I had already seen Simon Boccanegra five times at the Royal Opera house and to some extent the five performances have merged into one in my mind. Actually, that's not strictly true, but I think writing a review of each performance, even if I had time immediately afterwards, would have been repetitive.
In many ways the Proms performance, on Sunday 18 July was very different from the Royal Opera House performance. It occurred on the fifth anniversary of Plácido Domingo making his Proms debut. I was there, too, meaning I have been to every one of his Proms performances!
A different venue and no just in a trivial way. The Royal Opera House has a capacity a little over 2,000; the Royal Albert Hall holds about 6000 - they say it's 5,500 seats, but they take some seats out to create a mosh pit in the centre of the floor level, and there is also standing way up near the roof in the Gallery. Tickets are by-and-large cheaper than the Royal Opera House, although I will challenge that assumption when I get round to writing about the Meistersinger Prom.
The Prom was promised as 'semi-staged' and costumed. Oh, and I went with Jimmy, so, naturally I had the added anxiety of being responsible for his enjoyment!
We had very nice seats, two in the front row of Loggia Box 25, a box that is low down, is at about 70 degrees to the stage (or at about twenty past if the stage is o'clock). Unrestricted view and acoustically reasonable.
Before it began, I remarked to Jimmy that I wasn't sure why I was there, because I had the entire opera playing in my head, anyway. I did try to brief him on the plot, but he wasn't interested in anything other than 'there's a lot of singing, then he dies'. Although I did further add that the Prologue takes place twenty five years earlier than the rest of the opera, and so Plácido has to wear a dodgy wig to pretend to look younger.
The semi-staging meant that there was no scenery, and the chorus was dressed in evening wear and arrayed like a choir behind the orchestra. All the actors had also been let go, so the acting was very much the cast of seven to ten doing their stuff on a fairly narrow strip of stage in front of the orchestra and conductor, with the minimum of props.
But they were in costume, for which I didn't envy them. The programme notes for the ROH performances included an observation that the costumes, dating back to 1991, are very old-fashioned: some of them, for the Council Chamber scene, are made of upholstery fabric.
Many of the entrances and exits by the singers were made, not directly from the usual doors from the wings but through the doors into the arena, making use of additional space and allowing us to watch entrances down the stairs by the stalls. Intermezzo experienced this at close hand
Placido Domingo stopped just three feet away from me and sang a few lines! No idea what they were, I was too gobsmacked by his presence. Charisma doesn't begin to cover it. It's like a gravitational field. The Albert Hall shrunk around us.
I don't think the opera lost a great deal by being semi-staged. I'm not against concert operas and, indeed, my favourite night at the opera ever was a concert version. But in principle I regard it as diminution of the total work.
They haven't found a way to implement surtitles in the circular Albert Hall, so a full libretto (Italian/English) was provided with the programme. The lights weren't entirely dimmed, unlike the opera house, so it was possible - and indeed advisable - to follow the libretto. I'm not a great one for sitting down at home and listening to an entire audio-only opera recording following the libretto. I tend either to watch subtitled DVDs or listen to the sounds the music makes without necessarily understanding the words. I did find that there are at least three English versions of the words: the condensed form used on the surtitle screen (And TV subtitles), the literal translation from the Italian libretto and the free translation that was printed in the book. It was a good exercise to follow the libretti.
I'm going to write a separate blogpost about my overall impression of the opera and my 'marking' of the singers. I don't think that there was very much difference from my overall impressions of the ROH performance. It was good to have Ferruccio Furlanetto back in the role of Fiesco. To my ears he didn't sound quite as gorgeous as he had, for example on 5 July, but maybe that was because I knew that he had recovered from a serious throat infection.
Jimmy thought Marina Poplavskaya was the best singer and also thought very highly of Joseph Calleja. His verdict on Plácido - 'he's past it'.He then corrected to that 'his voice'. Well, I think Jimmy's wrong, but he's entitled to his view. But he was most certainly impressed by Plácido's dramatic performance.
I found it really quite overwhelming. I had spent Thursday evening on the front row of the stalls at Covent Garden, in a direct line to where some of the best action took place, and even, at times, chose yo use my binoculars. On Sunday, I was a good distance from the stage, in the cavernous Albert Barn, and felt the performance entirely differently. I suppose my overwhelming memory was of the final scene, when he entered, stooped over, on sticks, playing old and dying. Even though I was by now expecting it, it still shocked me, and he seemed to take so long to do that slow walk up onto stage. And most of all those final moments where he is in the final gasps of life and the plot is resolving itself into reconciliation. By this stage, I was waiting for 'the fall' and so was Jimmy, even though I was not sure whether it would happen - too much clutter on what seemed such a small strip of stage. In the event I missed the full impact of the fall, because he soon disappeared out of my view. This also means I missed the melodrama as he stayed down, playing dead for longer than necessary. Again, I refer you to Intermezzo and commenters for the full description of what happened Placido Domingo is dead (oops no hang on a minute....)
What overwhelmed me was, to use a cliche, the way he inhibited the character. I have to say, Plácido is a remarkable man in every possible way. In the prologue he really did look like a young man. Perhaps not in the TV close-ups but certainly in the way he moved. Not just bounding round stage, but in his bearing and his demeanour.
Once the prologue was over, Simon Boccanegra had aged considerably, but had also taken on the gravitas of the Doge. We are told he had become a tyrant, although this was never fully spelled out. In the Council Chamber scene he was regal, which was a contrast with his tenderness with Amelia. I have seen this played and have found the affection between Simon and Amelia to be too much like lovers. Despite the onstage chemistry and the clear affection, I found that it played wonderfully as father and daughter, perhaps partly because the actual age difference between the actual singers was convincing.
From being in command in the Council Chamber scene, he descended through self-doubt into physical pain and death. Stupid people says he plays each role exactly the same, which is utter nonsense. Clearly every actor uses the same part of themself to portray a similar aspect of a character - it wasn't difficult to imagine that this man had played Otello several times, clearly there are similarities. I sense that he thoroughly enjoys playing these drawn out over-dramatic death scenes; I thoroughly enjoy watching them. If I had the patience and the editing skills, it would be fun to out together a compilation video of the best 'death falls', and I am certain the similarities would be superficial.
I have read several reports calling this 'the best Prom ever'. Even allowing for short-memory syndrome (some had applied that label to the previous day's Meistersinger), I can't agree! I have limited experience, but for me, the best will remain Die Walkure in 2005. And much as I thoroughly enjoyed Sunday, I still had my memories from a very special performance on Thursday night to luxuriate in.
I took a lot of photos at curtain call, but they are all really rubbish. I did also shoot a video, again, rubbish, but here it is, anyway
