[richard]

Have just returned from Aldeburgh's Death In Venice. Dogberry has had the last word on comparisons, but with two productions opening so closely together they are inevitable.
Musically the Aldeburgh D in V was superb - Alan Oke showed the dissolution of Aschenbach in the second part even more movingly than Ian Bostridge and Paul Daniel conducted the Britten-Pears orchestra so skilfully. The acoustics are better than in the Coliseum and the Maltings a better venue all round for this particularly intimate work. And there was that extra historical frisson that it was in this precise building that the work first saw the light of day in June 1973.

BUT - a long time coming, but BUT it is. The production foundered - as so many do - on Tadzio and his troupe being far too old. (Only the 1992 Covent Garden in 1992 had a Tadzio of anything like the right age for Mann's novella and the libretto). And the troupe contained three girls, completely negating the libretto's requirements. Far from Britten's ghost being moved by this production as suggested by the Daily Telegraph, I think he would have been spinning in his grave. The production was austere and minimalist with the back brick wall bare of any decoration except a ludicrous small screen that showed amateurish and virtually unidentifiable 'videos ' of waves. When the hotel manager sings to Aschenbach - ' and the view', Britten has one of his great lyrical outpourings (rather similar to the descriptive music of Bly in Turn of the Screw.) At this wonderful moment a ludicrous video popped up at the back. The whole thing would have been better done as a concert version rather than in this pretentious travesty. The bare brick wall was reminsicent of those tedious RSC productions in both the Swan and the old main house when the director is trying to be 'inclusive', 'relevant' and 'accessible', but is actually succumbing to company parsimony. The production was quite inadequate, especailly after Deborah Warner's wonderful realisation for the ENO. And it was clear in the interval that thngs were not going down well with the packed house. I have seen every British based production of Death in Venice since 1973, and this was the most perverse of them all. So sad when the musical standards were overwhelmingly effective.