Excellent performances of UK and US music from Wellington Youth Choir

Wellington Youth Choir conducted by Jared Corbett; Deputy Musical Director: Penelope Hooson; accompanist: Gabriel Khor

Songs from Britain and the United States

Metropolitan Cathedral of the Sacred Heart

Friday 9 June, 7 pm

The Sacred Heart Cathedral is a good place for singing – for both singers and listeners, and so it was especially good to hear this generally well-schooled and enthusiastic young choir, in a wide variety of songs.

The British song tradition
The concert began with an account of God Save the Queen, which prompted no one to stand, because it was clearly an arrangement, and a rather entertaining arrangement of the anthem, by Tahlia Griffis and Will King, two choir members. Each of the later, unfamiliar stanzas took the form of a variation in a musical sense: a nice clean performance, part-singing well balanced, and the last verse especially amusing and harmonically quirky, without becoming conspicuously republican in spirit.

For Gunnar Erikson’s arrangement of Purcell’s charming Music for a While, the choir divided into a group of eight soloists with the words, against humming by the main body of the choir.  There followed other songs by English composers, generally in a folk song vein, by Herbert Howells and perhaps Elgar, and two songs from Britten’s Ceremony of Carols. (I’m not sure whether either the Howells or the Elgar was dropped, as I caught only half of what the conductor said as he introduced the group – nor did assistant conductor Penelope Hooson speak distinctly enough for me to catch all her remarks). Whether Howells’s In Youth is Pleasure or Elgar’s The Snow, it was a delightful performance, lively and luminous.

Penelope Hooson took charge of strong sopranos plus very distinct altos in a lovely rendering of Britten’s ‘Ballulalow’ and the lively ‘This Little Babe’ from his Ceremony of Carols.

There followed familiar folk songs: Bobby Shaftoe, Londonderry Air, and two songs from John Rutter’s arrangements in Five Traditional Songs: ‘O Waly, Waly’ and ‘Dashing away with the Smoothing Iron’. There were ecstatic harmonies and a penny whistle in Bobby Shaftoe, hard to keep in tune; tuning was also a challenge in Danny Boy though that seemed to increase its charm.

Rutter’s setting of ‘O Waly Waly’, employing pure, unison women’s voices to begin, was a fine and successful test of technique and accuracy; the ‘Smoothing Iron’ was a more traditional setting.

Bob Chilcott’s The Making of the Drum, quite extended – maybe 10 minutes? – called on some unusual tricks like rubbing hands together, humming and noisy breathing and later, less unorthodox singing like a four-note motif from women and melancholy part-singing by the men; but the words and the musical sense of the work escaped me, even in passages that were more orthodox. One of those occasions where the innocent listener perhaps tries too hard to find what the composer does not intend to supply or for the audience to worry about.

Songs from the United States
United States songs occupied the second half. More of them were traditional or derived from jazz or Broadway, than in the case of the British songs.

It began with the choir disposed around the side and cross aisles; the singing spread from the front and slowly took hold throughout, so that sections of the choir seemed to come from unexpected quarters as they sang an arrangement of the Appalachian folk  song Bright Morning Star.

Penelope Hooson then directed the spiritual Didn’t my Lord Deliver Daniel and Deep River, both in Moses Hogan’s arrangements. They were well balanced among the sections of the choir, sustaining a uniform tone.

My notes at this stage remarked on what I began to find a bit inauthentic: country or bluesy rhythms turned salon music, which overlies most concertised American folk music. Probably unfair, but my feeling at that moment.

Nyon Nyon by Jake Runestad was new to me; the high-lying words sung by women while men murmured below them, with strange vocalisations, nasal sounds, offered what might be called, perjoratively, noises as distinct from music, which can soon induce weariness rather than delight.

Looking for background on the composer of the next two songs, from Three Nocturnes by Daniel Elder, I found this comment about Ballade to the Moon : “Marked Adagio Misterioso, this evocative work has been appearing on festival lists all over the country, and for good reason – it is an important contribution to the choral repertoire.” (https://www.jwpepper.com/Ballade-to-the-Moon/10283255.item#/).

I’d scribbled remarks like ‘melodic, sentiment – not sentimental, singing moves about the choir interestingly, pretty piano accompaniment’ (and it’s timely to compliment the pianist Gabriel Khor on his lively and supportive playing throughout the concert); and about the second song, Star Sonnet, ‘another slow, inoffensive melody, monotone, basically sentimental  ’.  However, they proved a nice change from the earlier prevalence of over-arranged, Gospel-inspired material.

The rest of the concert included a nice setting of Fats Waller’s Ain’t misbehavin’ and a well-rehearsed if unadventurous account of Gershwin’s I got Rhythm.

There was a rather prolonged series of thanks to sponsors and supporters of the choir before the last two songs; a strange, low-key, hymn-like arrangement of The Star-spangled Banner and a sort of religious flavoured song by Susan LaBarr: Grace before Sleep.

Some reflections
For me, more strongly persuaded of the central importance of Continental Europe in most aspects of broadly western musical culture, the choice of music seemed somehow peripheral. There were virtually no mainstream classical choruses or ensembles or art songs in the programme; the nearest were a few British arrangements of folk songs by important composers. However, the choice of songs within those rather limited genres was eclectic, and the choir’s refinement, control of dynamics, colour, and their flexibility in some off-beat and unorthodox vocal techniques, was often most impressive; and I have to confess that the range of pieces produced an evening of entertaining and well-schooled performances.

I might finally comment on the programme. I see the job of critiquing live music performances as, in part, to create a record of classical music performance in the Greater Wellington region to help future music or other historians to obtain a better picture of activities than is likely to be accessible through the often non-existent archives of a multitude of individual orchestral, choral, chamber music organisations, tertiary institutions and music venues that are of variable accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Basic archival information, time, date and place of the performance(s), was missing. Though it did record the details of all the pieces sung and the names all choir members, musical directors and accompanist.

Choral singing flourishes in Wellington region Big Sing gala concert

New Zealand Choral Federation Secondary Schools’ Choral Festival
Big Sing, second gala concert

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday, 8 June 2017, 7.00pm

As I said in 2015 (in a review of the Big Sing National Finale concert), it is marvellous to find so many young people taking part in choirs and obviously enjoying it.  Apparently there are more choirs in the 2017 Festival than ever before, and it seems to me that the standard is always rising.  The fact that all the choirs learn all their pieces by heart is staggering to us mere adults who sing in choirs, to whom this is an almost overwhelming difficulty.  An excellent effect of memorisation is that for the most part, words come over clearly – not always the case when singers are constantly glancing down at printed copies.   Every eye here was on the conductors – except for those few choirs who were able to perform without anyone standing in front of them to direct things.

This year, there will be 10 regional finales.  39 choirs participated in the two evening concerts (the other on Wednesday), from 22 schools in this region, plus one from Tauranga.  As always, the excitement in the hall and the large, enthusiastic audience made for a memorable occasion.  Compared with the first of these events I attended some years ago, not only is the number of participants much greater this time (choirs varied from about 20 members, to one of near 200), the audience is much larger.  Each choir sang one item, chosen from the three it had performed in the daytime sessions.

Everything is run with almost military precision by excellent young stage managing staff, plus the very professional but friendly manner of Christine Argyle, the compère.  The judge was well-known local soprano, Pepe Becker, who made helpful remarks at the awards presentation at the end, comparing attitudes required for singing to those for sport.

The performances were being recorded, so that the judges for the national finale later in the year could choose the best choirs from all the regional concerts.

The printed programme could not contain a lot of detail, but it would be an advantage to have the names of choir directors and composers printed in a less skinny, pale type-face, since during items the house lights are lowered completely, and in between items is a short space of time, such is the precision with which choirs move on and off the stage.

The first choir was Dawn Chorus from Tawa College – over 100-strong.  Like a number of the choirs, it has taken part in most, if not all, the regionals since The Big Sing began 29 years ago.  ‘The Seal Lullaby’, a peaceful song by American Eric Whitacre involved singing in both unison and harmony – the former is often harder than the latter.  Sections of ‘oo-oo’ singing were excellently done; the choir’s tone was good.

Tawa’s Early Birds, a small all-girls choir with a student director, came next singing ‘Homeward Bound’ by Marta Keen.  I found this song rather bland, and not the best suited to this group.

Yet a third Tawa College choir, Blue Notes, consisted of about 30 boys and girls.  Their item was by New Zealand composer David Childs: ‘Peace, my heart’.  This quite complex song was given a very restrained rendition.  It was accompanied by solo cellist Benjamin Sneyd-Utting.  It was a musically satisfying performance.

Whitby Samuel Marsden Collegiate’s 30-strong choir Viridi Vocem performed Gershwin’s well-known ‘Fascinating Rhythm’, the mixed choir employing actions to amplify the rhythm.  Words were clear, but the tone left something to be desired, and there was little variety.

Wellington College, and one of the other choirs, employed a professional accompanist.  Their chorale sang ‘Yo le canto’ by David Brunner, a contemporary American songwriter.  The rhythmic clapping enhanced the good sound the 35 boys made.  The harmony was extremely well rendered, and the intonation was spot on.  There was a feeling of unanimity in this spirited performance.

Boys from this school then combined with girls from Wellington Girls’ College to sing a spiritual ‘How can I keep from singing?’.  It was a very competent performance.

From across the city came 35-strong Wellington East Girls’ College Senior Choir.  They performed the ABBA song ‘Super Trouper’ by Barry Anderson and Björn Ulvaeus, with a student director.  I found the tone and dynamics unvarying.  Although words and notes were very clear, it was a dull performance – though the audience was enthusiastic to be hearing something they knew

The same school’s Multi Choir, of about 60 singers, sang ‘Ki Nga Tangata Katoa’, by Lernau Sio, the choir’s student director.  The performance was accompanied by guitar, and there was a student vocal soloist (amplified).  The choir made a robust, authentically Maori sound, and matched their excellent ensemble with appropriate actions.

From the Wairarapa came two schools forming one choir: Viva Camerata, with students from Rathkeale College and St. Matthew’s Collegiate.  They sang a traditional African Xhosa song, ‘Bawo Thixo Somandla’, transcribed by their director, Kiewet van Devente.  The performance incorporated a lot of movement.

The singing was very good, with a strong, forward sound.

Next came the largest choir of the evening, Wellington Girls’ College’s Teal – reflecting the colour of their school uniform.  Despite the choir’s large size, here was clarity plus, in the excellent performance of Gluck’s ‘Torna, O Bella’, the only truly classical piece we heard all night.  It was a delightful performance of this piece from Gluck’s opera Orpheus and Euridice.

The Year 9 Choir from the same school was smaller, but still numbered about 80 members.  They sang David Hamilton’s ‘Ave Maria’.  The sound was a little too restrained, with insufficient variation of dynamics, and the piano sounding a mite too loud.

New Zealand composer David Hamilton appeared again with yet another choir from Wellington Girls’ College – Teal Voices.  They sang his beautiful ‘My Song’.  And it was beautifully sung, with feeling, fabulous clarity and a great dynamic range.

Heretaunga College’s Phoenix Chorale gave us ‘Skyfall’ by Adele Adkins (not Atkins) and Paul Epworth.  The song is based on the theme music from the James Bond film of the same title.  I’m afraid I found it boring.  It began quietly, but later the singers pushed their voices unattractively.  The students’ faces showed no involvement or communication whatever.

Chilton St. James School in Lower Hutt has featured frequently in The Big Sing over the years.  Its first choir to sing was I See Red.  They sang ‘L’Dor Vador’, a Jewish song by Meir Finkelstein.  The approximately 40 singers sang with delightful tone; both notes and words were very clear.

The school’s second choir, Seraphim, performed a Basque song, by Eva Ugalde: ‘Tximeletak’.  Mastering the language must have been quite an assignment!   Though we couldn’t understand the words, they and the music were clear; it was an interesting composition.

Another long-standing regular at The Big Sing, St. Patrick’s College’s Con Anima choir, sang Phil Collins’s ‘Trashin’ the Camp’, a song from the 1999 film Tarzan.  It was accompanied by electric bass guitar and piano, and featured a brief vocal solo.  The 30-strong choir’s rendition involved lots of movement; the piece was very popular with the audience and was sung with style, accuracy and splendid vocal tone.

To end the evening were performances from choirs at Samuel Marsden Collegiate in Karori.  The first, Ad Summa, was directed by the student who composed the piece sung by the second choir.  First up was ‘Te Iwi E’, transcribed by student Gabrielle Palado, who, Google tells me, is a champion golfer.  The singing was accompanied by actions in the best traditions of the action song.  A guitar was used to accompany this 90-strong choir.  It was a fine performance.

