Theatre / Reviews
Review: William Tell, Hippodrome
Picture: Richard Hubert Smith
Welsh National Opera’s production of Rossini’s opera is directed by David Pountney. He’s currently famous as an ‘ironist’ – a re-interpreter of classic operas. He wins lots of prizes and people in London simply adore him.
How his great skill manifests itself in this production, however, is through a series of increasingly bizarre and finally offensive set pieces that conflict more and more with the original William Tell.
I’d like to focus on the cast’s beautiful singing, the wonderful orchestra and the splendid conducting of Carlo Rizzi, but on too many occasions Pountney’s pretentious excesses drown them out.
First, a lone cellist is playing on stage before a soldier wearing a metal stag-horn helmet snatches it from her. The remains of a smashed cello hover above them. He’s clearly a symbol of the Austrian oppressors – but is the cello a symbol of Switzerland’s fight for liberation? Apparently so.
Rossini’s original includes ballet in a folk-dance style. Pountney’s version, not surprisingly, updates this by using contemporary dancers. The first time they perform, they deliver an admittedly charming modern interpretation – but their second appearance (when they’re ordered to dance) is gratuitously unpleasant. The village girls are physically (and probably sexually) assaulted by the Austrian soldiers – fists shoved between their writhing legs.
Next, a scene where an original song celebrates the joys of the hunt and the beauty of the chase. Here it’s sung by Austrian troops gloating over the bodies of the villagers they’ve beaten and broken.
Finally, the evil Austrian governor Gesler comes onstage in a polished suit of armour in a wheelchair. Is WNO so enlightened an employer that it’s chosen to feature a disabled performer? No: the singer walks out unaided for his encore. The wheelchair is there just to make him appear more “evil”.
I’m sure David Pountney thinks this is ‘ironic’ and ‘re-interpretive’ but as the father of a child who needs a wheelchair to get around I’d describe it as despicable.
So, good luck with the prizes David. Who cares what a few disabled people might feel about how you depict them?
William Tell was at Bristol Hippodrome on Saturday, 15 November.
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
