View: Next message | Previous message Next in topic | Previous in topic Next by same author | Previous by same author Previous page (July 1999, week 5) | Back to main OPERA-L page Join or leave OPERA-L Reply | Post a new message Search Options: Chronologically | Most recent first Proportional font | Non-proportional font ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Sat, 31 Jul 1999 00:53:55 +0000 Reply-To: "H.E.Elsom" Sender: Discussion of opera and related issues From: "H.E.Elsom" Subject: The consul, Holland Park, 30Jul99 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" John Sorel Mark Oldfield Magda Sorel Naomi Harvey The Mother Anne Collins Secret police agent Anthony Marber Plain clothes men Mark Cunningham, Rober Jeffries Secretary Alison Kettlewell Mr Kofner Nigel Fair Foreign woman Ida-Maria Turri Anna Gomez Marie Vassiliou Magician Dominic Natoli Vera Boronel Susan Cullen Assan William Allenby Conductor Tom Higgins Director Simon Callow The consul isn't exactly light fare for a summer evening. Menotti's 1950 opera centres on the efforts of Magda Sorel, the wife of a resistance leader in an indeterminate eastern bloc country after the war to get an exit visa from the consulate of another unnamed country. She sits in the consulate with a group of others whose applications are repeated returned for trivial reasons by the secretary, her child and mother die, the consul (never seen) turns out to be in cahoots with the secret policeman who is hounding her, and her husband returns only to be arrested and killed. She goes through with the suicide she had intended to keep him away. There's satire on grim bureaucracy -- The Castle (or the first page of it) is an obvious model, especially when Prague is a plausible candidate for the location. But there's perhaps as much Casablanca as Kafka, though it lacks the grim humour of either. The consul's jobsworth secretary is a semi-comic turn, not a million miles from Flywheel's Miss Dimp, and there is a collection of slightly offenively generic foreigners. John Sorel is wounded after a secret meeting, and his cause is as vaguely defined as Victor Laszlo's (freedom...), and as the nationality of both of them. There's no sense of what is driving people away (except that one woman is stateless after the war, who is persecutely by both tyrannies), or keeping them out of the consul's country. It's a painful reminder that the themes and images of the war against Naziism could be switched instantly to the war against communism without any sense that profoundly different first principles were at stake. The plot elements and music also come over as a patchwork of verismo with nods at Berg and Weill. A recorded chanson-style song, beginning Tu reviendras, plays before the overture and at intervals to represent Magda's oppressive hope that John will return. The action begins like Tosca with a fugitive from the police, and a sinister police agent manipulates Magda. There are several lullabies, the death of a baby and a number of obvious musical motifs. Menotti even gets in an Italian aria by means of a woman who doesn't speak the language of the country. Simon Callow got an intense and sometimes deeply moving performance out of a good cast. The set was on a turntable with the Sorels' dark grey partly ruined home on one side and a Caligari-skewed shiny grey modern office on the other. This allowed for seamless scene changes, even a dance around the consulate by the hypnotized applicants, and kept a cinematic pace and style going throughout. Magda's dreams were set off by lighting, and by robotic movements of the others in her dying dream. Naomi Harvey was an oppressed-looking Magda, but she was able to give the arias everything without breaking the illusion. To this we've come was a tour de force, delivered like a bel canto scena. Alison Kettlewell was suitably sniffy as the secretary, perhaps not quite hard-bitten enough, but her singing was well-balanced. Anne Collins gave a hearth-wrenching performance as the mother. I'd always thought of her as a trooper with a knack for comedy, but she sang her hymn- and lullaby-like music incredibly beautifully. Her agonizingly extended stillness when the baby died stood out in the middle of all the other business on the stage. Mark Oldfield sang forcefully but didn't quite have the charisma for John. William Allenby as Assan, the friend and possible traitor, had more of a heroic glow. Anthony Marber was a seedy and insinuating secret policeman, wearing a decidedly non-eastern-bloc raincoat. Ida-Maria Turri was an emotional, slightly batty foreign woman -- a comic counterpart of the mother? -- and Susan Cullen was elegant as Vera Boronel, who gets her visa, again, perhaps an optimistic but compromised counterpart of Magda. Marie Vassiliou was a mournful Anna Gomez, the stateless woman. Dominic Natoli had the right fraulent exuberance for the magician, and Nigel Fair as Mr Kofner also looked unbearably sad. They made a fine ensemble along with the secretary and Magda, with all parts clear over the orchestra. Tom Higgins and the orchestra also did a fine job, avoiding wallowing and supporting the singers effectively. Regards, Helen - H.E. Elsom he@helsom.demon.co.uk http://www.helsom.demon.co.uk/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to: Top of message | Previous page | Main OPERA-L page ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to the LISTSERV home page at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU.