Press reviews: 1984

UK newspaper critics give their verdict on New York's Philharmonic orchestra conductor Lorin Maazel's opera adaptation of George Orwell's 1984, which received its world premiere at the Royal Opera House in London on Tuesday.

THE GUARDIAN - ANDREW CLEMENTS

Maazel (bottom right) is conductor of the New York Philharmonic orchestra

It is both shocking and outrageous that the Royal Opera, a company of supposedly international standards and standing, should be putting on a new opera of such wretchedness and lack of musical worth.

Who paid for what and how much of its own funds Covent Garden invested in the production for 1984 is in the end irrelevant; I believe that they should not have spent any money at all on what appears to be the vanity project of someone with no track record at all as an opera composer.

Apart from the singers, no one comes out of this sorry spectacle with any credit. The libretto... replaces George Orwell's limpid, elegant prose with a mixture of kitsch, cliché and doggerel.

Maazel of course conducts, and the orchestra plays well enough for him. Some of the singers, too, perform heroically.

Rarely in a new work at the Royal Opera House can so much have been expended to so little effect.

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH - RUPERT CHRISTIANSEN

Stir the mixture, and the result is a cleverly concocted piece of operatic fast-food, stuffed with musical additives and devoid of substantial nutritional value, but quite engrossing and enjoyable.

Robert Lepage's production is a marvel of fluidity and precision, and although it is far from being his most radically imaginative work, it contains some haunting images, not least the pink, padded cell that is Room 101.

Maazel conducts his creation with his usual hard-edged brio. The show is carried by the magnificent Simon Keenlyside, who captures all of Winston's vulnerability and introspection in a deeply sympathetic and beautifully sung performance.

1984 may be third-rate art but Keenlyside's charisma at least makes it seem potently vivid and gripping.

THE TIMES - ROBERT THICKNESSE

A night with one star, sings love struck Winston (Simon Keenlyside) hopefully.

Well, we are generous people and will give him two - partly for Keenlyside's own performance, a typically wholehearted effort with some ungrateful material.

Lorin Maazel's new opera is not as awful as some feared, but it does share one property with Room 101, and that is the urgent desire it inspires for it to be over.

It is pretty unforgivable in any modern opera for the first act to be as long as the whole of La Boheme, particularly when what happens is one-paced to the point of profound boredom.

When Robert Lepage puts his theatrical imagination in gear, things begin to happen.

The cast... do what they can, but the evening remains ungood - even if there's no doubleplus about it.