A film that became a cult favourite, starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. “It was Mel who allowed this to happen,” an obviously grateful Lane says. In the recent annals of Broadway, no one can compete with what Lane and Broderick achieved as Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, the crooked duo who conspired to pocket a fortune by staging the worst play ever written, Springtime for Hitler. They packed the house on Broadway for a year in 2001 and again for three months in 2003. Moreover Lane, who won a Tony Award, was persuaded to reprise his role in London’s West End last year when the promised star, Richard Dreyfus, cried off.
At 49 years old, Lane has arguably now become the most bankable theatre star in America But he is not about to take Ferrell’s comment seriously. He likes to hang out naked in hotel rooms with the film’s leads, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick; and Hollywood put the musical on the screen purely to immortalise the stage performances of those two men. “It was absolutely the only reason to do it.”
It could almost be true.
The faux-baroque gestures of the ballet music from Idomeneo were no less satisfying, though here, as in Haydn’s Oxford Symphony, I was troubled by the gulf between the definition and engagement of the phrasing of the cellos and basses and that of the upper strings. In an age when gut violins have become richer and stronger and warmer, OAE are beginning to sound rather retro.. Will Ferrell, the American comic actor who plays a lunatic Nazi in the new film version of The Producers, let slip a couple of secrets the other day. Ernman has tremendous charm, and if she is guilty of over-egging details at the expense of line, I can think of another Swedish mezzo who did much the same at an equivalent age and has since become one of the greatest interpreters of words and music.
Throughout the concert, I was impressed by Rattle’s sympathetic accompaniment. His reputation is stronger in symphonic repertoire than in opera, yet this was a highly literate performance. Ernman’s “Laudamus Te” from the C minor Mass was blithe and brilliant, as was Cherubino’s aria “Non so piu”, with each of the libidinous page’s bucolic confessors – woods, mountains, flowers, breezes etc – cleverly individuated. With necessarily scant rehearsal time, it was obvious which works Ernman had previously performed.
“Al desio”, the version of Susanna’s Act II aria from Le Nozze di Figaro in which she suddenly acquires the formality of a Fiordiligi, showed a formidable technique but lacked the poetic fluidity of “Deh vieni”. Like “Non piu di fiori” from La clemenza di Tito, it is as much a showcase for the woodwind as for the singer, and OAE’s most incisive section did not disappoint. “E amore un ladroncello”, Dorabella’s excitable post-adultery aria from Cosi fan Tutte, is hardly the easiest piece to warm up with, but aside from Ernman’s peculiar blanching of the word “pace”, this was a relaxed yet lively performance. If Malena Ernman, who did just that in Friday’s programme of Mozart arias with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Sir Simon Rattle at the Barbican, was nervous, it didn’t show.
