Brocq as Gustav
von Aschenbach and Roderick Williams as The Voice of Dionysus
The score here underlines with mystic allure
Aschenbach's nagging opening perplexity, in his vast, cleverly projected
library (Sam Sharples) - 'My mind beats on' - but venturing into doubt
about his very art ('Should I give up my fruitless struggle?'), the
despairing lament ('Would that the light of inspiration had not left
me') and 'Should I give up my fruitless struggle with the word?' all
enunciated with fabulous poignancy by Le Brocq's deeply vexed, initially
strangled introspection, with the finesse of staccato woodwind
continuing to enunciate his unyielding introspection. This prefaces his horrified encounter, even
before he reaches the ship station, with the Elderly Fop, who (apart
from his initial luring character 'The Traveller') is the first,
outrageously fancy-clad role from the unerringly brilliant Roderick
Williams, one of those where Britten's librettist, the ingenious Myfanwy
Piper, clings tightly and respectfully to Mann's original script. All of
this, masterfully evinced by a terrifically on-form WNO orchestra, and
typical of the excellence they would go on to show throughout - bespoke
the not just the magnificent playing but the fascinating unfolding of
the entire story that was to follow. The vocal range and almost heroic versatility of
baritone Roderick Williams is legendary and of worldwide fame; but
when he turns from song - always superb - to exploring character on the
operatic stage too is, he proves - surely not surprisingly - always
vivid and galvanising. It certainly was true here. The energy, the vivacity and the sheer naughtiness he brought to each of his roles, originally personified with unforeseen brilliance by the great John Shirley-Quirk, was amazing. Williams captured here the camp awfulness of the overdressed Fop, the hyperactive mockery of the visiting Players' leader and the flamboyance if not campery of the Hotel barber, making Achenbach up with (as Mann indicates) a ridiculous hairpiece rendering him virtually the same kind of foppish, almost grotesque figure he had so despised, were splendidly offset by the in fact cynical propriety of the hotel manager and - hoist upon the ladder which formed part of Designer Nicola Turner's restrained but useful set - the luring, scarlet-clad, corrupting Dionysus, pitted against Alexander Chance's proper, demanding but dismissed gold-clad Apollo, to which add the puzzling insistence of the apparently criminal gondolier, all presented wholly different characters.
Diana Salles as The Polish Mother One scene from the second half of the opera
had a significant impact. Amid all the frenetic capers that surrounded
and dangerously attracted Aschenbach, in his desperate search to find
out the truth of the cholera outbreak in Venice, he encounters (as in
Mann's original) an English clerk who is flooded with the visiting
population's desperate plans to escape, and who takes him (alone) into
his confidence. The scene is quite an extended one, and introduces a
rational element which contrasts with the growing hectic character of
other events. It feels almost like a spoken exchange, and its
(paradoxical) calm and deliberation made it stand out from almost
everything surrounding it. At the heart of the opera is of course Tadzio,
the object of Aschenbach's yearning and obsession. The idea of involving
a staggeringly talented 'Circus troupe' (the intriguingly named and
superlatively talented 'nofitstate', one moreover emanating, like WNO,
from South Wales), seemed a fascinating and daring one. The athletics of
the entire ensemble - the endlessly active and astonishingly talented,
mobile and flexible Tadzio (Antony César) above
all, but also what was either the members of his family (largely female)
or not, each with her own creative part, and his muscular close friend
Jaschiu - brought a freshness and unique vitality to the
production (the boys' energies in the initial Britten-Piper conception
presented as just dance), was spectacular. There was a marvellous flair and breathtaking
invention to their every set piece (Tom Rack being their guiding
Consultant), so that one's eyes were drawn to every twist and turn,
every trick, every twirling with hoops, every hanging in the air - a
truly amazing kaleidoscope and unbelievable engineering of the human
body's possibilities. This was a superlative feast, at every turn. And not surprisingly, this gorgeous display is
the thing that holds Aschenbach's rapt attention. If there is a beauty to Tadzio that beams through
at every stage, it is this very physical display. His relationship to
the writer hinges upon their very separation; and that is as it must be.
It was partly why Britten and Myfanwy Piper settled on making the boy a
dancer: thus Tadzio exists on another plane, in a world with its own
very energetic interactions quite different from the staid
self-isolation of a study bound author. So much, so well. But if there is a drawback in
whisking the desired creature ('I love you') on to a different planet -
and the antics of the acrobats were simply phenomenal - almost any
direct connection between Tadzio and Aschenbach is almost irrevocably -
if maybe rightly - riven. There is a moment latterly when Olivia Fuchs
boldly inveigles her main character to approach the lying boy - I've
seen this risked most seductively between Quint and Miles in The Turn
of the Screw - and almost touch him, only for the moment to be lost
when the boy inadvertently wakes and exits. Equally, when Tadzio and
Jaschiu are earthbound rather than trapeze-soaring, the latter (in
almost exactly the same spot onstage) rolls on top of and kisses his
friend seemingly on the lips, witnessed of course, tragically jealously,
by Aschenbach. Visconti's Tadzio (Björn
Andresen) in the film is much more accessible - for some too salacious -
so that the moments of even passing momentary encounter between him and
Aschenbach (quite frequent) come across as all the more tantalising. It
was notable how powerful were the brief moments when Fuchs placed her
two protagonists simply facing each other across an empty stage (near
the end, especially). These inactive instants were as highly charged as
anything. In other words, although the gymnastics were what enthralled
all the audience around me, in some ways the aeronautics took over, at
the expense of all else. Aschenbach became obsessed not by Tadzio's
beauty, which is what he should be, but by the beauty of the acrobatics:
something more neuter than human. As always, the singing and sheer power of the WNO
chorus was not just impressive but even shattering. Whether amassed
somewhat statically at the back of the stage - and there are a huge
number of them to get onstage - or cleverly interweaving in interactions
devised by Fuchs, they have an important role (more than I recall) in
lifting Death in Venice way beyond the vocal limits of Britten's
chamber operas. Together with the sensational climaxes Hussain drew
from, in later cases, especially the strings of the dazzling orchestral
forces, all this is what lifts this work into the realms of a
mesmerising, full-blown opera. One was endlessly enticed by everything
about it; gripped by the unyielding intensity; utterly overawed. Roderic Dunnett 12-05-24 |
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