English National Opera’s The Dead City review — lush, lavish music

A crucial argument in English National Opera’s fight for survival is that the company has a distinctive mission. Between now and the end of the season, it is offering four productions — Philip Glass’s Akhnaten, Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die tote Stadt (The Dead City), Jeanine Tesori’s contemporary opera Blue and a staging of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No 3 — rarely seen anywhere else in the UK, if at all.

Die tote Stadt was staged by the Royal Opera just once in 2009 and remains a rarity. The youthful Korngold’s opera is sung here in a clear, rather prosaic translation by Kelley Rourke and makes an assignment of many challenges for ENO, most of them met with success.

For anybody who wants to know what The Dead City is like, imagine an operatic version of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. In each, the main character is unable to let go of a lost love, a dead (or supposedly dead) woman whose memory leads into a psychological spiral of obsession, mania, even violence.

Just as Bernard Herrmann’s spellbinding music is central to the film, so the score by the 23-year-old Korngold is the number one reason for staging the opera today. Its supersaturated romanticism, dating from 1920 and rooted in Freud’s Vienna, summons just the stifling air of neurosis that the story demands. Obsessive love has proved fertile ground for opera composers from Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle to Britten’s Death in Venice.

In terms of its drama, The Dead City is a more difficult sell. Not a lot happens and the opera makes heavy work of the central relationship between Paul and Marietta, who resembles his dead wife. ENO’s director, Annilese Miskimmon, keeps fairly close to the original scenario and focuses on creating a dream world where Paul’s fevered mind gives way to visions of his dead wife (not much of a lookalike here) lying on a hospital bed or coffin, and religious processions parading through misty Bruges.

So much of the opera happens inside Paul’s head that the role was always going to dominate, but Korngold has gone further and made it almost impossibly demanding. An announcement was made before curtain-up that Rolf Romei had been unwell for a few days, but his lyric strength and care for the vocal line suggest he will make a very convincing Paul when he is in full health.

The object of Paul’s obsession, Marietta, is a hardly less fearsome role. Allison Oakes, a British soprano singing major lyric-dramatic roles in Germany, throws herself into it with energy and passion, and by the interval must have felt she had already sung enough for several operas.

With Sarah Connolly as a warm-voiced housekeeper and Audun Iversen’s fine baritone sounding eloquent in Frank’s much-loved solo, the production is well cast. Helped by the Coliseum’s spacious acoustic, the conductor, Kirill Karabits, draws suitably lush sounds from Korngold’s lavish orchestra, extra instruments having to be placed in the stage boxes. This opera costs cash and commitment and ENO has largely given its best.

★★★★☆

To April 8, eno.org