Arts

when they are bellicose, which seems odd, but think of Norma. The tremendous performances of Sarah Connolly as Romeo and Marie Arnet as Giulietta are on exactly the right scale. This Romeo is headstrong, as his opening aria demonstrates, and modestly ardent, but not destined for heroic deeds. Giulietta is a mere girl — whatever Arnet’s age she manages to seem a lot younger — thrilled and surprised by what she is feeling. Together they make an almost unbearably moving pair. Bellini doesn’t award either of them giddy flights of coloratura, though vocal athleticism on a smallish scale is required, and provided in abundance. It is the sheer domesticity of their affections that contributes to the overall effect, which denies us the grand consolations of tragedy, but intensifies the poignancy. The central pair are surrounded, in this extremely strongly cast production, by convincing relations, hangers-on, well- and illwishers. Almost ranking with the lovers is the Tebaldo of Edgaras Montvidas. A Lithuanian of impressive presence and with a glowing tenor voice, he has already sung often in the UK, but I think never with the conviction he brings to this role, giving the piece a greater complexity than one usually thinks of it as having. The inspiring baton of Manlio Benzi makes a fairly long evening pass swiftly, or nearly timelessly.

Unfortunately, the previous evening at the Grand Theatre seemed like a wretched eternity. This was another themed evening, the theme being political opera and satirical operetta. I’m told by people I respect that Gershwin’s Of Thee I Sing is a masterly score, but I could find no joy or interest in it. It ran on Broadway for 441 performances in 1931, so clearly struck a chord in that Depression climate. Being about a presidential election with no clear policies, an idiotic vice presidential candidate, and a gullible electorate, it should provide at least some easy laughs. Unfortunately the text, by Ira Gershwin, who certainly knew better, is prolix, laborious, devoid of almost any sign of wit, and lacking in the sharpness that alone will carry satire over the decades. I estimated that about one and a half hours out of the two and a quarter the show lasted were spoken, in accents which sometimes tried to be American but nearly always failed. The result was that I felt so irritable by the time the next bit of music arrived that I was hardly in a mood to enjoy it, but it did seem to be alarmingly routine coming from the genius who wrote Porgy and Bess and some wonderful songs. This music is mainly breezy, leg-kicking, surely done far better in many Hollywood movies of the time. The audience left at what must have been a discouraging rate. q

Cinema Beating around the Bush Deborah Ross

W15, Nationwide W, which should be pronounced ‘dubya’, the Texan way, as in George ‘Dubya’ Bush — but never as in, for example, Dubya. H. Smith — is Oliver Stone’s dramatised portrait of the 43rd American President and it’s pretty much neither here nor there; neither sympathetic enough to be one thing nor, alas, deadly enough to be the other. I don’t know what held Stone back, why he beats around the Bush, why he didn’t just grab an iron bar and thrash the living daylights out of whatever is in there. What is in there? If there is something, this film doesn’t tell us, and if there isn’t, if Bush is just a hollow shell of nothingness, how did he manage to become top dog of the world’s top nation? It doesn’t tell us that either. Consequently, it

This Is War!

Robert Capa, Republican soldier storming fo rward, R io Segre, Aragóó n front, near Fraga, Spain,

November 7, 1938 © Cornell Capa, In ternational C enter of Photography

at work

a retrospective

artistic responses to

Iraq & Afghan istan

The Barbican is provided by the City of London Corporation as part of its contribution to the cultural life of London and the nation

www.spectator.co.uk THE SPECTATOR 8 November 2008 59