Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, 17 November 2007

Dmitry Ivashchenko (left) and Eberhard Lorenz in Mozart's Seraglio (photo - Marco Borggreve).

Vienna, 1782. Since the great Siege of the city a century before, an uneasy cold war has existed between the Christian West and the ‘evil empire’ of the Ottomans. But in the absence of active hostilities a fascination has grown up with all things Turkish: croissants and coffee, harems and Janissary music.

In choosing a Turkish theme for the opera which was to make his name in Vienna, Mozart was therefore following in a well-established theatrical tradition. But he wasn’t simply writing a whimsical and slightly racy fantasy: as Linda Colley’s marvellous book Captives demonstrates, thousands of Europeans had been seized by Muslims over the previous century, and so it was not that unusual to find Christian-born women held in Turkish harems.

So The Abduction from the Seraglio (to give the opera its full title) was both as up-to-date politically as John Adams’ Nixon in China, and as loaded with erotic fantasy as Valentino’s The Sheikh.

Inverness 2007. A new production of Seraglio would seem to offer an opportunity for examining current East-West relations, without doing violence to Mozart’s original concept. But the directors of this version, which originated with the Nationale Reisopera in the Netherlands, avoid almost all sense of ‘Turkishness’ as something alien or Other.

The abstract setting is both a large, blank room to which all six characters seem confined-shades of Sartre’s ‘Hell is Other People’-and a huge sandpit in which they play out their emotions with a furious, childish energy.

Costumes are generically18th century, there’s not a hint of Mediterranean sun, and the only Oriental reference, outside Mozart’s music, is an enlarged Persian miniature which flashes briefly into view when the chorus are singing.

This approach seems to pull the rug out from under the whole basis of the opera: without a clear idea of the Otherness of Pasha Selim and his servant Osmin, the crucial contrast is lost between, on the one hand, the enlightened clemency of the Pasha and, on the other, both Osmin’s stereotyped brutality, and the cruelty of the Pasha’s Christian counterpart.

But then, as a quote in the programme from Edward Said’s largely discredited Orientalism makes clear, to have emphasised the difference of the Turks would just have been to strengthen our Western prejudices about them. Welcome to the wonderful world of concept opera.

Seraglio is a singspiel-which means that there’s a lot of spoken dialogue, as opposed to sung recitative. So it does make some sense to perform the opera in English, rather than the original German. But Scottish Opera have imported this Dutch production in its entirety, including the cast, only one of whom is a native English speaker.

So we have the non-singing Pasha, speaking with a German accent, addressing the Spanish nobleman Belmonte, who replies in a French-Canadian accent, while Osmin declaims in a thick Russian accent, abusing the Spanish servant Pedrillo (who also has a German accent).

Still with me? In fact the only thing ‘Scottish’ about this Scottish Opera production is the excellent orchestra, which gives a wonderfully characterful and pointed performance under the confident and astute direction of Jeremy Carnall (also on loan from the Dutch company).

The usual argument for singing opera in English-so that the audience can understand the words-has always seemed weak to me, when it’s often hard to make out the sung words even of operas actually written in English. It gets much harder when only one of the singers has English as a first language!

Matters were not helped by David Pountney’s surprisingly maladroit translation, which failed to match consonants and syllables to the original German, thus ruining the effect of some of the best known numbers in the score, especially Osmin’s climactic triumph aria.

Mozart’s score is a fascinating mix of past, present and future. The heroine Constanze’s big aria of defiance looks back to the formal setpieces of Mozart’s teenage years, Osmin and Pedrillo have simple arias as immediate and memorable as folk songs, while the huge, complex Act II finale anticipates the wonderful architecture of his mature masterpieces.

Indeed, this must have been the part of the opera that caused the Emperor to complain of ‘Too many notes, Herr Mozart’, and it proved to be the highlight of this production. Mozart was a great tamperer with his libretti, and he made huge changes in the text of Seraglio so that it becomes the first of his humane comedies of reconciliation and forgiveness, the themes that will dominate every one of his mature operas, from The Marriage of Figaro to The Clemency of Titus.

But this production does not have the courage of Mozart’s convictions. The Pasha is made to deliver his final act of clemency and liberation grudgingly and against his own inner feelings, and he does not stay to hear the thanks of those he has spared. And as the offstage chorus praises the Pasha’s greatness, all six characters coldly resume their seats on either side of the stage, back where they began the opera.

There is no release, no way forward-huis clos-the conflicts, fears, jealousies will all have to be enacted again. Not quite what Mozart intended, but after all, he only wrote the music.

Fortunately, that music was well served. The lovers Belmonte and Constanze may have rather lacked charisma, but they rose to the challenge of their big numbers. Dimitry Ivaschenko was hampered by the production’s two-dimensional concept of Osmin, which left little room for comedy, but he is clearly a star in the making, with an imposing presence and a huge bass voice that should make him a great ‘Boris Godunov’ in the future.

Best of all was Rebecca Bottone as the sparky maid Blonde. She lit up the stage whenever she appeared, and drew the first (and rather belated) spontaneous applause of the evening. As I’ve already said, the orchestral accompaniment-complete with natural trumpets and hard, dry timpani-was excellent throughout.

Seraglio raises some interesting questions about Scottish Opera’s ways of working. It’s hard to see how the introduction of this Dutch production, the entire cast and even the conductor, is any different from the kind of touring visits which foreign opera companies make to the Edinburgh Festival, which are also often accompanied by Scottish orchestras.

It certainly seems to do little to build up any kind of Scottish ensemble company such as existed in Scottish Opera’s heyday. And when the result of bringing in what is, in effect, a ‘guest’ company is a production that is so often misguided, and at times-as lighting levels fluctuate madly, and singers career frantically around the stage rather than just staying in one place and singing-downright clumsy, one has to wonder about the company’s underlying policies.

Saturday’s performance had an added element of drama, in that a persistent background noise during Constanze’s big number turned out, once we’d all finished applauding, to be the fire alarm. Assuming it was the interval, many of the audience stayed put in the auditorium, until they were finally ushered out to shiver in the car park. Fortunately it was indeed a false alarm: just another teething problem for the new complex!

© Robert Livingston, 2007

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