Subject: Sonnets of Michelangelo, Lyric, Hammersmith, 8Apr98
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Sung by    Toby Spence
Played by  Julian Milford
Staged by  Neil Bartlett

"with 17 beautiful silent witnesses"

Britten's settings of seven of Michelangelo's sonnets was the first thing 
he wrote specifically for Peter Pears after they became lovers. The poems 
are an efficient synthesis of renaissance conventions into a drama of 
Platonic love (strictu sensu), and in their recurring themes of the 
struggle with the flesh they are strongly and at one point explicitly 
sado-masochistic. Britten sets them (in Italian) like Lieder, in a cycle 
of contrasting textures and tonalities. The result is typical Britten, 
though the word setting is less striking in Italian.

Toby Spence sang the sonnets standing in front of the piano, or sitting 
at one side of the stage. His voice is rather touchingly rough-hewn, and 
quite expressive, and he was allowed to get on with the singing, using 
forceful gestures within the limits that you'd accept at at recital. 
Julian Milford accompanied very well.

The production around him made an abstract drama of the poems. The 
setting was the world of Britten and Auden in the 1930s. (The emotional 
content of the production was pure Auden, though I'd assume that Britten 
was deliberating breaking new ground with the German-Italian merger of 
form and text.) The line "Tell me the truth about love"  (from a carabet 
song, words by Auden, that Britten wrote and performed in 1938) was 
projected across the curtain before it went up. The "witnesses", an 
assembly of the usual Oxbridge chums, were all in white tie, with 
occasional variations, and a waiter handing out glasses. For example, the 
beloved in Sonnett LV appeared in his underpants, and formed part of a 
pieta composition to reflect the implicit death wish (either masochism or 
Platonic progression to love of the spirit and renunciation of the body) 
of the poet, reflected on his beloved. 

This was the general approach: the actors mimed an abstract drama 
reflecting the themes of the following sonnet. Another example: Sonnet 
XXXI is another forcefully masochist expression of the battering the 
lover undergoes at the hands of love, which ends with the idea that he 
serves the pleasure of an armed Cavalier (another figure of love 
personified, but Michelangelo's beloved was called Callavieri). Before 
Spence sang it (very dramatically, and nearly sounding Italian), the one 
of the actors tried to get another to beat him up, and eventually made 
him angry enough to do it. Before Sonnet XXXVIII, which begins by asking 
the sea to take back the tears that the lover has shed, the actors all 
tried to get into doors, and one was reduced to loud weeping, in an 
allusion to the locked out lover weeping on the doorstep, often found in 
classical love poetry.

I couldn't see all of what was going on (last-minute seat as usual), but 
I think there was quite a lot in it. There was, though, considerably more 
action than singing, and the continuity of the music was lost, even 
though the drama of the words was strongly reinforced. It also risked 
being precious, but there was enough self-parody (synchronized sweeping 
up of floppy fringes, for example) to keep it amusing.

My other grouch was that the performance was 50 minutes or so at regular 
performance prices. A double bill would have been nice. 

However, this production is part of a series of four new productions at 
the Lyric in the next couple of months, so I suppose I should regard it 
as a festival rather than a season. The other productions are a similar 
style staging of Kindertotenlieder, also by Bartlett, and two new works: 
an opera based on Struwwelpeter, and one based on Genet's The maids, with 
tenor Nigel Robson and his bro, Christopher, the counter tenor, as the 
maids. I might have to see it.