Darkness at the heart of lost love
Vanessa (Glyndebourne) Verdict: Mesmerising ★★★★★
ALREADY famous for his muchloved Adagio For Strings, in 1958 the American composer Samuel Barber won fresh acclaim and the Pulitzer Prize for this, his first opera.
A Hitchcockian psycho-drama (premiered in the same year as his film Vertigo) with a libretto by his partner and fellow composer Gian Carlo Menotti, its lush and often lovely score has echoes of Fifties film music, but also pays homage to Puccini and Richard Strauss.
The titular heroine is a middleaged beauty who has lived as a recluse in a sprawling mansion for 20 years, awaiting the return of her lost love, Anatol.
But the Anatol who now enters her life to bring new anguish and heartache turns out to be her lover’s son.
The work has been neglected for many years (this is its first professional staging in Britain), but Keith Warner’s brilliant new production should surely reestablish Vanessa as a riveting piece of modern music-theatre.
Warner updates the action from 1905 to the time of the opera’s creation and designer Ashley Martin-Davis’s ingenious sets use giant mirrors and dappled projections to evoke the dark and chilly world of film noir.
The music is glorious, passionately played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Jakub Hrusa and rapturously sung by the ménage à trois at the enigmatic heart of the drama — Emma Bell as Vanessa, Virginie Verrez as her niece Erika and Edgaras Montvidas as Anatol.
Fine cameos, too, from Rosalind Plowright playing Vanessa’s mother and Donnie Ray Albert as the family doctor.
Warner hints at darker undercurrents (is Erika actually Vanessa’s illegitimate daughter?) and ensures that this compelling evening grips right through to its mesmerising final quintet.