There seems to be a subtle strategy in operation these days whereby art-works of a critically thorny nature considered from the optic of feminist political correctness are given over, as a pre-emptive ploy, into the care of women themselves. When the National Theatre stages Middleton’s cautionary tale of bad-blood amongst the sisterhood, Women Beware Women, later this year, it will be directed by Marianne Elliot. The new, third series Arden Shakespeare of the similarly contentious The Taming of the Shrew - to be published this Spring - has been edited by Barbara Hodgson. And tonight, at Covent Garden, we have Mozart’s, or more accurately, da Ponte’s sourly cynical account of female inconstancy conducted for the first time in the house by a woman, Julia Jones. In the event, her conducting was one of the otherwise dispiriting evening’s brighter aspects (though not as bright as the stage, unrelieved blinding beige, for the which Jonathan Miller has the brass face to receive a co-credit as Lighting Designer, as though setting a level at which everything and everybody, both on stage and in the auditorium, is more-or-less unvaryingly floodlit all night long constitutes a “design”). She sets tempi that are determined, at least in allegros, by the maximum speed at which rapid wind figuration can be still be cleanly, audibly articulated, exactly the sort of thing Karl Böhm used to do in Mozart, and which immediately predicates a fairly steady overture because the bassoon solos otherwise become a smudged blur, but as a result emerged immaculately here. Much else was similarly concerned with clarity of articulation, though it has to be said that whereas Böhm’s account of the score – which I heard at Covent Garden right at the end of his life – was suffused with a kind of golden, autumnal glow, Ms. Jones presents a far leaner, meaner sound (fortepiano recits, sharp and jagged) and, of course, a far fuller text (still no “Al fato dan legge” or “Ah, lo veggio”, though). I rather think I once heard her conduct La traviata at the Liceo, which had similar virtues of unobtrusive, albeit plain-Jane, correctness.

The Miller staging is now exactly fifteen years old, and is on its seventh outing in the house. The revival is credited to Daniel Dooner, who presumably did all the work, but this didn’t prevent the shy, retiring – indeed, he’s been retiring for about twenty years now – Miller from taking a reluctant curtain-call at the end (“drag me on, dear”). The sole positive thing I have ever thought about the wretched show is that at least it isn’t the one it replaced, the heroically execrable Johannes Schaaf staging, all Kalashnikovs in some iron-shuttered wavy-brown box. If only it was the one before that, John Copley’s 1968 production – Covent Garden’s first, believe it or not - which lasted until 1986, pure and perfect Marivaux to look at, and home to the likes of Margaret Price, Elisabeth Söderström, Lucia Popp, Mackerras, Böhm and Solti (about which the pathetically inadequate performance history note in the programme has nothing to say past its 1968 opening). Heigh-ho. So much for progress. As it is, we’re still stuck in Miller’s beige box all night long, like a run-down casino, with only the upstage door for architectural relief, and such ongoing nonsense as having to listen to an outdoor wind serenade going on in the pit, coupled with references to trees and gardens in Act II all the while stuck in some tatty hangar that looks as if the bailiffs have been in, yet in which black business-suited men and women move in and out at liberty singing about the beautiful military life. It’s three hours of excruciating visual sterility, the only “humour” extracted like teeth, either by the expedient of jokey surtitles (which are a disgrace in this show, omitting anything that doesn’t suit the concept, like boats, or swords, or zecchini, or indeed beaten chocolate: Despina with her Starbucks coffee says “I’ve been queuing half-an-hour for these”) or the even worse physical tomfoolery, pitched squarely at the level of a Carry On film, with jiggling tit jokes, air-guitar and high-fives. The ending, as all four lovers recoil and flee from each other in horror - set to Mozart’s blameless restoration of the original serene order in C major - remains an especial excrescence. O God, enough!

The general level of the singing struck me as poor for a show which the ROH is peddling at £195 a ticket tops, with none of the women fully capable of singing their role, one man who could, one who couldn’t, and one for whom it all depended on what he was singing. The latter was Charles Castronovo, whose account of Ferrando’s delicately introspective “Un aura amorosa” was so beefy and effortful, bereft of line, style or grace that I’d have thrown a dead cat at him if I’d been near enough (or, indeed, had one to throw) but whose “Tradito, schernito!” was, in its much more bluff, extroverted way, exemplary, full of bitter anger and remorse, and tapping an expressive vein not otherwise much in evidence, an altogether better use for his uningratiating, rather “tough” timbre. Troy Cook, also American – half the cast is – made for a fine Guglielmo, with an extremely well-schooled lyric baritone of ideal Mozartian weight, evenness, flexibility and colour, all of which is a fine irony given that of all the principals, he gets both the least, and the worst, music to sing (“Non siate ritrosi” and “Donne miei” are both pretty weak specimens). William Shimell as Don Alfonso acted with great adroitness and easily dominated the dramaturgical givens of Miller’s mobile-phone ridden inscenation (the man in front of me was actually told by an usher to turn his off at one point in the second act, life imitating art, alas). Equally alas, Shimmel’s voice is in shreds, no longer capable of sustaining an even line, especially higher up, which led to the most agonisingly awkward, ill-blended and uncomfortable “Soave sia il vento” I have ever heard. Elsewhere, only note-by-note peremptory barking just about got him through all the recitatives.

I had one of those grabbing-for-the-cast-list moments when Helene Schneiderman came on as Despina, because I’ve seen her in this, er, show, twice before, both times as Dorabella. She is a lively, droll stage presence (reminding me strongly of Lesley Manville in All About My Mother) but the truth is both her arias take her, at their respective conclusions, some way out of her present vocal comfort zone and sounded frankly shrieky. I have not encountered Nino Surguladze before, but all I can really say is that I’m in no hurry to repeat the experience. She is alert and resourceful on stage, acts quite naturally within the entirely unnatural parameters in which she finds herself, and in her Penelope Cruz way, looks very good indeed. But the voice is thick, dark and vibrato-laden, and both her arias struck me as both gusty and unstylish in delivery (and what, pray, was she singing at the start of “Prenderò quel brunettino?” It most certainly was not “brunettino”, though what it had been altered to I couldn’t make out clearly). Sally Matthews was Fiordiligi, and though I have admired her greatly in the past (her Ann Trulove was superb) I do not think the role sits well for her, and neither of her great test pieces - or her - emerged unscathed. “Per pieta” in particular was not a comfortable experience, unfortunately laboured, the leaps awkwardly negotiated, the general drag-act tessitura wholly outside her normal vocal range and sounding almost disembodied, clotted and gargling in the lower register. On the other hand, she gave a tremendous account of the recitativo accompagnato that prefaces “Fra gli amplessi” and tore into her half of the duet with real abandon, fearless and true (Castronovo was at his best here, too. This isn’t co-incidence. Neither has a Mozart voice by natural endowment, both being much too dark, veiled and weighty. But “Fra gli amplessi” needs more than the usual Mozartian scale and vocal timbre can ever put across, and here at least got it).

Bearing in mind that last time round we had Röschmann and Garanca as the sisters, with Matthew Polenzani and Lorenzo Regazzo as the suitors, under Sir Colin Davis, then I can’t find it in myself to describe this latest revival as anything other than vin ordinaire, which even the scrapping of the staging – a boy can dream, can’t he? – would have done anything much to improve. Still, the audience absolutely adored it all. Especially the tit jokes.

Stephen Jay-Taylor
Opera Britannia

Photography Credits: Richard Hubert Smith

Photograph 1: Charles Castronovo
Photograph 2: Troy Cook, William Shimell, Charles Castronovo
Photograph 3: Troy Cook
Photograph 4: Sally Matthews