【卫报】《末日启示》剧评丨第7期

London should have seen Peter Sellars' take on György Ligeti's only opera in 1999, when the production he had unveiled at the Salzburg festival two years earlier was due to come to Covent Garden. But the then newly renovated Royal Opera House was still having technical teething problems and the show was cancelled. We've finally seen it now, though, more or less: the semi-staging that Sellars has devised for the London Symphony Orchestra's performances with Simon Rattle follows the same 20-year-old line, setting Le Grand Macabre in a world of nuclear catastrophe.

1999年，伦敦本应见证彼得·塞拉斯对利盖蒂·捷尓吉唯一一部歌剧的演绎。那时，两年前他在萨尔斯堡音乐节上公开的作品理应在柯文特花园皇家剧院上演。但当时新装修的皇家歌剧院仍存在初期技术问题，所以那场演出被取消了。虽然如此，我们现在终于多多少少看过了：同伦敦交响乐团的演出布置的半圆形舞台沿袭了二十年不变的老套路，将“末日启示”设定于核灾难的环境中。

After the Salzburg production, for which Ligeti made the total revision of the score that's now definitive, the composer publicly repudiated the reading of his stage work as a post-Chernobyl parable.

（期待您的翻译，关注每日一句会有针对这句话的长难句解析哟~）

Two decades on, Sellars, however, has stuck to his approach. But with the stage strewnwith drums of radioactive waste, characters wearing white coats or decontamination suits and backed by video footage of nuclear power stations and mushroom clouds, demonstrations against Trident and survivors sifting through the devastation of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the whole thing seems muddled. Is this a critique of nuclear power or of nuclear weapons, or is it just saying, in a kneejerk way, that everything "nuclear" is bad?

尽管如此，20年后的塞拉斯还在坚持自己的解读。但是，他的舞台上满是放射性废物桶，角色身穿白大褂或防护服，背景里是核电站和蘑菇云的视频录像，针对“三叉戟”核潜艇的抗议游行以及幸存者回忆着广岛或长崎的毁灭。这一切令人摸不着头脑。这究竟是批判核电站、核武器，亦或仅仅是本能反应般地表示“沾核没好事”？

• strewn：散播的；散落于

• muddled：adj, 混乱的，糊涂的

strewn：散播的；散落于

muddled：adj, 混乱的，糊涂的

None of this helps the dramatic coherence of Le Grand Macabre either. The production by La Fura dels Baus staged at ENO seven years ago suggested the score had lost its subversive edge. Nothing in this performance contradicts that; in fact, it undermines what dramatic coherence there is, while the po-facedsermonisingsuffocates the anarchic black humour that is such a vital ingredient. From the grand macabre himself, Nekrotzar, who arrives in Breughellandto bring an end to everything but is too drunk to do his job properly, to the lovers Amando and Amanda, too wrapped up in each other to notice that anything apocalyptic is happening at all, everybody in the opera is a cartoon character.

这一切也都不利于《末日启示》的戏剧连贯性。七年前拉夫拉前卫剧团在英国国家歌剧院演出的版本表明其配乐已经失去了颠覆性的尖锐。这场演出从头到尾都在表明配乐事实上削弱了这出戏原有的戏剧连贯性，同时那一本正经的说教扼杀了无政府主义黑色幽默这一重要内容。从来到勃鲁盖尔兰德打算终结世界却因醉酒误事的死神，到水乳交融、全然不知灾难降临的阿曼多和阿曼达这对情侣。戏中每个人物都是以卡通形象出现。

• po-faced：一本正经的

• sermonising：布道，说教

• Breughelland：名字来源于16世纪尼德兰地区最伟大的画家彼得·勃鲁盖尔(Breughel)，Nekrotzar是他的油画《死神的胜利》中死神的名字。

po-faced：一本正经的

sermonising：布道，说教

Breughelland：名字来源于16世纪尼德兰地区最伟大的画家彼得·勃鲁盖尔(Breughel)，Nekrotzar是他的油画《死神的胜利》中死神的名字。

Turning them into nuclear operatives, besuited apparatchiks and victims adds nothing.

把他们转化为核作战者，被装饰的装置和受害者没有加入任何东西。

Musically, though, the performance under Rattle is superb. From the opening toccata played on car horns which parodies the canzona from Monteverdi's Orfeo, to the radiant passacaglia that supports the final scene, everything in Ligeti's score is heard more vividly than it could ever be in an opera house, and the playing of the LSO is astoundingly good. So, too, are most of the solo performances - from Pavlo Hunka's lugubrious Nekrotzar and Peter Hoare's drink-sodden Piet the Pot, Frode Olsen and Heidi Melton as Astradamors and Mescalina the couple whose relationship is conducted entirely in S&M terms, to Ronnita Miller and Elizabeth Watts as the young lovers.

尽管如此，音乐上，在拉特尔指导下的演出表现得非常好。从打开的汽车音响里播放的来自蒙特威尔第·奥菲欧的托卡塔曲小调（一种快节奏的钢琴曲）到支持最终情节的光芒四射的帕萨卡里亚曲,任何事物在利盖蒂的配乐下听起来显得比任何一家歌剧院更加生动，伦敦交响乐团的演出令人惊讶的棒。包括像大部分的单独表演--从巴布洛夫·守财奴的悲哀的莱克扎和彼得·霍尔的因酗酒而变得痴呆的皮尔特和波特，弗罗德·奥尔森和海蒂·梅尔顿作为一对在S&M期完全形成情侣关系的情侣亚斯兰大莫和莫斯卡里亚到作为年轻小情侣的洛丽塔·米勒和伊丽莎白·瓦特这样的这些单独演出。

Only Audrey Luna as Gepopo, the chief of police, does not make the most of her coloratura nonsense aria. It's normally one of the show-stopping moments, but then Sellars has Luna sing from a hospital bed, complete with one of his trademark drips. As too often in this production, the tired old message has to come first.

只有作为警察局长--吉婆婆的奥黛丽·卢娜，没有使用她那大部分华而无实的叹咏调。那通常是演出暂停时刻的一部分。但在之后，塞拉斯让卢娜在一个医院的病床之前唱起来，像水滴融入水中一样完全融入到他塑造的整体氛围的标志之中。由于在这部作品中表现得太频繁，这种老旧的信息不得不在第一时间就表现出来。

翻译 ▍G-P-3

审核 ▍veronica

编辑 ▍火柴

Try to translate it

After the Salzburg production, for which Ligeti made the total revision of the score that's now definitive, the composer publicly repudiated the reading of his stage work as a post-Chernobyl parable

注：以上所有图片均来源于网络

扫码关注英语微风尚返回搜狐，查看更多