Category: Reviews – Opera and Ballet

Maaike Christie-Beekman with Rachel Thomson in admirable song recital

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Wednesday Lunchtime Concerts

Maaike Christie-Beekman (mezzo-soprano) and Rachel Thomson (piano)

Debussy: Trois Chansons de Bilitis
Samuel Barber: Hermit Songs
Poulenc: Banalités

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 31 August 2016, 12.15pm

A recital entirely of song-cycles is perhaps a little unusual, but it made for a very satisfying concert.  Maaike Christie-Beekman introduced each in a lively and informative way, giving a summary of the words of each song.  Even though she was not using a microphone, most of what she said could be heard clearly.

The Debussy cycle used poems by Pierre Louÿs, which the latter claimed were translations of the Greek, but were in fact his own work, based on Greek styles and in some cases, sources.  The first, ‘La flûte de Pan’, was dreamy in character, with the enchanting flute written into both voice and piano parts in unmistakable French style.  It was a gorgeous song, sung by a gorgeous voice, with its very expressive, beautifully controlled range of dynamics.  ‘La Chevelure’ (head of hair), the second song, was livelier, with the French language pronounced with clarity.

The third, ‘Le tombeau des Naiades’ became quite excited, but ended in a quiet, contemplative mood.  The piano was always sympathetic and eloquent.

The performers turned next to the English language and Samuel Barber.  The poems were translations of Irish poems written from the 8th to the 13th centuries, and translated by W.H. Auden and others.  Most had religious themes, starting with a spiky ‘At Saint Patrick’s Purgatory’.  Here again, in English, Christie-Beekman’s words were for the most part very clear.  ‘Church Bell at Night’ was much more mellow, like the bell.  ‘St. Ita’s Vision’ followed.  I had never heard of this Irish saint, but apparently she lived a virginal life in the fifth century.  The song began in declamatory fashion, and then flowed into euphoria.

By contrast, ‘A Heavenly Banquet’ sounded like a very a jolly party. ‘The Crucifixion’ focused on the drama and pain, expressing grief.  ‘Sea-Snatch’ was fast and furious, like the action of a stormy sea, while the brief ‘Promiscuity’ was angular, questioning whether someone was sleeping alone.  ‘The Monk and his Cat’ contained delightful meows and other feline features, particularly in the lovely frisky accompaniment.  ‘The Praises of God’ was also short – and powerful.  Finally, ‘The Desire for Hermitage’ was solemn and flowing.  The sustained notes were beautiful.  All were characterised, and sung with appropriate feeling and clarity.

Banalités is Poulenc’s setting of poems by Guillaume Apollinaire (real name Wilhelm Albert Vladimir Apollinaris Kostrowitzky); this was the last in the tri-cycle.  Its opening number was ‘Chanson d’Orkenise’.  Not the Orkney Islands, but a village in France.  It was a fast, spirited song in a set all about love and heartbreak (but banal?).  The second , ‘Hôtel’, was more thoughtful, with a lazy mood.  The poem was about a young man who just wanted to stay in his room and smoke.  ‘Fagnes de Wallonie’ concerned a wander through the woods in Wallonie in Belgium – but sounded more like a quick trot.

‘Voyage à Paris’ was described by Christie-Beekman as ‘Carmenesque’.  It began with decisive chords from the piano, and the words confidently described ‘gay Paree’.  Finally, ‘Sanglots’ (sobs).  It was quieter and more introspective, but developed dramatically, having a sublime ending.

The singer conveyed lovely tone throughout a wide tessitura.  All the songs were sung in a thoroughly accomplished and comfortable manner.  Moreover, Christie-Beekman gave a lesson in fine presentation.

 

Magical I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Bellini) the tenth production by Rhona Fraser’s Opera in Days Bay

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Bellini)
Opera in a Days Bay Garden (But now in the house)
Produced by Rhona Fraser
Musical director and piano: Rosemary Barnes; Hayden Sinclair – clarinet; Greg Hill – horn

Cast: Barry Mora – Capellio, Bianca Andrew – Romeo, Katherine McIndoe – Giulietto, Filipe Manu – Tebaldo, William King – Lorenzo

Canna House, Moana Road, Days Bay

Saturday 27 August, 7:30 pm

This production of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi, like the productions of several of the operas done by Rhona Fraser’s Days Bay company, was probably the New Zealand premiere. Though there may have been performances by minor opera groups over recent years, I’m sure no recent professional production would have escaped me. (but see more in the Appendix below)

One of the problems with this assumed Shakespeare-modelled piece has been the tendency among English-speaking people to scorn any treatment of their great dramatist’s works by foreigners who don’t understand the essential character of Shakespeare’s plays. They forget that Shakespeare invented almost none of his plots, but drew them from many sources, as did almost everyone then, and would still do today if it weren’t for the literary impediments and excesses of the Law of Intellectual Property. Shakespeare’s main sources for the plays were Holinshed’s Chronicles of British history, classical historians like Plutarch and a variety of recent plays, poems and novelle from France and Italy. The latter creations account for Romeo and Juliet.

That is not to denigrate the extraordinary genius of Shakespeare who clothed them in rich and marvelous language, fully developed charcterisations, vivid dramatic situations, wit, irony, pathos and delight in the sheer virtuosity of his imagination, that turned dry raw material into the richest and most amazing literary creations.

Medieval origins of the story
The story, that no doubt had its origins in anonymous oral myth in the earlier Middle Ages, took written form from the 14th century, through Boccaccio, Bandello and others. Bellini’s librettist, Romani, had originally written his libretto (Giulietta e Romeo) for Nicola Vaccai in 1825, the story adapted from an earlier libretto by Giuseppe Maria Foppa for a 1796 opera by Zingarelli. (There is the curious story that certain singers, Malibran and Pasta inter alia, demanded the Vaccai version of the last act instead of Bellini’s).

These Italian librettists were probably using the Italian sources, as Shakespeare did not begin to be translated into other languages till around 1800. One of the first to translate Shakespeare into Italian, starting from 1811 was Michele Leoni and his translation of Romeo and Juliet was published in 1814. Romani could have known it.

So here’s a slender connection with Shakespeare. Michele Leoni’s translation and a separate Italian play by Scevolo, of 1816; both appeared before 1825 when Romani wrote his libretto for Vaccai. But the fact that there’s almost no trace of the Shakespearean story or language in Bellini, makes Shakespeare an unlikely source.

That is a long way of saying that Bellini’s librettist, Romani, had a much greater range of Romeo and Juliet stories to draw on than Shakespeare had. English literature need not feel demeaned by any sort of corruption of the great Shakespeare’s work in the Bellini account of the story.

Guelfs and Ghibellines; Campbells and MacDonalds
The other historical element in the story is the allegiances of the two families to actual long-standing factional warfare that had blighted Italy for centuries, between Guelfs and Ghibellines (the Capulets adhered to the Guelfs while the Montagues were Ghibelline); the feud was driven by the overarching political and ecclesiastical forces of the late Middle Ages – supporters of the Pope (Guelfs) and supporters of the Holy Roman Emperor (Ghibellines). The various states of Italy were ruled by one faction or the other; some were happily neutral. And these warring parties continued to bring grief to many parts of the country for centuries.

To be aware of these perpetually feuding elements is to help understand the viciousness and implacability of the hatred between Capulets and Montagues. (Look up accounts of the Guelfs and Ghibellines – Wikipedia is a good place to start).

To these dualities, Rhona Fraser added another, reflecting perhaps Scottish, family antecedents: warring clans, the Campbells and MacDonalds, replaced Capulets and Montagues. Thus the Capulets wore the Campbell kilt while the Montagues wore MacDonald tartan; though in truth nothing much was made of the geographical and ethnic shift.

However, to be aware of all the historical, textual, political and factional background to the opera hugely enlarges the fascination of the work.

See the Appendix to this review for more detailed account of the story’s antecedents, both of Shakespeare and of Bellini, and other peripheral stuff.

Turning seriously to Capuleti e Montecchi
This was the tenth production from Rhona Fraser and Co’s Days Bay opera enterprise. We happy band of Wellingtonians can be grateful for these sometimes more than once a year opportunities to discover delights of out-of-the-way opera repertoire. For the first time this production was in the house at Days Bay which managed to accommodate over 100 completely filled seats in the interestingly disposed living areas.

A first-rate cast was assembled. Bianca Andrew in trouser role of Romeo and Katherine McIndoe as Giulietta, Barry Mora at the patriarch Capellio (a stark contrast to Shakespeare’s conciliatory, rather human, Capulet!). What a formidable challenge Mora presented straight away, his voice and his very presence chilling in their power and authority. Nor was his de facto lieutenant, Tebaldo, less dangerous: Filipe Manu, who was runner-up in last month’s Lexus Song Quest. His younger, polished voice captured his angry inflexibility, and we tremble at the improbability of negotiating any sort of peace, given that Romani’s Tebaldo is even more filled with insane hate as is Shakespeare’s Tybalt.

But the third party in the opening scene was William King as Lorenzo: here it’s not Friar Lawrence, but the family doctor, Dr Lorenzo, which makes his later familiarity with potions and poisons rather more credible. His role is integral in the story from the start, and his singing and acting make the situation more interesting than the unmitigated hostility, emphasis much more on revenge and the killing of each other, that Shakespeare delivers. Sort of a UN Secretary-General mediating between Assad and Netanyahu.

And we note, perhaps with a certain relief, that we only have to get five roles identified, compared with the dozen or so in Shakespeare. We have no Montagues apart from Romeo himself (and he is disguised as a Capulet/Campbell).

Behind it all was producer and founding genius Rhona Fraser, this time directly in charge of the staging generally. If one had wondered how effective an attempt at staging would be in the somewhat constrained space in the house, the arrival of the first singers left no doubt. The shape of the rooms and their furnishings proved as convincing as any theatre stage, and use of tartan meant no need for elaborate Renaissance costumes. Props were limited to a few knives or swords, and dozens of candles along with subdued lighting removed us to a different time and place.

Though Romeo’s first appearance is as an anonymous envoy suing for peace between the ancient enemies. Romeo has already killed Capulet’s son, in a situation of ‘warfare’ (in which killing is not necessarily a crime). Trouser roles have become pretty familiar over the years as more and more operas of the 18th century, and quite a few later, are uncovered (and after all, Octavian in Rosenkavalier and the Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos are cases). Even with her fairly high mezzo voice, Bianca adopted with total conviction her role as a strong, energetic, attractive young man which somehow made Romeo a genuinely conciliatory figure.

But Tebaldo wants blood. Romeo’s moving and placatory appeal for peace is accompanied by Hayden Sinclair’s clarinet which seems a symbol of reconciliation, but his plea is scorned. For apart from Rosemary Barnes’s piano, the only instruments used, most tellingly in their isolation, are the clarinet and Greg Hill’s French horn which then, and at points later seemed to provide the very timbre that evoked the essence of an orchestral accompaniment.

It becomes a high-tension trio, and its absolute integrity and balance through contrast, and the tension it creates made me feel that this was a performance that could support a fully staged, professional production.

