London, Royal Opera House: ‘The Tempest’

72 Tempo 58 (229) 72–80 © 2004 Cambridge University Press DOI: 10.1017/S0040298204000245 Printed in the United Kingdom London, Royal Opera House: ‘The Tempest’ descending tones and fifths. In the third act, as nature regains its control of the island, the figure By all (press) accounts, the overture to The is inverted: it is this figure that governs both the Tempest, Thomas Adès’s first full-scale opera, was prelude and the final scene for Caliban and Ariel. completed at speed – just five days before the 20 No less convincing is the design of Ariel’s music: February première, at the Royal Opera House, the first act is stratospheric, circling around top E, Covent Garden. Comparisons with Rossini natu- pushing the coloratura soprano Cyndia Sieden to rally followed, but the question remained whether her limits (a challenge which, I might add, she car- such facility would be married to the necessary ried off magnificently). Recognizing both the substance for a setting of Shakespeare’s play. physical demands on the singer and Ariel’s grow- Robin Holloway’s claim (in the Financial Times) ing empathy for the humans he torments, the that the opera was ‘make or break’ for Adès may in general tessitura descends throughout the opera: hindsight come to appear somewhat overstated, Sieden’s lowest note tellingly and hauntingly coin- but there is no doubt that this was an important cides with the words ‘if I were human’. milestone in the composer’s career. What is truly convincing about Adès’s score is The mildly controversial decision to write a the fact that musico-dramatic structures such as libretto after Shakespeare may have irritated these are not only intellectually satisfying, but purists, but Meredith Oakes’s paraphrase of the (increasingly) emotionally too. The narrative play has much to commend it. Extracting from the demands of the plot and the nature of the libretto original a traditional narrative highlighting the seemed, on first hearing, to inhibit the expression power of redemptive love, Oakes simplified the in the first act (with the exception of Ariel’s beauti- plot, rendering it more suitable for the opera ful ‘Five fathoms deep’ and the entrance of house. The idiom has similarly been updated, Ferdinand), but with the second and third acts the with pervasive use of short rhyming couplets music and dramatic pacing were wonderfully replacing Shakespearean iambic pentameter. This judged. literary conceit, mirroring the artifice of The second act, which concentrates at first on Prospero’s island, does not inhibit rich poetic the delegation from Naples, provides Adès with statements: in the end, one barely misses the bard. the opportunity for greater characterization (and However, the occasional lapse into triteness inex- fun). In his aria for Ian Bostridge’s Caliban, he cusably causes the couplets to draw unwelcome demonstrates a new-found lyricism, offering at attention to themselves, as at the height of the rec- the same time a reading of Caliban not as a savage, onciliation scene towards the end of Act 3: but as a fey dispossessed prince. But it is in the final Miranda: How good they are, how bright, how scene, in which Miranda and Ferdinand duet with grand / And I am loved by Ferdinand a Mahlerian intensity, that the lyricism reaches Ferdinand: Oh perfection of my life / I’ve a father and new heights. Any suspicions that the romantic a wife sensibilities lurking under the music of the first The discrepancy between the blandness of liter- act were but another mask for Adès to hide behind ary expression and the vibrancy of Adès’s music at were dissipated: the music is both sincere and this point suggests that this was not an ironic ges- overwhelming. ture; the resulting sniggers in the audience were In the final act, Adès’s music and Tom Cairns’s unfortunate, but not unwarranted. production finally unleashed the magic of If the local interaction of rhyming couplets and Prospero’s island (although it is difficult to see the music at times create figures of dissonance, how the dinosaur models, which were straddled the same is not true for the music and plot consid- on occasion by a variety of characters, added to ered on the broadest scale. The first act, for the ambience). Emphasizing the unambiguous example, is dominated by a motif of alternate romanticism of Adès’s language, one finds an descending semitones and fifths that is first sung abundance of familiar musical and dramatic ges- by Prospero (a commanding Simon Keenlyside). tures, not least in the use of a passacaglia to By the end of the second act, with the lines ‘I have underscore the reconciliation quintet. Although lost my daughter’, the motif mutates into there is no question of its power, nor its constantly 73 enticing orchestration, this language has not been percussion sections, but by giving