An essential 'Attila' Rodney Milnes

An essential 'Attila' Rodney Milnes

As the clouds gather over Bow Street and the atmosphere of crisis intensifies, the triumphant and frankly rather surprising success of the Royal Opera's new production of Attila must have come like a ray of sunlight and done no end of good to company morale at every level. It certainly cheered the patrons up—it is a long time since I have heard so spontaneous and joyful an outburst of football-terrace-style enthusiasm from a first-night audience at Covent Garden. One shouldn't be surprised, of course, since no one plans for anything less than a success. But Attila isn't essential to any opera house's repertory, in the way that the sadly cancelled lphigenie en Tauride, say, is absolutely essential; it isn't even essential early Verdi in the way that Ernani is; it is arguably less worthy of revival by an international house than I due Foscari or II corsaro; it is unarguably less interesting in every way than Stiffen°. Characters are hazily drawn (it is hard to harbour sympathy with any of them) and motivation is shaky (I am still trying to work out why Uldino suddenly changes sides); as the perfunctory final act moves

jerkily to its close, the effect on Verdi of a fast-approaching deadline and the sheer muddle of the libretto (revised by Piave in Solera's absence) become ever more obvious. Some of the music is almost intolerably crude. So the fact that Attila at Covent Garden on October 13 was one of the most thrilling evenings spent in the opera house for many a moon remains rather surprising and

is definitely instructive. Never, ever, the lesson went, underestimate Verdi in the theatre, certainly not when there is a master-musician in the pit and a quartet of worldclass singers on the stage. Chief architect of the success was Edward Downes, who once more presented his credentials as a Verdi conductor who is unbeatable today. (How many more times will he have to do this before his worth is recognised world-wide? Not that there are any doubts in WC2: house, stage and pit exploded when he took his first curtain call.) 'Unbeatable' is a big word; let us say that there are conductors who might conduct Otello as well as Downes, if not better, but they have probably never heard of Attila, and if they have they wouldn't soil their hands with it. It was especially interesting to compare Downes's Attila with the recent recording under a conductor who does soil his hands with early Verdi—Riccardo Muti. Muti certainly pays the score the compliment of taking it seriously, and encourages the listener to do likewise; yet you somehow feel that however striking the insights and effects, they are almost self

consciously achieved from the perspective of today and retrospectively imposed on the notes. Downes achieves his effects from the notes outwards: this, you felt time after time at Covent Garden, is precisely what Verdi meant when he wrote this page, this is the effect he wanted to achieve, and here it was nearly 150 years later smacking you in the face with the freshness of a force-eight gale. Under Downes the good music in Attila sounded better than ever: Odabella's Romance, of course, so exquisitely scored, the irresistibly up-front duet for Attila and Ezio in the Prologue, the storm music, and Attila's Dream; the less 'good' music (such things are relative) like Odabella's aria and cabaletta, Foresto's vision of Venice,

ATTILA

Lyric drama in a prologue and three acts by Giuseppe Verdi; libretto by Temistocle Solera after Zacharias Werner. Producer Elijah Moshinsky; designer Michael Yeargan; lighting Robert Bryan; choreography Eleanor Fazan. First performance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on 13 October 1990. Odabella Josephine Barstow Foresto Dennis O'Neill Uldino Ramon Remedios Ezio Giorgio Zancanaro Attila Ruggero Raimondi Leone John Tranter Conductor: Edward Downes

or the love duet, had a rhythmic impulse, a steadiness, a radiance of lyric expression that granted the notes ineffable grandeur and dramatic power; the conventional (on the page) concertato outside the gates of Rome, its climax perfectly judged, for once sounded worthy of the dramatic situation; most exciting was the way that under Downes's baton music one would normally never think of listening to twice suddenly became inescapably important—the stretta in the second-act finale, say, or the introduction to Foresto's last aria, so innocent in print but here given quite extraordinary emotional intensity.

