The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 17

Stale seconds CHEESE onstrated any real feeling for Rossini's style. And a sense of Rossini's style what was most lamentably lacking in this supposedly jolly production, whether Ponnelle or Frisell was responsible. By the time the opening line-up of bloated, masked eunuchs had begun to shake their embroidery, Isabella had created a washing line on which to dry her clothes, and heads had clicked backwards and forwards and sideways in time: with beat! I wondered whether this had-anything. to do with the subtle, poised sense of humour which we were hearing in the: music. Rossini's inspiration indeed be somewhat four-square during the first' act, but' in the second it rises through the quintet and terzetto to real, touching eloquence, and Ferro succeeded here in drawing sophisticated, restrained singing and playing some of the rest was rather clattery and Whether or not I liked this production and it was enthusiastically received in the house is not the point here.

Operatic co-production across the world is an extremely complex and risky business, but given the economic facts of life, it is an increasingly necessary one. Why cannot Covent' Garden, with its artistic expertise, seize the initiative here arid co-finance the productions it wants to mount, instead of being content with what like a bargain in which it gets second best? One of the most satisfying experiences musical London has to offer must' surely be to hear a fine piano played in the superb acoustic of the Wigmore Hall to a packed;" hushed house with the relaxed musicianship, total com- mand, and profound understand-'ing which Andres Schlff brought to his Bach recital there this week. While too many other great pianists appear to have been frightened off Bach by the purists, Schiff gives the best possible demonstration that Bach on the piano is still acceptable: by playing it in a way that reveals one possible and utterly convinc- Typica! of Covent Garden's willingness to make do with hand-me-downs was the choice to cast Paolo Montusolo as Mustafa who has, been singing the part tor 30 OPERA PRODUCERS are busy men these days, and to judge, from the impressive array of opera films assembled recently on Channel 4, all' produced by one man, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle must be busier than Nevertheless, when the Royal Opera announces a 'hew production' by Ponnelle of Rossini's L'ltaliana in Algeri, one might reasonably expect the great man to find time to pop over to England for the-occasion. But this is not quite how the world of international opera works these days. Ponnelle is riot advertised as the producer of this tinn which; means" in case the rltntinrtirwi trMp' wnn rthat; Hp show; has been broueht -'in" 'from' the Vienna State nnera- where Ponnelle staged it in the autumn, and has been produced for Covent Garden by someone else.

We have come to expect producers to leave revivals of their nroductinns in the hands of others, but when was the last time a Royal Opera new production was not staged by its producer The opera was actually produced by Sonja Fri-sell, whose name was notable for its absence from any' of the advance publicity for' the she did not take a curtain call on the first night. Now Ms Frisell is a highly experienced collaborator with Mr Ponnelle, and we are told that he; has 'invited her to direct his productions in major opera houses around the And. Mr Ponnelle has been producing 'Italiana'. for a couple of decades now in' similar sorts of So what exactly is 'new' here? Well, there were some extremely handsome new designs by Mr Ponnelle, with a toytown -ofr1 im'ttin a plpver little boat which sank when a cannon shot it, and a big boat which turned up at the end to take everyone away; But the rest of what was new was what made. unlike Ponnelle's Vienna pro-' duction.

There was a new conductor in place of Glaudip Abbado, the lively Gabriele Ferro, and an almost entirely new cast in place of those whom Ponnelle had acttK WE THINK of the road-movie as a genre that developed in America around 1970 with deep roots in the national experience. In fact those allegorical odysseys through anomie territory with heroes subjected to an accidie cinema of the 1950s and Sixties. 'Wild Strawberries' I Fellini's 'La Stra'da', and Antoriiorii films like L- Avventura ana xa, 2ottey with their famous listless" walkabouts. Now, as if from; some, time. warp, comes perfect example road movies of 30 yearsago -The Beekeeper (Renoir, 18), in the Greek film-maker Theodore Angelopoulos abandons his characteristic epic style (and lengths) to give us something very like Antonioni's 'Red Desert'.

The effect is emphasised by the technique of painting whole streets grey to match the hero's mood and casting Marcello Mastroianni in the central role. In his familiar hang-dog manner, Mastroianni plays Spyros, a middle-aged teacher in northern Greece who for no disclosed reason packs in his job, leaves his family and sets off on a the slow movement with rhapsodic yet precise elaborations, and quite transformed the final movement with a musical, riot just a sonic, point his clipped, nervy treatment of the final 68 passage-shows that Mozart could not 'resolve' this piece into the major (though he tried) arid that it must end with a question. I was far less happy with the contribution of John Eliot Gardiner and his orchestra: earlier this cycle he set an apt style to match Boson, but in this larger-scale work the accompaniment was vastly overblown and often surprisingly crude. possible: But the driving, culmu-lative force of that Prelude, and the one in the Fifth Suite quite marvellous, as was the sustained intensity of the sarabandes. Odd to find in these 'English' suites so much use of French added inequality I'm not sure that worked.