The other choir, Altissime, was conducted by teacher (and distinguished soprano) Maaike Christie-Beekman.  She gave a demonstration of active, intelligent, involving directing.  The song ‘I am a sailor’ was by student Neakiry Kivi.  It was an impressive composition for a student to have written.  Its music was in places quite difficult.  The composer herself narrated, using a microphone, through part of the song; the last part was in te reo.  The 30 singers had wonderful tone, control and blend.  The dynamics were superb.  Perhaps this was the best item of the night.  I rather think this is the same song, given now an English title rather than its Maori equivalent, with which Kivi won the Royal New Zealand Navy’s 75th anniversary Secondary Schools’ Creative Competition.

Judging was on the basis of the day’s performances as well as those at the evening concert; the same went for the Wednesday sessions and concert – there were awards at the close of that concert too, though the printed programme did not distinguish as it should have between the awards given each night.

There were many certificates presented, but here I list only the cups.  The Victoria University of Wellington College of Education award  for the best performance of a New Zealand composition was awarded to Rathkeale College and St. Matthew’s Collegiate choir Viva Camerata.  The Shona Murray Cup for classical performance went to Wellington College Chorale; the Dorothy Buchanan Cup for ‘other styles of music’ was won by St. Patrick’s Con Anima choir.  The Festival Cup for ‘overall attitude to The Big Sing’ was awarded to Wellington Girls’ College.  Finally, a new financial award from the Ministry of Youth Development, named ‘Spirit of the Festival’ Youth Ambassadors Award, presented   in the form of a framed certificate, went to Heretaunga College.

Every choir member, director, trainer and accompanist deserves congratulations – not ignoring the fact that a number of the choirs sang unaccompanied, with accuracy and consistency, showing excellent musicianship.  Let’s hope that the students will maintain their singing, through youth and community choirs, when they leave school.

 

Engaging recital of once much-played piano pieces from young pianist

St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Louis Lucas-Perry (piano)

Haydn: Piano Sonata in F, Hob. XVI/23
Debussy: La cathédrale engloutie, No 10 of Preludes, Book I
Liszt: Ballade No 2 in B minor, S. 171
Chopin: Polonaise No 3 in A, Op 40 No 1 (‘Military’)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 7 June 2017, 12:15 pm

Louis Lucas-Perry’s brief biography printed in the programme writes of performances in Upper Hutt and Nelson (a Grieg Piano Concerto there), of winning a New Zealand School of Music ‘Directors’ Scholarship. He offers no information about the schools attended, but mentions teaching and accompanying the Big Sing, students’ choral festival, and chamber music groups.

I notice that I reviewed a student concert that included him in October 2015; there he also played Liszt’s Ballade No 2.

However, on the evidence of his playing he has reached a very respectable level of both technical skill and musical insight. He opened with Haydn’s splendid piano sonata in F major, a fine response to the key which inspires many composers to music that is open, cheerful, often witty (think Mozart’s piano concerto No 19, Beethoven’s Pastoral and No 8, Dvorak’s American quartet). This was staccato, bright, limpid, delighting in sudden modulations, which clearly also delighted the pianist.

Never mind that the second movement, Adagio, in F minor, changes the mood sharply, with a lamenting tone but employing one of Haydn’s most affecting melodies. Haydn can scarcely release it and it returns, blessedly, time and time again, played with infinite tenderness. The melody has such poignancy that I was convinced that I’d heard it long ago, but not for many, many years. I’m sure that everyone in the audience (of around 70) would have been entranced and that all copies of CDs of it in the library would have disappeared shortly after the concert. The last movement restored the spirit of delight (suddenly Shelley came into my head: ‘Rarely, rarely, comest thou, / Spirit of Delight!’ Though the next lines are not so pertinent – ‘Wherefore hast thou left me now / Many a day and night?’).

Debussy’s Sunken Cathedral doesn’t present obvious, enormous technical problems – merely the huge challenge of playing Debussy properly. So it was played carefully, perhaps too carefully for the strangeness of the imagery to emerge with a great feeling of mystery. After all, it’s in C major, mostly.

Liszt’s 2nd Ballade used to be familiar, played on the 2YC, predecessor radio station to RNZ Concert, dinner music programme. But it’s not much played by professionals today; why not? It contains lots of characteristic Liszt – melodic, passionate, mysterious – and Lucas-Perry clearly responded to it with a genuine Lisztian instinct. The pianist’s own imagined ‘programme’ – the legend of Hero and Leander – wasn’t a bad idea as long as one didn’t try to fit it literally to the story. But there were sufficient thundering bass passages and turbulent storm-tossed seas to fit all sorts of romantic legends. And he did a convincing job of telling the tragic tale.

