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| Verdi's Nabucco,
ENO, London |
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| Media,
Matt Fresco,
05 February 2001 |
Rating: F4
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David Poutney's production of Verdi's Nabucco is a thoughtful and thoroughly entertaining opera. Poutney not only directs but has translated this biblical thriller to English. His staging leaves something to be desired but his attempt to bring some modern echoes to the piece is masterful.
The show opens as if we are the congregation at a barmitvah. A child of thirteen reads the lesson dressed in his synagogue best. Another re-reads it in Hebrew and then the huge curtain draws back as if a lesson from the Talmud is about to be read and a huge page is being turned. Beneath the page the history, politics and religion come to life.
Poutney has the orchestra on stage throughout. Dressed in the sort of fatigues that Kosovan rebels would wear they dominate a stage made of scaffolding which represents not only construction but destruction too. The conductor Michael Lloyd relishes the opportunity to strut the width of the stage as if he were a rabbi officiating at the barmitvah. We are the congregation and Lloyd is determined to direct us as much as his orchestra and singers. This packed stage though leaves precious little room for the players and singers who are cramped into a tiny arena. While it adds tension it prevents movement.
This is a marvellous production full of resonance and passion. The eponymous Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylonian, played by the masterful Bruno Caproni, is resplendent as he imitates vile dictators in an impossibly ostentatious but dashing red military uniform. In 1845 he would have reminded Verdi's original Milanese audience of Pope Pius IX just as he reminds us of the modern day Saddam Hussein who presides over much of what was Babylon.
The UK has been suffering from a stifling atmosphere of hate for all things posh. The House of Commons has just banned fox hunting not because its cruel - the slaughter of millions of cows a day is cruel - but because it is the preserve of the ostentatiously wealthy. Opera has had a similar bashing. The public still sees it as a rich man's pastime. But the ENO is the opera of the people. With tickets from as little as £3, this production was packed to the rafters not with the bejewelled lords of the land but with a bejewelled pink party who know high camp when they see it. So a crowd that might have been boogying down at G-A-Y were appreciating the rebellious beauty of opera for all at the ENO and loving every moment of it.
But this is a piece of political dissent. This opera provides visceral excitement and passion not elitism. Opera unlike most things in life is not over when the fat lady sings, its over when the fat lady is dead on stage with a dagger hanging off her ample bosom. Given the absurd days we live in where the beautiful have to try and look like famine victims opera remains the last glimmer of hope for those that care more about talent than waist size.
Think about it, what is more absurd? A fifty year old Madonna in Stetson gyrating hips that just gave birth to a preposterous circus wedding and vacuously singing 'music makes the bougouise and a rebel' or a chorus at the ENO? You are right neither is more preposterous. But both make for wonderful theatre, only one has something to say.
2000/2001 Season
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