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Barry Millington's rating
, Confused fanfare for a betting man in The Gambler
By
Barry Millington
12 Feb 2010
It must have seemed an inspired idea to stage an opera about the social destruction caused by gambling at a time when the global economy has gone down the pan thanks to casino capitalism.
So Covent Garden’s first-ever production of Prokofiev’s The Gambler, with Antonio Pappano at the wheel and the brilliant Richard Jones as croupier-in-chief, seemed to be a good bet.
Sadly, the work itself turns out to be flawed.
Prokofiev’s own libretto (after Dostoyevsky) is, particularly in the first two acts, both incoherent and unfocused. Hurrah to Covent Garden for doing it in David Pountney’s lively English translation — for once allowing the demands of intelligibility to triumph over purism. It grieves me to say it but on this occasion it would have made little difference if it had been in Russian, or indeed Siberian Yupik.
Yes, a thread of greedy obsession emerges, though the traditional imperatives of characterisation, plot and dramatic necessity are poorly served. “Why bother?” was the general tenor of most overheard interval chatter.
And yet, by the end, Jones’s parade of bizarre circus types and their attendant quirks did begin to make sense. The lead female, Paulina, who as played by Angela Denoke with rust-coloured floor mop on her head and uningratiating vocal delivery to match, ultimately came to articulate the soulless degradation to which she had been reduced. The animal imagery of Antony McDonald’s ingenious sets also spoke volumes about this dehumanised society.
The incisive delivery of Kurt Streit’s Marquis was impressive, as was the crazed energy driving Roberto Saccá’s Alexei, the eponymous gambler. With his trademark glint in the eye and iron in the voice, John Tomlinson was a suitably strident General.
Pappano did well to capture the manic motor rhythms of the score, one-dimensional as it is.
Until 27 February. Information: 020 7304 4000; www.roh.org.uk.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Reader views (2)
The review as written, is hopelessly conservative. While The Gambler may be the most inaccessible piece of music not written in a 12-tone form, it's an egregious error to accuse Prokofiev, on the one-hand, of conservative neo-Romanticism, and, on the other, to eschew his works from the modernist period. When will we ever get a critical culture that can get past some of the Cold war-era xenophobia on this greatest of 20th century composers?
Why should we continue to raise up the likes of Stravinsky and Schoenberg, the former of which writing some of the real turkeys and snoozers of the last hundred years, just because our mommies and daddies told us to? Why should we continue to revive such works as The Rake's Progress and Requiem Canticles, just for the sake of politics? When will we get some journalists who can listen to and study the music that we'll hear--to advise us of its future merits?
- Nicholas Lawson, New York, NY, USA, 15/02/2010 03:48
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The orchestral music of the Gambler is wonderfully textured and is more colourful than the vocal lines. At the interval I was not sure what to make of it. Like a Russian novel it started slowly and I was getting to grips with the characters - few of whom had sung a note by then despite their many exits and entrances. After the interval the clever sets became ever more intriguing and the action moved faster. The roulette scene was wonderfully staged. When they finally got their chance the chorus and the minor singers embued the performance with memorable sounds movement and tableaux.Throughout the opera I enjoyed laughing outloud. Tomlinson was on fine form and the other principlals did their best with the rather dull lines Prokofiev gave them.
- Monica Darnbrough, teddington UK, 12/02/2010 16:46
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