Chopin’s Military Polonaise too, used to be a familiar dinner-music piece on radio (such times now seem to be filled by arrangements for inappropriate instruments of opera tunes and flashy scraps of well-known popular classics). Lucas-Perry took the march-like music cautiously but again demonstrated an ability to play all the notes accurately and capture the spirit of Chopin quite convincingly.

An engaging and enjoyable recital.

 

Acclamation for Auckland Viva Voce’s remarkable performance of enthralling work on pilgrimage: Camino de Santiago de Compostela

Viva Voce, conducted by John Rosser

Joby Talbot: Path of Miracles

St. Peter’s Church, Willis Street

Sunday, 4 June 2017, 4.30pm

The programme’’s sub-title for the work was “Joby Talbot’s stunning choral depiction of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage.”  The blurb was right; this was a truly remarkable work, of just over an hour’s almost constant unaccompanied singing (apart from the periodic use of 8 traditional small cymbals,or crotales), with no applause until the end.

Talbot is a 46-year-old British composer who has written in many genres, including opera and ballet, and for film and television.  This work was composed in 2005, a setting of a commissioned text from Robert Dickinson.  Although the printed programme has a photograph and note about Talbot, there is nothing about the poet, but John Rosser did tell us a little about him in his excellent introductory remarks.  The text is quite astonishing, not only for the fact that 7 different languages are used.  Rosser believes that the three performances by the choir (Auckland [the choir’s home city] and Napier before this one) are the first in the southern hemisphere.

Wikipedia gives little information about Dickinson, who is a British novelist.  The work traces both the story of St. James, who tradition says returned from martyrdom in Jerusalem to Galicia where he had previously preached, and that of walkers on the renowned (and now revived) walk to Santiago de Compostela, where the martyr’s bones were found 800 years later.  Dickinson created a brilliant text, printed in full in the programme – though not always easy to follow, due to the variety of languages, and much repetition, particularly of refrains.

Rosser informed us that there are now approximately a quarter of a million people walking the Camino each year; I know people who have done it, and I have stayed in an ancient village in southern France that was on one of the many routes through that part of the country, and bore on a wall the scallop shell symbol of the pilgrimage.

The men of the choir entered the church first, vocalising on low notes.  They walked to the front and stood in a circle, round a circle of stones.  The notes very gradually rose in pitch until they became high, reaching a scream as the women joined in from the back of the church, and the cymbals joined in.

The women advanced up the church, led by a solo voice.  The singing at this stage was quite loud, but dynamics varied throughout the work   The voices were very fine, and the resonance superb.  All were very precise both musically and in incisive enunciation of all the languages, in this sometimes intricate work.  The musical style in this early part was medieval. This first part was entitled Roncesvalles, the name of the place in northern Spain where the Camino starts, though many started in times past in southern France.  As the pilgrimage progresses, marked by the choir by numerous episodes of walking slowly around the church and into different positions on the platform.  The other parts are named Burgos, Leon and Santiago.

Walking and repositioning were not the only choreographed parts of the performance; part way through the first section the choir began swaying.  Then a bass with a very deep, fruity voice intoned from the pulpit while the choir sang pianissimo.  That was followed by a soprano and tenor duet.  The use of the cymbals was quite beautiful here.

In the second section there was a change to a modern style of composition.  The mood here was more conversational, as though the pilgrims were recounting to each other some of the trials of the journey (apparently ‘the English steal’), the tone being more mellow, with a prayerful quality.  Some of the more ghoulish sections of text conveyed a desolate sound, through both vocal tone and the intervals employed.

A reduced choir sang some of the text, and this produced an effective contrast.  Louder passages followed towards the end of the Burgos section and the deep bass made further utterances.

The women began the Leon movement (of which there was plenty) at the back of the church, intoning much repetition of the opening refrain.  Then the men, describing the land they walked through, sang loudly.  Rich harmony ended this section, at the words ‘We pause, as at the heart of a sun that dazzles and does not burn.’  Here as elsewhere there was consistent tone and pronunciation, and the blend was superb.

In Santiago there was more virtuosic singing  All of it was dynamically interesting and varied.  The first passage in Latin sounded like a chant, but was sung in harmony.  With the concluding words the choir faced and looked directly at the audience, singing ‘Holy St James, great St James, God help us now and evermore.’  The choir walked off, each picking up a stone from the stone circle and placing it with the others in a cairn at the foot of the platform.  They continued singing the last passages from memory, fading as they made a wonderful conclusion to the work as they continued to walk into the porch, still singing.

