Playing Baal

London
Coliseum
11/30/00 and 2, 6, 8, 12, 15 December 2000, 27, 31 January, 3, 9, 15, 17,
19, 23 February 2001
Guiseppe Verdi: <I>Nabucco</I>

Bruno Caproni (Nabucco), John Daszak (Ismaele), Alastair Miles (Zaccaria),
Lauren Flanigan (Abigaille), Anne Mason (Fenena), Richard Angas (High
Priest of Baal)
ENO Orchestra and Chorus
Michael Lloyd (conductor), David Pountney (director)


The first performance of <I>Nabucco</I> was sold out, unusually for a new
production at the ENO, and the audience seemed to be collectively relieved
to get something familiar after a season of Italian marginalia. To the
credit of David Pountney and the performers, what we got was a long way
from familiar, but it was received with enormous enthusiasm.

Pountney’s approach was to look anew for the big ideas in the drama and
music and to build the action around them. The programme contained some
fruitful notes about faith, fanatical leadership and national identity (and
an interesting nod towards <I>King Lear</I>); but the key to this
production of <I>Nabucco</I> is that the main characters are all mad, and
the people (with Ismaele and Fenena as their individual representatives)
suffer as a result. In their different ways, Zaccaria’s zeal and
Abigaille’s erotically charged sibling rivalry are as damaging as Nabucco’s
out-and-out psychosis, which is at least followed by the return of reason
and redemption.
Presented with straightforward passion, expressed mainly in the singing
alone, the emotions involved were as clear cut as those in, say, one of
Handel’s scriptural oratorios. But, although Zaccaria, Ismaele and the
chorus (and Fenena after her conversion) wore modern costumes that
identified them as Jewish, there was no sense of anyone being right or
wrong until Nabucco’s revelation. Zaccaria's anger and Ismaele’s love for
Fenena were clearly as much the cause of the destruction of the Temple, and
the exile, as Nabucco’s megalomania. The luxury casting of Richard Angas as
the priest of Baal, Zaccaria’s Babylonian opposite number, highlighted the
fact that religion was a major part of the insane mixture, but that no
particular religion was the problem.
Pountney’s other radical choice was to make the orchestra part of the
community: they were in costume and played on platforms on the stage, with
only the violins in the pit. (The set was otherwise almost formless, with
the main action in a small area in the centre, with a strange device
including a golden ball representing the power of Baal, which reappeared in
act one as a wrecker’s ball and loomed over the rest of the drama.) In two
key scenes -- Zaccaria’s cello-accompanied prophecy and Abigaille’s dying
repentance with cor anglais -- the solo instrumentalists came on to the
stage with the singers and were an integral part of the staging. The
orchestra was a standard Verdian big band, with the brass at the top of the
stage, but the playing was wonderfully light, often elegant, and a long way
from the oompah band that the music can seem to invite. Michael Lloyd
conducted from wherever suited the particular scene, very unobtrusively
providing the only rational leadership on stage.

The singers were all, in different ways, extremely well cast. Bruno
Caproni, from Northern Ireland, is a mainstream Verdian baritone, who
looked exactly right in his Austro-Hungarian military regalia. He sang
superbly and got a demented edge in his voice, but never really went
meshugge. Alastair Miles, in contrast, was a totally wild and dangerous
Zaccaria, using a beautiful voice to frightening effect. John Daszak
certainly doesn’t have a Verdian voice, but gave an intense performance as
Ismaele, usually a fairly rotten role because he’s mainly a plot device.
Anne Mason was a rather austere Fenena, a kind of soprano Anne-Sofie von
Otter. In her UK debut, Lauren Flanigan was totally deranged as Abigaille
in a performance of amazing power and commitment, expressing all the
dysfunctional emotion that Nabucco and his regime repress. Flanigan was
limping very badly at the curtain call, a small indicator of her physical
engagement, and hopefully not a serious one.

After last season’s <I>Ernani</I>, the ENO seems to be turning into a Verdi
house in spite of a lack of big-league Verdi singers. <I>Trovatore</I> in
the spring should be interesting.

H.E. Elsom