Category Archives: Topical
Khovanskygate: A National Enquiry
Khovanskygate: A National Enquiry
Fiona Maddocks reviews Birmingham Opera Company’s adaptation of Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina, directed by Graham Vick and with a new translation by Max Hoehn.
Also check out other reviews here:
http://www.theartsdesk.com/opera/khovanshchina-birmingham-opera-company
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/7d553c3c-cac8-11e3-ba95-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2ziZDzTKj
If you are in the area of Birmingham to catch the last few performances it seems highly recommended you do so. I’m gutted that I can’t make it and massive congratulations to all involved.
ENO Theabans Panel Discussion
Happy Easter everyone! I’m spending a bit of time this rainy day having a listen to this panel discussion on Julian Anderson’s first opera Theabans opening at the Coliseum this May. The ENO recently hosted this panel bringing together Julian Anderson, librettist Frank McGuiness, director Pierre Audi and ENO Music Director Edward Gardener. Hosted by BBC journalist Tom Service.
Finding the Words: Interview with Joe Austin, director by Francesca Wickers
Origional Source: http://www.fringeopera.com/features/joeaustin/
Baroque opera La Calisto has spent the best part of its life neglected. It premiered in Venice in 1651 to a lukewarm response, perhaps because its themes of seduction, homosexuality and betrayal proved too risqué for 17th-century audiences. For many centuries since, the opera has a virtually untraceable history. So when director Joe Austin took on the job for Hampstead Garden Opera, the project turned into a challenging hunt for missing pieces.
‘The more I talk to people about La Calisto, the more I realise they either they love it, or they haven’t heard of it. It’s very liberating as a director – no one is peering over my shoulder!’ This is Joe’s first show with Hampstead Garden Opera, a company that performs regularly at the intimate theatre above The Gatehouse pub in Highgate, North London. He often assists directors on large-scale productions (he recently worked with David Alden on ENO’s Peter Grimes), but also takes the helm for operas on the fringe.
La Calisto was written by Francesco Cavalli, a key player in the rising success of public opera in Venice (the world’s first public opera house – the Teatro di San Cassiano – opened there in 1637). The opera is set in a world groaning under the destruction of a war between Gods and mankind, and intertwines the Greek myths of Jupiter and Calisto, and Endymion and Diana. But of the forty-one operas Cavalli churned out, La Calistowas not a favourite. It dropped off the radar, and wasn’t seen again until the 1970s.
It was British conductor Raymond Leppard who brought La Calistoback into fruition, arranging it for a performance at the 1970 Glyndebourne Opera Festival, then publishing the score. ‘Leppard was notorious for bringing back long-lost classics. He did these forgotten works a great service. If he couldn’t find the original version, he would re-write it. Often vast swathes of it.’ Trouble is, he did that with the libretto of La Calisto, rendering it ‘useless’ to Joe who wanted something that more closely depicted the original.
In the 1990s, the radical and inventive Opera Factory, directed by David Freeman, staged La Calisto using a new translation by Anne Ridler, an English poetess. ‘The language she used was beautiful.’ Joe set his sights on this version of the libretto. Finding out that the manuscript is nowhere to be found was a mere spanner in the works, not a deterrent. Joe persisted.
‘The only remnants of her translation is kept at the Bodleian library in Oxford – I found a photocopied version of the score, which had her notes scribbled all over it. Anne Ridler had wanted to take it back to how it was originally, rather than use Leppard’s version.’
A lot of the pages were missing, and Joe painstakingly devised a libretto based on Anne’s scrawled annotations, the original Italian libretto and a basic, literal translation. ‘Anne’s son, Colin Ridler, also helped with our research.’ By a beautiful twist of fate, Colin happens to live a few minutes from The Gatehouse pub theatre, where the production will be performed.
The question remains – why did the opera fall short of public expectation back in 1651, and consequently drift off the scene? It could be one of several reasons, Joe muses. ‘Faustini, the librettist and impresario, died half way through the rehearsals. I think that made it harder to pull off. There’s been speculation around the opera’s subject matter as well. Scholars said it was too bawdy for the period, with its gay undertones and risqué plot lines. Although more recently, people say it was probably the other way around: not crude enough. This was carnival time in Venice – people really let their hair down!’