This was a real choir, unlike TV’s ‘Naked Choir’ contest, of which John Rosser is a judge.  What with mikes and costumes, they are not as naked as Viva Voce, which really does rely solely on its voices.

The choir returned to repeated enthusiastic acclamation, some in the audience rising to their feet in tribute to this outstanding and remarkable performance of this complex but enthralling work, which my mere words cannot hope to adequately describe.  This was a unique experience.

For a very cold late Sunday afternoon, there was quite a sizeable audience in the church.  There was some heating on, but it was insufficient on such a cold day.

 

NZ Opera’s 2017 Carmen surprises, disconcerts and delights

New Zealand Opera presents:
BIZET – Carmen – Opera in Four Acts

Cast: Carmen – Nino Surguladze
Don Jose – Tom Randle
Escamillo – James Clayton
Micaëla – Emma Pearson
Zuniga – Wade Kernot
Moralès – James Harrison
Frasquita – Amelia Berry
Mercédès – Kristin Darragh
Le Remendado – James Benjamin Rodgers
Lillas Pastia – Stuart Coats

Freemasons New Zealand Opera Chorus
Orchestra Wellington
Francesco Pasqualetti (conductor)
Michael Vinten (chorus director)

Lindy Hume (director)
Jacqueline Coats (assistant director)
Dan Potra (designer)
Matthew Marshall (lighting)

St.James Theatre, Wellington
Thursday, Ist June, 2017

(other peformances: Tuesday 6th June 6:30pm,

Thursday 8th, Saturday 10th June 7:30pm)

There’s almost always a lot to like in any production of Carmen. On the face of things the opera has everything that any theatre-goer-cum-music-lover could wish for – like the Shakespearean character who says “four feasts are forward”, one can say Carmen has the four things which ensure operatic success – spectacle, drama, compelling characters and memorable tunes. Of course, these things don’t make or play themselves, and, despite this review’s opening assertion, I still shudder inwardly at the thought of the most depressing night I’ve ever spent at the opera, in 1994, at Covent Garden, of all places, witnessing a second-rate production of – you’ve guessed it! – Carmen.

Happily, Carmen was one of the New Zealand Opera’s great successes in the still-fledgling company’s 1960s years – opera company founder Donald Munro used to regale us in later times with stories of the Company’s first “Carmen”, the outrageously sexy English soprano Joyce Blackham, whose portrayal of the eponymous heroine was by all accounts extremely “up front and personal”, emphasising her own physical allure and the character’s flirtatiousness – she alone would have been a drawcard for the public, one would imagine.

Fifty-plus years onwards, and from the Wellington Opera House a few metres further down and across the road towards Courtenay Place, relocated at the St.James Theatre, the company presented its latest 21st Century version of Bizet’s out-and-out masterpiece. With a leading soprano from Georgia whose career trajectory listed all the “great” contemporary opera houses, a strong, mostly Australasian supporting cast, marvellous playing and direction from the pit, and a director and designer with interesting and strongly-wrought production ideas, this presentation simply couldn’t help but make a striking and resonant impression, very much on its own terms.

It began with what seemed like some kind of conceptual challenge, austere and confrontational, with the chorus arriving on stage before the opening Prelude began, and “eyeballing” the audience unflinchingly – the contrast between the music’s near-vertiginous energies and the disengaged demeanour of the figures was almost Brechtian in its sense of alienation. Director Lindy Hume had referred to gestures such as these in her director’s notes which the programme carried, while admitting the ideas stemmed directly to her very first production of Carmen for West Australian Opera, 25 years ago! – she explained that her thoughts concerning the opera at that time still seemed to her valid and applicable in broad terms, reflecting her pride in that particular production’s achievement.

That opening gesture set the mode for the first two acts, whose set pieces were treated in like manner, creating in places what Hume herself referred to an “almost surreal and unnatural style”, and setting them apart from the more naturalistic exchanges. As an idea in itself it was interesting and impressive, but for me it drained a lot of the dramatic life out of places in the work, as it stylised these sections almost to the point of inertia, and invariably didn’t match the musical flow of things. The opening soldiers’ chorus had nicely built-in indolence, but I thought the children’s chorus lacked real exuberance and dynamism, their “mock-execution” play with the soldiers too “stagey” and contrived, conveying insufficient spontaneity.