The poignant sound of the horn introduced the recitative before Giulietta’s great, heart-felt aria, as she stood visible, behind a glass door, leading to the heart-breaking ‘Oh! quante volte’. Then, though the pair have met before, unlike the encounter at the Capulets’ ball in Shakespeare, Lorenzo enters with Romeo; and that leads to the beautiful love duet, the two, soprano and mezzo, both looking and sounding enchantingly beautiful, to a degree I’ve rarely experienced. It was intensified by the closeness of audience to performers.

The wedding ceremonies preparation demanded rather more space and numbers than were possible but the appearance of Romeo and Lorenzo together, with differing ideas about tactics sustained the agitated emotion: Romeo’s followers are about to storm the wedding, Romeo reveals his identity as Tebaldo’s rival for Giulietta’s hand, and it’s all on. And again, in spite of space constraints and smallness of chorus numbers, the drama was undiminished. Again Romeo failed to persuade Giulietta to escape with him.

Unlike in Shakespeare, for Romani and Bellini the couple’s great passion is not enough to overcome Giulietta’s fears and family loyalty, and finally, in Act II, Doctor Lorenzo’s remedy is the death-seeming potion to avoid being taken by force to Tybalt’s house. As her father arrives she finally takes it; there were further confrontations between Tebaldo and Romeo which end in the hearing of what is supposed to be funeral music which, for one of the very few occasions, the piano alone seemed inadequate. But it caused the two rival lovers strangely to unite in their common loss. Capellio’s implacability remains till the very end however, and there’s no coming together of the two families. The sequence of events leading to Romeo’s suicide and Giulietta’s awakening just seconds too late, were among the few elements in the tale where English play and Italian libretto came together.

The scene, beautifully lit with candles, moved slowly, demanding long-sustained stillness and almost mesmerizing effects that transfixed the audience.

I doubt whether there was anyone in the house who left with the feeling that this opera had offered an experience that was less powerful and convincing than Shakespeare’s, even though only a fraction of the words was employed. It certainly put this opera in the same class as Norma, and for me ahead of Sonnambula and Puritani.

Appendix

Italian origins of the story
The Romeo and Juliet story comes from an Italian story that was handled by several writers from the 14th century onwards.

The earliest traces of the story are in Boccaccio’s mid-14th century Decameron (III,8 and X,4) and an anonymous tales of two lovers called Leonora de Bardi and Ippolito Bondelmonti. They may have been the sources for the novella by Masuccio Salernitano published in 1476, about two lovers in Siena, Mariotto and Ganozza.

But the story takes something of its Shakespearean shape with the novella of Luigi da Porto about 1524 where the lovers are named Romeo and Giulietta, respectively members of the Montecchi and Capuleti families who inhabit Verona.

The drama then moves to France where Adrien Sevin in 1542 published a tale clearly indebted to Da Porto, though given a pseudo ancient Greek setting.

Then an Italian, Gerardo Boldieri, published a poem in 1553, introducing several innovations.

And in Lucca the next year Matteo Bandello published a Novella in the style of Boccaccio’s Decameron. Bandello drew on Da Porto with borrowings from the story of Leonora and Ippolito as well as from Boldieri.

This, together with five other Bandello stories were translated into French by Pierre Boaistuau in 1559, and that was adapted and translated in a long English poem by Arthur Brooke, published in 1562; and then a prose version by William Painter in 1567.

It is believed that Shakespeare knew both versions but based his play primarily on Brooke.

(Much ado about Nothing and Twelfth Night as well as Webster’s Duchess of Malfi were also based on Bandello’s stories, via Brooke).

Origins of the story in Italian opera
As for the origins of the story in Italian opera, the first opera libretto was probably by Luzzi for Marescalchi (1785, Venice), then Foppa for Zingarelli (1796, Milan), and Buonaiuti for Pietro Carlo Guglielmi (1810, London).

Felice Romani had written a libretto in 1825 called Giulietta e Romeo for composer Nicola Vaccai. (Vaccai’s career has been the subject of musicological research by Wellington’s opera and literary scholar Jeremy Commons). Romani’s libretto for Vaccai’s opera was probably based on the play of the same name by Luigi Scevola, written in 1818, and/or on Giuseppe Maria Foppa’s libretto for Zingarelli of 1796, the ultimate derivation of which was the Salernitano version from the 15th century, referred to above.

First translations into Italian
They were doubtless using the Italian sources, as Shakespeare did not begin to be translated into other languages till around 1800.
However, Michele Leoni was one of the first to translate Shakespeare into Italian, starting from 1811 and his translation of Romeo and Juliet was published in 1814, so it is very possible that Luigi Scevola’s play of 1818 drew on that translation though that is not based on any textual examination, and that Romani was influenced by it, for both Vaccai and Bellini. (An entry in Wikipedia declares simply that Romani’s libretto was based on Scevola’s play).

The first Italian libretto explicitly based on Shakespeare’s play did not appear until 1865; it was by Marco Marcello, for composer Filippo Marchetti’s Romeo e Giulietta first given in Trieste.

Bellini in New Zealand
I was curious to look at the early history of Bellini productions in 19th century New Zealand, to find Sonnambula by far the most frequently staged – seven productions between 1864 and 1881, and then none, and none in modern times, followed by Norma (and Canterbury Opera did that in 2002) and a couple of Puritanis in the tours of the 1860s and 1870s.

But no sign at all of I Capuleti, or of any of the other Bellini operas, like Il pirata, or La straniera. While we have been awakened to 18th century opera, and earlier – Monteverdi and Cavalli – Bellini has not had the same attention as Donizetti, understandable when the latter composed about seven times as many operas as Bellini.

Today, worldwide, things are not very different. Bellini is not among the most performed composers by any means as attention still dives deeper into the 17th and 18th centuries. London’s Opera magazine index of reviews for last year recorded Norma first, Puritani second and Capuleti and Sonnambula, with just one or two each. There was also one review of La straniera.

A night in Hanover 2003
It also helped that I’d seen it before, once in 2003 in Hanover, where I’d heard the conductor’s introductory talk where in which he described the Italian, non-Shakespearean origins of the story. The production was in some ways a characteristic, wilful German reinterpretation, but re-reading my account, as recorded in an article in New Zealand Opera News, it’s clear that I enjoyed and was moved by it. I found the striking black and white costumes arresting (still the fashion colour for today’s stage designers): Romeo, black and Giuletta, white, in the gorgeously sung love scene; and I remarked that the opera captured the character of the inter-tribal feud more poignantly than Shakespeare.

A friend who’d seen the 80s production at Covent Garden, full of top singers, asked me about the singers at Hanover; I couldn’t remember. As with most of my opera excursions in Germany and France I don’t look primarily for famous singers, but seek operas I don’t know, and opera houses, for their own sake. However, the two principals were Ina Kancheva (Giulietta) and Christiane Iven (Romeo).

But you need to dip into the Shakespeare for only a moment, as I was doing writing this, for any sort of one-dimensional comparison with Bellini to be ridiculous. One is totally seduced by the fluency, richness and wit of Shakespeare’s language, his imagination, the emotional and intellectual complexity of the interactions between his so subtly portrayed characters. And did you hear in the interval of a BBC Proms broadcast on Radio New Zealand Concert, a marvelous discussion between the BBC presenter and a Shakespeare actor (whose name I didn’t get), on Tuesday evening (30/8), just before despatching this? Finally, he delivered a spectacular speech from Henry VI Part 3 (I think; I’ve emailed RNZ Concert for help identifying). One wept in astonishment.

 

 

Don Giovanni scores impressively in performance by Eternity Opera’s second cast

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Don Giovanni by Mozart
Produced by Eternity Opera: producer Sandra Malesic
Conductor: Simon Romanos; stage director: Alex Galvin
(Sung in English translation by Edward Dent)

Sixteen-piece orchestra, led by Douglas Beilman
Cast in order of appearance: Nino Raphael, Orene Tiai, Amanda Barclay, Derek Miller, Chris Berentson, Hannah Catrin Jones, Emily Mwila, Charles Wilson

Hannah Playhouse (former Downstage Theatre)

Wednesday 24 August, 7:30 pm

When I arrived at the theatre at 7pm, I was surprised (and delighted) to find a box office queue out to the street. Though it proved to be largely because there was only one person handling both sales and the collection of already purchased tickets, it did show that the production had attracted high interest, and indeed by 7.30, there was scarcely an empty seat in the house.

This was the first evening at which a second cast was engaged – all except the Zerlina of the brilliantly cast Emily Mwila, who’d sung in the first cast too. The other singers this evening were rather the covers for the first cast, though each cast served as the chorus for the other; thus all were on stage for all performances.

It confirmed the success of the implicit intention expressed in the programme booklet: that here was a new opera company that sought to reach a wide audience with productions that were exciting and accessible to all, and reasonably priced.

The staging, costuming, orchestra
One can sense an audience that’s expecting to have a good time, almost through the sounds of their breathing; they were lively and responsive, ready to laugh generously at the least excuse; few operas offer as many opportunities as this. Which was a happy situation since the orchestra was tasked with creating a Mozart accompaniment from a very reduced score that was rather remote from the spirit and elegance of the original. (I could find no acknowledgement of the arranger in the programme; assume it was music director Romanos). Though the one-to-a-part strings presented a challenge in terms of orchestral warmth, I was glad that pairs of clarinets and bassoons were employed – instruments Mozart took special pleasure in. Any deficiencies in orchestral opulence were compensated by a sort of youthful energy and gusto, and also demonstrating sensitivity to the singers’ needs.

An imaginative stroke was to use guitarist Christopher Hill to accompany recitative, and to become the mandolin for Giovanni’s serenade.

Ignoring the music for a moment, the next thing was sets and costumes. The former were elementary, consisting of a dark back wall with door, and an upstairs balcony for Giovanni’s hurried first-scene exit from Donna Anna bedroom, and for Donna Elvira’s maid to be proxy-serenaded in the Act II costume swap between the Don and his servant; and dramatically useful curtains at the sides. The costumes on the other hand approached authenticity, sometimes richly, and so contributed hugely to the luminous hilarity of the staging that often depended on forced economies, near-misses of characterization.

The hand of an experienced stage director, Alex Galvin, was clear, often coming to the aid of singers whose vocal talents needed a certain support from meaningful acting and interaction.

Singers, seduction and swordsmanship
That opening scene is the devil though; virtuosic acting and singing is demanded straight away, and split-second timing. One hopes for a convincing sword fight; this consisted of just a couple of thrusts and the almost immediate dispatch of the Commendatore by Excelencia Don Giovanni (New Zealand’s weapons of choice these days are clearly not swords, noting the variety of devices employed in our daily murder cases).

It didn’t all work perfectly, for it’s so hard to fit words to action and the disposition of the singers. For example, Anna in the opening scene claims her intruder is threatening her, when in fact the Don by then is trying to escape; such things can often be explained – here for example, as part of Anna’s continuing effort to construct a rape scene for the sake of her reputation (though I don’t share that explanation of the situation).