The revival of long-lost works is an interesting counter-trend to the current wave of companies driving new compositions onto the opera scene (Tête-à-Tête festival, for example, or Second Movement’srough for opera). But according to Joe, there’s still a great sense of novelty with lesser-known existing works. ‘There is actually a big wave of revivals, too. It feels fresher than new writing, in a way. It’s more visceral, more palpable, and responds well to new audiences.’
Joe points out that it’s easy to forget just how bold and provocative 17th-century Venice was, especially during carnival season. When I ask the director whether the Baroque sounds of La Calisto clash with the modern touches of his production, he argues ‘there can sometimes be too much respect given to these baroque operas. People have this idea that anything pre-Victorian is tethered to a certain style, and that the sound world is reverential and needs to be honoured. We need to disassociate with that.’
‘Venice was incredibly bawdy, racy and aggressive. There is so much sex in this opera. It’s actually a world where romantic love and sex don’t necessarily go hand in hand. La Calisto addresses difficulties which still apply today – who you should and shouldn’t sleep with, and even rape.’
Will it be difficult to attract new audiences to a work they probably haven’t heard of before, let alone seen? ‘It is quite a niche world, but I’ll always choose to direct these lesser-known works. And that’s the kind of thing I go to watch, too. I do think there’s a great sense of satisfaction when you go to an opera whose music you know – it’s like going to a gig. But if you don’t know the music, it only takes five minutes listening to a recording on Spotify or online to familiarise yourself.’
Never mind whether you’ve heard of La Calisto, or even whether baroque opera is your cup of tea. This production at The Gatehouse is a special occasion – one that will undoubtedly put your preconceptions to the test – and a chance to witness the resurgence of a rare piece. Not to mention a chance to let your hair down.
La Calisto opens at Upstairs at the Gatehouse on 25 April, and continues until 4 May.
The End of the Great Big American Voice?
The End of the Great Big American Voice
“In March, Jennifer Wilson, an unknown 39-year-old soprano, suddenly burst onto the international opera scene by jumping in for Jane Eaglen as Brünnhilde in Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, just a day after singing the same character in a rehearsal of “Die Walküre.” Artistry aside, this is a stunning athletic feat. Few people today have the vocal heft and stamina to get through even one of these roles, let alone take on both back to back….”
ENO travels to Ambika P3 and making his opera directing debut is Joe Hill-Gibbins
Thomas Ades Powder her Face: ENO at AmbikP3
Thomas Ades Powder her Face: ENO at AmbikP3 Reviewed by Hilary Glover on Apr 4 2014
This new production by the ENO of Thomas Adès’ Powder her faceat AmbikaP3 was a thrilling exposé of a decadent life’s fall from grace. Very topical, given the current rounds of sexual exploitation by celebrities, this work also forces the audience to confront the duel standards by which society views sexual equality.
The libretto by Philip Hensher, known for his journalism and novels, could have taken a more damning view of female celebrity, but instead its straightforward exploration of excesses, prejudices, and scandal allows the audience to be shocked by a world we hoped had gone away but that we know is still bubbling beneath the surface. Adès’ music conducted by Timothy Redmond added an emotional depth to Hensher’s writing. Fragmentary hints of tango and tearoom dances helped consolidate the era of decadence and gave life to the words.
Loosely based on the life of Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyle, Powder her face was meant by Adès and Hensher (they claim) to be about a particular kind of woman rather than a strict biography. The main protagonist is referred to throughout as ‘Duchess”. In fact (Hensher states in an interview reproduced in the programme) some of the details made up in the opera have since become attributed to the Duchess of Argyle, for example the line “Go to bed early and often”.
The real life Duchess was the daughter of a Scottish millionaire who lived in New York. She became a celebrity simply for being rich and beautiful – but even today there are those who have celebrity status for this meagre talent, if not less. A broken engagement a divorce, and several affairs, eventually led to her marriage in 1951 to Ian Campbell, the Duke of Argyle.
