Something bad happened and now here we are. Such is the premise – tried and tested in dramatic art – of Verdi’s Sicilian Vespers, a convoluted commemorative prelude to a massacre during the French occupation of Sicily in 1282. Sicilian firebrand Henri (confusing – this is the French version) is in love with Hélene, doyenne of Sicilian rebels. When Henri finds out he is the product of the rape of his mother by the hated French governor, Guy de Montfort, he makes a bold choice to defect to the French with the doomed hope of changing things from within.
The bad thing happening at the time Verdi wrote Vespers for the Paris Opéra in 1855 was a battle for control between the forces of French and Italian opera and, in one of history’s most siloed culture wars, the big debate was over, amongst other things, the inclusion of ballet. The insistence on doing things the French way upset the patriotic Verdi, whose native country was just then enjoying its own national awakening.
Inspired, oddly, by this in-house dispute, Stefan Herheim’s self-referential staging transposes medieval Palermo to the stage of the Paris Opéra. Philipp Furhoffer’s opulent set and Gesine Völlm’s lavish costumes proved a hit when this production first appeared in 2013 – after all, the clothes and interiors of the Second Empire are much better than medieval Sicily’s – but nobody can quite put their finger on why baffled ranks of France’s occupying forces trundle in and out, packed like chocolate soldiers into gilded boxes watching the drama unfold amongst the excitable Sicilians.
Backstage (where a very clunky rape scene is forced on one of Verdi’s most exciting overtures) is a ballet studio whose warm Degas-esque glow is down to a Romantic-era painting of an erupting Etna. The giant mirrors that separate the two worlds of this play-within-a-play wobble and warp perhaps a little too much as we transition fussily from one to the other, rather taking away the grandeur from Verdi’s drama of betrayal, revenge and nationhood.
The bad thing that has happened in opera recently, as everywhere else, is a dramatic cut in funding, and the bastions of culture now find themselves occupied by algorithmically driven accounting systems chomping voraciously through anything not bolted down. What can be compromised is rehearsal time and it would seem that, on the evidence of some of Friday night’s misfires, that this is what happened here.
Making her debut as The Royal Opera's Principal Guest Conductor, Speranza Scappucci marshalled the orchestra well in the overture, making the most of Verdi’s irresistible bubble and incendiary fizz, but as the night wore on, ensemble and intonation in the pit showed the nervousness of under-preparedness while on the stage, a couple of the opera’s daring a cappella numbers started with éclat but quickly threatened to go their own way. At nearly four hours’ running time (with intervals) this is a long evening, and with storytelling reduced by Herheim to little more than the standard gestures of melodrama, there was a palpable sense of just getting on with it until Fate arrives.
Superbly cast as Palermo’s rabble-rousing heroine, Joyce El-Khoury saved the day, unleashing her breathtaking range on one of Verdi’s most dizzying roles whether exhorting patriotic fervour or pinpointing her love duet with Henri with exquisite delicacy.
Quinn Kelsey was every bit as commanding as a great Verdi baritone should be as Montfort, though perhaps a little too commanding for Scappucci, whose audible instincts for more subtle orchestral colouring he seemed largely to ignore. Valentyn Dityuk, making his house debut as the ill-fated Henri, matched El-Khoury for vocal firepower though their on-stage relationship, as everyone’s in this paint-by-numbers production, lacks a sense of psychological development.
Any opera house needing to balance its books would naturally reach for Verdi to put bums on seats and Vespers is one of three mid-period Verdi hits this season. The recycling of lavish sets and costumes that garnered rave reviews first time around is understandable, but for all The Royal Opera turns out quite a product, it’s the process that will keep it alive. Without sufficient time spent on that there are diminishing returns on everyone’s investment.
