It somehow feels appropriate, taking Luisa Miller on a daytrip to the countryside. Verdi’s middle period opera, based loosely on Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe (Love and Intrigue) is set in a Tyrolean village, so the rolling South Downs would seem an apt location, the work making its Glyndebourne stage debut. But don’t expect to see any of those pretty Tyrolean views or to detect the merest whiff of the outdoors other than a few bunches of flowers, for the director is none other than Christof Loy, Mr World of Interiors himself.
Loy favours one-size-fits-all white box sets and that’s precisely what we get here. In many ways, he is the perfect director for Covid-era opera, his clean, stripped back productions laying bare his focus on characters’ relationships rather than visual excess. His clinical staging accommodates the social distancing in place, even if there are moments that cry out for human contact – in what crazy world can two singers not be permitted to hug each other, but it’s deemed okay for them to drink from the same glass?
Pandemic protocols meant that Loy has been directing remotely from Austria, liaising with associate director Georg Zlabinger who has rehearsed the cast in Sussex. There are familiar Loy trademarks: a predominance of black and white, a cutaway wall, sharply etched shadows. Further decluttering comes from Covid safety measures, with the chorus absent from the stage, piped in live from a rehearsal studio, a handful of silent actors as maids and villagers. Another Loy tic is stage action during the overture, but it offers helpful backstory here, establishing a predatory male environment, and showing Count Walter’s henchman Wurm – has an operatic villain ever been better named? – negotiating for Luisa’s hand in marriage with her father, retired soldier Miller. We also see the love-at-first-sight encounter between Luisa and “Carlo”, the Count’s son Rodolfo in disguise.
Loy adds the odd comic touch – Wurm’s bunch of pink flowers for Luisa’s birthday are outgunned by a huge bouquet of red roses from “Carlo” – but for the most part, he turns the screw of the drama deftly. Rodolfo’s identity is revealed, as is his engagement to the Duchess Federica (as decreed by his father). Blackmail ensues and by the time the truth is revealed, the two lovers have downed poisoned water (Luisa unknowingly) and Rodolfo has stabbed Wurm… although here he merely throws him a dagger and invites the villain to commit the deed himself.