Twelve years later this marriage also ended – this time sensationalised by the production of Polaroid photographs of her ‘caught in the act’. When she denied that the pictures were of her, a jeweller was brought in to identify her pearls. The judge’s summing up portioned all the blame for the divorce on the Duchess and her sexual appetite.
Moving to a Park Lane hotel, she lived there until the money ran out – this was where the opera began and ended.
Written as a commission from the Almeida Opera for Cheltenham Festival, where Powder her facewas first performed in 1995, the ENO had chosen to stage this opera, not at the usual Coliseum, but at the University of Westminster’s industrial space at Ambika P3, just opposite Baker Street tube station. The space was originally a construction hall, but with its concrete walls and stairs it could just as easily have been an appropriated car park.
This new production by Joe Hill-Gibbins (his opera debut) used the space to its best advantage, and in fact the architecture gave the production team more to work with than a standard venue. The entire space was used as part of the experience. Even before the opera began we were taken past groups of Polaroids of a bemused man tacked to the stairwell, and past colour plates taken from old cookery books – the kind showing mysterious things in aspic or blancmange. This led us into the bar, where fortunately with chairs provided around the edges of the room for the weary. However, these were in darkness, which resulted in people trying to read their programmes using light from their mobile phones.
From there we were walked through the backstage to the concert hall. This allowed a sneaky preview of the opera props: a carpet with a wind up gramophone, catering trolleys with trays of things in jelly, a lobster, and glasses of champagne. The opera was performed in the round, and the stage was already set with the orchestra jammed into one corner (the percussion were tucked away behind pillars – heard but not seen) with the appearance of a palm court orchestra. A magazine casually left on one end of the piano’s music stand would become a prop later on. The other side of the stage was a pink boudoir of a dressing room complete with flock wallpaper, two stuffed dogs and stands with wigs. Between the two ‘rooms’ was a hotel workshop.
The opera opened with the projection of a Polaroid high up in the walls. Similarly to the projection used during The magic flute, the place and date were handwritten on the Polaroid at the hotel workstation in real time. Clare Eggington as the maid laughing, and Alexander Sprague as the electrician/hotel boy, set the scene in 1990. Sprague in a fur coat, wig and lipstick was dressed up as the Duchess and together they ridiculed the Duchess’ pretend modesty and past fame.
Enter the Duchess, also in a fur coat and even bigger wig. The impressive Amanda Roocroft was a multilayered Duchess – bombast hiding insecurity, promiscuousness masquerading as innocence. She tackled the intimacies of her role (yes that aria!) with conviction yet without compromising her music or diction. Her lyrical voice and delivery were exactly what was needed to bring the Duchess alive.
The unusual setting left no room for surtitles – however I did not feel that they were needed. All the singers were perfectly intelligible. Yes maybe when you have duets, trios, etc with everyone singing different words all at the same time the exact words can be lost. But even when surtitles are present, they often stop at this point. One, it is hard for the surtitle writer/reader to keep track, and two, generally people are singing repeats of their current sentiment, and the actual words are not that important to understand what is happening.
The rest of the opera unfolded as a series of flashbacks, each demarked by a Polaroid taken of an item or person on stage and then projected on the walls, working forwards again to 1990. The first couple of scenes built up expectation of the Duke, especially as young Duchess nervously awaits his arrival. His entry through a very brightly lit doorway gave him heavenly status. But we soon see that the couple are living separate lives and that he was as guilty of having affairs as she was.
Each scene brought more furniture and props onto the stage, slowly filling up every available space. This visual pressure brought into stark contrast the end of the opera when the Duchess has lost everything and the stage was once more empty.
The costuming was not flattering, more ordinary life than the mystery of stage. But despite the audience being so close to the stage leaving nowhere to hide, all of the talented performers bravely threw themselves into their roles – the men and Eggington sometimes in their underwear and Roocroft wearing a skin-tight lace catsuit for her scene in the bath.
