‘Within a few hours I saw a musical and a ballet in which adolescent girls in gingham frocks fall down vortices and have sub-Freudian encounters,’ PAGE 31


OPERA Fake’s progress


Anna Nicole ROYAL OPERA HOUSE, COVENT GARDEN


Dialogues des Carmelites GUILDHALL SCHOOL OF MUSIC, LONDON


Traviatas, Mimis and Butterflies, Lulus and fatal brides of Lammermuir. Mark-Anthony Turnage and his librettist Richard Thomas chose a heroine, the short-lived American celebrity Anna Nicole Smith, perfectly in that tradition – and in another one too, that breed of go-getters epitomised by Monteverdi’s Poppæa, the gleefully amoral girl who gains a crown and her man (Nero) but fails to notice certain ominous patterns in his behaviour. The show has divided opinion with remark- able precision. I am one of those who found it almost entirely worthless, an embarrassment for Covent Garden: the spectacle of the mar- keting campaign, like a granny in Juicy Couture, trying desperately to be trendy and youthful, was matched only by the usual relentlessly middle-aged audience doing their best to milk some enjoyment from an evening which, had it turned up on Saturday night telly, they would have switched off quicker than the Royal Variety Performance, to which, in its camp vulgarity, Anna Nicole bears a family resemblance. The many problems stem from a confusion in the authors’ attitude to the sad heroine: whether to celebrate or deplore the trashiness of her existence, to mock or condole – whether this is satire, send-up, fable or tragedy. It’s too predictable for comedy, too flippant for the opposite. We are left with pseudo-morals:


O


RADIO In defence mode


Woman’s Hour BBC RADIO 4


indifferent – there lurked the thought of an intelligent and capable woman who has suc- cumbed to the necessity of a persona. Only one of the questions in Jenni Murray’s 20- minute sit-down (3 March) really met this


B


eneath the reviews of Sarah Brown’s Downing Street diaries – good, bad and


pera is a dangerous place for women, a procession of death-bound Carmens and


Anna Nicole: too predictable for comedy, too flippant for the opposite. Photo: Bill Cooper


be careful what you wish for; life’s a bitch and then you die. This, from Thomas’ jaunty pen, feels plainly fake, mauvaise foi masquerading as weary Brechtism. It would have been better if Thomas, jovial


celebrant of the tawdry and the genius behind Jerry Springer – The Opera, had written the music. Turnage’s sluggish idiom gives us far too much time to see the jokes coming, and provides a chuggy accompaniment to some- thing struggling towards the condition of music theatre but without the wit and pace – or attractiveness – of Cole Porter, or even Andrew Lloyd Webber. Occasionally his strangled muse breaks out in a woozy-bluesy interlude or aria of mammary celebration or drug-catalogue. Eva-Maria Westbroek throws herself gamely into the role of the poor, gawky, talentless loser whose low-level ambitions are so derided. The roles of her embittered mother (Sue Bickley) and weird lover-lawyer Howard Stern (Gerald Finley) have a certain piquancy too, though the latter had been somewhat rewritten for legal reasons. (Why would you


transformation head on. It came when Murray touched on her guest’s performance at last year’s Labour Party conference and the reve - lation that Gordon, whatever else he might be, was her hero. Why, Murray enquired with characteristic bluntness, had she chosen to portray herself as a “soppy housewife”? In terms of getting a satisfactory answer, this was slightly less useful than asking Sir Alex Ferguson why he is such a testy old cur- mudgeon fixated on the idea of media conspiracies and referees being out to get him. Sure enough, Mrs Brown stonewalled like billy-oh (“I don’t think I sounded like that at all”) before declaring that she liked the idea of “people standing up for people”. But the


include a living American lawyer in your show, unless you were a serious fan of the reallocation of wealth?) The show was directed by Graham Norton and designed by Jeff Koons. OK, it wasn’t, but Richard Jones and Miriam Buether were doing their very best impressions. Francis Poulenc’s 1956 work


makes the most vivid possible contrast. This is opera’s blood- iest female hecatomb, as the 16 nuns of Compiègne face Robespierre’s gallows, and a masterpiece that manages to


be utterly human while pondering such doc- trines as the transference of grace. It’s a thing of pellucid aural textures, austerely beautiful chordal lines, a rather Protestant love of the word. Stephen Barlow’s poised production marooned the women on a raft of light amid surrounding blackness but tiptoed timidly around the relationships, the conflicts and the humour, too, that turns these characters into people and makes their end not merely deplorable but spiritually harrowing. These women were robust enough – even Blanche, the neurasthenic heroine who finally finds her courage (and the meaning of her chosen name Sœur Blanche de l’Agonie du Christ) – to mount those steps; they can take rougher treatment than Barlow gave them here.


If this performance didn’t explore the depths, it was still an attractive surface. Most impressive were Càtia Moreso’s Prioress, a caressing mezzo of some distinction, and Sophie Junker as Sœur Constance, her holy- fool witterings on death and providence, in the crystalline frame of Poulenc’s translucent strings and woodwind, going to the heart of the bright mystery behind this tragedy. Robert Thicknesse


exchange was enough to confirm the inter- view’s rather odd tone. A former PR supremo; a long-time political wife; the former chat - elaine of Number 10 – with this CV, one expected Mrs Brown to be, if not as hard as nails, then practised, direct and self-confident. In fact, she came across as nervy, defensive and clearly not enjoying herself in the least. She was also, perhaps understandably,


determined not to give much away. How dif- ficult had it been to give everything up to marry Gordon, Murray breezily enquired, gesturing at, if not absolutely invoking, the idea of the bicycle made for two in which wifey was firmly relegated to the back seat. (Continued on page 30.)


12 March 2011 | THE TABLET | 29


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