As for the “smoking” chorus, marking the entrance of the “cigarette girls” parading before the admiring glances of the young men, I felt the scene was choreographed to over-calculated effect, wrung dry of any of the sultry insinuation of aspect and manner suggested in the text’s utterances – “…. we will follow you, dark-haired cigarette girls, murmuring words of love in your ears” – and pared down to a kind of slow-motion synchronised walking exercise, viewed dispassionately by the women perched (I’m tempted to use the word “stranded”) on narrow steps and landings, who conveyed the visual impression that they’d seen it all before hundreds of times, and in any case vastly preferred their cigarettes!

Things took a long time to get going at Lillas Pastia’s, as well, with the opening instrumental strains of the Gypsy Song getting little or no stage response until Carmen herself took charge of things – up until then, a languour seemed to hang over the proceedings, a disinclination of the production, it seemed, to convey atmosphere and spontaneity in places that seemed to me to call for it most urgently. With the help of Carmen’s friends Frasquita and Mercédès, the stage action did eventually energise sufficiently to match with the orchestra – but it took a while! A turning-point was the arrival of Escamillo, the Toreador. His was no bloodless, over-stylised character – instead, a truly galvanising force!

Afterwards, the Quintet with the Smugglers rattled like a train over the points in an exhilarating fashion – indeed the whole Act seemed to energise itself with its sense of dramatic weight, from Escamillo’s entrance right to the end – a splendid three-way confrontation between two of Carmen’s prospective lovers and the Smugglers saw the ill-fated corporal Don Jose forced to desert the army against his better judgement, and join Carmen and her bevy of contrabandists on their adventures.

As for Acts Three and Four I found it far easier to assimilate the “stylistic” treatment of the various tableaux, such as the smugglers’ approach to their hideout at Act Three’s beginning – black landform shapes morphing slowly into moving figures, betrayed by an occasional glint of forward movement, the “word made flesh” marriage of action and music superbly realised. Only the transition between the last two Acts, with Carmen left lying on the floor in the wake of an altercation with Don Jose seemed to me to lose some dramatic momentum, leaving we in the audience uncertain of a response as the set numbers clicked over. Fortunately, the remainder of that final Act pulled out all the visceral and dramatic stops, even if poor Escamillo never got to show off his glittering Toreador’s costume!

The production, despite the early-on stage action’s stop-start trajectories, maintained plenty of on-going atmosphere by dint of its imposing settings and evocative lighting. With the costumes we found ourselves mingling with ordinary Seville citizens and its soldiery, with the exception of Escamillo, who was something of a swell in his elegant gentleman’s garb. But from the start here was the proverbial Spanish glare of day throughout the opening scene, gradually giving way throughout Lillas Pastia’s to the all-enfolding darkness, which reached its apogee at the Third Act’s beginning, and its antithesis with the explosions of colour among the crowd at the bullfight scene, before returning us to that pitiless opening light at the opera’s end.

Central to the atmospheric charge of the presentation was the brilliant, rich and evocative backdrop of sound recreated by the playing of Orchestra Wellington under its Music Director Francesco Pasqualetti – both in the numerous instrumental detailings (the horn-playing deserved special mention, as did the various characterful wind solos) and the power and colour-suffused textures of the full orchestral passages, full justice was, I thought, done to the composer’s miraculous scoring. And how supple and sonorous was the chorus’s singing throughout! – the aforementioned languour of the soldiers, the vocal ardour of the young men and the sensual insouciance of the young women factory workers in their “C’est fumee” utterances – then the infectious vigour of both the smugglers in their descriptions of the hapless customs-men, and the rip-roaring excitement of the bull-ring crowds – again, the figures up-front and confrontational, but this time abandoning their emotions to the music, to overwhelming effect!

So to the figures towards whom all of these different elements were directed – the cast of characters! – this was a strong, if interestingly constituted ensemble, the “odd one out” for me being the unfortunate soldier Don Jose, here played with an unrelieved sort of tortured awkwardness throughout, rather like a French Wozzeck, by American tenor Tom Randle. I admit to finding it difficult to understand how such an overtly dysfunctional personality as depicted by Randle would have had any appeal for the character of Carmen – but there was no doubting the disturbing undercurrents and frighteningly insistence of this Don Jose, a besotted individual completely out of his emotional depth with the new-found object of his desire. Randle’s voice, though used most intelligently, was notable more for its raw power than any honeyed tones, except in the couple of places during the “Flower Song” when he sang phrases quietly and affectingly.