Eggington’s maid was a vast contrast with her tightly controlled role as Miss Schlessen in Satyagraha. Both vocally and her acting skills came to the front, even from the very first ‘laughing’, amplified by interaction with the orchestra, to her portrayal of a variety of characters with different viewpoints about celebrities and about the Duchess. Similarly tenor Sprague and bass Alan Ewing, as the Duke/Hotel Manager, brought several different complicated characters to life. All three supporting roles demanded great vocal skill and all were ably sung. For example Ewing’s judge called for several different styles and vocal positioning to amplify the judge’s disgust and boy’s club mentality.
Powder her face is running at Ambika P3 until the 19th April.
Original source- http://www.planethugill.com/2014/04/powder-her-face-thomas-ades-at-ambikap3.html#more
“Reflecting on off-site performance”- Christopher Cook for ENO
ENO’s annual spring ‘away-days’ from the Coliseum are to be treasured. Henze in the Young Vic, Rihm at the Hampstead Theatre and Aa at the Barbican. It’s been an ABC of how opera has met the challenge of the modern world and a valuable reminder that serious music theatre is a living and not a museum art. But what could be more challenging than a vast concrete subterranean space under the University of Westminster opposite Madame Tussauds?
What is now the Ambika P3 performance space – 14,000 square feet of it – was once a place where they ‘tested’ concrete. Birmingham’s Spaghetti Junction and the Channel Tunnel began their life here, so to speak. But towering grey bare walls, a concrete floor and an echoing acoustic are all a far cry from the Edwardian luxury of the Coliseum or indeed the other theatres that ENO has visited for its past spring breaks.
In the event, the Ambika P3 fitted Thomas Ades’s Powder Her Face as perfectly as a pair of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll’s glace kid gloves graced her hands. An opera that looks back at a life of riot and scandal on a day of reckoning in which the penniless Duchess will be asked to leave the Park Lane Hotel where she has lived since her divorce from the Duke is all about contingency. And when the cast, dressed as stage crew, literally assembles the Duchess’s baby pink hotel suite, there was a real sense of a life being played out on a margin, sexually and socially.
Better yet, the two ‘rubberneckers’ who are in court for the celebrated divorce case are there in the audience, thus turning us all into voyeurs as the celebrated Polaroid with the ‘Dirty’ Duchess, as she came to be known, and the ‘headless man’ is produced in evidence. And, make of it what you will, but Philip Hensher the librettist for Powder Her Face, told the audience for the pre-performance talk that it was the idea of operatic oral sex that won over Ades to the subject.
And the incongruity of the tale of a mid-twentieth century upper-class scandal told in a brutalist concrete cavern does something else. In an opera house you are somehow encouraged to sympathise with the Duchess – here’s another suffering diva who will have to die, a first cousin of Norma, Tosca and Lulu. That’s what we expect. But here at Ambika P3, a temple to the technology that was going to rescue us all in the white heat of the 1960s, we see the Duchess as an anachronism while also sympathizing with a fallen woman. This is a story about privilege and class and money with a wonderfully knowing libretto dressed in a piquant score. And in a way it was technology that undid Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, when she was identified in the now-notorious Polaroid after an expert had recognised the Argyll pearls around her neck.
Christopher Cook
Original source- http://www.eno.org/sys/file/5661
What is going off in San Diego?!
What is going off in San Diego?!
Also check out…
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2014/mar/31/opera-drama-enters-second-act-san-diego/
….very intriguing situation to say the least!
‘Musical or Opera? Stage Companies Are Drawing on Both Art Forms’
‘Musical or Opera? Stage Companies Are Drawing on Both Art Forms’
“As opera houses search for new works and new audiences — and, ultimately, new sources of income and guaranteed ticket sales — musicals may be a salvation and, most likely, a staple of future repertoires. Musicals are drawing in audiences who have never attended a traditional opera — 50 percent of the audience at the recent Lyric Opera production of “Oklahoma!” were seeing their first production at the opera house — but also drawing the most jaded of opera-goers and symphony subscribers weary of yet another “Don Giovanni” or Beethoven’s Fifth.”
Where do you think the boundaries lie between the world of musical theatre and opera? What is the worth of highlighting the similarities and intrinsic links between the forms?
operacompass 