It has been said that a musical snob is someone who can listen to Rossini’s “William Tell” overture and not think of the Lone Ranger. At the Royal Opera’s new staging of the 1829 opera, sung in French as “Guillaume Tell,” snobs don’t have to worry. There’s plenty to take their minds off the famous Texan crime fighter.First, the plus points. Conductor Antonio Pappano drives the four and a half hour score with dazzling Italianate dash, and he sticks to the soloists like a postage stamp. Phrases sigh without becoming soupy, and tempos turn on a sixpence. It’s Rossinian conducting raised to the level of a Platonic ideal.Those soloists are a top-drawer bunch too. The luxurious voice of baritone Gerald Finley (Guillaume Tell) pours like molten gold, flashing with fire and beauty. Tenor John Osborn (Arnold) displays a sensational bel canto technique and rafter-rattling top notes. Soprano Malin Byström (Mathilde) isn’t quite as secure as she might be in her coloratura, but her sound is beautifully rich and melting. And Sofia Fomina (in the trouser-role of Tell’s son Jemmy) shows off a deliciously clear, fresh-voiced timbre, which is ideal for the part. The chorus, expanded for this grandest of grand operas, is on superb form.On September 15 the opera is broadcast on BBC Radio 3, and that — unfortunately — will be far the best way to experience it. Damiano Michieletto’s staging is a mind-boggling mix of banality, dullness, and cliché which on opening night caused an astonishing, and entirely unprecedented, outburst of booing while one of the scenes (a gang rape, staged with staggering ineptitude) was still in progress. There was even more booing at the curtain call too.The plot tells the story of a fourteenth-century Swiss freedom-fighter who encourages his people to rise up against their Austrian oppressors. In the most famous scene, the evil overlord Gesler forces Tell to shoot an apple from his son’s head. (In this production the apple explodes with a sharp pop like the electronically-activated prop that it is. Hilarity, yes; suspension of disbelief, no.) There’s a romantic subplot between Arnold, a Swiss peasant, and a Habsburg princess called Mathilde, too.Michieletto and his designer Paolo Fantin employ a mish-mash of references. Jemmy, in shorts and knitted pullover, looks like a 1950s schoolboy, while the female chorus all dress in 1940s cotton frocks. In one scene the Austrians appear in modern black combat gear with Kalashnikovs (suggesting Serbs during the 1990s Bosnian war), and in another they appear as Nazis. A silent figure dressed like the William Tell of fourteenth-century legend wanders round the stage like a spare part.It looks a mess. Worse, it looks dull. The genre of “grand opera” is supposed to offer opportunities for spectacular effects, and Rossini’s work has wedding celebrations, a daring boat rescue, a storm, and an uprising. Michieletto ignores all of them, and sets the action in a bare box made of three large white scrims. There’s an uprooted tree trunk, a desk, and some chairs. It’s the visual equivalent of Mogadon.Characterisation is sketchy, relationships are mostly non-existent, and motivations fly by the wayside. One moment Tell is reluctant to be a leader, the next he’s rousing his followers to action like a messiah. Did I miss something?The violence is risible too. The gang rape scene, which shows a poor actor having to bare her breasts (in yet another example of a male opera director exploiting female nudity), looks as though Michieletto has got his ideas of brutality solely from watching other third-rate opera productions. In another scene, the male chorus show how warrior-like they are by ripping off their undershirts (except a few who seem too shy or too sensible to do so) and smearing their chests with blood. It’s jaw-droppingly painful.After 1889, “Guillaume Tell” didn’t appear in Covent Garden for more than a century. A century will be too soon for a revival of Michieletto’s ghastly dog’s dinner.The Royal Opera House's production of “Guillaume Tell” runs until July 17.
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