Anna was sung by singing lawyer Amanda Barclay (who rather failed to explore all the remedies that might have been available to one schooled in the law); but here, her singing and acting were energetic and accurate and in her later appearances she confirmed her grasp of the complex nature of the role.

Her sexual abuser was Orene Tiai who has been singing successfully for a decade or so (I recall him early in his career, in the 2007 Tales of Hoffmann staged by Wellington G&S Light Opera). Larger than life, a warm, big voice, and acting that was perhaps just a little too plebeian for his role as local potentate-cum-rake.

Nino Raphael (NZSM alumnus) sang Leporello; he was dressed more like the Don’s gardener than as his man-servant; he is usually presented as the equivalent of Figaro: his master’s equal in all but wealth and power. His broad asides were in keeping with the more menial character, slightly lop-sided, and his acting, though lively enough, would better have fitted one of Shakespeare’s ‘mechanicals’. His singing matched that character well enough and later, his Catalogue aria appalled and amused cast and audience alike.

Donna Anna’s usually pathetically-portrayed lover, Don Ottavio, was sung by tenor Chris Berentson, another G&S stalwart. Though there was no announcement to the effect, I had to assume that he was struggling with a vocal problem as his voice was troubled; his ‘Dalla sua pace’ was omitted but he did sing, as well as could be expected given his vocal condition, the rather more taxing ‘Il mio tesoro’ in the second act, which is what Mozart substituted for a better tenor at a later, Viennese, performance. On the other hand, he acted the role with convincing, dead-pan, bloodless dignity, white costumed and every inch the honourable version of the aristocrat (in somewhat marked contrast to Don Giovanni).

Italian or English
And here I must confess to a little disappointment with the use of English (even in the version, now a little dated, by the distinguished Edward Dent). Any of the trained singers would have known all the main arias and ensemble pieces in Italian, and one felt a bit deprived without that aspect of a package of sound where words and music are so inseparable. But I know surtitles cost, and that for many of the audience, English would have helped. Diction naturally varied, but the English words were generally comprehensible.

Then there was the Commendatore of Derek Miller, an experienced singer, mainly in the Gilbert and Sullivan mold; again, there was some gap between his brief singing and acting – mainly dueling – and the timing and performance demands of his last few minutes on earth. He seemed at a loss in his confrontation with his daughter’s alleged rapist; here and at many places, more rehearsal with both stage and musical directors might have put the pieces together better (though I doubt that swordsmanship is a major part of singers’ training these days).

In that scene we encountered Donna Elvira, now, in contrast to Anna, fully dressed, wearing a rather gorgeous dark floral brocade gown. Hannah Catrin Jones, like the other Donna, revealed a good, well-projected voice, expressive and quietly passionate, but without a great deal of dynamic variety; later, in her intercession to defend Zerlina against the Don’s scoring another notch in his belt, she sang and acted with flair, only her top a little unrestrained. One looked forward to Elvira’s great aria ‘Mi tradi quell’ alma ingrata’ in the last scene, and it came off splendidly.

Defending Zerlina
That brings us to Zerlina, sung by Emily Mwila in both casts. She was the quintessentially flirtatious, spunky, all too ready to fall in with Giovanni’s plans that involved marriage and status and a life-time of faithful loving. And she’s not altogether pleased at Elvira’s interference. It was a high point of the show.

Throughout, the small orchestral ensemble does interesting and illuminating things, warmly supportive, and it was good to be able to pick them up at times, such as the cello solo after Zerlina’s ‘Batti, batti o bel Masetto’, and following woodwind echoing.

Zerlina’s lover was sung by Charles Wilson and he too was well cast, acting almost too well the humourless, powerless, put-upon, about-to-be-betrayed fiancé. For some reason Masetto doesn’t engage our sympathy much, and Wilson manfully (shall we say) exploited his role as the ritually laughed-at cuckold, a stock character from Greek and Roman comedy, and the Renaissance.

The final scene can be one of the great operatic experiences, but a lot of elements need to be right. A carefully crafted Giovanni/Leporello relationship is vital, but the rustic character of the servant somewhat militated against the suppressed hilarity and the conflicted feelings we have for the Don’s inevitable fate.

There’s only a limited role for the small, effective chorus. But a very important role for orchestra. As I note above, there was much to be grateful for, but the balance of tone and style between limited strings and winds suggested that singers and players could have benefitted from more rehearsal together. More time was needed for the integrity of the orchestral reduction to be properly absorbed by both.

However, let me not be misunderstood. An enterprise like this must be enthusiastically welcomed; it provides a little of the vital intermediate stage to a professional career that is almost entirely absent in New Zealand. One keeps hoping that one of the groups that arise from time to time will survive and flourish, and become professional, just as the De La Tour Opera of the 1980s turned into Wellington City Opera.

Onwards towards professional opera again
For Wellington now has no professional opera company. In spite of initial assurances of even-handed division of work between Auckland and Wellington when the two companies merged in 2000, Auckland has slowly absorbed everything, leaving Wellington as mere recipient of New Zealand Opera ‘touring performances’.

Let me recall that through its some 16 years of life Wellington City Opera staged about 34 productions, more than any other city over that period, and about the same number that New Zealand Opera has staged in Wellington in the past 16 years.

Over the past decade or so many groups have staged opera in Wellington; they come and they go. Essential to survival are determined management with the personal skills capable of winning funding, and pursuing sensible, adventurous artistic aims. Eternity Opera could be it. At least their name and this initial performance offers a pointer.

The Don rides out again – Eternity Opera’s “other” Don Giovanni

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Don Giovanni – Eternity Opera’s “understudy” cast

Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte
English Translation by Edward Dent

Alex Galvin (director)
Simon Romanos (music director)
Sandra Malesic (producer)

Cast:
Leoporello – Nino Raphael
Don Giovanni – Orene Tiai
Donna Anna – Amanda Barclay
Commendatore/Statue – Derek Miller
Don Ottavio – Chris Berentson
Donna Elvira – Hannah Catrin Jones
Zerlina – Emily Mwila
Masetto – Charles Wilson

Dancers and Chorus: Taryn Baxter, Minto Fung,
India Loveday, Sarah Munn, Jessica Short

Orchestra:
Douglas Beilman (concertmaster),
Anna van der Zee (violin) Victoria Janëcke (viola),
Inbal Meggido (‘cello) Victoria Jones (double-bass),
Timothy Jenkin (flute) Merran Cooke (oboe),
Mark Cookson, Moira Hurst (clarinet),
Ed Allen (horn),
 Christopher Hill (guitars),
Josh Crump (trumpet),
Andrew Yorkstone, Mark Davey (alto trombone),
Hannah Neman (timpani)

Hannah Playhouse, Wellington

Wednesday 24th August, 2016

What a delight to be able to enjoy, within the space of a few days, a second, almost entirely different cast performing the same operatic production! Eternity Opera’s Don Giovanni had opened on the previous Saturday (reviewed by Middle C, below) and this was the single chance for the “understudy cast” members to demonstrate what they could do in public – with the exception of the Zerlina, Emily Mwila, for whom there was no understudy, and whose performance was a great pleasure to see again, in any case!). So this evening’s performance was a tantalizing mixture of deja vu with fresh, new faces and voices and characterizations, as interesting to compare with the “other” as to enjoy for its own qualities. I confess that I’m inclined towards the latter approach, though I may let the occasional counter-impression slip through the net by accident, as it were.

Firstly, though, there were the constants between the two performances – the joy of listening all over again, for example, to Mozart’s score brought forward and sharpened in focus as conducted with great energy and commitment by Simon Romanos, and expertly played by the first-rate ensemble. I was seated in a different place in the auditorium this time round, in front of the singers and further away from the orchestra, and didn’t get the “edge” of the instrumental attack to the same extent, the music seeming to having a more rounded and integrated-with-the-stage sound. I noticed a couple of dropped notes in places in the solo lines, which could be put down to fatigue, but registered just as strongly the support the players gave to one another and to the singers – at the risk of singling out certain players, I delighted all over again, for example, in cellist Inbal Meggido’s obbligato accompaniment of Zerlina’s “You are cruel, dear Masetto” (“Batti, batti o bel Masetto”), the playing at once so deliciously insouciant and having great tensile strength, signifying the encirclement and breaking-down of her jealous lover Masetto’s defences with her abundant, coquettish charms.

Of course that was just one of many felicitous detailings which we were able to enjoy, aspects of the sterling work done by the entire quintet of string players throughout. Another delight was guitarist Christopher Hill’s accompanying of Don Giovanni’s serenade to Donna Elvira, following on of course from the player’s unfailingly sensitive recitative accompaniments, which I thought worked surprisingly well. The various winds, including the horn, aided and abetted the singing throughout with gorgeously-phrased melodic introductions, counterpoints and resonating harmonies – and I loved the impact made by the introduction of those extra brass and the timpani for the Second Act’s “statue” scenes.

I was grateful to director Alex Galvin for his decision to present the show in period costume and with stage settings that reflected the composer’s time, enabling the full flavour of Mozart’s and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte’s partnership to play freely in a more-or-less “intended” context. The use of English greatly benefitted these interactions, the point as I saw it being not to “update” but to illuminate the story. I thought Galvin’s conception of the staging nicely took the wind out of the sails of those who ceaselessly contend that opera needs to be contextually “modernised” for today’s audiences to “connect” with. And the response of a young friend of mine who also saw the show on this particular evening was, at the end, to excitedly ask when the company would be staging its next production!

Of course, reproducing what one imagines would be anything like the settings and atmospheres prevalent in the composer’s own era is an art-form in itself, even using the libretto’s detailing as source-material. I liked very much Alex Galvin’s opting for black backdrops which couched the production in more-or-less constant darkness, one that for most of the time connects with the story’s time-of-day frame and its rather Goya-esque settings. Having said that, I thought the opening needed to be made even darker, the characters (Leporello, Donna Anna and Don Giovanni) too viscerally identifiable during the latter’s attempted violation of Donna Anna. Conversely, there were a couple of moments where the oppressiveness of the gloom might for the sake of theatrical contrast have been momentarily brightened, such as the Act One scene where Zerlina and Masetto are celebrating their marriage with their friends, and even, a little later, the meeting of Don Giovanni with Donna Anna, the woman he had attempted to seduce the night before. However, the production’s instinctive and on-going evocation of darkness served the story and its various themes well.

What colour we experienced came largely from the costumes which in nearly all cases in both performances eloquently “spoke” for their particular characters, with only the first-choice Donna Elvira (Kate Lineham) being, I thought, made to look a touch too matronly. The rest of both casts inhabited their various garments readily and easefully, allowing the essential personalities to shine forth – perhaps in the cemetery scene, the “Darth Vader” (from the film “Star Wars”) aspect of the Statue, a memorial to the Commendatore, slain by Don Giovanni, looked somewhat incongruous at first, but the apparition’s supernatural aspect logically gave its appearance a kind of “carte blanche”, stimulating, to say the least!

