GLORIANA

David Nice reports from the Decca sessions for Britten's "Gloriana" in Wales

MEMORIES of the English National Opera Gloriana prompted some disappointment when I learned that the Decca session in hand dealt with ceremonials only; hopes of a private Elizabeth and Essex confrontation were thereby dashed. But it soon became apparent that there was more edgily personal Britten in the opening tournament than I'd remembered: the inspired casting of two febrile singer-actors, Philip Langridge and Jonathan Summers, set sparks flying in the tense confrontation of Essex and Mountjoy. Sir Charles Mackerras had taken on the role of dramaturge as well as orchestral conductor--a less common occurrence than you might imagine in the world of opera recordings---'orking with Langridge and Summers on the meaning of the text and the blending of the voices before going on to deal painstakingly with the orchestral timbres Britten lavishes on public pomp.

Such preparation, easy-going but thorough, is typical of a Mackerras project. 'When you're doing a recording and the singers haven't ever done their roles on stage before, you have to practise and rehearse certain things that you might not otherwise have had to do. And actually the only person involved in the whole thing that had done it before was me. As it wasn't possible or even desirable to get singers who'd had stage experience of Gloriona, I was able to pick the right people. You really can't imagine anyone more suitable for Essex than Philip Langridge—yes, it's so important that the neurotic feeling is engendered right at the very beginning (Peter Pears had originally hoped to play the part of Cecil, but it having been established that he was to sing Essex, Ben made it more of a Pears part). And Josephine Barstow has exactly that right colour of voice for Elizabeth, a very distinctive, unique kind of timbre. Ben wrote it for a passé singer, but of course you don't want a passé singer for a recording. Together, I think, they made the opera into something really great. It's been the fashion to denigrate Gloriana as a pièce d'occas ion, and not even a very successful one because no one was very interested at the time or thought it fitting. But when you've got really good singers it should prove to be just as great as any other Britten opera."

Work on style starts at home, months before the recording—with the singers. "I made Jo Barstow come here early, we went through it, I showed her how I thought it should be, and when she came to studying it she was able to do it with those little tips from me in mind. I think one of the reasons why Tristan"—in the Welsh National Opera production, which Mackerras and the rest of us would dearly like to have been recorded—"was so successful, is because I had Anne Evans and Jeffrey Lawton round for three little periods of two days between July and January when intensive rehearsals began, and it really paid off, you know. I do that as much as I can so that one doesn't spring one's idea of the style of the thing on an artist who might have got a different conception. Even though I've known Anne, Jeff and Jo Barstow for years and years, each different style of music has to be started afresh."

Did he find any particular problems with GIo,'iana, any falling-off in dramatic tension? "The only weakness is the end, and though he did revise it several times, it still remains slightly hollow and disappointing. We tried hard with the spoken melodrama, Jo and Philip recorded it in all sorts of different expressions, I'm not even sure which has finally been selected. And I've yet to hear it with all the sound effects. Yes, the music itself is good, and it's all based on the 'Happy were he' song—the highlight lute-song of Essex----"orchestrated and transformed in different ways. All that idea comes from Wagner, doesn't it? It's strange that Britten really almost hated Wagner, and yet he used so many Wagnerian devices and transformations for dramatic effect. I'm sure he'd hate me for saying that. He hated Brahms too, but he knew so much. I remember him singing the whole of the first movement of the Fourth Symphony, singing it rather stupidly to show how silly he thought it was. But he knew what he was criticizing. I'm sure he must have admired the kind of devices Brahms and Wagner used—I think it was the feeling or the atmosphere engendered that he couldn't abide."

Mackerras had come to the Gloriana sessions fresh from a Met production of Billy Budd, Gloriana's predecessor in the Britten canon— "that was no jolt, I simply relished the chance to do two great masterpieces by the same composer so close to each other in time". He cites Billy's ballad in the darbies and the expression of Vere's confusion as examples of Britten's invariably "hitting the nail on the head by such simple means". We also share an unfashion

Mackerras has a longer-term knowledge of most of the Britten operas than I'd assumed. During his years at Hamburg State Opera in the late 1960s, there was an Albert Herring arf deuisch, with Erwin Wohlfahrt a wonderful Albert and, yes, it did translate, though we had fun with the character Cis because that's just what she sings, C sharp in German, one of Britten's little jokes", and A Midsummer Nights Dream with a Loge-tenor as Oberon—"I was happier with the casting when we did it at Covent Garden." He also conducted Budd for the BBC television production in 1966, "with Ben breathing down my neck. No, actually he didn't say much unless I asked him to—and then it was always a definite answer. He was very good to work with, because he understood every instrument, he understood players' difficulties, and it was also wonderful the way he showed a singer how the way he wrote a rhythm, it was essential that one sang exactly that in order to produce the right expression of a particular sentence."

By then, a rift had been mended. Mackerras had played an important role in the work of the English Opera Group during the 1950s, conducting The Rape of Lucretia and taking over from Britten on a tour of The Turn of the Screw. Relations came to a temporary halt when Britten took umbrage over the innuendo of Mackerras's observation that there were "masses of boys" in Noyes Flue/dc. The incident is recorded in 1-lymphrey Carpenter's recent warts-andall biography. Was Mackerras fairly represented? "Yes, I think so. It's a marvellous book because it shows how we all worshipped him but at the same time we laughed at Ben and

Peter because they could be very affected—that terribly upper-class pronunciation, even a mincing sort of manner. I didn't find homosexuality particularly funny but he we did find funny, most of us had these kind of double-standards. Or course, if they'd been more open—but they couldn't be, there was still the example of Oscar Wilde and you never knew until the law was changed whether somebody in great authority might not suddenly decide to make an example of someone terribly famous. And the other thing which I was glad Humphrey Carpenter put into proper perspective was that although Britten would have liked relationships with boys, he always restrained himself. It's all very well for the modern person to say, tell that to the marines; I can only say that to me it was quite obvious nothing ever went on. Those who think otherwise just don't know the person.

"He was certainly kind with his professionalism—marvellous with the singers and players that he knew. He was a little bit awkward with big symphony orchestras that didn't know him very well. But at the same time because everyone admired his compositions so much, even hardened orchestral players were quite happy to go along with him and help him the way they do with any marvellous composer. He was wonderful in Mozart, and I'll never forget the experience of hearing him rehearse Berg's Three Lyric Pieces–his understanding of the detail and how to get the orchestra to play with one voice, one mind." The same could be said, couldn't it, of the teams of singers he chose for his own works. "Yes, he was able like Mozart to write music which perfectly suited his chosen singers. How wonderful that he had Peter to write all those roles for. Much as I prefer other performers as Peter Grimes because they're more down to earth and represent the character's rough side better, in a way I always miss hearing Peter Pears singing it because Britten wrote it for exactly the inflexions that Peter gives it." No such recorded ghosts stalk the new Gloriana—completing the glorious canon in a style that Britten, all jibes forgiven and forgotten long before his death, would certainly have welcomed.s'86