Playing opposite him as Carmen was the magnetic Georgian-born soprano Nino Surguladze. Though somewhat cramped by the staging for her very first entry, she was a liquid, mercurial and volatile presence throughout, making the most of the “Habanera”and its detailings with her easeful spontaneity and ready (though never over-modulated) physical allure. Only what I thought was some unnecessary, protracted business with handcuffs at the expense of the commanding regiment officer Zuniga detracted from her sultry, disarming focus. For the rest she was magnificent, even with her back turned towards the audience when first held captive by Don Jose, after the skirmish among the factory girls – her playful seductiveness throughout the Seguidilla completely ensnared her hapless captor, whose doom was sealed from that moment.

So it was in exalted terms for the rest of the drama – Carmen’s initial infatuation and subsequent disenchantment with Don Jose, her playful and resonant encounter with the celebrated Escamillo, her darkly-modulated acceptance of her eventual fate during the fortune-cards scene, and the final, defiant and destructive encounter with Don Jose at the end. Surguladze obviously shared and fully participated in director Lindy Hume’s vision of the heroine as a woman who believes utterly in herself and her values, even in the face of death.

Though she was Carmen’s opposite in diametric ways, Don Jose’s would-be sweetheart from his own village, Micaëla, was here portrayed with admirable character and fortitude by a sweet-toned Emma Pearson, whom I remembered most warmly as an affecting Gilda, from a NZ Opera Rigoletto some years before. She similarly melted our hearts here with her touching rendition of “Et tu lui diras que sa mere” (You’ll tell him that his mother..) from her Act One duet with Don Jose (one of Bizet’s most affecting melodies), and, later in the work, her heart-in-mouth “Je dis, que rien ne m’epouvante” (I say, that nothing frightens me) when looking for Don Jose at the smugglers’ mountain hideout.

Completing the quartet of would-be-lovers was the Toreador, Escamillo, played and sung with predictable verve and compelling vocal authority by James Clayton, who, somewhat surprisingly, as I’ve said, never got to impress the punters in his Toreador get-up (usually a feature of the last few moments of the work when he bursts onto the scene of Carmen’s murder by Don Jose, too late to save her). Along with great self-assuredness, Clayton refreshingly brought out a good deal of the character’s suave, debonair and charming aspect, a change from the sometimes excessive arrogance and macho pride by singers wanting to impress and nothing much else.

The lesser parts were given with all the apparent surety and confidence of those in the leading roles, all New Zealand singers (one feels certain there could, for New Zealand Opera, one day be another New Zealand Carmen)……..Don Jose’s commanding officer, Zuniga, was played imposingly by Wade Kermot, his voice and aspect conveying great authority when in control of the barracks, and face-saving dignity when put in a compromising position at Lillas Pastia’s by the smugglers. James Harrison doubled the roles of Morales, the cool-as-cucumber soldier who first notices the arrival of Micaëla at the barracks, looking for Don Jose; and of the smuggler Le Dancaire, the latter portrayal set alongside that of James Benjamin Rodgers as Le Remendado, the two men a force to be reckoned with as gun-toting contrabandists. They were more-than-likely the partners in the story of the two women, Frasquita (played by Amelia Berry) and Mercédès (played by Kristin Darragh), the pair becoming the smugglers’ secret weapon in the latters’ dealings with the customs officers.

The two women did a splendid job in various contexts, supporting Carmen in the Act Two Gypsy Dance, and the smugglers in the Quintet Nous avons en tete une affaire (We have a scheme in mind), but most tellingly in the famous “Card Scene” Trio, Melons! Coupons! during which Carmen foretells her own death. Amelia Berry’s Frasquita was brighter-toned than Kristen Darragh’s darker, more powerful Mercédès, the two intertwining their voices to perfection in the lively interplay that framed Carmen’s grimmer soliloquy.

With all of its idiosyncrasies and compulsions, the production certainly created a distinctive and memorable compendium of impressions, which I thought gathered force and consistency as it progressed. Even if one takes issue with certain aspects, what can’t be denied is the conviction with which the individual roles were brought to life, and with which the drama as a whole was presented. For my money there was a very great deal to like and to admire, and, by the end of the show, to find convincing and satisfying.