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28/06/2004 Wagner at Glastonbury: ill-chosen opera, targeting the wrong audience
True to its New Labour ideology (access for all), English National Opera yesterday performed a Wagner set - Act 3 of Valkyrie, the second part of the Ring Cycle - at Glastonbury. Depending on your point of view, it was either a) a commendable attempt by ENO to widen its audience; b) a waste of time and money. Even if you accept the ENO policy, yesterday's execution is open to criticism. If you're trying to convert poprock festivalgoers to opera, you don't start with Wagner, one of the least accessible composers in the repertoire. You start with a lighter, more tuneful composer - Verdi, Puccini, or Mozart - so at least some of the audience will recognise a few of the tunes, from TV ads. (OK, many will have known Ride of the Valkyries, from Apocalypse Now, but they'll be mightily disappointed if they turn up at ENO to see the opera, expecting a whole evening of such stirring stuff.) You sing in the original language - not in English translation, which trivialises the libretto. And you front the production with a big name who registers on the celeb scale. It's not very bright to stage Wagner, sung in English, by a no-name cast. In some ways, the Glastonbury audience fits the ENO target demographic - middle aged, bourgeois, left of centre (ie Guardian readers). But a quick glance at the weekend's list of festival performers, with nary a hint of music for grown-ups, tells you that this audience either doesn't go down to Somerset for the music or that its tastes are very conventional. I'd wager that there are few in a typical Glastonbury audience willing to expand their horizons to embrace new, challenging musics like opera. ENO's free performance of La Boheme in Trafalgar Square on 7 July seems far more likely to attract converts to the London Coliseum. Info: www.eno.org
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