So, what of the cast this time round? Away from the “comparison” aspect of putting the two ensembles together role-by-role, I would say that each of the singers had something unique and tantalizing to bring to their individual parts. In some cases stage deportments and voices took time to warm up and properly activate, but in almost every case were firing and exuding energies and resonances by the opera’s end. A case in point was Giovanni’s servant Leporello, portrayed by Nino Raphael, whom I thought somewhat indolent, both physically and vocally, at the start, adopting a passive, arguably too nonchalant-sounding aspect when viewing his master’s would-be amorous exploits, and in doing so for me making his character seem uninvolved almost to a fault. As the story proceeded he seemed to gradually wake his Leporello up and bring out a sparkle more readily in both word and deed, until by the end he seemed in much greater possession of the part, or vice versa.

Something of the same languidity hung about the well-developed shoulders of the Don, Orene Tiai – his aspect seemed more happy-go-lucky than intense and predatory, an “easy-come-easy-go” attitude which didn’t develop any pronounced “edge” normally associated with the character’s efforts to pursue sexual adventures. He did at certain times convey a mode which suggested he was accustomed to getting his way, but he rarely gave a sense of having that unquenchable appetite for women which he admitted to at one point in the opera, despite the impressive statistics proffered by Leporello concerning his master’s amorous activities. His voice was by turns charming and sonorous in his set numbers, more alive and purposeful there, I thought, than in recitative, where he tended to “sing-song” rather than “point” his delivery of the lines. Still, he did well to move the action on at the beginning when “confronted” by the Commendatore, the latter either missing or failing to properly emphasise a movement or gestural cue or a vocal challenge to fight, so that the Don had to propel the action on unprovoked – or so it seemed!

The great ensemble finale at the end of the first act was a true galvanising point, which seemed from the new act’s beginning to give everybody’s stage personae more intensity – a kind of edge was raised which, in the Don’s case, carried him on something of a tide towards his confrontation with the Statue in the cemetery and fuelled their final encounter at the conclusion of Giovanni’s supper scene. Derek Miller’s Statue seemed fortunately to be able to generate more heft and power than he managed to find as the ineffectual Commendatore, which set the scene for the Don’s final despatch at the hands of a group of infernal cohorts of Hell – all women, incidentally, which seemed properly meet and just.

As for the women who were the objects of the Don’s somewhat haphazard attentions at various stages of the evening, all conveyed a distinction of character which enhanced their place in the drama – Amanda Barclay’s Donna Anna fiery and volatile, Hannah Catrin Jones’s Donna Elvira upright and dignified, mingling constraint with moments of deeply-felt grief and desire, and Emily Mwila’s Zerlina, pert, vivacious and totally winning. I did feel a little startled at the immediacy of some of Amanda Barclay’s expressions of blood-lust made in her “vengeance” duet with her hapless fiancee, Don Ottavio, but otherwise responded to her obvious involvment with the character and the story. Hannah Catrin Jones, in comparison, was more controlled in both deportment and vocal expression, wanting, I thought something of Amanda Barclay’s impulsiveness and spontaneity in her expression, but not too much! Both singers gave pleasure when shaping their longer lyrical lines with beauty and sensitivity, and not having their voices subjected to pressure from the strictures of the composer’s more intensely-wrought vocal figurations.

Victims, too, by proxy, of the Don’s predatory activities, were the men involved with these women, such as Don Ottavio, who seemed here, to all intents and purposes, practically neutered by Giovanni’s near-violation of his fiancee, Donna Anna. At the best of times, long on declamatory intent and short on effective action, Don Ottavio (sung by Chris Berentson) made a noble-hearted and dutiful, if somewhat emasculated impression as per his character. Berentson’s acting was consistent and reliable, as was his ensemble singing, but his voice needed more heft and juice when heard solo. Da Ponte and Mozart certainly got it right in ascribing desperate marriage-delaying tactics to poor Donna Anna, faced with the deadening prospect of eking out her days with a dutiful but lacklustre husband.

On the other hand, Masetto (here portrayed by Charles Wilson), the peasant lad betrothed to the pretty and vivacious Zerlina, whom the Don took a shine to in the first act, readily displayed his displeasure at the situation, railing against his partner’s coquettish behaviour and causing her great remorse, leading to some delicious interplay between the characters as Zerlina exerted her well-nigh irresistible charms upon her aggrieved sweetheart, and achieved the desired result. Though arguably not appearing robust and rustic enough for a peasant lad, Wilson’s sense of character made it work, singing and acting alongside Emily Mwila’s Zerlina with heartwarming involvement.

In both productions the chorus work sparkled (in the wedding and festive scenes) and resounded with doom-laden tones (in the opera’s final scene, where the Don is dragged down to Hell by the femme fatales turned demons!). Whatever the scene the deployment of people on stage created atmosphere, colour and excitement, and advanced the drama.

While the performance by-and-large confirmed the choice of principals for the “first” cast the performances described here enshrined for the most part viable alternatives whose realisation worked in each case, enabling the show “to go on”. I thought doing both an excellent idea, especially considering the number of people I saw who, like myself had attended the other production as well.

One is left with more-than-ample feelings of enthusiasm and goodwill towards the company and its director, with a hopeful view to there being further operatic worlds for them to conquer – on its own, the audience attendance and its response to the performances would have been heartening. The production certainly demonstrated that, if there’s sufficient energy, commitment and feeling for the art-form, it’s so very worthwhile and rewarding to have opera done in almost any performance scale, if the resources to do so can be found.

I can only echo the sentiments expressed in the final sentence of my review of the “first cast” performance in wishing Alex Galvin and Eternity Opera every future success.

Opera with energy and excitement – Eternity Opera Company’s Don Giovanni at the Hannah Playhouse

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Eternity Opera Company presents:
DON GIOVANNI

Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte
English Translation by Edward Dent

Alex Galvin (director)
Simon Romanos (music director)
Sandra Malesic (producer)

Cast: Leporello – Jamie Henare
        Don Giovanni – Mark Bobb
        Donna Anna – Barbara Paterson
        Commendatore/Statue – Roger Wilson
        Don Ottavio – Jamie Young
        Donna Elvira – Kate Lineham
        Zerlina – Emily Mwila
        Masetto – Laurence Walls
        Dancers and Chorus: Taryn Baxter, Minto Fung, India Loveday
        Sarah Munn, Jessica Short

Orchestra: Douglas Beilman (concertmaster), Anna van der Zee (violin)
                Victoria Janëcke (viola), Inbal Meggido (‘cello)
                Victoria Jones (double-bass), Timothy Jenkin (flute)
                Merran Cooke (oboe), Mark Cookson, Moira Hurst (clarinet)
                Leni Mäckle, Peter Lamb (bassoon), Ed Allen (horn)
                Christopher Hill (guitars), Josh Crump (trumpet)
                Andrew Yorkstone, Mark Davey (alto trombone)
                Hannah Neman (timpani)
                   
Hannah Playhouse, Wellington

20-27th August, 2016

The name “Eternity Opera” is itself a splendid gauntlet-brandishing gesture, an assertive declaration of overall purpose and intent, reinforced by a note in the programme for Saturday night’s opening of the new company’s season of “Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”–  firstly, “to stage productions that are exciting and accessible to anyone” and, just as importantly, “to support the many talented singers and musicians in the Wellington region”. Judging by what the opening night’s performance managed to achieve in terms of immediacy and intensity, there was plenty of excitement and involvement for the audience in Wellington’s Hannah Playhouse, strange though it might have seemed for those of us familiar with the venue’s history to see opera performed there.

Whatever misgivings one might have felt beforehand along these lines, particularly regarding the venue’s relatively limited performing space for both singers and orchestra, were immediately blown away by the impact of the Overture’s opening.  The immediacy of it all seemed to me to bring one far closer to the “inner life” of the music than the somewhat distanced effect of having the performers on a vast stage and in a sunken orchestral pit. Instead, here they all were, almost, it seemed, within touching distance! The effect was, I thought, electric and energising, right throughout the work.

With the Overture at the beginning, one relished the instrumental playing’s focus, energy and infinite variety of colour and nuance. It all “clicked” as, amid the gloom, my eyes began to “pick out”, one by one, the faces of some of Wellington’s top musicians. Conductor Simon Romanos readily found the “tempo giusto” for both the music’s monumental opening and the allegro which followed, pointing up for us the opera’s Janus-faced aspect – what the composer himself styled as both a “dramma giocoso” (a mix of drama and comedy), and, in his own catalogue of compositions, an “opera buffa” (comic opera).

The performance used Edward Dent’s English translation, which came across well in the theatre’s intimate spaces. First to appear on the stage was Leporello, the Don’s servant, sung by Jamie Henare with wry, Sancho Panza-like humour throughout, understandably taking a little time to warm up his voice’s energies in this opening scene, but, a little later, making the most of the famous “Catalogue aria”, singing and characterising the words with obvious relish. Servant and master played off one another along the way with plenty of complementary panache and mordant wit, a highlight being Leporello’s “Mr.Bean cut down to size” transformation at the hands of his master, when being disguised as the latter for further nefarious purposes.

As for the redoubtable Don Giovanni himself, Mark Bobb made a personable hero/villain, conveying both the energy and underlying world-weariness of the habitual seducer – reflected, of course in the character’s almost total lack of success with the sexual conquests he pursued in the course of the opera. While his voice had its limits, such as insufficient “top” with which to clinch the hedonistic splendour of his “Champagne aria”,  his singing early on in the piece wasn’t without charm, in the first act convincingly and seductively all but completely breaking down the defences of the peasant girl, Zerlina, about to be married, and, in the second act, mockingly serenading firstly his jilted lover Donna Elvira, who’d come to town in pursuit of him and to make life as difficult for him as possible, and then switching his focus to her maid.

Sparks were effectively struck by Giovanni’s encounters with the Commendatore, the father of Donna Anna, the latter another of the Don’s would-be conquests. Both the first-act duel between the two men, and the return of the murdered Commendatore as a statue to take revenge on the reprobate worked up plenty of dramatic and musical steam. Throughout these escapades, Mark Bobb’s portrayal veered convincingly between bravado and dissipation, strongly conveying at the end both his character’s defiance of heavenly retribution for his crimes of excess, and his grim acceptance of the fate in store for him.

Roger Wilson brought sonorous authority to the Commendatore/Statue role, using his powerful voice to great effect, though thanks to his costume his “Statue” persona for me more readily evoked “Darth Vader” (of “Star Wars” fame) than anything else. Nevertheless, he and Giovanni really made something of their supernatural confrontation, building up to the “mark of doom” moment when their hands clasped, here most excitingly realized.

Don Giovanni is certainly an opera that puts relationships to the sword, as witness the ardent but largely ineffectual peregrinations of Don Ottavio, who’s Donna Anna’s betrothed and who seemed destined to remain so indefinitely, on account of his beloved’s grief at her father’s death. Jamie Young enacted what can be a thankless part, with plenty of palpable feeling for his sweetheart, best expressed in recitative, dialogue and ensembles set-pieces rather than in full-scale arias, where his voice seemed to lose its quality under pressure.