Above all, Downes makes the orchestra 'sing' as expressively as the soloists. One would be tempted to cite the word `Mantovani' to describe the string sound were it not that it would inevitably be misunderstood, but from the big tune in the prelude onwards it did have a wonderful 'singing' quality to it. The nervy, sprung rhythms to the accompaniment figures always gripped the imagination, the instinctive-sounding yet cleverly controlled stringendo-crescendo effect each time Foresto and the chorus sang of their vision of Venice, which must have brought the house down during the original run at the Fenice, repeated the effect here. Consistently, I repeat, what might look bland on the page was made to work in the theatre.

Final evidence of Downes's genius in this music was the fact that the four principals sang better than I have ever heard them before: the conductor was up there with them, breathing with them, watching them, helping them give of their best. The pristine freshness of Ruggero Raimondi's interpretation of the title role never for a moment suggested that he has made a speciality of it for nearly 20 years: it was as if he were singing it for the first time, and singing it wonderfully. His tone was fresh, perfectly centred, bang on the notes instead of, as can sometimes happen, slightly under them. His impersonation had ideal elemental power. The most Italianate of our native tenors, Dennis O'Neill (Foresto), can on occasion sound Italian in slightly the wrong way (can belto rather than bel canto), but not here: his phrasing, his deployment of mezza voce, his taste put one in mind of Bergonzi, than which there can be no greater praise, and his security of emission would be envied by many a real Italian tenor. Giorgio Zancanaro (Ezio) is of course one of the great Italian baritones of the day, but he can be a dull dog (in the title role of Guillaume Tell, for instance). Again, not here: there was expressive warmth as well as firmness in his singing, an imaginativeness in response to phrase notably lacking in his performance on record. As for Josephine Barstow, who took on Odabella at short notice, she has, again, surely never been more convincing in a role of this sort (one was reminded of her stunning Violetta of some years ago). It is impossible not to be conscious of a credibility

gap when writing about this singer: just as there are many here who admire her unreservedly, so there are those in Europe, and some closer to home, who don't get the message, and I don't just mean in Salzburg; I can imagine some Italian colleagues failing to understand her appeal. To me, that appeal is founded—as in the case of O'Neill—on total security: you know nothing is ever going to go wrong, you know all the notes are there, and all of them right within the voice, not tacked on artificially at either end. If you want more steely brilliance at the top or chesty resonance at the bottom, fine, you could

have them, but you would also have to take on the possibility of accidents. I prefer the security, and the way she delivered the fearsome opening aria and cabaletta as if they were music, and meant something, rather than just circus turns. Her musical intelligence and pliant beauty of tone made more of the Romance than many a steely warhorse could have done, and her dramatic intelligence made the character believable if not exactly likeable, defiance, remorse, treachery, all adroitly mixed, with a real sense of the woman's dilemma in the final scene.

The two smaller roles were excellently taken: Ramon Remedios as a positive Uldino, and John Tranter appropriately thunderous as Pope Leo. The chorus, doubtless inspired by what was going on in the pit, was at its very best.

Elijah Moshinsky's production matched and supported the outstanding musical values with quiet but effective discretion. The fact that so much worked in purely theatrical terms owed much to clever lighting by Robert Bryan—dawn on the mudflats of the Adriatic, for instance (not a great deal happens musically), or golden back-lighting for the vision of Venice. Some people were upset by a rape in the Prologue, but I missed it, my attention grabbed by a disembowelment elsewhere on stage: that doesn't sound discreet, but at least there was some choice. Having contrived a background, Mr Moshinsky sensibly arranged for the principals to spend most of their time down-stage in close contact with conductor and audience.

Michael Yeargan's decor, based on wooden panels sliding in and out like a camera shutter, certainly helped project the voices out into the auditorium. The costumes were timeless and fairly placeless, though there was a worrying hint of the Middle East in Odabella's headgear, and equally worrying topknots for the gentlemen that one had to think of as Hunnish rather than rejects from The Mikado. But the general non-representational nature of the decor made one think of any number of other early Verdi operas that maybe would not deserve fully-fledged new productions—La battaglia di Legnano, Alzira, Jerusalem, Aroldo—t hat could be staged, now, in this set with these singers and this conductor. There's a thought.