Conversation about opera has become an increasingly cronky merry-go-round over the last few years, revolving not around art and imagination so much as money, elitism and whether or not the repertoire is refreshing itself at a rate that makes any significant contribution to a modern creative environment. Much of the latest discontent has focused on the forced move of the English National Opera (ENO) from its London redoubt – the Coliseum – to Manchester where, until its new home is built, it will do the rounds of existing venues.
So it is refreshing to find Welsh National Opera (WNO) out on the road with a revival that stares down many of the resulting anxieties, while reframing the underlying debates in a way that detractors of the art form would do well to heed. After opening its new season with an old repertory staple, Così fan Tutte, it is touring Benjamin Britten’s more challenging Death in Venice, about the fixation of an ageing writer for a beautiful young boy he spots in a Venice that is succumbing to a cholera epidemic. The opera itself is obviously not new. Based on a novella by Thomas Mann, it premiered just two years after Visconti’s famous 1971 film. But half a century on, social attitudes to the themes it addresses – gay love, obsessive desire, and the morally hazy relationship of artist to muse – have changed, giving a fresh resonance to its meditations.
