I went to the first night of WNO's new production of Guillaume Tell last Friday and greatly enjoyed it. It's an opera I've never seen staged and which I only heard for the first time in Antonio Pappano's Proms performance two years ago. Some of the music was cut for this performance but it still lasted nearly four hours with one interval. The director was David Pountney, no natural romantic, and his set with Alpine backdrop seemed designed principally to suggest the icy grip of Austrian oppression rather than any natural idyll; the set also transformed into something closer to a prison or fortress for the scenes where the Austrian governor Gesler was on stage with his soldiers. There were two scenes with dancers which were well choreographed, the first portraying the joy of wedding celebrations early in the first act, and the second where the Swiss peasants are forced to dance for Gesler and here the choreographer Amir Hosseinpour created movements suggestive of different kinds of physical and sexual domination and violence.
David Kempster sang the title role well, and Barrie Banks was very good as the conflicted Arnold, torn between his love for the Austrian Mathilde and his loyalty to the Swiss nationalists. Unfortunately Gisela Stille as Mathilde was unable to sing but simply acted her part on stage while her understudy Camilla Roberts sang her role from the side. Clive Bayley was excellent as the tyrannical Gesler, even though depicted, in a wheelchair, as a cross between a bald Dr Strangelove and a Bond villain. There was also good support from Fflu Wyn as Jemmy and Leah-Marian Jones as Hedwige. But for me the outstanding successes of the performance were the playing of the WNO orchestra under Carlo Rizzi and the WNO chorus, in a work where the chorus is as important a character as any other: every single act ends with an extended choral movement. I certainly came away with a greater respect for Rossini's versatility in opera and for this work with its influence on the Berlioz of Les Troyens (even though Berlioz had initially rejected the cult of Rossini which had swept the Paris Opera) and the Verdi of Don Carlos.
David Kempster sang the title role well, and Barrie Banks was very good as the conflicted Arnold, torn between his love for the Austrian Mathilde and his loyalty to the Swiss nationalists. Unfortunately Gisela Stille as Mathilde was unable to sing but simply acted her part on stage while her understudy Camilla Roberts sang her role from the side. Clive Bayley was excellent as the tyrannical Gesler, even though depicted, in a wheelchair, as a cross between a bald Dr Strangelove and a Bond villain. There was also good support from Fflu Wyn as Jemmy and Leah-Marian Jones as Hedwige. But for me the outstanding successes of the performance were the playing of the WNO orchestra under Carlo Rizzi and the WNO chorus, in a work where the chorus is as important a character as any other: every single act ends with an extended choral movement. I certainly came away with a greater respect for Rossini's versatility in opera and for this work with its influence on the Berlioz of Les Troyens (even though Berlioz had initially rejected the cult of Rossini which had swept the Paris Opera) and the Verdi of Don Carlos.
Comment