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Nothing happens, everyone sings Rule Britannia London Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House 05/17/2000 - Thomas Arne, Alfred Andrew Rees (Corin), Mhairi Lawson (Emma/Spirit), Daniel Norman (Alfred),
Elena Ferrari (Eltruda), Sally Bruce-Payne (Edward), Louise Mott (Edith)
Christian Curnyn (conductor), Netia Davan Wetton (director)
Early Opera Company Orchestra
Thomas Arne, born and buried in Covent Garden, was the Andrew Lloyd Webber
of his day, a composer and entrepreneur who gave filled theatres by giving
the punters what they enjoyed. So it is doubly appropriate to open this
year's BOC Covent Garden Festival, whose initial aim was to provide
entertainment to bring customers into Covent Garden's shops and
restaurants, with a work by Arne.
Alfred, written in 1740, started out as a court masque and was never
in fact a great commercial success for Arne. But it came in useful for him
and for other producers over the twenty years after its composition as a
statement of English identity in a time fraught with worry about foreign
invasions and Roman Catholic subversion from within. This leaves it almost
meaningless for an audience today. Unlike Handel's analogous -- and much
more ferociously nationalistic -- oratorios from the 1740s, Alfred
on the whole lacks music that stands on its own. This might be an accident
of survival, since the choruses and most of the recitatives are lost. But
the surviving arias compare badly with Handel's, the closing,
pseudo-Handelian heroic "Rule Britannia" in particular. This staging of the
surviving music had an uphill battle from the start.
On the whole, the orchestra won, while the singers just about kept their
ground. The pastoral airs (for the happy shepherds among whom Alfred find
refuge, though he doesn't burn the cakes in this one) are straightforward
and jolly. Andrew Rees and Mhairi Lawson had fun with the opening scenes,
with back-projected goats and Good-Life setting. Daniel Norman looked the
part as a politician Alfred (nearly hairless and blond). After a shaky
start from an impossible nose-down position on the stage he warmed to the
music. Elena Ferrari similarly did a generic MP's wife pretty well, but
took time to get into the music. Sally Bruce-Payne looked as if she should
have been called Kevin, but gave a suitably youthful and muscular
peformance of Edward's emotionally ambivalent arias, from distraught to
blood-thirsty. Louse Mott as Edith, a woman whose lover has been killed in
the war, gave a completely compelling performance that stood out a long way
from the rest. Mott is definitely a star. The others, on paper a very good
cast, seemed collectively underwhelmed with the material.
Netia Davan Wetton's grey production probably didn't help, although it was
ingenious in some ways. The set consisted of a platform made of half of a
union flag, in shades of grey, and a blank screen for back projections. Two
dancers acted out the battles in a West-Side-Storyish sort of way. The
singers wore modern dress, and the battle was an election: Edward prepared
for battle by stuffing envelopes with target letters. (Pat Wainwright
wouldn't have let him get away with folding the address and photo on the
inside.) It was inexpensive and reasonably to the point, since an election
is a decision about national identity. It wasn't very interesting, but
perhap Alfred isn't really that interesting. H.E. Elsom
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