This weird and wonderful Romantic opera is a fitting start to the Arcola’s 2024 Grimeborn season. It was first performed in Leipzig 1828, just a few months before Rossini’s William Tell was premiered in Paris. It is based on the Polidori short story that emerged from the feverish weekend at the Villa Deodati that also produced Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It is a classic vampire tale but Gothic Opera have subjected it to a radical updating to sanitise the old story – ‘sexy male monster slaughters innocent virgins’ and to ramp up the humour in the absurd melodrama. Both quests yield only partial success but the result is nevertheless thoroughly entertaining.
The scene is Scotland. The fading vampire Ruthven has been told by the Vampire Master that he has twenty four hours to gain the souls of three willing victims, otherwise he will go straight to hell. He finds two relatively willing victims, Janthe and Emmy, and they succumb to his ‘charms’. His third target, Malwina, is less pliable and she is loved by Sir Edgar Aubrey. However, her father insists she marries the Earl of Marsden (Ruthven in disguise). In the climactic marriage scene, Ruthven – assisted by his new vampire henchwomen – is thwarted by Aubrey but Malwina realises she has a choice of futures – as the wife (and property) of Aubrey or as a free (if changed) woman. No prizes for guessing which path she chooses.
Director Julia Mintzer injects loads of energy and fun into what was originally a blood-soaked melodrama. With nothing but a coffin, a very large teddy bear, and a generous supply of (fake) blood and guts, she keeps the action surging from one absurd set piece to the next. Fortunately, she has Giuseppe Pellingra to rely on in the key role of Ruthven. His is a star performance. Not always making the sweetest sounds, he nevertheless swaggers and charms his undead way through the opera – and, in his aria describing the miseries of life as a vampire, he verges momentarily on the tragic. And Milena Knauss is a fine Malwina, with a rich soprano voice, though that is not always as clear as I would have liked in the somewhat chaotic ensemble scenes. Despite her autocratic father and her besotted lover, she is no-one’s pushover, so her choice at the end doesn’t feel impossible … if one is willing to suspend disbelief long enough, of course. But emotional truth is not what this opera is about and she makes the most of her ghoulish transformation in the final scenes.
Madeleine Todd and Amber Reeves are both splendid in the roles of the vampire’s willing victims though why the director chose to see that Ruthven obtained his blood supplies from their legs rather than their necks is a question that still disturbs me. Grainne Gillis in the role of Vampire Master hammed it up with gusto – the male roles were perhaps less successful but that may well have been necessary for the feminist take on the story. Jack Roberts playing Aubrey has a lovely tenor voice but in his confrontations with Ruthven he had little opportunity to display it. And though the ensemble work was lots of fun, it was sometimes musically ragged. The chamber orchestra – piano, cello, double bass and, inexplicably, sousaphone – sounded unwieldy perhaps because conductor Kelly Lovelady was understandably so sensitive to the needs of the singers.
Did the re-write work? Yes and no. The humour – including the one-liner asides – sometimes misfired and I for one could have done with less of the ‘flinging cloaks over shoulders’. And while I share the general distaste for nineteenth century opera’s preoccupation with killing off its heroines, this is a vampire story and, as such, not a very obvious vehicle for a morality tale about the oppressive patriarchy. But for the final scene – the triumph of evil over domestic slavery – it was impossible not to be swept along by the sheer bravado of the whole thing and the fun the performers were having. Not much of a tribute to Marschner then but exactly the sort of production that fits Grimeborn’s mission – bringing radical opera and innovative productions to a wide audience.
Composer: Heinrich Marschner
Librettist: Wilhelm Wohlbruck
Conductor: Kelly Lovelady
Director: Julia Mintzer
Performers incl: Giuseppe Pellingra, Milena Knauss, Jack Roberts, Amber Reeves
Running time: 2 hrs 20 mins
Until 17 August 2024
Photo credits: Craig Fuller