When opera composers take up the Bible it isn’t usually in search of spiritual instruction. Nothing of the sort was on his mind when Verdi repurposed the Old Testament story of Nebuchadnezzar herding the Hebrews into Babylonian captivity for his opera Nabucco, which has just been playing at Covent Garden in a run disturbed but not destroyed by Covid cancellations.
Verdi was notoriously unsympathetic to the Church, and his chief interest in this biblical scenario was as the backdrop to a love story of the classic kind that involves warring factions, rivals and recriminations. One of Nabucco’s daughters has fallen for a handsome young Hebrew, and if that wasn’t problematic enough, his other daughter Abigaille has fallen for him too. No good can come of this, and for much of the opera it doesn’t.
But Nabucco isn’t just a desert romance. Verdi and his librettist may have been less than careful in their borrowing – they get confused between Babylon and Assyria: see one ancient kingdom, you’ve seen ’em all – but each act of the opera is nonetheless prefaced by a quote from the prophet Jeremiah. Musically, the high point of the piece is not a lovesick aria but the famous chorus of Hebrew slaves, “Va. pensiero”, whose power resides in the fact that it’s a genuinely affecting statement of exile and loss. The dramatic high point comes when Nabucco, having conventionally lost his mind, regains it by promising to acknowledge the Hebrew God. So deeper matters aren’t ignored completely.
I wish I could say that this Covent Garden production – an old one by Daniele Abbado, revived – delivers the big drama to heart-stopping effect: it’s an austere show with pared-down design, vaguely modern dress, and big moments like Nabucco’s conversion barely register. But its sobriety is stylish, tasteful and unfussy, allowing space for the music to speak. And the music is well done, by a largely Eastern European cast who sing with old-fashioned, characteristic directness. Unsubtle but impressive.
The baritone in the title role, Amartuvshin Enkhbat, is a case in point. And even more so is Liudmyla Monastryska, who barely acts as the vengeful Abigaille but stands with legs astride, assumes a combat pose, and belts it out – with thrilling vocal prowess that compels you to forgive her rock-like immobility.
Being an early Verdi score that calls for punch and impact, there’s no lasting harm done to Nabucco by such things. And the conductor Daniel Oren punchily supported them, with strong, impassioned playing from the orchestra and singing from the chorus. That the chorus came on wearing Covid masks was a precaution too far for some people in the audience, who booed, and it did affect the sound. But visually, although absurd to start with, this was something you stopped noticing by Act II. And if anything it forged a link between our own times and the ancient past, given the starring role that plagues sometimes play in the Bible.
Among the mysteries of music is the way conductors influence the sound of an ensemble. It’s beyond words, and especially mysterious as a feature of the British choral circuit, where there are a number of elite groups drawing on much the same pool of professional singers but with discernibly distinctive sounds fixed by the people in charge.
Over the festive season I heard a number of these groups, more or less back to back, marvelling at the differences. And above all, I marvelled at John Eliot Gardiner who conducted his own Monteverdi Choir and Orchéstre Revolutionnaire et Romantique in a seriously distinctive performance of Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ at St Martin-in-the-Fields.
L’Enfance is an odd piece: like a Christmas oratorio but more interested in the side dramas of King Herod and the subsequent flight to Egypt than in events at the stable (which get swiftly despatched, with no show at all from Mary and Joseph until 30 minutes into the score).
Its sound-world is understated, modest, French. And Gardiner delivered it immaculately, with star soloists (including tenor Michael Spyres), as the fanfare to a new venture in which St Martin’s is now the home base for all his musical activities.
It’s a questionable move because St Martin’s isn’t comfortable for the audience, who get hard pews and poor sightlines (as I can testify from being seated behind a pillar), or for the musicians, who get a cramped performing space. But at least it’s a prominent building that will look good on film. And L’Enfance was indeed filmed, for online broadcast by Deutsche Grammophon.
As for the remaining choirs I heard at the end of the year, they mostly formed part of the St John’s Smith Square annual choral festival, and demonstrated how some groups had weathered the enforced silence of Covid shutdowns better than others. Christ Church, Oxford sounded tired and tentative; Clare, Cambridge was alive with energy and dazzling. You can only hope that 2022 will bring them all a better year than 2021.
This article first appeared in the February 2022 issue of the Catholic Herald. Subscribe today.
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