Crushing Benvenuto Cellini by Terry Gilliam

Even before the closing notes of Benvenuto Cellini had sounded, the audience erupted in loud cheers and cheers last night (12 May). So Monty Python director Terry Gilliam's team pulled out all the stops to make this first opera by Hector Berlioz an unforgettable experience. That his dadaesque staging evokes memories of the joke-and-roll approach of the popular Theatre of Laughter proved no objection to the well-educated visitors of The National Opera. In this way, the production seems primarily a sample épater le bourgeois.

The overwhelming applause nearly matched the excess of decibels produced at times by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Opera Choir, in defiance of the lightness and transparency promised by conductor Mark Elder. The (too) many mass scenes were deafening. Partly due to the Stopera's poor acoustics, a distorted, tinny sound emerged; it was as if all that musical violence was being squeezed through speakers that were too small. If the municipal Enforcement Department had taken measurements, the management would definitely have been reprimanded for noise pollution.

Breathtaking sets

The sets are breathtaking. Immense, movable constructions depict Benvenuto Cellini's studio, his lover Teresa's bedroom, the streets of Rome, a stuffy working-class pub, or the metal foundry where Cellini manages to cast his Perseus statue in bronze just in time. The stage is populated by an equally spectacular amalgam of acrobats, stilt walkers, contortionists and jugglers, who pull off the most frenzied antics and lug around grotesque carnival masks. Gilliam also makes the venue itself the backdrop when he has street performers emerge from the aisles and rain down rains of confetti on us.

Witty are Teresa's pious chamber ladies, dressed in high-necked black dresses, who are played by mimicking gentlemen. Also beautiful is how Gilliam portrays the 19^e-century setting intersects with anachronisms. An electrically lit arrow points through the sign Bar the way to the inn; headlines projected on the vaults speak of a scope ('Cellini fails to finish statue'); the pope's guards wear red gowns and the plume helmets so characteristic of Roman campaigners.

Types

The story, on a libretto by Léon de Wailly and Auguste Barbier, has little to it. In the words of George Bernard Shaw: there is a tenor (the rutting artist Cellini) who gets it on with a soprano (Teresa, daughter of the Pope's treasurer), and a jealous baritone (the fatter Fieramosco) who tries to thwart their budding affair. In vain, he devises ruse upon ruse to prevent his rival Cellini from casting the bronze statue of Perseus and thus fulfilling his promise to the pope. That art ultimately triumphs over mediocrity seems an afterthought.

Despite, or perhaps because of all the spectacle, the drama nowhere comes alive: the characters remain characters, with no significant psychological development. Balducci, Teresa's father (a somewhat unsteady Maurizio Muraro), is a complacent citizen who wants to pair his daughter with the best - read richest - party. His intended son-in-law Fieramosco (an adequate Laurent Naouri) is a cocky, silly brat, who gives way as a matter of course to the sprightly oblique marquis Cellini (the tenor John Osborn). Teresa (the soprano Mariangela Sicilia) seeks adventure as a teenager and inevitably falls for his debauchery and swagger.

American John Osborn has a powerful, clear tenor and manages to reach every corner of the hall even in the softer passages, but lacks the sensuality that explains why Teresa falls for him like a log. Mariangela Sicilia also has a voice like a bell, but fails to move despite a few beautiful arias. The mezzo-soprano Michèle Losier - also in drag - gives formidable shape to the role of Ascanio, Cellini's crafty sidekick; the Dutch tenor Marcel Beekman shines in his role as the innkeeper.

Berlioz's music lacks the sophistication of his later operas and is sometimes rather bombastic, especially in the first act. This is reinforced by the equally baroque staging, and boredom struck regularly. Moreover, Elder got choir and orchestra in the faster passages but not in sync. It was only in the second act that more drama and finesse appeared in the sound, but again the sum did not become more than the parts.

Several times I thought with melancholy of Gluck's penetrating, austere staging Orphée et Euridyce with which the Nederlandse Reisopera is currently touring our country. Of course, it's comparing apples to oranges, and Gilliam has a name to live up to when it comes to wacky flatness, but I can't help thinking that even Benvenuto Cellini would benefit from a more subdued approach: less is more.