Death in Venice, Benjamin Britten/Myfanwy Piper, WNO, Birmingham Hippodrome, 11 May 2024. 5✩✩✩✩✩ David Gray & Paul Gray

“A triumphant production of Britten’s late masterpiece.”

WNO’s elegantly simple staging of Britten’s Death in Venice takes a work with many psychological dimensions and gives it additional physical dimensions through the use of aerial acrobatics. This is a master-stroke on the part of Director, Olivia Fuchs, and one which elevates the drama in more than the literal sense.

The story follows celebrated writer, Gustav Von Aschenbach as he travels to Venice. Here hediscovers a muse and object of desire in the form of Tadzio, an inappropriately young and remarkably beautiful Polish aristocratic boy. One of the many dichotomies explored by the opera is that between Aschenbach’s initial emotional repression, and a more liberated and dangerous emotional freedom he is able to experience through his feelings for the boy.

In the original staging Tadzio and his family are unvoiced parts played by ballet dancers. Here the Adonis, played with breath-taking physical abandon by Anthony César - and his family – embody, through their aerial ballet, total emotional release more powerfully than any earth-bound choreography ever could. The contrast with Peter Van Hulle's painfully uptight Aschenbach could not be starker.

Van Hulle's performance performance is revelatory. Singing with judicious use of power and an extensive palette of colours, he compellingly portrays the character’s psychological and moral disintegration. His Aschenbach is unlikeable in its pompous self-regard, but totally sympathetic in its ultimate degradation.  

Playing a range of characters that usher and coax Aschenbach through his decline and to his death, Roderick Williams displays an astonishing range, both as an actor and as a singer. His is a terrifyingly menacing performance.

A virtually, and rather beautifully bare stage, allows narrative, which unfolds through a series of vignettes, to flow effortlessly. Symbolic, monochrome images projected on the backcloth illuminate, but never dominate. Location is suggested tellingly and cleverly through the use of a few moveable props. Subtle and unobtrusive lighting-design creates a brooding atmosphere of increasing foreboding.

Fuchs’s direction is economical, with every gesture and movement having its origins in the text. There is no superfluity. The result is completely absorbing, almost immersive, and deeply disturbing.

Britten’s score is detailed and full of colour. Solo instrumental lines abound so that, at times, it feels like the voices are underscored by almost a “concerto for orchestra”. The players rise admirably to the challenge, particularly the piano that accompanies Aschenbach’s extended recitative-like passages.

All in all, this is a triumphant achievement.  

Cast

Gustav von Aschenbach – Peter Van Hulle

The Traveller/Elderly Fop/Gondolier/Hotel Manager/Hotel Barber/Leader of the Players/Voice of Dionysus – Roderick Williams

Voice of Apollo – Alexander Chance

Tadzio – Antony Cėsar

Polish Mother – Diana Salles

Daughter1 – Vilhelmiina Sinervo

Daughter 2 – Selma Hellmann

Governess & Jaschiu – Riccardo Saggese

Danish Lady – Carolyn Jackson

Russian Mother – Fiona Harrison-Wolfe

English Lady and Lace Seller – Meriel Andrew

French Girl & Strolling Player – Claire Hampton

Strawberry Seller – Emily Christina Loftus

Newspaper Seller – Angharad Morgan

French Mother – Sarah Pope

German mother – Stella Woodman

Russian Nanny – Helen Greenaway

Bagger Woman – Beca Davies

Hotel Porter – Micheal Clifton-Thompson

Strolling Player – Rhodri Prys Jones

Gondolier – Simon Buttle

Glass Maker – Alun Rhys-Jenkins

Russian Father – Alastair Moore

Hotel Guest – Jasey Hall

German Father – Julian Boyce

Priest – Martin Lloyd

English Clerk Gareth Brynmor John

Hotel Gest – Sian Meinir

Guide to Venice – Stephen Wells

Creatives

Conductor – Edmund Whitehead

Director – Olivia Fuchs

Designer – Nicola Turner

Lighting – Robbie Butler

Video Design – Sam Sharples

Circus Consultant – Tom Rack