Another victim was Masetto, one of the villagers, along with his to-be-partner, Zerlina, whom the Don had already lost no time in making the focus of his attentions for a while. I always saw (or heard) Mazetto as someone essentially rustic, a “salt-of-the-earth” character with a few rough edges, which the elegant, modulated portrayal of Laurence Walls seemed to have knocked off and smoothed around, making the character appear in manner and voice more poet and philosopher than country boy. Still, his interaction with Emily Mwila’s Zerlina, his sweetheart, had a lovely innocence, beautifully delineated during her singing of “Batti, batti” (Beat me, beat me), by way of winning back his ruffled affections in the wake of her “dalliance” with the Don.

Turning to the women, the first we encountered was Donna Anna, daughter of the Commendatore and betrothed of Don Ottavio, but who had somehow aroused the interest and attentions of Giovanni – Barbara Paterson’s portrayal of Anna captured, I think, much of the character’s ambivalence regarding her attempted seduction by the Don, thus “awakening” aspects of her as a woman which the dutiful Don Ottavio might well have left undisturbed. A certain “edge” to her voice sharpened the vibrant intensity of her character, one which became almost too incisive at certain pressure-points. Still, there was no doubting her dramatic commitment and the willingness to interact with others – a well-honed sequence was the “vengeance” vow demanded of Ottavio by Anna immediately following the discovery of her murdered father’s corpse, Barbara Paterson and Jamie Young between them generating and conveying plenty of force and weight.

By contrast Giovanni’s rejected sweetheart, Donna Elvira, beautifully realized by Kate Lineham, mingled intensity of feeling for her treacherous ex-lover with anger, scorn, and despair on one hand and frustration and determination on the other. Hers was a voice that, apart from the occasional moment of pressure affecting the singing line’s trajectory, filled out the melodic contours with such beauty as to produce moments of glowing warm amidst the gloom. Her Elvira was, it seemed, a character ready to forgive and reconcile with any wrongs done by others, imparting a human dimension to the drama whose privations engaged our sympathy.

Where both Anna and Elvira were sophisticated society women, the third female role was Zerlina, whose delightfully coquettish portrayal by Emily Mwila was one of the show’s highlights, and who exuded both rude, rustic health and artfully-wound persuasive charm right from the start. Helped by a beautifully-modulated and flexibly adept voice she “owned” both music and character and brought them together with an ease and fluency that suggested here was a “natural” at what she did on the musical stage – I’ve already mentioned her winning “Batti batti” in tandem with Laurence Walls’ Masetto, and altogether enjoyed her work immensely.

Though the set couldn’t be described in any way as “lavish”, its darkness matched the atmosphere of most of the opera’s scenes, with the exception, perhaps of the first garden scene, during which Zerlina and Mazettto were to be married. The remainder framed the spherical settings with black curtains, underlining the darkness at the centre of the Don’s self-destructive impulses and the despair/fear felt by those attempting to keep in tabs on him. Costumes were more-than-usually striking against the black  backdrops, generally mirroring what we were able to glean of each character, with a few unexpected stimulations, such as the space-age statue in the cemetery scene!

In terms of purpose and intent one could safely declare that this production of “Don Giovanni” did excellently well, making what I thought were all the right gestures for encouragement of further production activities, given that, unlike the way pursued by the opera’s eponymous hero, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, for fledgling artistic ventures. One can only wish director Alex Galvin and his company every success, while at the same time encouraging enthusiasts and interested parties to get behind them with all the support an artistic community sympathetic to such a venture can muster.

Brass Poppies – ordinary people at war

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Festival 2016 presents:
BRASS POPPIES (Ross Harris – music / Vincent O’Sullivan – libretto)

James Egglestone (William Malone)
Sarah Court (Mrs Malone)
Robert Tucker ( Tommo)
Anna Leese (Mary / Luck)
Jonathan Eyers (Billy)
Madison Nonoa (Joyce)
Wade Kernot (Fred)
Mary Newman-Pound (Lucy)
Andrew Glover (Turk/Patriot)
Benjamin Mitchell, Taniora Rangi Motutere (dancers)

Jonathan Alver (director)
Maaka Pepene (choreographer)
Jon Baxter (AV design)
Jason Morphett (lighting)
Elizabeth Whiting (costuming)

Hamish McKeich (conductor)
Stroma New Music Ensemble

Shed 6, Wellington

Thursday 3rd March 2016

Poet Vincent O’Sullivan and composer Ross Harris have collaborated on no less than eleven words-and-music works since 2002, the most recent being the chamber opera “Brass Poppies”. The work received its premiere at Shed 6 in Wellington last week, and after finishing a four-night season has gone on to Auckland’s Mercury Theatre where it will play for two more nights later this week.

Though the opera was actually completed by O’Sullivan and Harris before their previous Festival presentation Requiem for the Fallen, was given in 2014, it effectively complements the latter. Brass Poppies treats the subject of war and its effect upon people in a remarkably intimate and personalized way. While the Requiem was notable for its diversity of means (string quartet, brass and percussion, various taonga puoro, chamber choir and tenor solo), the opera, though no less telling in its impact on the listener, is more “conventionally” written for voices and chamber ensemble.

Harris commented in an interview beforehand that he thought the work had more in common with Stephen Sondheim and Kurt Weill, rather than with “conventional” opera. It seemed to me that there were a few such influences, consciously or otherwise applied – for example the meeting of the young soldier, Billy and the young girl Joyce at the dance I thought reminiscent of the meeting of the young lovers in “West Side Story” – and the all-pervading dance-rhythms which drove the opening scenes so surely and buoyantly seemed also to me to draw from the composer’s involvement with things like Klezmer music. Particularly affecting was Tatiana Lanchtchikova’s accordion-playing, rhythmic pulsings and harmonic flavorings which conjured up a bitter-sweet ambience that flavoured the whole ensemble’s music-making throughout.

O’Sullivan’s libretto, though an anti-war statement, never thumps a tub, or loads the scenario with suffering or horror of a cathartic kind – his words have the lightest of touches, with everything insinuated or suggested at the start, and stated simply and poetically at the end. And Harris’s music does the same, the lyrical lines and dance rhythms keeping the narrative flow on the move, and maintaining forward movement even when, in places, suggesting the gentlest of  pulsatings amid the silences. And so the sense of tragedy is heightened for us, because the lives and circumstances of the four soldiers are so very like ours, easily identifiable with – and yet somehow the monstrousness of what they and their families are drawn into is conveyed, the “snuffing out” of lives on a hitherto unprecedented scale is numbingly registered.

It’s the kind of thing that Wilfred Owen wrote about in his poem “Anthem for Doomed Youth” with the words –

“The pallor of girls, brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.”

Together at the opera’s beginning, the soldiers and their families (represented by the women) are taken away from the ordinariness of their lives and gradually drawn into different worlds, each replete with remembrances of and longings for what was and might be again – at the beginning we heard rhetorical-sounding statements, deeply-felt but already with a hollow ring, such as  “This is what we’re fighting for”, and similarly-felt exchanges between the couples “What we told each other we remember”. When parted, the dialogues (via letters) took on the poignancy of  separation and the mutually-shared hope that “luck” would keep the men company and keep them safe, a spirit characterized by one of the women as a “presence” circulating among the men at Gallipoli.

Such sentiments were, of course, lump-in-the-throat in effect, as were the longings expressed for a “return to what was”‘ on both sides. One husband-and-wife exchange was shared by both singers, one taking over the words of the letter from the other; while another soldier’s letter recalled memories of walking with his girl in orchards filled with apples – he then made reference to walking under a different kind of orchard, those of the stars overhead at Gallpoli. It was all very heartfelt on a deeply personal and individual scale, with hopes, fears, sorrows and resignation gently brought together in a wholly natural way.

A jingoistic note was expressed by a British Empire figure repeating vainglorious cliches of valour and sacrifice, set against verses whose words underlined the cynicism of the “victory” rhetoric, as did the ditty about the Kings “in their counting houses, counting out their money”, making something fairytale-like from out of the turmoil and tragedy. All of this struck such hollow resonances as the soldiers, all having been killed by this time, countered these sentiments by announcing  the grim finality of their position with the words “we’re not likely to change our minds as the grass keeps growing” – and later, commenting on “the deep snows of forgetting”. Emotions ran in parallel, the women in mourning and the shades of the soldiers (sightless to their bereaved partners) in lament for what has been lost, with the women singing of the subsequent evenings as “silent as a shattered gun”. The quiet interlocking of thought and emotion, and the avoidance of overt, visceral grief gives oceans of realm for  individual feeling to well up and flood the spaces, so that we in the audience were overcome with the cruel emptiness of it all, on both sides.

Describing his words for the libretto as “only the scaffolding for something bigger” O’Sullivan paid tribute to his collaborator’s music, though to this listener’s ears what came across was a tapestried amalgam of words and music, wrought  out of similar impulses. The music, as strongly as did the words, told us who these people were – ordinary people being asked to go and perform in extraordinary situations. So Harris’s music was catchy and recognizable and readily identifiable – period pieces, such as waltzes, marches and other different dance-forms, the music of the people, so to speak. The rhythmic verve of the dance was physical in its impact, and its sudden changes of metre both ironic and volatile in its effect. I thought I heard those Klezmer touches on various occasions, the genre’s intrinsic bitter-sweet ambiences here very much to the point.

Director Jonathan Alver’s staging of the work made creative theatrical use of the ostensibly unpromising Shed 6 venue. I hadn’t heard any live music there previously, so my first reaction to encountering what seemed to be such “barn-of-a-place” surroundings was of dismay – fortunately, these concerns weren’t realized in performance. The clarity of both vocal and instrumental lines was, I thought,  exemplary, though the surtitles played their part in clarifying lines throughout the more concerted singing passages. Balance between singers and instrumentalists seemed well-nigh perfect, with conductor and players being visible “on stage” throughout, over to one side rather than down in a pit of any kind – part of the work’s choreography of movement.

The production wasn’t “in the round” as the Requiem of two years ago had been in Wellington Cathedral – this was more conventionally staged, with singers and dancers appearing on a stage via entrances diagonally placed between column-like walls on which were projected various scenes and scenarios. In this way the singers and dancers seemed to come in from the midst of whatever scheme was projected onto the surfaces of the columns, and in places return to them via their exits, which I thought worked beautifully as an idea – no more poignantly than when the soldiers took their leave of their women through exits framed by contemporary photographs of freshly-enlisted men in uniform marching down Lambton Quay in Wellington. Besides the four couples and the Turkish figure / British patriot character, there were also two sprite-like dancers whose movements expressed both gentleness and strength, delicacy and vigour, the latter sometimes combatative and warlike. Costumes were simple – khaki uniforms for the men, period dresses for the women, as expected. After the soldiers were each killed they remained as “presences” on stage, haunting their women, though not being able to communicate – very simple and powerful.

