No boundaries pushed, just excellent singing and admirable leaders
Simon Boccanegra Royal Opera, Covent Garden
This is a performance that can be warmly recommended to operatic conservatives. Dating from 1991 and an era before Middle European Marxist intellectualism had become fashionable on our stages, Elijah Moshinsky’s production, elegantly designed by Michael Yeargan, draws its inspiration from the magnificence of early Italian Renaissance painting.
It makes no judgments and pushes no boundaries; it follows the libretto fairly literally, complicit with its assumptions. There is no depth to the characterisation. Theatrically, it is static: the solo singers stand and deliver, interacting only through conventional gestures, expressions and embraces; the chorus, as the baying mob, is clumsily handled.
Yet although Moshinsky has made no attempt to interrogate Verdi’s ideology or to mine the text for “contemporary relevance”, some moral essence of the opera comes through to speak to us. Here is a situation in which justice and conciliation triumph over violence and vengeance, in a world where rulers strive for nobility and dignity. Most poignantly, it shows how two old men, fearsome enemies all their adult lives, are finally brought together in a spirit of humane understanding and forgiveness. There’s precious little sign of that in our own fractious politics, more’s the pity.
For this revival, the Royal Opera has assembled an interesting cast that falls just short of knockout. The veteran Ferruccio Furlanetto is mightily imposing, both physically and vocally, as the ruminative patrician Fiesco: he offers a strong match to Carlos Alvarez’s compellingly virile portrayal of Boccanegra, the ruthlessly successful piratical businessman turned wise statesman. Mark Rucker and Simon Shibambu make their mark as the despicable schemers Paolo and Pietro, and the chorus sings with bravado.
In the role of Amelia, Armenian soprano Hrachuhi Bassenz has the unenviable task of competing with vivid memories of Kiri Te Kanawa and Angela Gheorghiu in earlier iterations of this production; her voice is not as ravishingly beautiful an instrument as theirs, and her phrasing lacked the ideal spaciousness and deliquescence, but she is accurate, musical and sympathetic nevertheless.
The star of the show for me is Francesco Meli, who gives a storming, swaggering performance of the hothead Gabriele Adorno’s Act II aria – not, in truth, Verdi at his finest, and Meli made it seem better than it is.
Henrik Nánási conducts briskly and bluntly – a young man’s impatient reading of an opera rich in mature wisdom. I don’t feel him to be one of nature’s Verdians.
Until Dec 10. Tickets: 020 7240 1200; roh.org.uk. A performance will be broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on Jan 26