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It’s not often that I have felt so disinclined to write a piece about the past week’s opera-going, especially when it was an occasion I had looked forward to so much: Berg’s second opera Lulu, one of the strangest works in the repertoire, but even if not a masterpiece — it’s very hard to say what it is — a work of enduring fascination.
However, if you had the misfortune to encounter it for the first time in the Royal Opera’s new production by Christof Loy you would be entitled to wonder whether it was a work of any fascination at all, and not just a long-winded and perhaps unsavoury bore. At least the Royal Opera’s production of Wozzeck, fearful as it is, stimulates rage: this one merely leaves you glazed and immobilised. The setting is a tripartite screen, white some of the time, black the rest, with white strip lighting above; and a single chair. All the males, with fleeting exceptions, are dressed in dark-grey office suits and ties; the women in dark dresses, with the odd more elaborate skirt, rapidly shed. The cast stand and face the audience, expressionless as possible, and sing. It isn’t at all like a concert performance. It is like — it is — an anti-staged performance, in which each singer is drained of character. The Lulu of Agneta Eichenholz radiates non-allure. She looks blank or bored, doesn’t move about much, and copes with the notes to moderate effect. If she were in a living production her vocal shortcomings might not be so patent, but there is nothing else to concentrate on. For the one blow-job she administers, to her first client in Act III, she is out of sight in the wings, and one sees his back, his mild giving at the knees, and his zipping up. That is as erotic or anti-erotic as the production gets.
Most of the rest of the cast is strong, indeed annoyingly so, considering how their talents are unexploited. Jennifer Larmore sings the role of the Countess Geschwitz beautifully, and does her best to put something into the part, but is clearly under directorial interdict. Michael Volle is a consummate artist, one of the finest baritones of a time rich in them: but his Dr Schön and Jack the Ripper, again superbly voiced, have none of the complexity of the first role or the sinister quality of the second. The same goes for the excellent Alwa of Klaus Florian Vogt. Gwynne Howell, who could surely make something horribly seedy out of Schigolch, is not allowed to: anyone who saw Hans Hotter’s perfectly vile portrayal of the role will remember what it could be.
The orchestra plays well, though with no particular sense of purpose. In Act I it was excessively restrained, but pepped up for the other two. But it was accompanying nothing. In an interview in the programme Loy gives his views on the work, talking about the psychology of the characters. But that is exactly what they are denied. In a sense I think Berg denies it too; but he demands a maximum of action, concealment, violence, so that we can puzzle over what lies behind it. If one read Loy first one would expect a probing if misguided study of the point of the bizarre things going on — even if he defies Berg. For instance, Loy actually says ‘I don’t like seeing both women [Lulu and Geschwitz] die’, so Geschwitz survives, while Berg has her killed too by Jack. But mainly Berg is betrayed far more comprehensively than that, by not being allowed to create characters at all. At least if the Royal Opera ditches this, there won’t be much wasted scenery.
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