This was very much an ensemble opera, though with a number of stand-out vocal moments for individual voices. The conversations among the characters were as significant as were the individual soliloquies, each acting as a foil for the other, though the solo sequences tended to “carry” the more profound utterances. The couples interacted with admirable ease and fluency, each with a particular character, from the tremulousness of the two youngsters, Joyce (Madison Nonoa) and Billy (Jonathan Eyres), to the no-nonsense working-class codes and understandings used by Fred (Wade Kernot) and Lucy (Mary Newman-Pound). Australian tenor James Egglestone as Captain William Malone relished his occasional stentorian moments, though most memorable was his tender interaction with his wife (Sara Court), particularly during the reading of a letter home, the husband taking over from the wife halfway through with the reading  – it was all a perfectly-tailored piece of give-and-take.

Robert Tucker (as Tommo) beautifully put across his letter/song which recalled memories of the apple orchard where he courted Mary (Anna Leese), and making the most of his declaration of surprise and resignation at looking upwards at a different kind of orchard at Anzac Cove – the night sky. As for Anna Leese, her strong-willed Mary, vigorous and feisty, “morphed” this character at one point in the story with Lady Luck, a female personification of good fortune, taking it upon herself to circulate among the Allied soldiers, singing about the “mantel of luck”, in between wordless chantings, everything beautifully and lyrically sounded. Again, one got the sense of the impact made on individuals, with Mary’s description of an excursion up to Brooklyn an almost Janus-faced aspect of her “Luck” persona by association – things that ordinary men and women would think of and hold onto in extraordinary situations, and expressed in a naturalistic context. FInally, Andrew Glover made the most of his cameo-like opportunities as the ghost-like Turkish soldier and the British patriot, enigmatic figures at opposite spectrum-ends.

Every instrumental sound was vividly realized by the Stroma Ensemble under Hamish McKeich’s direction – the musical realizations played their part in enhancing the production’s consistently underplayed yet powerful inner resonances. It’s one whose message will continue to resound, and repay revisiting.

Handel’s early Agrippina in brilliant Days Bay production

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Agrippina by Handel
Opera in a Days Bay Garden

Producer: Rhona Fraser Musical director: Howard Moody; stage director: Sara Brodie
Joel Amosa, Rhona Fraser, Rowena Simpson, Stephen Diaz, Rebecca Ryan, Daniel O’Connor, Julian Chote, Dan Sun, Barbara Patterson

Sixteen-piece orchestra led by Howard Moody

Canna House, Days Bay

Sunday 14 February, 6pm

Wellington’s boutique opera company that presents most of its productions in the beech forest-surrounded garden of the company’s producer, Rhona Fraser, staged its ninth opera at the height of an unusually warm summer. We regretted not making time before the performance to join the thousands on the beach, for a swim, with the temperature hovering around 27 degrees.

This was the company’s second Handel opera, after Alcina in 2012. Other unfamiliar pieces have been Mozart’s L’Oca del Cairo, Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims and La Calisto by Cavalli.

(For the record, the company’s other productions have been of The Marriage of Figaro, Maria Stuarda, Così fan tutte and Der Rosenkavalier).

It’s one of Handel’s early works, written in Italy while he was absorbing the traditions of Italian opera, dominated by Alessandro Scarlatti, and Cesti and Stradella and others. Agrippina was written for Venice when he was 24. Nevertheless, it is regarded as one of his most successful pieces both on account of the vitality of the music and an unusually well-contrived libretto. So it’s not one of those operas where by the middle of the second act, you get impatient that no one asks the obvious question that would put an end to the troubles and truncate the opera.

The performance, the second, on 14 February, on the terrace before the house succeeded well with no sets and few props. Instead, the cast is expected to perform athletically, extravagantly, with the focus on themselves, their voices and acting. The performance was in front of the orchestra which was in the recessed entrance way on the right for the first act, but from Act II moved to the left side, straddling the wide sliding doorway of the large living room, half in, half out. The orchestra was the usual ensemble, 16-strong, drawn mainly from splendid NZSO players, with outstanding oboists, and led from harpsichord by Howard Moody.

At the start, facing west and singing into the blazing sun, with nowhere to hide, nerves and intonation weaknesses showed. But in all cases, each quickly came to life, gaining confidence and relishing the risqué nonsense.

Rhona Fraser herself sang Agrippina (Emperor Claudius’s wife), sometimes struggling to portray her duplicitous character, but singing and acting with conviction, with very overt asides in the form of smiles and grimaces and other signs of cynical self-interest. Next to her role as the Marschallin in the Strauss opera, this might well be her biggest role in her Days Bay enterprise.

The opera opens with the news that Emperor Claudius has died at sea leading his wife Agrippina to launch her campaign to persuade the Senate to accept her son Nero as successor. However, Claudius’s general, Ottone, appears with the news that he rescued Claudius and the rest of the opera is essentially a complex series of plots (and their frustration) aimed at achieving Agrippina’s ruthless ambitions.

In spite of his first appearance as Emperor in most un-imperial costume, Joel Amosa, soon took command of his role as Claudius in more appropriate purple toga, displaying not only grandeur and authority but an intelligent sense of humour. Though Ottone, counter tenor Stephen Diaz, who has performed in previous productions at Days Bay, first also appears in singularly unmilitary dress, he emerges as a general of unusual charisma, with commanding presence and voice.

Claudius resumes his flagrant pursuit of Poppea under the nose of his wife who continues to attempt to get rid of both Claudius and Ottone.

Accomplished Handelian Rebecca Ryan, overcame her unflattering costume, to portray Poppea boldly and vocally buoyant if not quite managing the flagrant, seductive bit.

As in Monteverdi’s masterpiece, La coronazione di Poppea, Nerone is a trouser role and Rowena Simpson, in tight-fitting black costume, creates a lively, youthful character, not the legendary monster who later succeeded Claudius and might have murdered his mother Agrippina (some accounts have her murdering Claudius, so Nero’s effort might not seem so bad). And you’ll recall that in the Monteverdi opera, Poppea sets her sights on Emperor Nero who banishes his wife Ottavia so that he can ‘marry’ Poppea.

The two brilliant counter tenors Stephen Diaz and Julian Chote, in their respective roles as Ottone and Narciso, were both accomplished and larger-than-life. Narciso and Pallante (Daniel O’Connor), are defined as ‘freedmen’ (libertus) – that is, former slaves who have been freed and accorded full citizenship, here probably on account of their talents and education. Peripheral figures perhaps, they gained attention through their entertaining flamboyance and impressive singing. They become useful in the last act as Agrippina’s tools in her persistent scheming to get Nero confirmed as Claudius’s successor, in the event of Claudius meeting with an accident.

There are other minor characters: Lesbo, the Emperor’s servant, was sung vividly by Dun Sun and at the end the goddess Juno appears to bless the eventual happy ending that statesmanlike intercession by Claudius had brought about. Barbara Patterson acts and sings the goddess with glittering splendor.

The success of the staging was again the work of Sara Brodie, master of imaginative histrionics, explicit dissembling, clever exploitation of the physical shape of the terrace and house. Much credit goes to the witty and at times very colloquial translation by Amanda Holden, which was first used by director David McVicar for the English National Opera production that was seen in Brussels and Frankfurt before reaching London in 2007. Most of the singers succeeded well in projecting the words with clarity.

Sure, it’s a complicated story, not easily grasped merely by reading a synopsis. Rather, it made sense through the vivid performance itself, especially in a production that illuminated character and motivation as well as this entertaining hill-side staging did.

Modern revivals of Agrippina began in the middle of World War II, at Halle, Handel’s birthplace; reportedly a travesty, from today’s point of view. Next came a live radio broadcast by Italian Radio in 1953. There were several more stagings in Germany before the first in England, at Abingdon in 1963. There was a concert performance in Philadelphia in 1972 and the first staged production in Fort Worth in 1985. It returned to Venice in 1983. All of these apparently neglected a concern for historical practice, and the first to seek historical performance accuracy were at Schwetzingen in 1981 and Göttingen in 1991.

In the 21st century, productions have become fairly common, as interest in early opera, especially Handel, has become very widespread.

New Zealand Opera’s Tosca a triumph at all levels

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Tosca by Puccini (production by New Zealand Opera)

Conducted by Tobias Ringborg; directed by Stuart Maunder

Solo voices: Orla Boylan, Simon O’Neill, Phillip Rhodes, James Clayton, Barry Mora, James Benjamin Rodgers, Wade Kernot, Matt Landreth

Assistant director: Tamsyn Matchett; set designer: Jan Ubels; Costume designer: Elizabeth Whiting, lighting designer: Jason Morphett

St James Theatre, Courtenay Place

Saturday 10 October, 7:30 pm

The Wellington run of Tosca no doubt benefitted after uniformly positive reviews and word-of-mouth reports from Auckland.

The reports from Auckland were not mistaken; here was one of the most impressive and successful productions from this company yet.

In Wellington, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra was in the pit, and it was, of course, a superb collaboration that obliged the audience to notice Puccini’s masterly dramatic orchestration and the ways in which, under the experienced Tobias Ringborg, it supported and enlivened the story and the characterisations.

The chorus too, recruited separately for each city, was conspicuously excellent in the important episodes where it shone – nowhere better than in the Te Deum at the end of Act I; there, together with the fine boys’ choir.

And I was delighted that so many New Zealand singers were on stage: all but Orla Boylan in the title role.

Updating of opera and theatre has become almost de rigueur for today’s stage directors, and it can serve an opera well, when the story is generic in character. Here, it is shifted from 1800 to the 1950s and the programme note offers various parallels with the original time when Italy was partly and temporarily under Napoleon’s control.

As stage director, Stuart Maunder, demonstrated his skill and experience in guiding his characters in realistic behavior, in sensible and coherent action, whether a formal church ritual at the end of Act I, or the uneasy disposition of Scarpia’s henchmen in Act II. Costumes conformed to the chosen era and the stage design and lighting contributed imaginatively to the changing moods and emotional states described by the music and words.

After the unmistakable, ominous chords that launch the opera, Angelotti bursts through the doors of a dark, wood-panelled church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, having escaped from prison wearing suit and tie. And James Clayton carried his agitated yet commanding role splendidly.

Expectations were high for the appearance of Simon O’Neill as Cavaradossi, a role that he has not been very conspicuous in, though he has sung it in Hamburg and Berlin. Though his strength lies more in the heroic, military roles, called the Heldentenor in Wagner and German works, he employs vocal power and elegance to portray a convincing artist, political activist and lover for whom love is not, actually, the strongest force; who never allows any of the pious sneers of the Sacristan any leg-room, and whose resolute resistance to tyranny is always foremost. ‘Recondita armonia’ came across, as it should, very fine, a somewhat portentous, pretentious efflorescence, in contrast to the Sacristan’s simplistic piety, and also to Tosca’s more elemental erotic impulses.

How good it was to have a Sacristan of the experience and histrionic subtlety as Barry Mora in the role! There was droll wit in some of his ritual gestures relating to Satan and the pretty non-existent religious paraphernalia in the church.