the soloist plen- won without cost: scenes such as Antonio’s brutal ty of unaccompanied or lightly-accompanied rebuttal of Prospero’s forgiveness might have ben- material and ensuring the orchestra answers the efited from a slightly more acerbic idiom. soloist (at least in the first movement) in a way that The outstanding performance by cast, chorus retains the mood of the soloist’s entry. The ten- and orchestra under Adès’s baton, alongside the minute first movement – essentially quick and constantly imaginative staging and lighting, high- spiky in feel, with a more reflective coda – evokes lighted the significant achievement of the score. Walton from the off in a brisk semiquaver figure With The Tempest, Adès’s undisputably exquisite from the soloist (the gifted young Lawrence aural imagination, technical fluency and dramatic Power with the BBC Symphony under Oliver sensibilities are coupled with a depth of expres- Knussen, Turnage’s former teacher). This opens sion that can be found in few of his earlier works. the work and the movement is built upon it, as Though it is not quite the unequivocal master- well as the brief military brass and percussion flar- piece that some had been hoping for, there are ings from the orchestra. signs that his music is reaching a new maturity, More successful than the orchestra’s comments and indicative of further riches to come. on a rather unmemorable viola phrase is the coda, Edward Venn where by keeping the viola uncharacteristically silent and waiting, Turnage is able to deploy the full orchestra in longer-breathed phrases of deep- er texture. Here too Turnage fans can enjoy the Barbican, London: Turnage’s Viola Concerto trumpets and horns transforming a phrase that ’On Opened Ground’ had seemed merely petulant on the viola into one of real anger. In the wake of this movement’s cli- Not being a string player himself, Mark-Anthony max the viola has a entry of slow melancholy Turnage approached his first concerto for a string marked ‘warm and intense’ while – in an assured instrument with some trepidation. It turns out move – two solo violins play a slower, more tenu- that while the writing for the viola is idiomatic ous version of the original theme, reeling after the enough, Turnage has something of a love/hate impact of the tutti. relationship with traditional ideas about the con- In the second movement, ‘Interrupted Song certo. Divided into two movements – Turnage and Chaconne’, Turnage keeps the viola to the admitted that in the unlikely event of his writing a fore by using a very different approach from the symphony it would have three, five or six move- first. The soloist holds a long above-the-treble-clef ments, never four – the new concerto (completed line while woodwind and divisi solo strings have a in 2001 and here given its UK première) has the simple repeating and lamenting accompaniment. expected cadenza but one that appears only 36 After a minute or so comes the first of three ‘dark bars in! Such challenging attitudes to an old form interruptions’ where the viola is turned from its characterize the new piece, subtitled On Opened rather shapeless ‘song’ by an autumnal descend- Ground. Even so the work’s structure – scherzando ing figure that sweeps across the orchestra and opening with slower coda, slow second move- causes the viola to move back to the richer alto clef ment and brisk chaconne finale – bring us back to in a mood of nostalgic rumination. Alas, this the more usual reference points for a concerto. expressive interlude is all too brief, and the While he acknowledges the surprising influence soloist’s limited use of the material within the of Walton ‘in the second movement’, the influ- interruptions is an odd compositional quirk. ence of that composer’s own viola concerto is Sometimes Turnage’s conscious challenge to actually more pervasive than Turnage would have romantically-expressive string instrument writing us believe. Even the title, while apparently making (danger: too much lyricism ahead!) can feel frus- reference to Seamus Heaney’s collection Opened trating. Ground, seems to point more fruitfully to the The Chaconne sees the greatest interaction ground bass of the second movement’s chaconne. between soloist and orchestra in a rather skittish One thing is certainly as described: On Opened finale as both forces work themselves up to one of Ground is, as he claims, one of Turnage’s most lyri- Turnage’s trademark stamping dance-rhythms. cal pieces and might win him an audience for The soloist, as before, reacts by choosing quiet whom the earlier astrigencies were too great. contemplation before the first movement’s main Violas notoriously get lost in or dominated by theme returns, though without altering the irres- the orchestral texture and Turnage has been oluteness of mood.

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