Benvenuto Cellini, Coliseum - opera review: 'stunning and not to be missed'

Pure Python brilliance - Terry Gilliam directs Berlioz's opéra-comique with the cinematic flair of his best feature films
Vocal beauty: Michael Spyres as the Florentine sculptor Benvenuto Cellini
Alastair Muir
Barry Millington9 June 2014

Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini is an opera like no other. The eponymous Florentine sculptor is a libertine who, charged with murder, escapes hanging by a semi-miraculous casting of a Perseus figure for the Pope.

Conceived as an opéra-comique, Benvenuto Cellini ended up at the Paris Opéra where grand opera reigned. Indeed it’s that curious hybridity of genre that makes it unique. Berlioz, an exuberant, iconoclastic genius like Cellini himself, sparks on all cylinders and the result is both bizarre and brilliant.

Which is where director Terry Gilliam comes in, deploying the surreal visual invention of his Monty Python animations and the cinematic flair of feature films such as Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. The 90-minute first act, centred on Mardi Gras celebrations, feels like one long carnival with hangover thrown in. But Gilliam’s imagination (co-director Leah Hausman) rarely fails him: the stage is teeming with acrobats, flame-throwers and a cast of eccentrics (costumed by Katrina Lindsay) moving around the spectacular set (designed by Gilliam and Aaron Marsden, video work by Finn Ross) with virtuoso timing.

The grand operatic elements of the second act and the comic opera finale, all offences suddenly and inexplicably forgiven, only increase the sense that both structurally and generically the work is, to put it in technical terms, an unholy mess.

Edward Gardner’s conducting releases the energy of the score, while relishing the innumerable subtleties of its mercurial orchestration. Michael Spyres brings heft as well as vocal beauty to the title role, while Corinne Winters is a no less accomplished Teresa. Pavlo Hunka and Nicholas Pallesen are admirable as Balducci and Fieramosca. Willard White is splendid as Clement VII: this pope and his acolytes are pure Python.

Not enough words are audible, even from the otherwise excellent Spyres, but that is in some ways a blessing, for Charles Hart’s tin-eared translation is virtually unsingable. Flawed the work may be but the show is stunning and not to be missed.

Until Jun 27 (020 7845 9300, eno.org); live screening June 17.

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