La Donna del Lago, Covent Garden/Ariadne Auf Naxos, Glyndebourne - music review

There’s a real theatrical intelligence in Rossini’s La Donna del Lago, while Katharina Thoma's version of Ariadne auf Naxos captures the fragility of happiness and the undertow of melancholy well
La Donna del Lago ©Alastair Muir
23 May 2013

Uneven the score may be but Rossini's La Donna del Lago contains much of beauty and provides vehicles for at least three exceptional singers.

Juan Diego Florez’s Uberto, the disguised King of Scotland, was compromised by his tight, forced delivery, his fearless negotiation of the stratosphere impressive rather than thrilling as a result. The nuances he lacked were demonstrated by a stand-in Rodrigo, Michael Spyres, whose remarkable vocal range and technical facility were deployed to excellent effect.

Best of all was Joyce DiDonato, who brought to the role of Elena, the eponymous Lady of the Lake, dazzling coloratura but also the tonal colouring and sighing humanity Florez lacked. Trapped in an unintentionally comic trio with Florez and Spyres engaged in a testosterone tussle, each competing to sing higher and wave his sword more phallically than the other, poor DiDonato covered her ears in despair.

Also admirable were Daniela Barcellona’s Malcom and Michele Mariotti’s sympathetic conducting.

John Fulljames’s production, sets by Dick Bird, opens with the stunning spectacle of the Lady of the Lake displayed in a glass cabinet, the object of scrutiny by a roomful of academicians of Sir Walter Scott’s own era. It’s a witty visualisation of the 19th- century’s antiquarian view of Scotland and in the final scene it is not just Elena but also her lover and father who acquire the status of museum specimens. There were boos at the end, perhaps in response to the simulated rapes and corpses dangling on meathooks. This isn’t a sentimental view of the Highlands but even if occasionally it’s clumsily handled, there’s a real theatrical intelligence at work.

Katharina Thoma’s production of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos for Glyndebourne imaginatively locates the action in an English manor house in 1940, thus setting up a neat resonance with the culture of country house opera but more profoundly evoking a world on the edge of catastrophe. The drawing room becomes a hospital ward, the three nymphs transformed into nurses, and Bacchus arrives by plane rather than ship. Everything fits superbly and the production captures the fragility of happiness and the undertow of melancholy better than any I can remember.

The mellow glow of the LPO under Vladimir Jurowski’s sensitive baton complements the vision perfectly, while a fine cast enhances the pleasure. Soile Isokoski is superb as Ariadne and Sergey Skorokhodov will be an agreeably lyrical Bacchus when free of his throat infection. Kate Lindsey as the harassed Composer, Laura Claycomb as Zerbinetta, Thomas Allen as the long-suffering Music Master and William Relton as a deadpan Major-Domo also deserve mention. Look out for the streaming online and in cinemas.

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