Review

Stark, compelling and very well acted - La Clemenza di Tito, Glyndebourne, review

Richard Croft and Anna Stephany in La Clemenza di Tito at Glyndebourne Opera
Richard Croft and Anna Stephany in La Clemenza di Tito at Glyndebourne Opera Credit: Alastair Muir

This bizarre production got off to a bad start with one of Glyndebourne’s rare technical malfunctions – film footage projected during the overture flashed on and off with retina-punishing flickers. What ensued was scarcely steadying: the director Claus Guth had translated imperial Rome to a dark reedy bog above which loomed a featureless modern office suite.

Everyone is dressed in neutral black. The chorus moves and gesticulates in block formation suggestive of a totalitarian parade. Of the glory of Rome or Tito’s largesse there is no sign: he could be a corrupt CEO or even a mafia capo for all the clemency he radiates. The film had shown Sesto and Tito playing together idyllically as coaeval children, until a prank with a catapult separates them. Muddlingly, Sesto is subsequently presented on stage as a slip of a teenager, while Tito has declined into middle age. At the latter’s renunciation of revenge, his lackey Publio assumes power.

Anna Stephany in La Clemenza di Tito
Anna Stephany in La Clemenza di Tito Credit: Alastair Muir

Guth is evidently one of those directors who makes an opera mean what he wants it to mean: he refuses to be led by the mood of the music or fooled by the moral certainties of the libretto. The result is stark, compelling and very well acted, but too perversely cool and hard in relation to the score’s nobility and elegance to be convincing.  It’s an interpretation that doesn’t grow organically out of Mozart – merely one that speaks to contemporary neuroses.

Robin Ticciati conducted the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment crisply and robustly, favouring light clean textures in the arias. I don’t know who sanctioned the protracted pauses between every exchange of the unaccompanied recitatives, but their effect was absolutely maddening.

Anna Stephany and Alice Coote in La Clemenza di Tito
Anna Stephany and Alice Coote in La Clemenza di Tito Credit: Alastair Muir

Veteran Richard Croft (a late substitute for Steve Davislim, who resigned after disagreements with Guth) sang with exemplary stylistic poise and tonal sweetness, perhaps making Tito more sympathetic than the staging intended. As his antagonist Vitellia, Alice Coote was characteristically idiosyncratic – she certainly had her thrilling moments, and some dodgy ones as well. Michèle Losier, Joélle Harvey and Clive Bayley provided first-rate contributions as faithful Annio, simpering Servilia and stalwart Publio. Jeremy Bines’ chorus were on top form.

But the evening’s undoubted star was Anna Stéphany – a  slender and youthful Sesto, touchingly full of angst and remorse, dispatching both his-her big arias with terrific élan and immaculate technical control. When she was singing, an otherwise bleak show came brilliantly alight.

Until 26 August, in repertory with Don Pasquale. Tickets: 01273 815000; glyndebourne.com

On August 28, the production will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 from the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, SW7. The performance on 2 August will be streamed live on the Telegraph website.

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