Beatrice Cenci, by Berthold Goldschmidt (1950), libretto by Martin Esslin, based on the play by Percy Bysshe Shelley. "UK staged premiere" Francesco Cenci Stephen Bowen Lucrezia Magdalen Ashman Beatrice Julia Leyland Bernarno Heather Edwards Cardinal Camillo Pauls Putnins Orsino Benjamin Lake Marzio Peter Willcock Olimpio/Carpenter James Norton Judge/Officer Julian Smith Singer James Geer Prince Colonna Andrew McIntosh Andrea Thill Benevenuto Mantero Carpenter Stephen Bloy Dancers Pao-Yi Liao, Jean Abreu, Mintaka Jannes, Michelle NicChon Uladh Conductor Gregory Rose Director Stephen Langridge Trinity College of Music Opera Group and Orchestra Goldschmidt wrote Beatrice Cenci as a commission for the Festival of Britain in 1951. It was first performed in 1988. This is apparently its first staged production in the UK, where Goldschmidt lived from 1938 to his death in 1996. It's easy to see why it didn't click with the New Elizabethans in 1951, whose idea of modernity was mass-produced sixteenth-century houses on suburban estates: Shelley's play is a classic revenge tragedy, exploring the extremes of experience with emotional brutality and, in the end, resigned pessimism. Goldschmidt's treatment has more in common with Dialogues of the Carmelites than with Gloriana, with touches of his Berlin theatre days in the 1920s and 30s. Beatrice, her step-mother Lucrezia and Lucrezia's son Bernardo live in fear of the brutal Francesco Cenci. Beatrice hopes to marry Orsino, her old love, even though he is now a priest, but he is planning to seduce and abandon her. Francesco has to hand over a third of his wealth to the Pope to avoid being arrested for his general wickedness. Wound up, he hosts a celebration for his people at which he cheers the death of his sons in Spain. Beatrice appeals to the gathering to rescue her from him, and in revenge he rapes her. Beatrice and Lucrezia have him murdered, only to learn that the Pope was about to imprison him anyway. They are convicted of murder, in spite of appeals by the cardinal who investigated Francesco's crimes and Bernardo. (The Pope more or less says that young people will find any old excuse for parricide if Beatrice gets away with it -- a nastily modern-sounding line.) As they die, the people both cheer and pity them, and the cardinal comments on the web of evil in which all are involved. But it's also amazing that it hasn't been staged before now, as it's incredible, and has all the components of success: powerful drama, opportunities for great singing and some lovely lyrical themes that you come away humming. These happen to be Goldschmidt's settings of poems by Shelley that he or Esslin inserted in the play, and they are probably the most English thing about it, simple music for some of the most unaffected Romantic poetry, occuring at moments of high emotion, for example "Time" as Beatrice waits for the murderers to kill her father, and "False friend..." as she waits in prison to die, to a melody that recurrs as Beatrice and Lucrezia mount the scaffold. Goldschmidt's music is demanding, but not impossible, for both he audience and the singers. He seems to be aware of the relationship between Romanticism and bel canto, and writes scenes that focus all the emotion on Beatrice's voice, for example, a mad scene after the rape. But there is also some post-Straussian orchestration which, in the smallish space in Spitalfields, risked overwhelming the singers -- several of them began by shouting. The first two acts end strikingly with a violent sequence of chords, first minor, then major, and the third act ends in a quiet, religious echo of the requiem mass theme which followed the execution. In general, the young cast dealt well with the drama and seemed to be stretched in the positive sense by the music. Stephen Bowen, who was impressive in a comparatively small and amiable role in last year's production of The albatross, showed as Francesco that he is great Scarpia material. He was completely convincing as a man who is going to do whatever he wants, especially if the church or anyone else tells him he's depraved. He also has a very fine voice, and I think delivered the most accurate singing of the performance. (This was a case where I was relieved that he seemed a jolly enough person at the curtain calls.) Julia Leyland as Beatrice made a fair stab at some music that is very demanding indeed. Pauls Putnins as the sympathetic cardinal had the vocal and personal gravitas required. He's got the makings of a serious heavy bass, and his English diction seems to have improved a lot since he was in Eccles' Semele a couple of years ago. I found James Geer's performance of the song "To Sophia" enchanting, though there doesn't seem to be much to it, or to his voice, except some indefinable charm. The production was very straightforward, with period costumes and conventional gestures as you'd expect in bel canto. The set consisted of a platform sloping down from left to right in the performance area (there's no stage or pit at Spitalfields) with steps down to a tiled area downstage left, and up to double doors upstage left, and over the orchestra upstage right. The orchestra was fitted around the right hand side of the platform, which can't have helped the balance. The platform was the public area where the crowd gathered for the celebration and execution, and the tiled area was Beatrice and Lucrezia's private space, first (perhaps) their rooms, and then the prison. There was almost no stage decoration, except some bars that moved from the orchestra side of the platform to the opposite side to form the prison, but the set was both striking and effective. I'm definitely going to get the recording, and I also hope that somebody does a full professional production of Beatrice Cenci soon. Before tonight, the only work of Goldschmidt's I knew was Der Verflossene, the painfully funny song (on Ute Lemper's Berlin cabaret CD) about the shadow with a polka-dot tie and a halo -- the singer's increasingly frantic and jealous imagining of his beloved's ex.