{"id":1080,"date":"2015-06-22T12:26:24","date_gmt":"2015-06-22T12:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/?p=1080"},"modified":"2015-06-22T12:26:24","modified_gmt":"2015-06-22T12:26:24","slug":"picnics-plato-and-pleats-death-in-venice-at-wormsley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/2015\/06\/picnics-plato-and-pleats-death-in-venice-at-wormsley.html","title":{"rendered":"Picnics, Plato and Pleats: Death in Venice at Wormsley"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"DEATH<\/a>

DEATH in VENICE by Britten;
Garsington Opera at Wormsley;
18 June 2015;
Gustav von Aschenbach – Paul Nilon
Tadzio – Celestin Boutin
Conductor Steuart Bedford
Director Paul Curran
Designer Kevin Knight
Lighting Designer Bruno Poet
Choreographer Andreas Heise
Credit: \u00a9 CLIVE BARDA\/ ArenaPAL<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Garsington Opera at Wormsley has achieved some sort of artistic milestone with a near-perfect new production of Benjamin Britten\u2019s Death in Venice<\/em>. Based on the richly autobiographical novella by Thomas Mann, converted into a spare libretto by Myfanwy Piper (whose painter husband, John Piper did the original 1973 sets), the opera is a curiosity, with only one major singing role \u2013 but it\u2019s a killer. Gustav von Aschenbach, a celebrated, but blocked German novelist who goes to Venice to get his mojo back, performs in virtually every scene, until he slumps, dead, in his deckchair. He\u2019s succumbed to the Asian cholera that is plaguing Venice, and a tenor with less stamina than Garsington\u2019s Paul Nilon could be excused for being exhausted by the marathon.<\/p>\n

Mann\u2019s tale, which the boy-loving Britten found extra-sympathetic, was itself a sort of chronicle of coming out, based on events that actually happened to the bisexual German writer. At his hotel on the Lido, Aschenbach sees a Polish family, mother, governess, two daughters and a son, and is struck by the beauty of the blond boy. Tadzio. The Britten\/Piper solution to the problem of needing so many juvenile voices was to make all the family dancers \u2013 reverting to an earlier style of opera.<\/p>\n

As the other singing roles are not enormous, it makes good sense, as director Paul Curran does at Garsington, to treat the dance as an equal element of the show, and here choreographer Andreas Heise has created a spectacle that is both gorgeous and drives the narrative. It helps, of course, that Tadzio is played by Celestin Boutin, who has the looks of Mann\u2019s imagined boy (though he is a few years post-adolescence and a foot or to taller) and whose athletic dancing is the equivalent of Paul Nilon\u2019s singing. There are five other young male dancers, including Jaschiu (Chris Agius Darmanin), Tadzio\u2019s wrestling-on-the-beach friend, and they are all splendid to look at in their one-piece bathing costumes as well as strong, vigorous and lithe. But Boutin is a real marvel, with the high leaps and extension I associate with the young Nureyev, and genuine acting ability. His Tadzio connected with Aschenbach with a kind of electricity that meant that, though they never speak, a current flowed between them, so that you felt that Tadzio was always aware of the writer\u2019s presence, whether he looked in his direction or not.<\/p>\n

In the Strolling Players scene the topless boys don skirts and wigs and form a sinister conga-line and for a moment do a demented Busby Berkeley routine, high kicking with two facing one way, and two the other, before orgiastic proceedings that no one seems to notice, though most of the cast are on the stage. Praise, too, for the female dancers (not forgetting the graceful two children): Georgie Rose Connolly as the governess, and especially Nina Goldman as the Polish mother (the Lady in Pearls), whose striking profile is perfect for designer Kevin Knight\u2019s gold-pleated costume in the scene with Tom Verney\u2019s slightly disturbing countertenor Apollo.<\/p>\n

Knight\u2019s very simple designs pay homage to an adopted Venetian, Fortuny. There is a simple painted backdrop, sometimes representing the lagoon as seen from the Grand Hotel des Bains on the Lido and sometimes showing a distant landscape of Venice. Most of the scenic work, though, is done by sheer white curtains with pleating \u00e0 la Fortuny, made translucent or opaque by Bruno Poet\u2019s mood-shifting lighting.<\/p>\n

Besides the unforced melancholy of his tenor voice (in the role created by Peter Pears), Paul Nilon\u2019s dramatic triumph is that he somehow keeps Aschenbach\u2019s dignity, even when he sees the \u201cGames of Apollo\u2019 \u2013 the boys playing on the beach, with Tadzio winning the \u201cpentathlon.\u201d Though he finally realises that he loves Tadzio and admits it out loud, Nilon doesn\u2019t makes him a foolish old man; and he even manages to keep a straight face after the barber has painted it with rouge. Even while in pursuit of this blond, god-like, stunningly steatopygous boy, Nilon\u2019s gestures remain refined, his posture polite, as befits a well-bred German middle-aged \u201cmaster writer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steuart Bedford, who conducted at Garsington, also presided at the original Snape Maltings production on 16 June 1973. I\u2019d be surprised if any aspect of the original, including the orchestra was better. In the early scene with the Traveller Britten\u2019s percussion effects were so startling that I felt I was hearing dozens of tympani, and later the other tuned percussion instruments made you feel as close to them in the wonderful, intimate Wormsley auditorium, as you were to the woodwinds, basses and cellos. By the time of the potentially tedious reflections on Plato\u2019s Phaedrus<\/em>, we were as involved with the orchestra as we were with Aschenbach\u2019s dramatic plight.<\/p>\n

This Death in Venice<\/em> didn\u2019t just look good: it was one of those rare experiences where movement, drama and music combined to give you pleasure, move you, and make you think about abstract questions in a most remarkably concrete way. Bravo.<\/p>\n

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”YKFrV3idwSJeUuDOR6bOewygCkUyEG9z”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Garsington Opera at Wormsley has achieved some sort of artistic milestone with a near-perfect new production of Benjamin Britten\u2019s Death in Venice. Based on the richly autobiographical novella by Thomas Mann, converted into a spare libretto by Myfanwy Piper (whose painter husband, John Piper did the original 1973 sets), the opera is a curiosity, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1080","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blogroll-2","7":"category-elsewhere","8":"category-uncategorized","9":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-hq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1080"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1083,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions\/1083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}