Attila

'Attila' doesn't see the best of Verdi, and dramatically is not his most concise ('Otello' or 'Rigoletto'), being sometimes static and silly and with some dramaturgical weaknesses. But it has some lovely music- Ezio's "E Gettata La Mia Sorte" is the most familiar to me- and deserves to be better known.

Even if the opera is problematic, it did deserve much better treatment than this production, where the somewhat generously average rating is for the musical values and impressive singing only for a production that looks ugly and shows once again a complete lack of taste and sense from Peter Konwitschny.

The orchestral playing is expansive and sympathetic in the recitatives and fire with fire and pathos in the arias. The chorus sing stirringly and with great feeling, and while it is a good thing that they were not neglected their stage business is overdone and tiresome. The conducting is accommodating yet alert to the drama, "E Gettata La Mia Sorte" is a notable example of the musical values being particularly impressive.

Dmitry Belosselskiy is a rich voiced and expressively refined Attila, and is also a very authoritative actor. Lucrecia Garcia's has a radiant beauty but also steel, she also commands the stage very well. George Petean's voice is as strong as an oak, if occasionally pushing at the top, and he has charisma galore. The weak link is the vocally far too held back and dramatically stolid Forresto of Nikolai Schukoff.

However, the production not only looks sparsely ugly, the backdrop looks so drab, but the modern dress just jars constantly and everything just looks cheap and like the production was struggling with a low budget.

It is Konwitschny's staging that undermines the production the most. Maybe it was trying to overcome any weaknesses in the drama, but it doesn't in any way manage that. It is so confused, so static often in interaction, tastelessly incoherent with so many touches that are at odds with the text and veers often on comical in the most grotesque of ways, so lacking in sense and taste that it is easy to get bored silly quickly regardless of the cast's noble efforts.

To conclude, impressive cast and musical values but ugly visuals and Konwitschny's inability to direct an opera production with any regard to the librettist and composer's intention bring things down.

This is the third Verdi production seen of his (including the worst 'Don Carlos' on DVD, and a 'La Traviata' lacking in passion or emotion) and perhaps the sixth production seen of his overall, including his attempts at Wagner (including a musically very good but weird 'Lohengrin' and a mediocre at best 'Tristan Und Isolde' with an outstanding Isolde but a terrible Tristan). Of the bunch the best was 'Gotterdammerung', and even that just scrapes average in quality. 5/10 Bethany Cox