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Despite labouring under the burdens of repeated Covid lockdowns and truly philistine cutbacks Aidan Lang, former General Director of Welsh National Opera left a brilliant  legacy. Bernstein’s Candide and Osvaldo Golijov’s flamenco inspired Ainadamar were two visual highlights of 2023. Now comes a Death in Venice – WNO’S first – that further expands how opera can be placed on stage. James Bonas did almost unbelievable things with projection during his staging of Bernstein but Olivia Fuch’s Death in Venice brought aerobatics into opera.

Most major opera companies in Britain handle the music very well – and conductor Leo Hussain was no exception as he helmed an augmented WNO orchestra - so it is left to directors to turn a well sung, well played experience into something exceptional and this is what Olivia Fuchs and the NoFit State company achieved.

Mark le Brocq Gustav von Aschenbach and Antony César Tadzio | Photo Credit: Johan Persson 

Britten wrote Death in Venice in the 1970s for singers and dancers. The mute dancers were to portray the object of the hero’s desire, Tadzio and his Polish family They are simply objects in Aschenbach’s greedy, writerly eyes. He decides not to tell them about the plague engulfing Venice so he may have longer to gaze upon young Tadzio. 

Working with the acrobatic Cardiff company, NoFit State Olivia Fuchs reimagined the Polish aristocrats as much more than pleasing bodies. They danced in the air over the earthbound author (beautifully sung by English tenor, Mark le Brocq). At the beginning of Act II Aschenbach resumes the narrative in one of his many self-justifying/self flagellating recitatives while above him four acrobats slowly unwind themselves from the fly tower until they land gracefully on the stage. It was one of those wonderful moments that opera can do so well. One might extrapolate that earthbound Aschenbach, obsessed with form and discipline, is being contrasted with the aethereal Poles but the scene did not need explanation to be beautiful.

Le Brocq did his best to make Aschenbach sympathetic but the opera, unlike the novella or the 1971 Visconti film is surprisingly private about its main character. Yes he has writer’s block and he fancies Tadzio and he dares not do anything about it.  Nor should he. The boy is underage. Mann and Britten dignified this inhibition in terms of the highly accomplished writer, who has achieved formal beauty through years of diligence finding himself reduced to impotence by natural beauty. But the fact that Aschenbach finally dies with rouged cheeks, mascara and dyed hair and still unable to attract the young man is hardly the stuff of tragedy. In less sympathetic hands it could be comedic.

Roderick Williams The Voice of Dionysus Mark le Brocq Gustav von Aschenbach and the Cast of Death in Venice | Photo Credit: Johan Persson

The Belgian circus performer Antony César played Tadzio, often stripped to the waist. Aged only 21 this beautiful fifth generation high-wire artist succeeded in being more than an object of desire. The multi-talented Roderick Williams played just about everyone else, seven roles in all from 'Elderly Fop' to 'Voice of Dionysus' and 'Hotel Barber'. I suspect he had the better evening compared to Le Brocq who was obliged just to lament and complain.

Death in Venice was a fitting swansong for Benjamin Britten who himself was too ill to attend its first performances at Snape Maltings in 1973. The role of von Aschenbach was written, as ever for Britten’s lover Peter Pears, a man who ironically lacked all the inhibition and self-loathing that Mann and Britten felt about their homosexuality. But it was a fitting autobiographical swan song for Britten.

The New Theatre in Oxford was sold-out for the one night this production travelled so far from Cardiff. That is no mean feat for a 1785 seat Art Deco venue. Word had got around that here was something remarkable coming into town. There was a queue around the block to get in, despite heavy rain. The aerial acrobatics not only stole the show but sold it too.