This statement opera, playing for 2 hours 40 minutes including a single intermission in its present incarnation, grew out of a more modest Mahagonny-Songspiel lasting little longer than tonight’s interval. The bigger stage work is by no means easy to bring off. Its notion of a capitalist never-neverland where everything has its price remains topical, but the plot is just one damn thing after another, the structure loose, the famous songs spread rather thin. Weill’s genre-busting musical idiom combines American vernacular elements with something serious, closer to Hindemith. So should Mahagonny be cast with solely operatic voices as here or dragged towards music theatre? While ENO opted for the former, the singers were not helped on opening night by some wildly inconsistent miking. The Announcer’s linking narration was delivered with the intended digitized edge but as for the rest? Losing the aggressive angularity of Brecht’s original German text was never likely to be a boon, Jeremy Sams for once failing to find a wholly convincing register.
That said, the commitment of chorus, principals and orchestra impressed all the more in a piece scheduled for only three London airings. Mahagonny has surprisingly deep roots in this unjustly beleaguered company’s history. The then Sadler’s Wells Opera first championed the work in 1963 with Sir Colin Davis in the pit. In 1995 a full-length Declan Donnellan staging featured such ENO stalwarts as Lesley Garrett and Sally Burgess. Tonight’s conductor, who formally takes up the post of company music director next year, attracted huge acclaim in the premiere run of Gerald Barry’s opera The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, shining less brightly in Mozart – that was some twenty years ago in happier times for opera in the capital. Director Jamie Manton is a more recent regular: he delivered ENO’s Award-winning Janáček in 2022, a vigorous, unsentimental take on The Cunning Little Vixen.
His new show develops a similar raw energy after a slower start. With virtually no set beyond a generalised industrial wasteland vibe, a world of infinite possibility is ready to be unloaded. In a nice conceit the three central fugitive characters arrive in a container lorry that subsequently disgorges people and props as well as housing more intimate action. We are not in 1920s Berlin or the Wild West but a sort of garishly exaggerated present-day. As is so often the case in contemporary productions of confrontational socialist art, the focus is allowed to drift into apolitical nihilism. Who needs help from hurricanes when we’re spoiling the world just fine? Having no money is a worse crime than murder. But why should this be so? Manton eschews the dialectical in a bleak cavalcade relying on memorable visuals to fill the house’s wide-open spaces. While sloganising banners add nothing meaningful, the approaching typhoon is graphically evoked using little more than a swinging lantern and a tap dancer (Adam Taylor choreographed by Lizzi Gee). Predictably Brecht’s sex workers are no longer exclusively female, and the gallows are replaced by an electric chair. Some commentary is delivered from boxes normally occupied by patrons. Lighting design is crucial, at times brilliantly achieved.
Vocally speaking the outstanding performer is the mezzo Rosie Aldridge as Leokadja Begbick. The role of the unstoppable madame who establishes the city of Mahagonny is often allocated to past-it operatic veterans or Broadway stars. Aldridge is neither. She has been Kundry in Parsifal and Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd. And she can deliver spoken text too! The biggest voice belongs to Heldentenor Simon O’Neill. His hulking Jimmy MacIntyre, not always grateful, is super-audible with or without microphones and (satirical?) American accent. Danielle de Niese incarnates Jenny Smith, the tart with at least a semblance of a heart (if we can still say that). The acting is great. The voice can be sweet or downright shrieky. She gets a hand-held mike at least some of the time which helps. Chorus members, whether kept on the move as individuals or sculpturally blocked en masse, are key to the success of the third act, here thrown into greater relief by being placed on its own after the interval. There is less feeling of emotional remoteness in the score, and it probably helps that Weill recapitulates his best bits. A thought-provoking evening for sure.
