As we know, small can be beautiful: and smaller works can often thrive outside the great opera houses. Grimeborn presented London with a rare chance to see Strauss’ short opera Daphne, sung for one night only to a piano accompaniment from the tireless fingers of Marta Lopez. Opera At Home’s exciting cast included the fabulous Justine Viani in the title role, and a true contralto Gaea from thrillingly dark-voiced Violetta Gawara. We were in for a treat: but unfortunately, an overly gimmicky production from director and conductor José Manuel Gandia tendered to hamper any natural drama on stage.
Daphne comes from one of the most controversial (read: embarrassing) periods of Strauss’ life, when he continued to compose under the Nazi regime, rather than taking a principled stand (or moving away from Germany). Gandia took Strauss’ discomfiting collaboration as the starting point for his production concept, setting it in the 1930s and including on stage a dispossessed Jewish family (Ros Stern, Jaymes Aaron and assistant director Henriëtte Rietveld), intended to represent the relations of Strauss’ stepdaughter Alice who all died in concentration camps (Strauss saved Alice), though you needed to be psychic to work out that connection in the absence of a programme note. The Jews were badly treated every now and again by the Shepherds, dressed in sub-military greatcoats, and the Maids, wearing sharp skirts and vintage tights. Leukippos, for some reason not implicated in the general anti-semitism, became a village idiot in a tattered straw hat; the immortals were in evening dress (Daphne and her mother Gaea in Grecian silk gowns, Peneios in a dapper red hat) which seemed to vaguely separate them, yet they interacted in a friendly manner with the proto-Nazis, so maybe they weren’t exonerated: it wasn’t clear. Meanwhile, Apollo’s disguise – a greatcoat, but worn tramp-like over a bare chest – didn’t place him clearly in either realm. As the scenes unfolded, the Jewish family would appear, be insulted, then disappear. Why was a mystery, particularly as all was sung in German, with only brief captions projected on a wall. Although Gregor's libretto is not celebrated, it seemed a missed opportunity not to provide an interested new audience with a full translation, given Daphne’s rareness.
Victoria Johnstone’s bland, basic design (a leather Chesterfield and three columns of green material for trees) didn’t serve the Arcola or the production well. At its final climax, the Jewish family lay down beside the dead Leukippos, the first victims in a concentration camp suggested by barbed wire unwound so tortuously that it brought back wry memories of struggles with tangled Christmas tree lights. Daphne, often acknowledged as a symbol of Strauss’ creativity, was now a tree which had become part of that barbed wire fence, overlooking the camp mutely and uncomplainingly. As a symbol of Strauss’ political inactivity in the face of rising Nazism, that final scene was fair enough: but I am afraid that is an easy (and obvious) target to hit, however gauche the aim. Gandia’s preoccupations with Strauss didn’t capture the essence of Daphne as an opera.