White Skull Leggings

Simon Boccanegra; Rigoletto/ Tristan und Isolde – review

Is English National Opera trying to do too much? Some desperate ticket offers on current productions suggest life is not easy. Four ambitious new shows in rapid succession might be considered sane in happier economic times or in a different month: January, maybe. Yet to pick the final weeks of the season, when the opera glut is at its peak across the land, when exams are keeping many – parents, teachers, students – at home and when, for one brief moment in the year, an evening outside is a viable alternative, seems perverse.

Exactly the same pattern occurred at ENO last year so it is not an aberration even if, in the middle of a low-impact, neutrally received new staging of Simon Boccanegra it felt like one. Terry Gilliam's vivid Damnation of Faust , less than a fortnight away. Aren't they enough?

Adding Verdi's sombre tragedy to this display of late blooms was a risk. Despite Plácido Domingo's recent advocacy when the tenor switched down to baritone to sing the title role of pirate-Doge, this sombre tragedy remains an acquired taste. Often spoken of as Shakespearean in its examination of the quiddities of power, it ranks among Verdi's finest works but its glories are shadowy and subtle.

This staging, by Dmitri Tcherniakov, was certainly dark, or at least grey. It was anything but subtle. The celebrated Russian director-designer, who divided opinion with his Eugene Onegin seen here in a Bolshoi residency, is famous for demanding absolute silence in rehearsal, and saying a minimum himself. A little more conversation might have worked wonders. So much in this handsome updating almost succeeded, but rich ideas were repeatedly clobbered by stagecraft which can only be described as naff.

I was under the impression that the arms-akimbo school of acting had died long ago but perhaps, in some weird postmodern double bluff, it has risen again. How else to explain the hand flinging and wringing that accompanied key moments in the drama. Wall hugging and bending double to indicate extreme emotion were also touchstones to guide you through the drama, and never mind that Verdi's magnificent score, glittering like mica schist, is already blazing its own unswerving trail.

Tcherniakov hammers the plot by spelling out the back story, literally, on a front curtain during pauses between scenes.