When this Bregenz Festival production of The Greek Passion was re-staged by the Royal Opera a few months ago it was hailed as a magnificent achievement and the opera itself as a remarkable discovery. Short memories: Welsh National Opera mounted the work in 1981, a production conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras that was subsequently recorded (though with a Czech choir and orchestra) by Supraphon (3/91). That recording is still available and in several respects, not least its studio recording, it surpasses the newcomer, but that is almost beside the point. Martinu wrote the opera to an English libretto largely because he hoped it would be staged at Covent Garden where his friend Rafael Kubelik was musical director. When, in 1957, Covent Garden rejected it, he extensively revised the opera for a production in Zurich which was staged in 1961, two years after his death. The Supraphon recording, and all other performances of The Greek Passion until now, used the revised ‘Zurich version’; but this new recording is of the original ‘London version’.
The two are very different. In the revision Martinu modified some of his declamatory recitative into arioso, he made some points more telling by tightening them up (the end of Act 2, for example, is both more concise and more poignant in the Zurich version) but he also made numerous cuts, especially in Acts 3 and 4. The present recording is 15 minutes longer than Mackerras’s Supraphon; paradoxically, though, it seems both shorter and swifter.
The people of one poor Greek village are confronted by refugees from another, driven from their homes by invading Turks. The catalyst of the conflict is Manolios, a shepherd chosen by the involuntary host village to portray Christ in a passion play. Torn by a pity that he can hardly express, he pleads with his neighbours to share their land and meagre resources with the incomers. The village rejects him and he is murdered. Quite crucially, the portrayal of Manolios’s ‘conversion’ and of individuals driven to brutality by fear, is much sharper in the London version, where every line, however barely declamatory, adds to the unfolding of the drama. While the Zurich version is sometimes more beautiful, the original is more powerful and tragic.
It is a hard thing to say, but those who love the opera should really have both recordings. Supraphon’s cast is the better on the whole. John Mitchinson’s heroic voice somehow adds to the poignancy of Manolios’s halting, hesitant eloquence. Koch Schwann’s more lyrical Christopher Ventris is admirable, and he particularly benefits from the restoration of material cut in the revision, but his voice is very similar in quality to several other tenors in the Bregenz cast. Nina Stemme is very good as the village Magdalen, but makes less of the English words than Supraphon’s Helen Field. Esa Ruuttunen is an authoritative Priest, lighter-voiced than Supraphon’s John Tomlinson.
The newcomer has a good deal of stage noise and of characters moving off-microphone, and the excellent chorus is sometimes disappointingly recessed. But Ulf Schirmer leads a strong and gripping performance of what now seems (I had a few doubts when reviewing the Supraphon recording) a moving and compassionate masterpiece.'