But for a demonstration of how a powerful musical imagination can compliment an exquisite use of piano sound, it would be difficult to betterSchifFs Bach. It was a radical contrast, and a quirky reflection of the diversity of our current tastes, to hear the later music of Mozart played the following evening on an earlier- Sale now on! and winding Until January 23rd Angelopoulos, Rohmer DEBUSSY: La tmOuto cfen; PnMt a rm-nM fn ttsns; IMa. i EvtoQf.BtltySi Lmn SyANfly Orsbntn ud CtomCteado HUrio. OS 423 10S. The welcome rarity here is 'La demolsele an 1887 pre-'PeSaas' rhapsody of soft, misty harmonies which sets a French translation of Dante Gabriel Rossettt.

Maria Ewlno's ooroeousty sensual yet cool omolsele, yearrtng for her toved one, and the distant antipnooaJ chorus who know he wU not come, provide the only dramatic hipetus; Abbado sustains the Pre-ftaphaeEte mood morfntfy and atnwsphericaly, and also draws a vtvfd and exchTng 'Iberia' from the Lsa ArtamldeGB Limited Neal Sheet, Covent Garden London WC2H9PU Telephone 01-240 2346 l'ltaliana in Algeri' atCovent Garden NICHOLAS KEN YON ally directed in Vienna. Still present, though, was the star of the show and the evident reason for Covent Garden's wish to perform the Agnes Baltsai who dominated the stage" effortlessly: and in of some i vocal problems (which included a jarring beat, between chest and head registers) managed to meet brilliantly the demands of Rossini's elaborate, coloratura. She commanded the house even when she reduced her voice to a whisper, and her characterisation of Isabella as at -once haughtily and slyly contemptuous of the natives was crisply effective. Typical, however, of Covent Garden's seeming willingness to Agnes Baltsa make do with hand-me-downs was, on this occasion, the choice to cast Paolo Montarsolo as Mustafa. He is certainly experienced, for he has' been singing this part for no less than thirty years; but he can now get through it only by a sort of vocal sleight-of-hand combined with some exaggerated buffo acting.

Deon van der Walt's Lindoro was light, sometimes brittle and strained, though: more attractive than his recent Bel-monte here. Judith Howarth's Elvira was plucky, but Alessandro Corbelli's Taddeo was the only singer apart from Balta who dem Long bleak journey of self-discovery, arid self-mortification through a wintry countryside. -We can' only' guess -atfthe bees on his bonnet (a washed-out marriage, a disappointing career, disgust over his country's recent history, incestuous feelings towards his recently married daughter). The bees buzzing' in the back of his van, however, are real, for like his father and grandfather before him Spyros is. leaving his hives for the summer at traditional sites all over the country.

The bees are of course richly symbolic of formally organised society, creators of sweetness, creatures at one with the world and so on. Along the way Spyros picks up an attractive teenage hitchhiker with a striking resembl-ence to his daughter. She represents the new generation and the couple finally make love before the Mank screen of an abandoned cinema '(another resonant setting popular among movie makers since "The Last Picture Show'), Meanwhile he 1 OKAGOmtUHf AFTER THE SUCCESS OF fllOBOLBS 9-20 FEB at 7.30 pm Tickets from 3.50 Box Office: 01-278 8916 Rosebery Avenue, London EG Ticket Agent: First Call 01 with booking fee ana regular if ing meaning of the music. 1 in the past, and especially listening repeatedly to records, I have found Schiff somewhat whimsical in the points he pulling Bach around now, this way, now that, like a scholar toying with a hypothesis. But in the English Suites he played in this concert he was absolutely straightforward and directly expressive.

I still jib when a deliberately massive effect of Bach's a couple of bars of minor in the Third Suite's Prelude is shaded down to nothing, or some passing bass octaves in the same piece are highlighted in ways that would not have been and the Comic Strip considered the tone of serious cinema. There is hardly an incident arid scarcely a touch of intentional humour. But hVis as easy and as perrnissible to wallow in this sort of stuff as in, a soap opera. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and; emerged wonderfully depressed at the end. By contrast, Eric Rohmer's Four Adventures of Reinette and MirabeUe (Lumiere; Chelsea Cinema, U) is unpredict-able, exhilarating, full of life arid light.

