Dantons' Death, by Gottfried von Einem
British Premiere 7May97


Danton              Andrew Slater
Camille Desmoulins  Alan Oke
Lucile Desmoulins   Alison Roddy
Herault de Sechelles
                    Andrew Mackenzie-Wicks
Robespierre         Wills Morgan
Herrmann            Andrew Greenan
St Just             John Hall

Conductor           David Angus
Director            John Lloyd Davies

Translation         Amanda Holden

New Sussex Opera Chorus
Symphony Orchestra of Flanders

I didn't see the premiere, but a second performance on Saturday 10 May.
There was a reasonable audience in the Dome in spite of some negative
reviews.

Danton's Death is really epic theatre, with full-strength "classical"
music, not unlike the best film scores of Rosza or Neumann but with
Straussian vocal lines that don't always get heard over the orchestral
exuberance. As theatre, I felt it worked superbly. Von Einem (or his
librettist? I can't see one credited) seems to have extracted key scenes
from the play, so that the opera consists of a series of symbolic personal
interactions, the climax of which is Danton's refusal to play along with
the tribunal that orders his execution. There isn't much personal or
political background, so everything depends on the performers delivering
the dramatic moment. (This is especially true for a British audience for
whom the figure of Danton probably doesn't have the resonance that it does
in other European countries.)

On the whole, they did, outstandingly. Andrew Slater's Danton was
passionate and (necessarily, with the competition from the orchestra)
forceful, and Wills Morgan was suitably cold and sinister as Robespierre.
(He seemed much more at home here than in Monteverdi's Orfeo with the Kent
Opera a few months ago.) Alan Oke and, particularly, Alison Roddy were very
moving as the Desmoulins. Lucile is supposed to lose her reason when
Camille is arrested, but Roddy never quite got demented, though she has a
lot of stage presence and sang excitingly.

The chorus lost against the orchestra, however. This might have been
because of the set, which extended part way into the auditorium with a
platform that allowed the principals to sing in front of the orchestra
while the chrorus were stuck behind. But it's more likely that there just
weren't enough of them.

(One review described the set as a cross between IMF and Mondrian. It was
based on a black grid with white panels and the odd red element. The most
striking feature was the door, which was in the form of a guillotine that
came down to close it.)

Altogether, especially after the poor reviews, this was an interesting
surprise. I suppose it's difficult to fit into the repertoire, because it's
a short evening's worth (two acts of 45 minutes each) but requires
heavyweight singers and makes them work. The subject may be of limited
resonance as well, though, as the programme notes point out, it has
something in common with Peter Grimes, which was written at about the same
time: Danton is an unsociable type who is destroyed by a conformist mob.
He's a lot more interesting historically and personally than Grimes, and
the music goes down a lot more easily.