The Scarpia of Phillip Rhodes was perhaps the unknown quantity. I had seen Phillip in several slightly smaller roles for New Zealand Opera as well as in Hawkes Bay as a journeyman singer in the late 1990s. This time it was the real thing. Though not tall, and dressed in what I suppose was a 1950s Mafioso style of a ‘spiv’ rather than a gold-braided police chief, the confidence of his movements, the colour and quality of his voice created a character of authority. His arrival in the church at the end of Act I and assumption of command, the ugly ranging of his henchmen around his chamber, and his approach to wine and women – his credo – in Act II, ‘Ha piu forte sapore’, came across with chilling force. Though the opera has him at ease with aristocratic manners and interests, he’s more the low-life crook who’s got to the top through violent means than a corrupt aristocrat.

Then there’s Tosca. Orla Boylan is tall, and had all the presence of a diva as well as a voice of strength and character; but there was little electricity in her relationship with Cavaradossi; or much irresistible sex-appeal in her demeanour, other than her position in the arts world, that might have driven Scarpia in his determination to rape her. But her singing did it all, from the ‘Non la sospiri la nostra casetta’ as she tried to seduce a slightly distracted Cavaradossi in Act I, and the show-stopper, ‘Vissi d’arte’; these were totally convincing and her style, again like O’Neill, not primarily of a sensual, lustful nature. So the streak of steel in her nature conformed with her stabbing Scarpia several times, just to be sure. Deep down, perhaps her performance was saying that she lived for art and love, but more for art?

The other characters were well taken. James Benjamin Rodgers as Spoletta, Wade Kernot as Sciarrone and the small roles of the Gaoler (Matt Landreth) and the shepherd boy (Archie Taylor) were not only excellently cast but also, for the first time in several years, almost all were New Zealanders (James Clayton now lives in Wellington).

Unusually, the curtain remained down throughout the first ten minutes of Act III, with the shepherd boy’s charming singing which sets a bucolic scene, designed to create a stark visual contrast with the ugly scene of Cavaradossi’s execution, Castel Sant’Angelo. The melody of his movingly sung, pathetic aria ‘E lucevan le stelle’ permeates the whole act.

As for the execution itself, though the firing squad had taken aim, Spoletta suddenly grabbed Cavaradossi, forced him to his knees and shot him with a handgun at point-blank range. A difficulty remained for Tosca: she sees this, and there can be no mistaking that Scarpia’s ambiguous remark to Spoletta, ‘as in the case of Palmieri’ had meant a pretend firing-squad execution was itself a pretence and her lover is dead.

Yet she still approaches Cavaradossi urging him to get up.

Tosca has positioned herself on a platform four metres or so above the roof of the Castel Sant’Angelo and we witnessed a much more than usually breath-taking leap to her death.

The period change in this production deserves a little further consideration.

Where the time and place of an opera are very clearly prescribed by the background story, here a play, as well as by the librettist and composer, in Napoleonic Rome in 1800, the matter is a little more complicated. One needs to think hard whether any real advantage will be gained by moving it forward 150 years. It’s in the 1950s and the programme note draws comparisons with post-war Italy, the presence of the Catholic church, ‘a regime dominated by foreign interests’, and the mafia in the background, and suggests, rather tendentiously I think, ‘a time of secret police, of terror, suspicion and corruption supporting a fragile, conservative regime’. Maybe that’s sufficient.

Earlier productions of Tosca
In the preview articles for New Zealand Opera’s 2003 production of Tosca, New Zealand Opera News, which I was editing, devoted a good deal of space to the much more detailed back-story of Tosca that was narrated in the play by Victorien Sardou, which had been a world-wide success from its Paris premiere in 1887. It was one of most famous roles of the great French actress, Sarah Bernhardt.

The magazine also printed a list of all the New Zealand productions of Tosca that had been recorded.

The New Zealand premiere was in January 1917 in Auckland, the first port of call of the Gonsalez Italian Grand Opera company.
1919/20 Willamson Grand Opera Co
1932 Williamson Imperial Grand Opera
1949 J C Williamson Italian Grand Opera
1961 New Zealand Opera Company (nation-wide tour)
1973 National Opera Company/Auckland Opera Trust (in Auckland only)
1980 Dunedin Opera Company
1984 Wellington City Opera
1985 Mercury Opera, Auckland
1990 Canterbury Opera
1992 Wellington City Opera
1993 Dunedin Opera Company
1996 Canterbury Opera
Opera Hawkes Bay
Opera New Zealand (formerly Auckland Opera, and performed only in Auckland)
2003 NBR New Zealand Opera (both Wellington and Auckland)
2005 Canterbury Opera

Nine different productions in the fifteen years after 1980! None after 2005 till the present. And that typifies the drastic decline in the range of operas produced all over the country after the flourishing decades of the 80s and 90s.

Delightful, witty Così fan tutte from Wanderlust Opera

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Così fan tutte (Mozart) in concert
Wanderlust Opera: produced by Georgia Jamieson Emms

Musical director: Bruce Greenfield (piano)
Narrator: Kate Mead
Georgia Jamieson Emms (Fiordiligi); Bianca Andrew (Dorabella); Imogen Thirlwall (Despina); Cameron Barclay (Ferrando); Robert Tucker (Guglielmo); Matthew Landreth (Don Alfonso)

English translation by John Drummond, Ruth and Thomas Martin and Georgia Jamieson Emms

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 15 August, 7:30 pm

It’s best to start with comment about the somewhat unfortunate timing of this wonderful enterprise. A clash with the university school of music’s double bill, running four performances from Thursday to Sunday. On top of that, many vocal enthusiasts would also have been torn by having to choose between the last day of the Big Sing, the choral competition/jamboree/gala of secondary school choirs, held this year in Wellington.

Because of conflicting commitments among the cast, no alternative date could be found however, and the audience (around 100) was a bit smaller than I’d expected: it certainly deserved a full house.

Though it was not a fully staged performance, there were many other features that contributed to a sparking, highly entertaining show; the mere absence of sets and costumes of the era didn’t deny the singers plenty of histrionic scope. Recitatives were replaced by a ‘performance’ by Kate Mead, named ‘narrator’. She was much more than that; in a flamboyant black and silver costume, she entered arm-in-arm with Bruce Greenfield, took her place on a platform on the right while Greenfield went to the piano, which served very well as orchestra.

He launched impulsively into the overture, hitting the keys with staccato ferocity. But after only a minute the overture was cut short and Kate took over to set the scene, with detail rich in witty hyperbole, insight, oxymoron, cynicism and meticulous Neapolitan geography. (If you’re interested, Piazza Carolina is close to the great San Carlo Theatre; their five-storey house is on the corner of Via Gennaro Serra – check it out next time you’re in Naples).

Kate’s dramatic elan ran the risk of upstaging more than one of the real performers. Like the singers, she spoke in English, which, in theory, negated the need for surtitles; but as usual, they’d often have been a help, as voices vary in clarity and carrying ability. (I have to confess a very strong preference, always, for the original language, with surtitles of course). So the scene was promptly set for a comedy in which there was no hope of rational intelligibility.

The other most important actor was the one-man-orchestra, the piano, which did get in the way sometimes, and made it hard to catch some of the Italian-inflected English. But it was always worth paying attention to the sheer brilliance of Greenfield’s playing of the delicious score.

However, the more important thing is the singing.

The three men, in dinner suits, established their characters at once, voices very distinct, though Cameron Barclay’s self-confident Ferrando was at first a little better projected than the Guglielmo of Robert Tucker whose well-grounded baritone slowly distinguished itself. The sisters’ several duets were nicely differentiated in timbre, and models of emotional excess. Bianca Andrew as Dorabella, the more susceptible of the sisters, used her fine penetrating mezzo wonderfully; Georgia Jamieson Emms benefitted as a result of the different character of her voice and personality, easily capturing the nature of Fiordiligi. They both wore glamorous, timeless, ball dresses.

Matthew Landreth as Don Alfonso did not, early on, quite command the nonchalant, Figaro-factotum character that Da Ponte and Mozart envisaged, but by the advent of the quintet, ‘Sento, o dio’, he was fitting comfortably into the texture of the performance.

It’s true that quite a lot was left out (there were 17 numbers listed in the programme from a total of 31 usually numbered in the score), though none of the well-known arias and ensembles was missing, like the divine trio ‘Soave sia il vento’, Fiordiligi’s ‘Come scoglio’ with a conspicuously splendid piano accompaniment; or tenor Ferrando’s touching ‘Un’ aura amorosa’. As an opera without a chorus, it is famous for its beautiful duets, trios and quintets, and they were often more beguiling than the solo arias.

With Alfonso’s pecuniary persuasion, Despina (Imogen Thirlwall) has entered the fray; her performance is vivacious and her initial hesitation to be complicit in Alfonso’s scheme quickly falls away.

The implementation of Alfonso’s plot is followed by a big sextet, as the two Albanians are introduced, and offer the most taxing of all suspensions of disbelief with the most improbable of disguises in all theatre, sporting moustaches and with unstable fezes (plural?), still wearing dinner suits, but with loosened ties.

Despina assumes great importance in Act II, starting with her perky ‘Una donna a quindici anni’, in her attempt to modify the girls’ self-denying virtue. With a few cuts in the score, we miss the agonising vicissitudes of the four as Despina’s principled counsel slowly takes root, especially in the Fiordiligi, the more virtuous of the two, leading precipitately to a double wedding officiated by Despina the notary.

To be sure, one missed the often hilarious, accelerating marital climax that a well-staged performance can offer, but the combination of fine singing and nearly believable acting was not a bad substitute. The outcome from the collapse of earlier assumptions about human behaviour is often left obscure; though I feel that an enigmatic outcome makes better dramatic, psychological sense, here the return to the original pairing was clear (perhaps it would be more acceptable in the provinces).

This splendid, entertaining, Wanderlust Opera enterprise is a serious attempt to find a way to bring opera to wider audiences. Georgia Jamieson Emms and her co-conspirators are to be congratulated on their courage and success which, given some financial support, has the potential to relieve operatic starvation in parts of the country.

The plan is for this performance to become fully staged under director Jacqui Coats and to travel next year to Wanganui, the Kapiti Coast, New Plymouth and Carterton. What is clearly needed is a change of attitude by Creative New Zealand which has a wretched history over many decades of rejecting applications for assistance by admirable, small opera groups.

