André Tchaikowsky’s The Merchant of Venice review: Excellent team work from the cast
IN his will, André Tchaikowsky (no relation to the Russian composer) left his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company to be used in productions of Hamlet, so that after his death there would be a part of him still performing.
Tchaikowsky’s Gothic whim is understandable in the light of his traumatic life. He was a Jewish survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto. His grandmother escaped with André, then seven, but his mother was transported and murdered in Treblinka.
Though Tchaikowsky became a brilliant composer and concert pianist his one opera, The Merchant of Venice, remained unperformed when he died in 1982.
It was finally premiered at Bregenz Festival in 2013.
Unlike many Shakespeare-inspired operas, John O’Brien’s libretto follows the original text closely.
The score has resonances of Berg and Stravinsky in the first act and is more harmonious in the second act.
Director Keith Warner and designer Ashley Martin-Davis’s Royal Opera House staging of a massive wall of safe deposit boxes conveys the commercial importance of the Venetian ghetto.
As tension mounts between Jew and Christian, stormtroopers bearing flaming torches invade the walled ghetto.
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Act One culminates in Shylock’s daughter Jessica (Lauren Michelle) absconding with her father’s riches to the arms of her Christian lover Lorenzo (Bruce Sledge).
Then we move to the luxury resort of Belmont where heiress Portia (Sarah Castle) lounges on a sun bed while suitors try their luck at the caskets of gold and silver, the contest being won by Portia’s preferred candidate Bassanio (Mark Le Brocq).
The young Venetian is financed by the merchant Antonio, who borrowed from the Jewish money-lender. When Antonio can’t repay in the stipulated time, Shylock insists on holding to the lethal terms of the contract.
African American baritone Lester Lynch gives a special poignancy to the role of Shylock. The Christian characters, similarly to the play, are deeply anti-Semitic .
Tchaikowsky sees Antonio, (counter tenor Martin Wölfel), as another outsider, whose sacrifice to enable his beloved Bassanio to marry Portia is taken for granted.
There is excellent team work from the cast, most of whom were in last year’s production at Cardiff’s Millennium Centre.
André Tchaikowsky’s The Merchant of Venice Welsh National Opera Royal Opera House, London WC2 (Run ended)
