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An 'ardent' Kate Lindsey (Composer) in Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss at Glyndebourne. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
An 'ardent' Kate Lindsey (Composer) in Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss at Glyndebourne. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Lohengrin; Ariadne auf Naxos; La Donna del Lago – review

This article is more than 10 years old
Welsh National Opera, Cardiff; Glyndebourne, West Sussex; Royal Opera House, London

This was Wagner's big week. To celebrate his 200th birthday, his descendants once again got out the venom spray, aiming at his dodgy legacy as well as one another. A group of psychologists, rather late in the day, concluded that Wagner's music causes degeneration, perversion and fatigue. He made it on to Radio 4's Today programme via the advocacy of Valery Gergiev, was celebrated by 32 horns at the Southbank and had a life-sized statue unveiled in Leipzig, the city of his birth. "And he was only 5ft 4!" shrieked the heightists, as if on top of those well-catalogued crimes of antisemitism, liking women's clothes and giving birth to Hitler, he had stubbornly refused to grow.

Taking a rather more moderate approach, Welsh National Opera settled for staging an opera: Lohengrin. This early Romantic work is the one in which a Grail knight travels by swan-boat and won't reveal his name. Designed and directed in a new staging by Antony McDonald, it was a tour de force. There were no rats – as in the recent Bayreuth production – and no swastikas or gas-chambers as per the Tannhäuser that had to be cancelled in Düsseldorf this month. Staid? Not a bit. Set in the revolutionary 1840s, with an air of lovingly detailed civil decay that also had a feel of modernity, it concentrated on the opera's key issue. That is, that we should take people as they are (yes, Wagner was a fine one to talk). In the case of the mysterious Lohengrin, not who's his father or who are his people, but who is he?

Peter Wedd rose triumphantly to the challenges of the title role, poetic and majestic. Emma Bell enchanted as the passive, bereft Elsa, ever challenged by the wilful malevolence of Susan Bickley's exciting Ortrud. Their big confrontation was chilling. Claudio Otelli's evil Telramund and Matthew Best's regal Heinrich combined with a well-choreographed and lusty chorus to reach the highest musical standards. WNO's music director, the German Lothar Koenigs – do we sing his praises enough? – was ever sensitive to ebb and flow but unafraid of the roaring climaxes Wagner provides. Fanfaring trumpets, arranged round the Millennium Centre auditorium, shook building and eardrums. I retired uplifted as well with the usual additions of degeneration, perversion and fatigue.

Richard Strauss accused Lohengrin of being "terribly sweet and sickly", boring, roughly orchestrated and too long. Oddly, similar criticisms have been levelled at Strauss's own operas. His Ariadne auf Naxos, which opened this year's Glyndebourne festival, is not a universal favourite. It takes many sightings to realise just how asinine the plot is, how unbalanced the two sections of the opera are and yet how redemptive and ethereal is its final message: choose love and life over misery and death. That said, most of us don't have the option of falling into the arms of Bacchus or sleeping in a Greek cave that turns into an erotic bower.

Blasting through all this nonsense, Strauss's music, vigorous and unexpectedly lean, ensures the work's status as a masterpiece. Vladimir Jurowski, in his final season as music director of Glyndebourne, drew athletic playing from the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The short overture bubbled exuberantly, strings soaring upward in glee. If only the rest had matched up.

The production was one of those "someone should have said no" occasions. In her UK debut, German director Katharina Thoma has transported the action to a Queen Anne revival-style English country house in 1940. Uniformed officers mingle with the Music Master (a peerless Thomas Allen, for him thank heaven), Major Domo (William Relton), Dancing Master (Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke) and the rest of a bourgeois household.

At the chaotic climax of the Prologue an explosion interrupts proceedings. No, not the firework display Strauss and Hofmannsthal intended, but German bombs falling on England. Yes, it was that cringe-inducing. In part two, the house has become a field hospital with iron beds and Red Cross nurses in starched aprons. For some reason, probably the dreamy nurses, it brought to mind that line, not Hemingway's best, in A Farewell to Arms when Henry says: "I was blown up while we were eating cheese."

Everyone, if not injured, appears to have turned loopy. Even injections of tranquillisers cannot suppress the fizzing Zerbinetta (the lively, light-toned Laura Claycomb). Ariadne, somewhat pallidly played by Soile Isokoski, lies in a posh stupor waiting for death's embrace until along comes Bacchus (Sergey Skorokhodov) who'll do instead. Some flopping palm trees reminded us that this usually sexy opera was here settling for dysfunction. Kate Lindsey makes an ardent young Composer, which is something. You can watch it in cinemas across the UK or here on theguardian.com on 4 June and tell me how wrong I am.

A similar sort of madness attaches itself to Rossini's Scottish-Romantic La Donna del Lago (1819), based on Walter Scott's poem. Aficionados make a strong case for this work, which is crammed with bel canto ornament and almost equally devoid of action: so yards of tartan and yards of tricky singing. Colourful orchestration, double and triple choruses and onstage bands add aural richness.

The attraction of the Royal Opera's new staging is the dazzling cast led by Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez. Directed by John Fulljames and designed by Dick Bird, it opens boldly with DiDonato, the Lady of the Lake herself, trapped in a trophy room display case in what might be a gentleman's club. After that I admit I lost the plot, not so much literally as dramaturgically. A non-functioning spiral staircase seemed to serve no other purpose than to mirror the tortuous ascent and descent of every aria.

Flórez and DiDonato were well nigh impeccable and the fact that the adorable and appealing Juan Diego ended up looking like ex-President Sarkozy was some feat on the part of the costume department. Even amid these stellar artists, the mezzo Daniela Barcellona in the trouser – or kilt – role of Malcolm nearly stole the show. The orchestral playing was unusually clumpy, leadenly conducted by Michele Mariotti. He comes highly commended so I assume this was an off-night. The verdict is that Donna del Lago would be completely unbearable with singers of lesser quality. As it was, it was fascinatingly brilliant.

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