Bruno Caproni        Nabucco
John Daszak          Ismaele
Alastair Miles       Zaccaria
Lauren Flanigan      Abigaille
Claire Weston        Fenena
Richard Angas        High Priest of Baal

ENO Orchestra and Chorus

Michael Lloyd Conductor
David Pountney Director

The ENO started the continuing run of Nabucco appropriately on 27 January,
the hundredth anniversary of Verdi's death and also the anniversary of the
liberation of Auschwitz, now marked as a day of commemoration in the UK.
The production is essentially the same -- they've put the scaffolding back
at either side of the stage -- and so is the cast, except that Claire
Weston replaces Anne Mason as Fenena. Graeme Danby was due to replace
Richard Angas in the small but, here, structural role of the high priest of
Baal, but Angas appeared in this performance, as sinister as before.

I was five rows back in the stalls this time, and found the production even
more fascinating though totally incomprehensible. The main characters are
on stage most of the time, leaving mainly so that they can enter to music
that marks an entrance. There are no breaks between scenes or acts. Only
the singers in the next scene take up new positions. And there is
absolutely no sense of place, except of the stage itself, full to
overflowing with orchestra and often with the chorus. The shoes at the
front turned out to be full of water, which the chorus empty onto
themselves one by one during Va pensiero. This chorus staged something like
a sit-down demo with the Babylonian guards taking people away one by one
(as they did at the start of the exile). The gold ball that is Baal looks
like an infantile joke, though it is a splendid symbol of Abigaille's
battiness as she throws it around and the High Priest catches it anxiously.

In the middle of all the confusions, Bruno Caproni's Nabucco is a solid
centre. Shortish and rotund in red uniform and gold braid he looks as if he
belongs in Gilbert and Sullivan, but he makes the music sound as certain as
something from one of Handel's oratorios, though a lot more sonorous.
There's probably quite a lot of Handel's Saul in Nabucco, Of course Nabucco
joins in the Israelite triumphalism where Saul (unusually for a Handelian
Israelite) caves in in despair.
But all of the singers, and the orchestra, were flying tonight. Perhaps it
was the occasion, or perhaps it was a successful ensemble getting back
together again after a break. Lauren Flanigan was as deranged as ever,
piling on odd items of clothing like a schizophrenic. Claire Weston was a
bit too chunky for the fatigues, which was the costume designer's, not
hers, and otherwise spot on as Fenena. John Daszak was a distraught,
definitely romantic Ismaele, and you wished he'd had more of a role in the
later action. Alistair Miles was amazing as Zaccaria, totally fanatical,
totally musical and sounding extremely Italian even though the translation
had, again, echoes of Handel's oratorios, as did some of the music, for
example in the aria about not calling on the Lord in vain.

Part of the success of the production probably lies in its generality.
Pountney gets things away from Cecil B. De Mille biblical epic and closer
to home, with the generic twentieth-century Jewish clothes. But he also
ties the narrative into scripture with the short quotations in English and
Hebrew that preface each act. It's actually not so far from The death of
Klinghoffer, with murderous obsessives driven mad by injustice on both
sides, in a timeless but resonant setting. With luck, this production
should be around for a while.