<<  -- 7 --  Roderic Dunnett    UNALLOYED GENIUS

Elder's handling of the score -- he directed it to glorious effect in concert at the South Bank's Deutsche Romantik Festival a few years ago (while Lionel Friend conducted a worthwhile New Sussex Opera staging around the same time) -- is quite simply exemplary. Layer upon layer was revealed : would the composer had been there. Weber's orchestration is as ever-surprising and magical as Mozart's : what sounds like flutes galore for Adolar; more flutes, in that eerie low register at which Weber excels, as Eglantine circles Euryanthe;

a Stadler-like clarinet (again, for Adolar); terrific strings for his key outburst ('Ich bau'auf Gott' -- 'I put my trust in God'), and for the remarkable opening to Act III (especially after Elder's first pause); a horn -- or perhaps a shy trombone -- and violin G string for Schwanewilms's first Act III whisper; the bassoon link that heralds her abandoned recitative -- Weber uses bassoons wonderfully; they reappear for Euryanthe's resigned 'Hier an der Quell' ' -'here will I die' -- one of the many instances of Chezy's use of nature imagery in this text; even the baddies rely on it -- and the soft strings that accompany it.

When she is finally discovered by the King's conveniently passing hunting party, her outburst, 'zu ihn' -- evidencing her desperation to recover Adolar -- is astounding and thrilling. Anne Schwanewilms -- who has only to incline her head fractionally to produce astonishing visual effect -- holds this story gorgeously together; she herself is one of Chezy's sternest critics (at least, of the language the librettist uses); but Schwanewilms's electric, involving, multilayered performance actually confounded her own worst fears : she herself proved the text to be viable. At the end, her 'Unschuld' -- 'guiltlessness' -- proven, she remains ravaged. There has been no dalliance at all, but what we have witnessed onstage is Euryanthe's multiple ravishment : by Lysiart; by the brutish male chorus (who exonerate themselves by recovering her); by Fate; by Eglantine; and by Adolar. The conversion of the Act III monster into a pinprick-head giant image of Adolar himself was just one more stroke of ironic genius. But then -- Glyndebourne staging and music alike -- this was an evening of unalloyed genius.