Grange Park Opera

Capriccio

The background to Stephen Medcalf's new production of Richard Strauss' Capriccio (seen Sunday 20 June 2010) at Grange Park Opera is the fact that it was premièred in Munich in 1942 at the National Theater, in the middle of the war and that the National Theater itself would take a direct hit during a bombing raid and be burned down
the following year.

Given this history it is obviously not quite possible to set a production strictly during the period of its first performance, and all productions that I have seen (La Monnaie, Brussels; Glyndebourne; Covent Garden) have relocated the time period to the first quarter of the twentieth century, so that the closing moments could be described briefly as Countess in glamorous 20s dress, moonlight, elegant building.

Medcalf and his designer Francis O'Connor open the piece on the bare stage of a rather shabby German theatre. Before the music starts, the Countess (Susan Gritton) comes on wearing smart 1940s street clothes. She takes a copy of the score, sits at the very edge of the stage, looks down into the pit, gives the conductor (Stephen Barlow) a signal and the Sextet starts. During the remainder of the sextet, the cast appear, wearing 1940s street clothes. Some acknowledge the Countess, and then each disappears through the doors of the dressing rooms at the back of the stage. The relationships of the cast members parallel those of the characters in the opera, so that it is obvious that the two singers playing Flamand and Olivier are both in love with the singer playing the Countess.

When the sextet finishes, the cast have moved into eighteenth century costume, but there is an area which is, for them, backstage, so that we see them when they are not performing in the opera. This blending of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries is tricky, and a couple of my companions found it difficult to follow at first, but it pays immense dividends. During Act 1, whenever the Countess has a scene with either Flamand (Andrew Kennedy) or Olivier (Roderick Williams), the other is seen sitting in the 'wings', so that the three are always together in some way.

Then at the end, after La Roche's description of the Countess's birthday celebrations, each cast member slips off and re-appears in 1940s dress. So that when La Roche (Matthew Best) tells them to go off and compose a contemporary opera, it's quite clear that the events the opera will refer to will include the war.

But Medcalf and O'Conner have one further trick up their sleeves. At the end, during the interlude before the Countess' final scene, the rear of the stage dissolves to reveal the ruins of a city. The Countess sings her solo amidst the ruins of the theatre and then during the magical closing bars, picks her way through the rubble. This closing sounds rather hackneyed, but in execution was magical, partly because Medcalf can rely on us to know that after Capriccio, Strauss would write Metamorphosen, his lament for the loss of Dresden after the bombing. By keeping the period of the opera flexible, Medcalf manages to have his cake and eat it, delivering on the one hand an elegant period performance of Capriccio and on the other hand a commentary on the work and on its contemporary resonance.

I realise that I have not, yet, commented on the singers. This is partly because their performance was of such a calibre that it enables us to think about the resonance of the complete performance rather than individual virtuoso moments.

The big virtue of Susan Gritton's intelligently sung Countess Madeleine was that she made you care about the Countess and her indecision over choosing Flamand or Olivier. For the allegory to work you have to become involved in the discussions on stage, otherwise the opera simply becomes a tedious dialogue. Gritton, along with Andrew Kennedy's Flamand and Roderick Williams' Olivier, ensured that the dialogues were involving, tense and fraught with hidden tensions. Kennedy and Williams presented a nicely differentiated pair of would be lovers. But the secret was in the interaction between them and Gritton. Here the smallness of the Grange Park theatre helped enormously. The dialogues were just that, and when sung by three such fine artists as these, you couldn't help but become involved.

Quirijn de Lang's Count provided a lively foil, injecting some much needed lightness into the proceedings, and Lang seemed to make rather more of the part than I have seen in the past. The theatre director La Roche (Matthew Best) seems to be just a facilitator until the closing parts of Act 2 when, following a bravura description of the Countess' birthday celebration planned for the morrow, La Roche has to defend his art. Owing to a fire alarm alert, we got to hear Best deliver his description of the burning of Carthage twice. It was certainly worth hearing, and his plea for the artists to create work relevant to today was very powerful.

Sara Fulgoni was every inch the charming actress Clairon, delightfully flirting with the Count. Further entertainment was provided by dancer Bryony Perkins and the Italian Singers, Wynne Evans and Sally Johnson.

Stuart Kale was profoundly touching as Monsieur Taupe, the prompter who has fallen asleep and been left behind. The performance was rendered all the more thoughtful by Medcalf as the character appears with a Jewish Star of David chalked on his back.

But Strauss ensures that the night belongs to the Countess. After everyone has left, full of creating their new opera, after stage hands have cleared the theatre, she gets her glorious final monologue, meditating on words, music and their combination in opera. You sensed that this scene was a bit of a stretch for Gritton, though having the act interrupted by a fire alarm cannot have helped. If the voice does not quite radiate with the glorious freedom necessary here, it does get close. And her account of the solo was intelligently beautiful and profoundly melancholy.

I found Medcalf's finishing amidst the ruins of Munich, combined with the fine music making, to be a satisfying end to the opera. Medcalf never forced the updating and whilst there were moments in Act 1 when the production might have seemed a little too clever, it settled down and gave us a thoughtful commentary on the opera, hovering between eighteenth century and 1940.

In the pit, the English Chamber Orchestra was not quite the Vienna Philharmonic. Conductor Stephen Barlow ensured that we got clarity rather than lushness and accompanied the singers well, never allowing Strauss' orchestral forces to overwhelm what was on the stage.

This was one of those evenings of satisfyingly intelligent music making, where the performances combined with the producer's conception to create a whole. I certainly hope that this isn't that last Strauss opera that Grange Park do, I'd love to hear Susan Gritton sing Arabella there.

By Robert Hugill, Music and Vision