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Daniel Rosenthal July 15 1997 The Times Ian McDiarmid (Cenci) and Kathryn Pogson (Lucrezia) in a "live cinema experiment" Photograph: DONALD COOPER |
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Look behind you
The Cenci
Almeida Opera, London N1
Daniel Rosenthal
July 15 1997
The Times
Ian McDiarmid (Cenci) and
Kathryn Pogson (Lucrezia)
in a "live cinema experiment"
Photograph: DONALD COOPER
Giorgio Battistelli's extraordinary new piece for Almeida Opera, commissioned (bravo!) with funds from the Arts Council, is basically a melodrama in the strict sense of the term a mixture of music and the spoken word. It's a curious form, one that flourished briefly in the 18th century with Benda's Ariadne and Medea (1775); Mozart was fascinated by melodrama, but his two experiments with it Zaide and Thamos significantly remained unfinished.
But it pops up persistently in opera, in the Wolf's Glen in Freischütz, the grave-digging scene in Fidelio at the climax of Strauss's Frau ohne Schatten, right down to the final scene of Britten's Gloriana. Every picture, or rather every panel, tells a story: it's a short-winded form. For the first 20 minutes you are fascinated by it; the next 20 are spent wondering if it's really working; when as in the case of Benda's pieces, and indeed the 65 minutes of Battistelli's Cenci you start drumming your fingers, it's suddenly over and you go home happy.
Yet "melodrama" seems hardly adequate to describe Battistelli's riveting experiment, any more than "total theatre". It's more like "live cinema", and the dramatic texture is incredibly dense. The spoken text is a drastically cut translation of Antonin Artaud's 1935 version of this heady tale of incest in high places. Battistelli's continuous accompaniment weaves in and out of it, punctuates and drives it on with great complexity it must have been hell to rehearse. His musical language may be modernist, but is suffused with essentially Italianate lyricism, never more so than in the romantic warmth of the textures accompanying preparations for Beatrice's hanging, tenderly supervised by her stepmother.
The four actors' words are amplified, echo-distorted, hurled all round the auditorium, with the tiniest whisper audible; add heavy breathing, echoing footsteps, weird clicks and groans and whinnyings from every angle, and you are forever looking nervously over your shoulder just in case there's something as nasty happening behind you.
And the stage action is supplemented by film, some of it agreeably rude, some of it constructive: the idea of the guests at Cenci's banquet being on silent film, to be stopped and started at will, could well recommend itself to reluctant hostesses. These 65 minutes are certainly crowded with event.
Ian McDiarmid's Cenci, his speaking voice swooping through more octaves than even Sir Donald Sinden could imagine, and writhing with an unbridled lust that might give Roger Corman pause for thought, is melodrama in the traditional sense the point is that all this, together with Anastasia Hille's equally intense, guilt-racked Beatrice, would be laughable were it not for the music, which consistently suspends disbelief and indeed commands the very opposite. As an investigation into what music can achieve, this is decidedly unsettling.
No praise could be too high for the conductor David Parry, the director Nick Ward, or the army of sound engineers who have collectively realised Battistelli's unique, Artaud-worthy vision. There are repeats on Saturday and Sunday, warmly and slightly nervously recommended.