James Conway
Over the last 27 years I have had the good fortune to programme and direct a dozen Handel operas, some of them several times; and because they have toured and been invited to festivals, I have been lucky enough to see them played before extremely diverse audiences. I recall the trepidation and delight I felt before the Irish premiere of Tamerlano in Tralee, County Kerry (anticipated by a scary reviewer in one of the august journals of the day in the words ‘the plain people of Ireland do not want da capo arias’), as clearly as the dismay I felt when asked to explain my production of Rodelinda to a small group of journalists (presumably to sweeten their reviews) and donors not before or after but at the interval of a performance in the most high-brow receiving house in the USA.
I take pleasure in the form – and play with form – of Handel’s operas. I esteem the characterisation, the profound understanding of all kinds of love, the story-telling (pretty remarkable in the face of the requirements of the celebrities with whom he worked), and the sheer mastery of vocal and instrumental writing within a beautifully confined palette. Some work better than others on stage, but none that I have studied needed rescuing – unless perhaps from an accretion of performance tradition, or of expectation and affectation on the part of some of those ready to buy tickets.
What Handel’s genius deserves is creative, thoughtful, open-hearted attention. Just as the best performers are those who are generous enough to bring themselves to the stage, and to meet their characters in rehearsal, so the most rewarded audience members are those who leave preconceptions and received opinion at the door, and bring their own feelings, thoughts, sharpened sensations and goodwill to their seats. One of the achievements of which I am most proud – not mine alone, of course – was the Handelfest English Touring Opera toured in 2006, with 5 different Handel operas performed on 5 successive nights in several regional cities, together with recitals and talks in the daytime. What I remember of that, now, are the excitement in the foyers, the comments on the streets in the day-time, the letters and emails in the years that followed. I remember the people telling me that Tolomeo had spoken to them of the loneliness and beauty of the homeless, that Teseo has surprised them with its sheer energy and brilliance, that Ariodante had pushed them to consider the limits of goodness, that Flavio had seemed like Romeo and Juliet with melody.
In those weeks after the London openings it seemed there were no gate-keepers, no acknowledged experts. There were many people who cared, and there were some right barneys at pre-performance talks. A few people did talk about vibrato as if they knew what it meant, but generally that sort of dullness found its way to the cellar, and quieter voices said how the work made them feel, describing what happened when they listened attentively to a siciliano, or even watched a sequence of gestures that deepened their appreciation of character and fate, just as music does.
Just as the best singer, player or audience member has to be generous enough to bring their own, particular, generous attention to a performance, so directors and conductors have to bring their particular, personal, generous attention to a production. Conductors are much in fashion as auteurs, though I dare say few in the audience know what the conductor actually does in the performance, unless they are observed feverishly playing the harpsichord. They do a lot, if they are good, and none of what they bring comes to them in nocturnal communion with the composer (though some have been turned into such celebrities that their heads may have been thus turned). It all comes from hard work and close attention.
Directors, on the other hand, are unfashionable: easy targets for snipers. To be any good they have to prepare for months or even years with close attention and humility; they have to cull more ideas than they develop, and to embed those that are developed so deeply in performance and design that they seem to be the ideas of the performers and the audience members. I guess there are some who are celebrities but not very good, just as there are celebrated-but-not-very-good academics, journalists, performers. But I don’t recognise the image of the bad child, rather like Ravel’s ‘L’Enfant’, which seems to be the regular target of metropolitan journalists and gate-keepers.
I don’t reckon that choosing a period in which to set a production is very interesting. Sometimes it is essential (in a political opera with an identified time lapse like Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, for example); sometimes it is helpful, if it helps to illuminate the meaning of a siege, say, or a religious conflict; and sometimes it offers clarity in terms of defining status, obligations, or even a way of moving on stage. But it is not the primary task of a director as I understand it. Maybe I am old-fashioned: I think directors create design with designers, interpret and clarify text and music, agree motivation, create movement with performers that sets out meaning in special relationships, use theatrical devices like lighting to heighten meaning, and try to guide the eyes of the audience in a way that matches or strategically (and temporarily) opposes the music and text.
Contrary to what people seem to think, each gesture of hand or arm or face, each position on stage is (or should be) scrutinised in rehearsal; it is likely that it is the result of layer on layer of practice. What appears simplest has probably had more distracting gesture excised than you can imagine. I recall some gestures in particular (it might not be a good sign that they stand out) that were so counter-intuitive they took what seemed ages to make – a slow fall, for example, the meeting of two wrists, a controlled gaze in dialogue; then, when they ‘worked’, it was a long labour to make sure they kept their proper duration in relation to the music, yet did not atrophy. I guess that is why most ‘semi-staged’ Handel opera performance is so repellent to me. It’s just lazy, and the results are generally silly, full of stock gesture and village-idiot facial expression, with the occasional hand-holding or kiss to seal the deal of banality the conductor has made with the audience. (In fairness, they are not 100 miles away from a good deal of jet-age celebrity performance on our finest stages). Naturally, ‘semi-staged’ performances are generally the best reviewed in today’s journals, in which directors are so loathed, but one hopes that will pass. Maybe then we can have excellent concert performances again, as well as well-staged ones.
Because I understand Handel’s operas as dramas of character refined by fate, and because the characters develop in distilled recitative and formal arias, I have always favoured stark, poetic settings and clear, extremely detailed gesture. I guess I should be happy if a favourable critique says that it is not ‘inappropriate’ – even though I don’t understand the use of ‘appropriateness’ in the consideration of art of any kind. It has become such a dull word: something for people who are looking to have their expectations met in artistic encounters. Surprise, delight, enrapture, scald, scour – these are the kinds of verbs I like to think of when I go to the theatre, and when I work on an opera production.
Forget reviews: why should you care? Forget authority: who has it, in this context? Nobody knows what an opera production is supposed to be like, and although there is a rickety industry built out of it, nobody knows what is ‘authentic’. If you give close attention, and if the director, conductor and performers have given close attention, something wonderful might happen. I’d say a fair bit of my emotional education, such as it is, has come from the practical study of Handel’s operas – as well as much wanton pleasure. I am doing my best to see that as many people as possible around the country have those chances!
James Conway is Artistic Director of English Touring Opera.