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Allison Cook and Johan Reuter in From The House Of The Dead at the Royal Opera House.
Dazzling: Allison Cook and Johan Reuter in From The House Of The Dead at the Royal Opera House. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Dazzling: Allison Cook and Johan Reuter in From The House Of The Dead at the Royal Opera House. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

The week in classical: From the House of the Dead; A Midsummer Night’s Dream – review

This article is more than 6 years old
Royal Opera House; Coliseum; Royal College of Music, London
Royal Opera’s take on Janáček’s brutal work dazzles – plus a double helping of Titania, Bottom and friends

Stabbing, soaring, glittering, now abstract, now igneous, now full of song, the music of Janáček’s final opera, From the House of the Dead (1928), is one of the great masterpieces of the 20th century. Despite familiarity with the piece, not least from Welsh National Opera’s recent, thrilling revival, I would not have said that a week ago. The Royal Opera’s first staging, conducted by Mark Wigglesworth and directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski, making his ROH debut, changed my mind, or focused it.

Based on Dostoyevsky, set in a Siberian prison, with scarcely a narrative or plot, much brutality and the merest shreds of mercy, From the House of the Dead is opera at its most confrontational. Dramatically it’s extremely difficult to get right. This gets part way. Running under two hours without an interval, the score is taut, relentless and lean – a long sit if you cannot face its uncompromising nature, all too short if you can. It addresses the hardest questions about humanity: what unites sinner and sinned against? Sharing a Quaker view, Janáček saw a glimmer of God in every one.

One reason (aside from the more obvious) for the work’s relative rarity is its fraught editorial history. The idiosyncratic Czech composer was correcting proofs at the time of his death. Only now, after painstaking efforts by the scholar John Tyrrell, can it be performed as Janáček intended. When you consider that he drew his own wobbly freehand staves and spattered his pages with every kind of shorthand scribble, cross-hatch and scrawl, you see why the process has taken so long.

Wigglesworth drew dazzling playing from an enlarged ROH orchestra, percussion spilling out into the side boxes so that the sinister drum roll, late on, had even more than the usual terror. Janáček’s singular technique, developed here in a manner almost unrecognisable from his earlier, well-known operas Jenůfa or Káťa Kabanová, was to wedge blocks and shards of musical ideas together like hardtack. The closest image to convey this strange sound world might be the lumpen beauty of mica schist.

The excellent, all-male – bar the prostitute (Allison Cook) – ensemble cast gleamed with strong interpretations, led by Willard White, Stefan Margita, Ladislav Elgr and, especially, Johan Reuter. Among cameos, Nicky Spence making his ROH debut graced the stage in voice as well as dance, with Graham Clark tearing at our emotions as the elderly prisoner.

In designs by Małgorzata Szczęśniak, with stark lighting – plenty of fluorescent strips – by Felice Ross, Warlikowski has given the piece a closely observed 21st-century prison setting: prefab sports hall, observation gallery, chicken wire, a mood of ceaseless tedium. Anyone who has had cause to visit such a place will recognise the glaring accuracy of this bleak vision. At times it was too fussy. There’s no question that the French philosopher Michel Foucault has thought about the meaning of justice more than anyone, and none of us is above being reminded, but the big-screen projection of him at the start fought with the pulsating beauty of the opera’s prelude. There was something pathetic about those who booed at the end. What on earth did they want from a work of such cold comfort?

Of the many words you could apply to Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – magical, ethereal, at times amusing – concise is not one. Act II, in the Athenian wood, when the humans take for ever to lose and find themselves, can be an endurance test. It certainly meandered last week at ENO’s revival of Robert Carsen’s production, first seen at the Coliseum in 1995.

Musically secure, with an attractive cast and some detailed and voluptuous orchestral playing under the baton of Alexander Soddy, the production has downy charm but zero bite. ENO has restored it in favour of Christopher Alden’s boys’ school production (2011), which bristled with darkness and brilliance, raised tough questions and split audiences. Carsen’s approach may be closer to Britten’s intentions, but it’s hard to believe the work’s world premiere, in Aldeburgh’s Jubilee Hall in 1960, wasn’t rather more chewy.

Michael Levine’s designs consist mostly of beds large and small, and a colour scheme dominated by green, blue and white. With several ENO Harewood artists in the cast, Soraya Mafi’s regal Tytania stood out. Matthew Durkan and Eleanor Dennis (memorable as Malcolm and Laura Fleet in ENO’s recent Marnie) shone as Demetrius and Helena, with Clare Presland a defiant, fiery Hermia and David Webb as the fickle and insistent Lysander. Christopher Ainslie combined lofty stage presence with a cool, hazy lightness of voice ideal for Oberon. Joshua Bloom’s Bottom and Graeme Danby’s Quince eased cheer into the mechanicals’ scenes. Above all, the actor Miltos Yerolemou injected energy as an athletic, beady Puck. There’s a visual coup in the last act that lifts the spirits and softens hard hearts.

You prefer sleaze? Try South Kensington. The Royal College of Music International Opera School has staged its own Midsummer Night’s Dream – like ENO, employing the committed skills of Trinity Boys Choir (rather better drilled at RCM). Eschewing gauze and fairy wings, Liam Steel’s production plunged us into seamy 1920s Berlin and a Cabaret-style underworld of sexual uncertainty and “dark wood” fantasy.

The second of two casts, both under the supportive musical direction of Michael Rosewell, fielded plenty of talent. Everyone, orchestra too, deserves praise. Richard Pinkstone (Lysander) and Harry Thatcher (Demetrius) are already names to watch. Thomas Scott-Cowell’s trans-everything Oberon was more earthy than Ainslie’s at ENO, but just as worthwhile. Theodore Platt’s Bottom and Glen Cunningham’s Flute, all baby-doll pink and nipple tassels for his transformation into Thisbe, were particularly charming. Imaginative if uneven, this bold staging gave the work contemporary edge, with a due nod to health and safety. Snug, playing the lion, had a notice pinned to him: “I am not a real lion.” You can never be too careful.

Star ratings (out of 5)
From the House of the Dead ★★★★
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (ENO) ★★★
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (RCM) ★★★

From the House of the Dead is in rep at the Royal Opera House, London, until 24 March

This article was amended on 14 March to clarify that Glen Cunningham in the part of Flute transformed into Thisbe in the Royal Academy of Music’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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