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The firebrand of Rome London
Royal Albert Hall
08/17/2003 -
Hector Berlioz: Benvenuto Cellini
Bruce Ford (Benvenuto Cellini), Laura Claycomb (Teresa), Monica Groop (Ascanio), Christopher Maltman (Fieramosca), Franz Hawlata (Balducci), Ralf Lukas (Pope Clement VII), Johannes Chum (Bernardino), Reinhard Mayr (Francesco), Ekkehard Wagner (Innkeeper), Matthias Hoffmann (Pompeio)
Roger Norrington (conductor)
MDR Radio Choir Leipzig, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (SWR)
Benvenuto Cellini is an opera crying out for staging. It is probably also nearly unproducable for the same reason, its Shakespearean scope and its bumptious set-pieces, the Roman carnival where a play distracts the semi-villain while the hero and real villain swashbuckle it out, and the final casting of the statue of Perseus from anything Cellini's assistants can lay their hands on. You can see why Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin though Cellini had potential as a Broadway musical (with something like Berlioz's librettists' plot, sub-Gilbertian lyrics by Gershwin and Weill's best grimly humorous music). But Berlioz's music stands on its own, and another concert performance will do nicely for now. Where Colin Davis brought out Berlioz's extroverted grandeur and Valery Gergiev, in the most recent performance in London, brought an air of inspired improvisation against all odds, Roger Norrington and his German band and choir brought out clearly painted colours and shapes. At times the effect was almost delicate but it was always joyful. Perhaps three and half hours of opera on a Sunday night isn't going to bring in an audience, even at the Proms, but the only downbeat thing about the evening was the lack of much of one. Though the temptation to dance in the arena was all the greater.
The singers were as much part of the ensemble as the orchestra and chorus, and generally seemed to be having a good time. Outstanding was Laura Claycomb, a luminous Teresa, singing every conventional prayer to the Virgin and worry about her old dad as if she meant it. Monica Groop as Cellini's apprentice Ascanio (somewhere between Cherubino and Oscar in Ballo) was charming, with just a hint of obnoxious teenager. Christopher Maltman as the inept villain Fieramosca was funny, and just sinister enough. Fortunately he acted well enough to obscure for the moment the fact that he is far more attractive than Bruce Ford, who was a rather desiccated Cellini, going on Mime. His singing was pure, but his spectacles encapsulated his lack of engagement with the enthusiasm around him, and his French was notably uneven in a Francophone-free cast. Franz Hawlata was too stuck in his copy to make much of Balducci, Teresa's unlovable father. Ekkehard Wagner, from the choir, was very funny as a superlatively nasal innkeeper.
HE Elsom
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