Depressed fish - send help
Fish at Glyndebourne - If they remove the water will it make us more of a visual arts production? - Water Colour by Sarah Keen
Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo” at Glyndebourne
Oh God, The Grange , I owe you such an apology - what can I say? Nothing. I am abject. In my review of Eugene Onegin I suggested that The Grange lacked the ruthless attention to perfection that Glyndebourne has in spades.
Maybe it’s the heat but something has gone terribly wrong in East Sussex. (Who are apparently trying to include the visual arts into opera????) FFS. Anyway the first sign that all was not well was in the tearoom gardens. The once luxurious roman stone fountain was now dribbling long streams of algae into a stone trough below. So far so unpleasant. When I glanced down I was concerned to see two anxious looking fish taking shelter in the shadow of some dried out herbs and sunk in a green murk. They did not look thrilled. I checked to make sure they weren’t surfacing for air as the quality of the water was grim. To be fair they were not; neither however were they in any great depth of water. Glyndebourne - think fish - please check them as the heat is killing.
Next Act 1. Orpheo. The house lights stayed up as woman wandered on stage and seemed to double up with menstrual cramps, then stood up and looked back anxiously to the wings. Well she might. The conductor had not landed in the pit yet. She clasped her stomach once more and twisted her arms back. Conductor arrives. We cheer The Orchestra of the Enlightenment. Another woman plods across the set and looks similarly anxious. Circa primary school play - should we expect a teacher to take them reassuringly by the hand. A quick word on the staging. Cluttered. Oriental rugs, Fireplace with paints, brushes. It looked terribly like a first year DRAMA undergraduate’s effort. More props people, quickly ASM. The house lights finally go down. Very odd nervous beginning.
Anyway fortunately the music starts - good old Monteverdi - just gorgeous.
But now what horror unfolds. We have gone full on video. The second anxious lady is Music apparently and she was right to look worried. A crowd of dancers pile on the stage (but can’t dance as no room). The woman with period pain is Eurydice wearing a fetching black and white skirt. She can not sing. Her part is taken by Music who stands behind her and completes her part. (With the exception of Orpheus this fate was inflicted on all the opera parts. The result was at the final bow the audience were asking each other who the singers were).
As well as the dancers on stage, Music is sent literally back to the drawing board where she spends most of her time pretending to sketch the preposterous scenes that the video reflects behind her. So as she sings about green leaves of joy, the video shows monochromatic scenes of telephones, a man climbing across lyre chairs and collapsed houses. Nothing but nothing matched the libretto. Music tells us she will stop the birds singing. They will not stir in order to listen to her tune. What comes up behind this glorious sound is a dead tree with little flitting birds twitching about it. Is anyone reading and understanding the narrative? Anywhere?
To add to the visual noise - the screen also pops up random texts - with no relation to anything going on. I am the poet - you are the poem, Fresh fields of Breath. These may or not be real phrases from the original text but here they looked the platitudinous nonsense you might find on Meghan Markel’s pots of jam. All we lacked was Love yourself and then we could go home as there would be no reason for Orpheus to head into Hades in search of anyone. The video display played across the singers and thus camouflaged them. It was impossible to make out anything on this trip hazard of a set. Orpheus clad in an irritating hat treked all of three feet across the carpets in search of Eurydice and, as we know, fails. Only my Lyre can come to my aid, except he is not carrying anything as musical as a Lyre - oh no. He has a book: novel, journal, Lonely Planet’s Guide To Hell? We can not know as he never refers to it at all. Peter Greenaway or Sherlock this is not. It’s like being stuck in a mad grass-hopper’s Instagram doom-scrolling reel.
Acts 11,111,1V & V as above. The opera singers and chorus deliver stunning quality of musicianship despite a distracting background of fans (why?) paper (noisy) and abstract images of Eurydice’s black and white clothing pop up like a zebra crossing abut the place Suggesting to this very disgruntled viewer that the poor woman has been reduced to a piece of skirt.
When she turns up at the end seemingly alive and spinning around childishly I could only wonder what the point of this production was. You did know she was bound in death forever right? The big thing point of Orpheus’ failure.
Unless you live in Glynde I wouldn’t bother hacking across country to see this - there are better operas to see this season. Hie thee to Buxton.
It was as though the director could only see himself and his will in the production. It did not allow one second for reflection. It did not ask in wonder; how do we all cope when someone we love dies, where do they go, how can we find them again, how will we continue? The music, sublime as it was, could not in this production be good enough. If Glyndebourne pursues its quest for visual arts to its natural conclusion it will dispense with the chorus and opera singers and just have them as a soundtrack played across a background of AI slop.
Glyndebourne has the tagline No ordinary opera. Unfortunately this opera was a disorderly mess. You need to get a grip Glyndebourne. Your heart springs are failing. Go clean that fountain, make the waters run crystal clear once more. Look after the fish. Add the music back. Sing.