Gyran

I wanted to see a production of Les Huguenots but I got more than I bargained for. It turns out that this was Joan Sutherland's final performance and the film ends with a 20-minute standing ovation. This was a fitting tribute to the second best soprano of the 20th century. Of Dame Joan's performance as Queen Marguerite of Navarre I will maintain a diplomatic silence, only saying that her decision to retire at that stage of her career was probably the right one. The outstanding performer in this production is Suzanne Johnston as the Queen's page Urbain. In a dour opera she lights up every scene in which she appears.

Meyerbeer's opera tells of the conflict between French Catholics and Huguenots in the 16th century culminating in the St Bartholemew's day massacre of the Huguenots in 1572. Don't watch it expecting a history lesson as the story concentrates on the love interest between Raoul, a protestant gentleman and Valentine, the daughter of a Catholic count. To be fair to Meyerbeer and his librettist he does give a good account of the animosity between the two factions at this stage in French history. We see the religious tolerance of Raoul, Valentine and of her Fiancé Le Compte de Nevers. Protestant bigotry is represented by Marcel, Raoul's servant. Catholic bigotry is represented by Le Compte de Saint-Bris, Valentine's father. Sometimes it all seems a bit too familiar as though the human race has not made much progress in the last 450 years.

The weakness of the plot is that it hinges on a familiar device in opera. Raoul witnesses Valentine, from a distance, talking to Nevers. She is breaking off their engagement but Raoul jumps to the conclusion that they are having an affair. He subsequently spurns Valentine, in the presence of the Queen, prompting her father to plot the revenge that culminates in the massacre.

Although this performance is from 1990, it seems much more dated than that, possibly it is was a production that was brought out of retirement as a vehicle for Dame Joan. As you might expect, it is a bit fuzzy and is not in widescreen. It is done dead straight with period costumes and scenery and a stand and deliver style of performance. Most of the male characters are named Le Compte de something or other, dress in doublet and hose and sport curly moustaches and little pointy beards so it is sometimes difficult to remember who is who.

Meyerbeer's music is pleasant and tuneful without being memorable. The best music comes in the fourth and fifth acts of this long opera, for those who are still awake. Anson Austin as Raoul and Amanda Thane as Valentine have a long scene together where Raoul has to choose between his love for Valentine and his loyalty to the Hugeuenot cause. The final act is quite brutal and shocking and I did not see it coming. It's nice sometimes to see an opera for the first time and not know how it is going to end.

Some of the ballet sequences and pageantry have been cut from this production, not surprisingly given its length. More surprisingly, the whole of Act V Scene I is cut in which the protestants celebrate the marriage of the Catholic Queen Marguerite to the Protestant King Henry of Navarre.

I don't know what possessed the usually reliable librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal to write this. It has been compared with The Magic Flute but, to me, A Midsummer Night's Dream came more to mind. We have three levels of characters, the spirits, the regal and the ordinary people. The story, as far as it is possible to summarise it, concerns an emperor and an empress who cannot have children. This is because the empress is the daughter of Keikobad, the king of the spirits and she has lost her shadow during her transformation into human form. For some reason that I don't understand, not having a shadow is symbolic of being unable to bear children. Her nurse suggests popping down to earth to see if they can pick up a shadow from someone who does not need one. They end up in the home of Barak, a dyer, and his wife. The dyer's wife does not have a name even though she is the main character in the opera. She is unsympathetic to Barak's urge to have children on account of their impoverished circumstances. In fact, she also wants him to kick out his three disabled brothers who live with them. If you must know, one has only one arm, another has only one eye and the third is a hunchback. The wife readily agrees to sell her shadow but later regrets it. The empress then has second thoughts mainly because she is impressed by what a good, honest man Barak is. It turns out that this has all been a test and when she refuses to take the wife's shadow she acquires one of her own. The opera ends with a joyful quartet with the two happy couples looking forward to having many children.

I cannot say that I was enamoured of the theme. It all sounded like Pro-Life propaganda, only more so. There is a chorus of unborn children but, more accurately, they are not yet conceived children. It's as if there were all these children waiting to be conceived if only their parents were not so selfish.

This could have been a disaster in the hands of a German postdramatic director. In fact director Jonathan Kent plays it with a pretty straight bat, possibly taking the view that the opera is so weird that it does not need extra layers of symbolism. He successfully manages to convey to the stage most of von Hofmannstahl's weird imagery although the chorus of unborn children singing in a pan of frying fish is quite a big ask. Even with a synopsis in front of me and with Kent's clear staging I struggled to make sense of the plot.

It is, though, quite beautiful to look at with a fabulous castle for the emperor and empress who look like a pimped up version of the king and queen of hearts. Barak's hut is also a fabulous set. It is a room that serves as a garage, a launderette for his dying business and a bed-sitter. I was impressed by way that Mariinsky kept changing the scenes from one to the other. I don't know whether this was done in real time but I suspect that it was because Strauss provides lots of intermezzi to cover these changes.

From a musical point of view these intermezzi are almost the best bits of the opera. There is a huge orchestra, under Valery Gergiev that makes the most of the sumptuous tunes and luscious harmonies. To be honest, the vocal lines do not add much to what the orchestra is doing. The exception to this, if you are still awake at the end of this long opera, is in the final act. Here we have the vocal lines soaring over the orchestra, particularly in the joyful final quartet which is somewhat reminiscent of Der Rosenkavalier. Edem Umerov is a lovable Barak in his one size fits nobody tee shirt. Mlada Khudolei gives a touching performance as the unhappy empress with some frighteningly high and complex music. The star of the show is Olga Sergevea as The Wife in another high soprano part of stunning complexity. She gives a gut-wrenching performance as a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

Director Mike Leigh must have fond memories of schoolboy productions of G&S operas as he faithfully reproduces one here. What is most noticeable about this production is that he succeeds in removing all trace of humour from the proceedings. There is no attempt to give the pirates or the young ladies individual characters. The ladies, in particular move around the stage like a flock of sheep. The choreography, such as it is, is lamentable. The production looks lost on the vast Colluseum stage. Designer Alison Chitty vignettes some of the scenes in garish geometrical shapes but this only serves to emphasise the emptiness of most of the stage. The recording of the vocal dialogue is unpleasantly boomy.

Joshua Bloom as the pirate king and Robert Murray as Frederic are rather bland. Andrew Shore struggles with his Major-General patter song and too often parts company with the orchestra. Claudia Boyle is an impressive Mabel and deserves to be in a better production.

This is one of Gilbert's sillier libretti although Sullivan provides some of his best music. It is debatable whether this silly story of pirates who are really noblemen who have gone astray can ever be successfully produced for a modern audience. The evidence of this production suggests that this opera is a poor wandering one.