Opera reviews: Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini and Beethoven's Fidelio
TERRY GILLIAM brings the carnival to his operatic directorial debut Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini while Fidelio by Beethoven is a great start to the Garsington Opera season
fter his triumph directing The Damnation of Faust for English National Opera three years ago, former Monty Python Terry Gilliam has been raring get his hands on Berlioz’s first opera Benvenuto Cellini.
His new staging at the Coliseum suggests that the director, the composer, and the opera’s protagonist had one belief in common - nothing succeeds like excess.
Gilliam’s production opens to a riotous carnival of stilt walkers, jugglers and acrobats. Two giant masks of a gargoyle and skull hang over the action either side of the stage. Against a Piranesi-style etching of 16th century Rome, the baggy monster of a plot unfolds, based loosely on the colourful autobiography of the tearaway goldsmith and sculptor.
Cellini was in and out of prison during his lifetime, variously accused of murder, immorality, and fraud. He escaped the scaffold because of his artistic genius. Having commissioned the work Perseus with the head of Medusa (sited in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria), the Pope overlooked the sculptor’s misdemeanours - but only if he managed to cast the statue overnight for delivery next morning.
The first part of the opera takes in Cellini’s seduction of Teresa, daughter of the papal exchequer Balducci. His trouncing of rival sculptor Fieramosca ends in Cellini fatally stabbing Fieramosca’s friend during the carnival.
The second, more structured part, concentrates on the race to cast the statue. In a masterly theatrical stroke, Willard White’s Pope Clement VII glides on in a spectacular Popemobile, accompanied by a camp posse of Swiss guards.
Cellini desperately throws every bit of metal he possesses into the cauldron to make up the shortfall, causing a colossal explosion. Finally, we see the statue’s immense torso and legs towering out of our view.
American tenor Michael Spyres’s swaggering Cellini has the measure of Berlioz’s demands on the voice. Corinne Winters, after a hesitant start, blossoms as Teresa, and baritone Nicholas Pallesen is a splendid Fieramosca.
Edward Gardner conducts the English National Opera with the panache needed for this extraordinary work. Benvenuto Cellini will be broadcast live to cinemas on Tuesday (Details: eno.org).
John Cox’s staging of Beethoven’s Fidelio, first seen in Garsington Opera’s original home in 2009, has opened Garsington Opera’s 25th anniversary season, its fourth in its new surroundings on the Wormsley Estate. Gary McCann’s design of galvanised iron walkways and watch tower adapts well to architect Robin Snell’s timber and steel pavilion.
Rebecca von Lipinski gives an impassioned performance in the title role of Fidelio/Leonore, who, disguised as a boy, finds work in the prison where her husband Florestan (Peter Wedd) is held as a political prisoner. Complications ensue when the gaoler Rocco (Stephen Richardson) decides the attractive boy will be a good match for his daughter Marzelline (Jennifer France).
The core of the opera is the triumph of good over evil. The final act when Fidelio confronts the evil Governor Don Pizzaro as he is on the point of killing her husband is a classic opera cliffhanger - you wait in suspense for the trumpet call that heralds the arrival of the King’s minister.
Darren Jeffery as Pizzarro is an unashamedly pantomime villain in red and black. Promising bass Joshua Bloom as Don Fernando is his opposite number in angelic white. The orchestra under Artistic Director Douglas Boyd is in fine form, and there’s an exultant finale from the chorus of prisoners.
A great start to the season.
Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini by the English National Opera at The Coliseum, London WC2. For tickets call 020 7845 9300. Beethoven’s Fidelio is at the Garsington Opera at Wormsley, High Wycombe, Bucks. Call 01865 361 636 for tickets.
