There’s a lot going on in Tchaikovsky’s emotionally untrammelled opera of 1890 — a far cry from the wistful lyricism of his better-known Eugene Onegin — and does it ever get directors over-excited. The central thread is the mental collapse of anti-hero Herman from mere oddball loner to full-throttle nutcase, an obsessive who, teased and egged on by his supposed mates, violently acquires and then adopts a most iffy gambling system, with predictable consequences. Gussied up with jaunty little hints of the supernatural, the narrative melts down Herman’s mind into complete surrender to ghosts, death, mania. Meanwhile, there’s a slightly unconvincing but intense and structurally vital love story to work in.
There have been some peculiar stagings of this, including an entertainingly trashy one at ENO done by David Alden which found a way of inserting plushophilia and yiffing (look ’em up, squares) into the mix. The opera has a definite whiff of wayward sexuality — Herman’s rough bedroom wooing of the decrepit old Countess who reportedly holds the secret of the foolproof “three cards” is the top spot for this little piquancy. At Covent Garden, Stefan Herheim turned the whole thing into a (really stupid) pseudo-psychoanalysis of the composer based entirely on his sexuality: Herheim evidently finds homosexuality the most — if not the only — interesting thing in the world, which maybe it is if you come from Norway, though hasn’t he forgotten about the fish? But really this psychosexual angle is only going to take you so far.
This here is a good-looking show, blackout curtains pulled around Garsington’s big glass box to set off the darkened stage dominated by designer Tom Piper’s big, distressed, mobile mirrors — a set that screams “ghost story”, but works neatly also to emphasise loneliness, isolation, the claustrophobia of the three main characters, Herman, Lisa (the girl he craves from afar) and the Countess. The mirrors swivel around to reveal another side of the city, the backstairs, the garrets, full of the servants and lowlifes who prop up the peculiar society of aristo gamblers, nannies, posh girls and superannuated beauties we are presented with. Lizzie Powell’s lighting sets it all off marvellously well.
Herman’s mental state is unfortunately reflected in his singing
Things start nicely with Tchaikovsky’s pithy intro dealing out the dramatic themes of the opera, played with edgy intensity by conductor Douglas Boyd and the Philharmonia, and assiduously illustrated by the director, with Herman louring about the place in his conspicuous black togs. But quite quickly, and for the rest of the first half, it all goes unfocused, random, bitty. It turns out our lad really isn’t on that much of a journey at all, being already pretty much bombed out, lost in paranoid imaginings about (just for a start) the crowd of pram-pushers who he feels have taken against him. This isn’t a great idea: a Herman who starts out a little less Dostoyevskian stands a better chance of engaging our interest. It also makes his pursuit of Lisa rather more stalkery than is useful, and her eager acceptance of his crazed overtures — instead of immediately calling the cops — is a bit of a jolt.
Herman’s mental state is unfortunately reflected in his singing: Aaron Cawley certainly has a strong voice, and first-night reports were generally approving, but by the third performance it was getting ragged, veering between a worrying tonal instability in the quieter bits and some full-scale shouting as passion takes over; the role is certainly a big sing, as they say, but this was too much. The voices were not blending at all well, either, and the quintet — when Herman runs into the Countess/Lisa party and everyone has a good old introspective think, was just horrid. There’s no continuity, actually rather a big thing in this piece that Tchaikovsky wrote in a highly concentrated burst of furious inspiration.
Like all directors, Jack Furness avidly dials up the sexiness, coy hints of transgressiveness in the Mozartian Daphnis-and-Chloe interlude that always just fails to interestingly mirror the plot, in Lisa’s usually blameless friendship with Polina, and in her somewhat premature clinch with Herman. Well, it keeps you interested while nothing much is happening. But then the second half finds its feet: Tchaikovsky launches a nervy, wormy, insistent theme that might have been written by Mussorgsky, night closes in, Herman infiltrates the Countess’s bedroom (witnessing, in Pushkin’s blithe source story, the “dreadful secrets of her toilette”) and we’re off on the Cresta Run of the opera’s wild ride to doom.
And Boyd finds a new purpose in the music, as one phantasmagoric scene succeeds another: the old lady singing an ancient air wanly to herself, faint and distant, has you holding your breath; Herman, all bluff and gallant, frightens her to death; then, in his shabby room, works himself up into such a state he starts seeing ghosts. The doomy orchestra accompanies Lisa as she realises she’s picked a very bad penny, and they share a stormy duet that is more passion than actual singing. The gambling-room finale is nicely done, too, though Robert Hayward is no kind of lyric singer, and spoils Tomsky’s jolly song about girls sitting on branches. Tchaikovsky himself cried buckets when he killed Herman off, but I really hadn’t warmed to the unlucky fellow enough for that.
As hinted, this is musically very mixed. Laura Wilde’s Lisa has a good Gothic fever about her, but the actual singing is often a kind of wordless noise. The chorus is forceful and well directed, the background characters spikily brought to life and decently sung, and Roderick Williams delivers the evening’s most (or perhaps only) beautiful singing as Yeletsky (Lisa’s upright intended) in his cheesy love song. Diana Montague is hardly monstrous enough for the dreadful old Countess, but sings her song nicely. And there’s nothing wrong with the director’s imagination and spicing of the drama that a more unified musical treatment wouldn’t save. But a bit more attention to basics would deal a much stronger hand.