Stepping aside from; his current series of 'Comedies and Proverbs', but remaining the quizzical moralist, the 67-year-old Rohrrier has improvised this movie with- two beguiling teenage acresses, who are given some support from adult faces familiar from earlier Rohmer pictures. -A Reinette (Joelle Miquel) is a country girl with a strong, almost rigid, moral sense. She paints in the manner of Paul Delvaux though she hasn't heard the word 'surrealism' until she meets MirabeUe (Jessica Forde) one summer afternoon. MirabeUe is a city girl, a student of ethnology at the Sor-bonne, and something of a Mastroianni in The Familiar hang-dog manner. Great reductions on all Italian designer lighting and furniture smut.

encounters a variety of glum strangers and friends. The latter include two! old school-chums one a successful busmessman, the other a former, revolutionist (Serg Reggiani) dying in hospital with whom he had once dreamed of changing the world. 'The Beekeeper' is drenched in a form of iteliectual angst arid spiritual despair that was once road Draetnatist. After striking up uus rural acquainiautc, uicy become flatmates; in Paris where in a subtle progression of anec-Vdotes their friendship grows and I their values are tested and challenged. Both are far less self-ab-' sorbed than other young Rohmer heroines.

ll- The third of the adventures, "The Beggar, The Kleptomaniac, and The Hustler' is the most ethically complex, as the girls argue about chanty ana social responsibility. The funniest is the last: one, where Reinette, having accepted a bet that she can go a wnoie aay without speaking, is forced to sell a pamtins to a garrulous art-dealer without saying a word; Crisp and economical (both financially and artistically) 'Four Adventurers' is Rohmer's best film in years. It gives youth and the memory of youth, a good name, The Woo Woo Kid (Prince Charles, PG) is a thin true story of the 14-year-old Californian schoolboy Sonny Wisecarver (Patrick Dempsey), who apparently became a national celeb rity 1944 when he first eloped with a. 21-year-old 'mother of two, then, when the marriage was annulled, took on with the 25-year-old wife of a i marine serving in the Pacific. 1 I say 'apparently' because Richard in his history of the American home front 1941-45, 'Don't You Know There's a War doesn't think the case worth even a line.

Actually it isn't a very interesting story and probably needed a specialist in bizarre Americana like Jonathan Demme to give it real point and texture. Still, Sonny is nicely played by Dempsey (who looks like Sean Perm after a month's counselling and a nose job), and Talia Balsam and Beverley D'Angelo are touching (and fetching) as the women in his life. Near Dark (Cannon, Panton St, 18) is a heavy handed, fool- style instrument. Malcom Bilson is reaching the end of his current recorded Mozart concerto cycle with the English Baroque Soloists, using period instruments and an 18th-century style piano, and is continuing to reveal astonishing riches of naunce and detail in these works. His account of the minor Concerto K.491 in the Elizabeth Hall on Thursday was taut and concentrated quite different from a very langorous new account on fbrtepiano by another American player just, released on Philips (420 823) though that has a lovely accompaniment directed by Frans Bruggen.

Bilson breathed new life into ish tale of an Oklahoma farm boy falling into the clutches of a family of itinerant vampires. It scarcely even qualifies as Stoker Third Class, and the promise its director, Kathleen Bigelow, showed in her first film, "The Loveless', remains unfiilfilled. Likewise Joseph Ruben's The Stepfather Odeon, Swiss 18) is a disappointment after the same director's clever SF thrUler Dreamscape'; That earlier picture was signposted with references to 'Spellbound' and story of a psychotic serial murderer arousing the suspicions of his step--daughter is a sort of homage to 'The Lodger' and 'Shadow of a Doubt'. One of the screenwriters on this unconvincing movie is Brian Garfield, author of 'Death Wish', unpleasant memories of which it brings to mind. Made in their hit-and-miss style, the Comic Strip team's two new 50-minute comedies, The Strike and The Yob (Scala, 15), are respectively a hit and a miss.

A leaden SF parody directed by Ian Ernes, 'The Yob' takes on 'The Man With Two Brains', and takes off 'The Fly', in both cases unsuccess-fuUy. Peter Richardson's 'The Strike' is a consistently amusing account of what happens when a screenplay written by a young Welsh sociaUst (Alexei Sayle) about the 1985 miners' strike fails' into the hands of HoUy-wood. It becomes the right-wing 'Strike The Bloodshed Begins', a cross between 'How Green Was My Vate and 'On the Waterfront' with Al Pacino (Peter Richardson) as the anti-militant Maverick Arthur Scar-giU and Meryl Streep Gerinifer Saunders) as his school-teacher wife. The movie's finale in a tearful House of Commons is far superior to anything in Alan Alda's sunilar 'Sweet Liberty', though generally it is less telling about the movie business than Nick Darke's undervalued stage comedy 'The Oven Glove Murders'. Film at 235 4.30 6.40 8.50 BRUNSWICK SQ.WCI KEHWIKTOIPKONIU7M02 1 A film by ERIC ROHMER children won't Id like this.

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