Diva details

Flora’s salon in Act II, Scene 2

        With her luxuriant red hair (when I met her once, a few years ago, her hair was the same colour, but I think this was a wig, as it was inconveniently long for someone who travels as much as a soprano at the top of her game), her voice as beautifully coloured as her hair,  her figure looking youthful and lithe in Crowley’s sumptuous costumes, and her considerable gifts as an actress, Ms Fleming is the diva in every detail.

Antonio Pappano conducted his own Royal Opera  orchestra with aplomb and passion, and with the attention to both overall phrasing and dynamics we’ve come to expect from him and them.

So why wasn’t this a perfect performance?  Some years ago I had the good luck to watch Sir Jonathan Miller give an acting masterclass for young opera singers, at Ischia, in the Bay of Naples. It was one of the most impressive moments of theatre I’ve ever seen, for he boiled down the entire secret of directing opera to a simple maxim: Remember that in opera you are always singing to someone. On very rare occasions it is the audience to whom you are singing; but in most cases you are singing to another person, or group of people, on the stage. This doesn’t mean the singer can never look at the conductor. A moment of eye-contact is often sufficient to establish this bond with the other character(s) – but it has to be there, for in that connection is the essence of the drama. 

      If only Richard Eyre had insisted on this, we’d have seen a great historical performance, rather than the very good one I much enjoyed.