Vaughan Williams’s The Poisoned Kiss (completed 1928, premiered 1936) mixes gothic fantasy (or fairy tale) with quirky (if sometimes simplistic) humour, arriving at an improbably happy resolution with no fewer than six couples paired off in marriage at the end. Its libretto (by Evelyn Sharp, sister of Cecil) adapted Richard Garnett’s The Poison Maid, which itself was based on the story Rappaccini’s Daughter by the 19th century American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne. That is set in Renaissance Padua, and beneath the opera’s overt gothic elements there is the basic scenario of a commedia dell’arte entertainment, especially as mediated through the genre of 18th century opera buffa, even if not the latter’s social setting. A father (here, the magician Dipsacus) stands in the way of his child’s fulfilling her own desires for her life and choice of partner, in this case because he uses Tormentilla as a means to avenge his jilted love for the Empress Persicaria years before. The parent-child relationship is mirrored by that between the Empress and her son Prince Amaryllus, whom she had with the husband she was forced to marry instead of Dipsacus.
As in an opera buffa the schemes of the parents (Dipsacus especially) are ultimately foiled by the children who want to pursue a relationship regardless – though here the magician’s plan is initially thwarted unwittingly since Amaryllus and Tormentilla don’t realise at first that they are each the child of their parents’ sworn enemies. Although Tormentilla has learned that she has been brought up by her father to become imbued with but immune to poison, so that her first kiss with a man will result in his death – which Dipsacus intends will be with Amaryllus – her tryst with the latter in an unguarded moment of passion doesn’t bring about his demise after all, as his mother knows of the plot and has strengthened him with antidotes. Tormentilla becomes an active agent in using unassailable logic to persuade the Empress not to let her son die to avoid falling into Tormentilla’s hands, because to permit that would actually let Dipsacus’s scheme win out in the battle for vengeance. In one of the somewhat unlikely twists of fortune typical of an opera buffa, the Empress immediately relents, allowing Amaryllus and Tormentilla to be married; and furthermore she is persuaded to be reconciled with Dipsacus herself and be married to him. As in many operatic comedies, there is also the lighter-hearted subplot of a love affair between servants which also bridges the two warring sides, here between Amaryllus’s servant Gallanthus and Tormentilla’s maid Angelica, both played with Cockney charm by Tony Bannister, and Laura Jamie Anstice in her feisty, fulsome singing.
In his setting, Vaughan Williams draws upon and satirises other traditions apart from Italian opera, although when Gallanthus tells Angelica of the Prince’s previous flirtations, his list is surely meant to echo Leporello’s ‘Catalogue’ Aria. With spoken dialogue (some of which is cut here, rather than using Ursula Vaughan Williams’s later spoken narration) it harks back to the format of Mozart’s singspiel The Magic Flute (as well as featuring parental figures at loggerheads, like the Queen of the Night and Sarastro, and employing groups of female and male sidekicks to those principals, where the Empress’s Mediums correspond to Mozart’s Three Ladies, and the Hobgoblins are more loosely like the Boys, as accomplices). But there are stronger elements of Gilbert & Sullivan in several numbers, both in the punning wit of the text and their appealing melodic facility (even the Empress’s music avoids the Queen of the Night’s coloratura histrionics) where such lyrical directness even sometimes looks ahead to mid-20th century musicals.
A tango rhythm at the opening of Act Three for the three Mediums, and some jazz-inflections elsewhere are fascinatingly improbable sources of inspiration for Vaughan Williams. But other passages are clearly instilled with the composer’s characteristic vein of folksong, not least in Angelica’s amusingly ironic solo aubade as she wakes up to another day of drudgery and Anstice here fills Holy Trinity Church with the performance of her haunting, modally-inflected cantilena – and as she delivers that high up from the pulpit, we almost expect her to let her long hair drop down like Mélisande. Otherwise, there is a full-blooded satirical fervour which recalls the composer’s Five Tudor Portraits, particularly in the final chorus – a typical happy ending like an opera buffa, but stylistically Vaughan Williams’s own, with also a dash of emphatic chordal writing like one of his upbeat hymn settings.
Chris Cann’s semi-staging (though ‘semi’ undersells it, as all the characters act – it is only the choral ensemble who stand to the side) successfully walks the tightrope between the corny humour, sickly sentimentality, and supernatural sensationalism to which the opera is slightly prone, to create a witty and energetic realisation. Costume designs evoke the late-Victorian or Edwardian world but it doesn’t become a period piece with over-egged acting and declamation to which G&S productions are sometimes susceptible. The singers enthusiastically fill the generous acoustic of the South Kensington church. Such is the vigour of Alex Carpenter’s conducting and Aeron Preston’s unflagging accompaniment on the piano, with its varied textures and timbres diligently delivered right from the boisterous overture, that the lack of a larger instrumental ensemble hardly registers as an issue.
Stephen Walker brings a dignified, lyrical ardour to the part of the Prince, and Emma Humann is an equally decorous Tormentilla, despite the menacing sound of the character’s name. James Chadburn is more a lovably, schoolmasterly rogue as the magician, than a villain – particularly in his gown and Canterbury cap – while Helena Culliney displays more volatility as his old flame in her spoken passages than in her more humanly, emotively delivered singing. The three Hobgoblins slither around the set and the Mediums glide around it but without upstaging the other, and working in effective synchronicity before they are married off to each other and made more personable.
This is a must for all Vaughan Williams fans (who were also well served by the New London Opera Group’s Hugh the Drover two years ago) but will be no less rewarding for those interested in 20th century opera. The performance shows that, despite the libretto’s alleged shortcomings in much written commentary, the opera works as an enchanting piece.
Further performances to March 29
The post The New London Opera Group – Vaughan Williams’s The Poisoned Kiss appeared first on The Classical Source.
