According to the Royal Opera House’s new production of
Rossini’s La donna del lago, strange
women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
But while the production’s vague juxtaposition of barbaric hi...
According to the Royal Opera House’s new production of
Rossini’s La donna del lago, strange
women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
But while the production’s vague juxtaposition of barbaric highlanders and
European-style courtiers doesn’t really work, there’s a lot of exciting
singing, Joyce DiDonato as the titular aquatic lass, and Juan Diego Florez in a
kilt. So there’s that.
Rossini, La donna del lago. Royal Opera House Covent Garden, 5/17/2013. New production premiere directed by John Fulljames with sets by Dick Bird, costumes by Yannis Thavoris, and lighting by Bruno Poet. Conducted by Michele Mariotti with Joyce DiDonato (Elena), Juan Diego Florez (Uberto), Daniela Barcellona (Malcolm), Michael Spyres (Rodrigo), Simon Orfila (Douglas).
La donna del
lago is a peculiar match of style and content. The story is wildly Romantic
but the musical language is a semi-anachronistic, heavily ornamented opera seria
that doesn’t seem to gel with the more primal sentiments that it is expressing.
(My colleague the Zwölftöner wrote about this in terms of a very different
production of this same opera.) Throw in a convoluted plot and threats of fairy
tale kitsch and this is a very tricky opera to stage in a dramatically
interesting way. But it’s a star vehicle and Rossini singing is arguably one of
the brightest corners of operatic vocalism right now, so it’s a problem that
keeps coming up.
John Fulljames’s production is not convincing, however. He
gives us a Scottish court of Europe-oriented aristocrats, dressed in a French
style and situated in something that is simultaneously a library and, the side
boxes suggest, the inevitable theater-in-theater. A sentimental landscape
painting of a loch covers the paneled wall at the back, and encased in glass
are the human domesticated fragments of Scotland’s wild Highlands are literally
encased in glass in the middle of the room. The courtiers let Elena out of her
box, she’s in a white nightie looking dazed and emerges singing her opening cavatina.
In disguise, the King (that would be Juan Diego) runs off
into their Highland world--this is the main body of the opera’s plot. The
courtiers constantly observe this action. At the end, Elena is not married into
the court but paired off with fellow wild Highland spirit Malcolm, and they are
both returned to their glass boxes.
So I guess Fulljames is setting up a juxtaposition of wild
Scottish Romanticism with the vestiges of eighteenth-century Enlightenment-era
court life, something like the contrast between Walter Scott’s source and
Rossini’s transformation of it. The problem is that this isn’t integrated
enough to feel anything more than tacked on. Also there may have been a Rossini look-alike running around. I'm not sure if that was him or not.
There are some cheap attempts to be shocking, such as the
disembowelment of a goat (a small ram?) that looked so fake as to not even make
my Top Five Operatic Onstage Disembowelments (what can I say, I go to see
Bieito productions a lot—but seriously, I can name a whole slew of opera houses
that the ROH props department could call for tips on making that carcass look
more realistic), some hanging bodies at the end that show us the cost of the
court’s taming of the Scottish beasts within, and finally the Highland men do the now-expected thing where they
prepare for war by groping passing women, a thing I really wish productions would
stop doing. I know what you’re trying to do but you’re using women as a prop to
say something about the men, and that’s problematic no matter the message.
The moment to moment Personenregie is not good at all,
involving many stock gestures and static moments. I know that you can’t demand
too much during this kind of obstacle course singing, but you can do better
than this. The result was a certain dearth of character development.
The cast was, ho
