Music Theatre Wales at the Linbury Studio
In some ways, Letters from a Love Betrayed reminded me of a sort of reverse whodunit. It is certainly not a whodunit in a conventional sense – although someone is murdered, there is never any doubt who did it. I won’t go into details of how I came to compare the two – I don’t want to give the story away.
But my point is, when you read a whodunit, you’re often going to be sitting there trying to work out for yourself who done it, looking at all the possible suspects, as well as looking at other characters in the story who so far haven’t come under suspicion. It can be very annoying if the identity of the murderer is too obvious, but it is probably a million times more annoying when the murderer turns out to be someone who has barely featured in the story, or, worse still, not featured at all.
And this is, for me, one of the big problems with Letters from a Love Betrayed. Something is revealed to the central character, Analia, near the end. We see her as she makes the realisation, but we don’t have the knowledge to make the same connection ourselves. It’s a fascinating twist, and in many ways a rather good one, but it does come completely out of nowhere, and I personally would have found it more satisfying if there were more clues. At the very least, in a story like this, we should be able to look back and think: “Oh, of course!” when the secret is finally revealed to us. But to me, it came so completely out of the blue, it was a bit of a let down.
To be fair to librettist Donald Sturrock, this part of the story probably wasn’t very easy to bring to the stage. It might have been easier to pick up on the clues in Isabel Allende’s original short story. But I do feel that there was probably more Sturroc, director Michael NcCarthy or designers Colin Richmond and Holly McCarthy could have done to set up the revelation. But maybe they didn’t want to. Maybe they wanted to preserve the element of surprise at the end – and they certainly succeeded, if this was their aim. A great twist, but ultimately an unsatisfying one for me.
Mary Plazas sang the central role of Analia. It was an ideal role for her. She is exceptionally good playing at the innocent characters. She gives them all real charm and vulnerability, but each character is so carefully drawn, each so distinct from the other, it’s certainly not a case of her playing the ‘same’ role again and again. (Besides, as her Nedda for ENO showed, she can do raunchy very well too.) Plazas’ Analia was tragic, innocent, maybe a bit stupid, but her sweet, dreamy nature was appealing and I really wanted a happy ending for her. Her singing, as always, was lovely.
Christopher Steele played her husband Luis, the man who won her love with the letters he sent to her, only, as the title suggests, to betray her, repeatedly and humiliatingly. Steele didn’t manage to turn Luis into a truly sympathetic character – although it was sad that he had no idea what a lovely, caring devoted wife he had – but it was a fantastic portrayal of nastiness and cruelty. A huge contrast to when I sang Haydn’s Creation with him.
Hairy McMungo, naturally, was very impressed by the Scottish mezzo-soprano Arlene Rolph – and I have to say I completely agree with him. She played two roles, the Mother Superior and the Slutty Gloria, two such vivid portrayals that I was genuinely surprised to hear they were played by the same singer. There were differences not only in the appearance of the characters, but also the movement, even the voice sounded different. Gloria was quite an odd character, apparently a tart with a heart, who could change from seductive to horrified within a matter of seconds. The changes were sudden – but that was how the libretto was written. Rolph certainly played the two halfs of Gloria’s character with conviction.
Also in the cast were Jonathan May and Paul Kenhone, both thuggish in the roles of Analia’s bullying uncle Eugenio Torres, and Richard Edgar-Wilson offered a nice cameo in his brief appearance of Analia’s son’s teacher.
The libretto… well, it wasn’t exactly Da Ponte. The schoolroom duet was nicely done, but elsewhere the rhymes verged on the embarrassing. For once, the muddy diction was something of a relief. Eleanor Alberga’s music, conducted by Michael Rafferty, was atmospheric throughout, if not stunningly brilliant, and the South American setting of the story was very clear. Colin Richmond and Holly McCarthy’s designs were minimal – looking at them, the story could have been set pretty much anywhere. But perhaps that’s part of the point. The social situation of Analia’s needing to marry in order to go out into the world could not exist in Britain. But the betrayal, the bullying, the feeling of being trapped, perhaps that could happen anywhere.
It’s not a great opera. Far from it. But I am glad I saw it.
Cunning Little Vixen
primi-divi at hotmail.co.uk