Garsington Opera's production of Benjamin Britten's opera Death in Venice is flawless. Deeply moving, exquisitely layered and perfectly executed, it left me feeling I had witnessed something momentous.
The opera is based on Thomas Mann's novel of the same name, in which the author Gustav von Aschenbach, suffering writer's block, travels to Venice to find inspiration. Here he falls in love with a beautiful young polish boy who is unaware of the passion he inspires. The discovery that cholera has struck the city precipitates in Aschenbach a catastrophic internal struggle.
In creating the opera, Britten and librettist Myfanwy Piper preserved perfectly the ominous, shadowy angst of the novel and the fastidious, nervous arrogance of the lead character. However, there is also much of Britten himself in the character of Aschenbach, as he struggles to balance form with feeling, a love of beauty with a longing for wild abandoned passion, Apollo with Dionysus. It is a raw work populated with frank truths, whether they be the struggle inherent in the creation of art, the terrified vanity of one growing old, a mother's protectiveness of a son, or the absolute ache of unrequited love.
This is Britten's last opera, and it incorporates many of the sound-languages he had developed and explored during his lifetime. For the playfighting boys one hears gamelan perfectly mimicked, a twelve tone backdrop evokes the despair of a creative block, and throughout Sprechgesang-like recitative lends dialogue an unnerving realism. Most striking was the feeling that the poetry of Piper's libretto was just another colour in Britten's orchestral palette, to be blended and contrasted with the other instruments. And it is testament to the excellence of Andreas Heise's choreography for this production that movement became yet another strand of melody-poetry woven in to the whole. In Britten's organic harmonic language, somehow just outside western tonality but not at all alien, leitmotifs become known unconsciously, assimilated rather than learned. The themes become always-already recognised, the storytelling plugged directly into the emotive core.
Garsington Opera's realisation of this extraordinary and wonderful work is masterful. On stage an enormous muslin curtain serves to populate the protagonist's imagination with shadows and tantalising presences, as it sways and shudders with the weight of the longed-for. At the head of a uniformly excellent cast, Paul Nilon's performance as Aschenbach demonstrates enormous expressive skill and vocal stamina. He portrays perfectly the fussy, proud widower who is equally terrified by that which he hates and that which he loves. Not once was the audience left behind on his gargantuan journey from rapture to self-loathing, from love to fear of love, nor once did Nilon's voice display anything less than perfect, rounded tone and beautifully measured delivery.
The object of Aschenbach's affections, Tadzio, is danced entrancingly by Celestin Boutin, showing the pure and beautiful youth, the playful, skirmishing boy, and the sensual, erotic emergent with equal strength. Masculine lines merge flawlessly with indices of perfection, creating classical Greek silhouettes. To see him dance flirtatious waltzes with his sisters' governess (danced enticingly and delightfully by Georgie Rose Connolly) makes one's heart ache for Aschenbach, watching, as always, from a distance. And Tadzio's rejection of his mother's clinging, caring embrace was amongst the most poignant moments of dance I have seen.
A production this strong needs exceptional artistry at its heart and at its head. Leading the ever excellent orchestra, conductor Steuart Bedford shows a deep and intuitive understanding of the work and draws together all the individual elements Britten conjures. Apart from a couple of moments in which the tempo was perhaps a little too frantic for the singer, the whole piece crackled with energy and untiringly held suspense.
There are many reasons why going to see an opera at Garsington is magical: the beauty of the wood and glass arena, nestling in front of a wooded hillside; watching the swallows, antlered stags and leaping trout while picnicking by the lake; the thrill of dressing up and walking amongst the great and the good; the prickle of excitement as, from across the meadow, you hear the first strains of an orchestra tuning up, punctuated by the pop of champagne corks; seeing the rose light of evening illuminating the stage as the first notes sound. It is something I wish everyone might be able to experience at least once, just for these reasons. But to see a performance of this calibre, of a work of such insight and musical precision, in such an enchanting place is to know life at its very best.