Two rare one-Act operas featuring stories of jealous, murderous lust, offer some fascinating juxtapositions – Der Wald (premiered 1902), Ethel Smyth’s second opera, but a late essay in Wagnerian Romanticism if more sensational (and written in German); and Respighi’s Lucrezia, a late exercise in verismo that was not quite complete at his death in 1936, but finished by his wife, Elsa, and a pupil, Ennio Porrino. This is billed as apparently its UK premiere (though that should be qualified as ‘staged premiere’ since the New Penguin Opera Guide notes a BBC Radio 3 broadcast in 1973, presumably in concert performance).
The eponymous woodland setting of Der Wald evokes a legendary Grimm Brothers world beyond the reach of ordinary urban civilisation, where different rules and customs apply. The basic background of a misty Germanic forest with the outlines of a timber barn are preserved in Stephen Barlow’s production. But the drama transposes a sort of 1950s Western saga of good and evil into the woods instead. (It’s worth remembering that in 1903 the opera was the first ever by a woman staged at the Metropolitan Opera in America.) The honest peasants (among whom are the betrothed Röschen and Heinrich) are ordinary folk to whom the Pedlar (Hausirer) appeals with popular wares such as fashionable clothing and an Elvis record. They are confronted by the black leather-clad, motorbike-riding Iolanthe – partner of a cowboy-like Rudolf, owner of the wood – and her cohort of sinister huntsmen, like goths (appropriately enough within a mythic Germanic setting and presumably recalling, by analogy, the violent gothic tribes of Germania whom the Romans disastrously encountered at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 A.D. Certainly these huntsmen appear to take it on themselves to police the woods in their own arbitrary way, like the Wild West). If the concept sounds lurid and extravagant, it’s no more so than the opera’s plot in any case, and is choreographed with a reasonable degree of subtlety. Iolanthe takes a fancy to Heinrich and uses the fact that he has poached a deer against him, to provoke him to leave her or face capital punishment for his crime. He chooses not to betray Röschen and so is mercilessly killed.
The chorus of wood spirits in the Prologue – which is reprised at the opera’s end – eulogises the allegedly simple, rural way of life in the forest, but also serves as an elegy for worldly transience. Its Brahmsian introspection sounds like an imitation of the German Requiem or the choral ode Nänie. However, the freshly filled graves over which the spirits preside, the empty bear skin hauled on by the Pedlar, and Heinrich’s captured deer all bely that chorus’s vision of a sylvan peace and harmony, and presage Heinrich’s own violent demise.
Avery Lafrentz has a bold and somewhat woozy tone with a shrill edge, suiting the witchy character that is made of Iolanthe here, and contrasting vividly with Manon Ogwen Parry’s sweetly angelic Röschen – a role cast as merely the good young woman, without much psychological development. Tobias Campos Santiñaque’s slightly brittle vibrato results in a less than confident or ardent Heinrich, while Redmond Sanders’s Rudolf is a touch held back, in thrall to Iolanthe. Sonny Fielding’s Pedlar captures a certain roguish levity, offsetting the gloom of the rest of the plot.
The well-known story of the rape of Lucretia, in Respighi’s setting, plays out here in a contemporary American courtroom. Textual projections indicate that a parallel is drawn with the fairly recent trial of Brock Turner, whose rape of Chanel Miller was regarded as being treated with unsuitable leniency by the Californian judge, prompting a wider examination there of the legal definition of sexual consent. They have their counterparts in this production with the silent extras of the Plaintiff, Defendant, and Judge.
They witness this retelling of an episode from early Roman history, just as Respighi’s opera added its own extra dramatic dimension in the one-woman chorus of La Voce. Somewhat like a courtroom advocate, she relays and comments upon the incident in a recitative or arioso style that switches, intriguingly, between Monteverdi (the tense mood of Il combattimento springs to mind, another trial of sorts) and Puccini. Between those two poles oscillates Respighi’s own style in the rest of the score, terser but otherwise not so distinctive – though after the sprawl of Smyth’s work it has an engaging directness. Respighi comes into his own more in the work’s rich orchestral scoring than its word setting, though these aspects come together in Lucrezia’s concluding monologue, lamenting to her husband what has happened, before killing herself as a matter of honour. There’s more than a touch of Strauss, and in its soaring lyricism and fateful mood it’s reminiscent of Salome’s peroration, which similarly climaxes in catastrophe.
Gabriella Giulietta Noble gives voice to the drama not as a dispassionate, objective observer, but with an impressive, arrestingly wide array of expressive nuance that makes the diegetic role of La Voce an equal, complementary part of the work alongside Lucrezia’s mimetic one. Lowri Probert exudes dignity and control, compared with which her handmaids (Marianne Ruel and Seohyun Go) are touchingly restrained. After the more syllabic, and sometimes almost half-spoken delivery of Der Wald, Sanders’s Tarquinio and his four fellow Roman noblemen bring a welcome Italianate colour in their proud swaggering as they place their bets as to whose wife is the most virtuous. Sanders develops an insidious, ironic heroism as he confronts Lucrezia, while Harry Jacques is a purposeful Bruto, later brought on as a witness; and Campos Santiñaque as Lucrezia’s husband, Collatino, bears himself with a suffering forbearance.
Dominic Wheeler and the Guildhall School Orchestra have the measure of both works. There’s an atmosphere of brooding mystery within the overall soundscape of Der Wald, even if Smyth’s music rarely breaks out of a certain foursquare Wagnerian influence. The performance of Lucrezia has more searing force, responding wonderfully to the greater flesh-and-blood substance of Respighi’s score which, incidentally, strikes a marked contrast with Britten’s mealy treatment of the same subject.
The episode of Tarquinio’s rape famously proved to be the last straw for Roman patricians, disgusted with the corruption of the monarchical dynasty (of which Tarquinio was a younger member) that ruled Rome, leading to its overthrow in favour of a republic. Just as Respighi blends the antique and (for him) up to date musical worlds of Monteverdi and Puccini – respectively, Roman moral uprightness and depravity perhaps – so Barlow’s production suggestively combines ancient and modern in the appearance of the Roman characters, especially the noblemen. Their double-breasted suits, worn with laurel crowns, sandals and sashes merge a 1930s fascist style with Roman dress. Setting the narrative in a contemporary American court not only intelligently corresponds with the Miller case, and modern discourse about the legal concept of rape and its emotional consequences. Tarquinio’s heinous crime replayed in such a context also serves as a comment upon present overbearing political authoritarianism in that country, especially given the fact that the sexual mores of some of its leaders and supporters are less than unblemished. Now is an apt time to think creatively about the Trump regime as under judicial scrutiny, the more so since this production coincides with the remarkable rise to power of the somewhat anti-establishment Zohran Mamdani in New York. In its own way, small perhaps, this is a powerful instance of how theatre can and should engage with the wider world today. What a privilege for the Guildhall School’s students to be able to take part in that constructive dialogue.