 

NZSM Students’ operatic double bill moves and delights

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music presents:
PURCELL – Dido and Aeneas
RAVEL – L’Enfant et les Sortilèges

Students and Staff of Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music,
Victoria University of Wellington

Casts and supporting musicians

PURCELL – Dido and Aeneas
Dido – Alicia Cadwgan / Aeneas – Declan Cudd / Belinda – Ester Leefe
Handmaidens – Hannah Jones/Rebecca Howie / Sorceress – Olivia Marshall
Spirit – Luana Howard / Witches – Shayna Tweed / Elyse Hemara
Sailor – Luka Venter / Covers – Olivia Sheat/Griffin Nicholl

Conductor: Donald Maurice

RAVEL – L’Enfant et les Sortileges
The child (Katherine McIndoe) – Cover (Pasquale Orchard)
The mother (Luana Howard) / The sofa, The cat (Daniel Sun)
The armchair, The shepherd (Emma Carpenter)
The clock (Luka Venter) / The teapot, The little old man (Declan Cudd)
The fire (Hannah Jones) / The Chinese cup, The shepherdess (Olivia Marshall)
The princess (Olivia Sheat) / The tree (Joseph Hadow) / The dragonfly (Olivia Marshall) The nightingale (Esther Leefe) / The bat (Shayna Tweed)
The squirrel (Rebecca Howie) / The frog (Griffin Nicol) / The owl (Elsa Hemara)
The footstool (Bethany Miller) / Cover (Julian Chu-Tan)

Conductor: Kenneth Young

Chorus: Julian Chu-Tan, Nicole Davey, Alexandra Gandionco, Sophia Gwynne-Robson, Joseph Haddow, Elizabeth Harré, Sally Haywood, Canada Hickey, Emma Cronshaw Hunt, William King, Eleanor McGechie, Bethany Miller, Griffin Nichol, Garth Norman, Pasquale Orchard, Nino Raphael, Karishma Thanawala

Musicians from Te Kōkī NZSM and guest players from the NZSO

Director: Frances Moore / Design: Alexandra Guillot / Talya Pilcher (lighting)

Memorial Theatre, Victoria University, Wellington

Thursday, 13th August, 2015

One has come to expect a high standard of performance, interpretation and artistic creativity from students at Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music, based on the success of some of their recent activities. This latest production was, in effect, “double the pleasure”, as it  brought to the stage two works so utterly different as to turn our sensibilities on their heads, yet capture our sympathies as strongly in each case.

Beginning the programme was Henry Purcell’s most well-known work for the stage, Dido and Aeneas – a story featuring a whirlwind romance which ends in despair and death, one whose description sounds like verismo opera! Rather than seek to reinforce the “grim reality’ scenario with a companion-piece like, say, Puccini’s Il Tabarro, the School most enterprisingly went instead for Maurice Ravel and his setting of Colette’s whimsical tale-with-a-moral L’Enfant et les Sortilèges.

Each of the works had its own particular set of qualities and disciplines, making the choice of the two a happy one from both the performers’ and the audience’s point of view. Conductor and orchestral players were different but many of the singers appeared in both productions. Unlike Purcell’s work, which sported more-or-less full-blooded operatic characters, Ravel’s featured a single leading singer in tandem with a kind of “parade” of colourful characters, personifications of both animals and normally “inanimate” objects come to life.

From this point alone it could be gleaned that the experience for all of us across the two halves of the evening was different and wide-ranging on many counts, but for this listener at least, extremely satisfying. There were one or two moments which lacked sweetness and grace, mostly in the Purcell work, where at the Overture’s beginning the players’ determinedly vibrato-less tones were straightaway laid bare, and took time to generate warmth and ease. As well, there was a slight stage hiatus during Aeneas’s deer-hunt, later in the piece, those on stage seemingly “stranded” by the action – or rather, its disappearance – for a few moments.

Otherwise, the presentation throughout both works flowed hand-in-glove with the music, a state of things by no means a “given” in contemporary opera production, but one here fruitfully and organically upheld throughout. Director Frances Moore mentioned in a programme foreword the capacity of both operas to go beyond a naturalistic storytelling setting, and this was beautifully achieved by simple means – powerful, direct staging, ramps and platforms made in an instant into castle ramparts, assembly halls, forest glades, witches’ dens, child’s nurseries and scented gardens. Costumes, props and lighting also played their part in evoking these wide-ranging scenarios created by the stories and the music.

I thought the “girls’ school” origins of Purcell’s work nicely delineated by the production’s directness – simple, striking modern-day costumes of white, two handmaidens to the Queen “filled to the brim with girlish glee” in their movements and interactions , and Dido herself spectacularly clad in red, regal and dignified as befitted a monarch. In the best sense a student-ish enthusiasm informed the work of those on stage, exemplified not only by the singing but by lovely touches such as the aforementioned horseplay between the Queen’s handmaidens, and the endearing goofiness of one of the witches during the “coven” scenes. It all enhanced the presentation’s theatricality, both liberating and ensnaring our sensibilities and interest, and putting them all the more deeply at the service of the story.

Properly dominating the stage was the Dido of Alicia Cadwgan – right from her first, heartfelt protestations, her voice resonated with queenly sorrow, her character poised precariously between imperiousness and vulnerability. With both voice and “presence” she was able to bring out all of the character’s greatness of heart and implacable sense of truth unto herself, making her eventual betrayal by her suitor Aeneas the death-blow to her own existence. Her delivery of “Your Councel all is urged in vain” here threw Aeneas’s irresponsible protestations into boldly-exposed relief, making us truly believe that death, for her, was the only course, “the only refuge for the wretched left”. It was, for me, a beautifully-wrought portrayal, in every way.

No other character in the opera matches that of Dido’s in depth or breadth of utterance – but her serving-maid, Belinda, played by Esther Leefe, and the two handmaidens, Hannah Jones and Rebecca Howie, respectively, sang and acted with both spirit and sensitivity, the duet “Fear no danger to ensue” making a lovely sound, as well as amends for an earlier, slightly out-of-kilter “The greatest blessing Fate can give”. And Esther Leefe’s “Pursue thy Conquest, Love” made an excited, and not inappropriately breathless an impression, as Belinda urged her Queen towards her wooer, the Trojan hero, Aeneas.

Declan Cudd as Aeneas, the all-conquering hero, cut a very dapper figure in his dress coat and scarf, ready to charm the uncertain Dido with honeyed words. He sang accurately, if somewhat drily – one suspects his voice has yet to properly “bloom”, though having to be, as the role decrees, more politician than lover in utterance didn’t help him generate very much romantic feeling. It’s certainly not the most grateful of characters to play, and in the Second Act he’s reduced to “talking up” his pursuit and shooting of a deer to make the venture sound more heroic, though he made the most of the declamation “Yours be the blame, O Gods”, after being sent a bogus message, allegedly from Jove, to sail for Rome immediately, thus abandoning his recently-wooed Queen.

I liked the use of the theatre’s aisles to throw open the vistas of the hunting throughout the forest’s glades, and enjoyed the amusing, slightly tongue-in-cheek representations of Aeneas’s quarry, in stark contrast to the “Monster’s Head” which the hero makes a meal of describing. But even more fun with the space’s entrances and exits was had by the Witches who introduce the Second Act, the “Wayward Sisters” with their “dismal Ravens Crying”. Olivia Marshall made a gleefully nasty impression as the Sorceress, striking in appearance while bent upon evil, aided and abetted by a “Mutt-and-Jeff” pair of cohorts (Shayna Tweed and Elyse Hemara), one goofy, the other sharp and impatient, but each in their different ways nasty pieces of work. Together with the chorus assuming “coven camp-followers” roles, the grisly wraiths danced and cavorted throughout their ensembles, limbo-rocking beneath a piece of “infernal cloth” during “But ere we this perform”, and then using both stage and aisles for the wonderful echo effects throughout “In our deep-Vaulted” cell”, the reddish lighting backdrop appropriately suggesting the context of infernal forces.

Much was made of the contrast between the bustle and contented confusion of “Haste, haste to town” at the onset of rain, with the chorus sporting umbrellas and making a wonderful job of the pre-Handelian-like ensemble, immediately before the visiting of Aeneas by the spirit of Mercury. Both Luana Howard as the Spirit and Declan Cudd sang steadily and pointedly throughout, and managed to convey the essence of the exchange, involving Aeneas’s confusion and uncertainty, which resulted in his downfall. His plight and betrayal of Dido had already been rather cruelly lampooned in anticipation by the Sailor’s song (lustily delivered by Luka Venter), calling his shipmates to take their leave of their “nymphs” on the shore, promising them they will return though never intending to do so.

It remained for Aeneas to be sent packing by Dido amid all of his bluster, and for the latter to deliver perhaps baroque opera’s most famous farewell aria, “When I am laid in earth”. Again, Alicia Cadwgan was equal to the task, “pinging” her high notes thrillingly (the first a little more comfortably than the second, though, dramatically, the slight faltering on the later ascent wasn’t inappropriate!) and imbuing her more meditative lines with wonderful pathos and finality. By this time the orchestral playing had long “found” its voice, and the aria and final chorus was most sensitively and eloquently accompanied by the strings. Altogether an excellent performance of a great and difficult work, with the singing-lines everywhere exposed and merciless (a case of “only the very skilled need try this music”) – and these musicians brought enough skill and sensitivity to the task, working fruitfully with conductor Donald Maurice to produce a memorable result.

After this was a case of “vive la difference!”, even if Ravel’s delightful adaptation of Colette’s cautionary tale L’Enfant et les Sortilèges seemed, next to Purcell’s tragic masterpiece, more of a divertissement than usual. Of pleasure, however, there was no less, as the performers (this time with a different conductor, Ken Young, and a new set of instrumentalists) transformed the performing-spaces into a child’s world of wonderment, accompanied by those characteristically magical sonorities we associate with the composer of Ma Mere L’Oye and Daphnis et Chloe. All credit to director Frances Moore and designers Alexandra Guillot and Talya Pilcher for effecting such a convincing contrast between two very different kinds of realities.

Central to this child’s world is the character of THE child itself, the role here so very wholeheartedly acted and sung by Katherine McIndoe, and nowhere more touchingly than during those moments of “growth towards empathy” on the character’s part. After being scolded by its mother and rejected by its “first love”, the storybook heroine, the child seeks solace at being in the garden, but is traumatized by the fruits of previous misdeeds, which caused the tree’s “wounds” and the dragonfly’s loss of its mate, caught by the thoughtless miscreant and pinned to the wall. In the midst of the resulting melee of acrimony, the child finds itself almost involuntarily bandaging the wounded paw of a baby squirrel, an act which brings about its eventual rehabilitation.

From the willfulness of the opening exchanges with “Mama”, through the despoliation and subsequent recriminatory interaction with the objects in her world to her remorse and eventual rehabilitation, Katherine McIndoe fully engaged our imaginations, and, towards the end, our sympathies. She was supported by a series of brilliant character portrayals whose range and detailing provided constant and “rolling” entertainment on the way to bringing about the story’s “uncovering of the self” at the heart of the matter – in this case, the underlying human desire for love.

It would be unfair to single out individual performances of these roles, as, despite the “one-after-the-other” aspect of the interactions, the opera SEEMS an “ensemble piece”, due to the production’s pace and cumulative tensions, which drew the characters unswervingly together for the final denouement. Suffice to say that the characterisations brought the objects and animals readily to life, either with great tenderness and pathos or with plenty of bubbling, roaring energy. Throughout they were supported by conductor and orchestra with alert, on-the-spot instrumental detailings, augmented at certain points with great washes of ensemble sound – all told, a splendid achievement from all concerned.

With productions such as these to the School’s credit, one hopes for further operatic delights in the not-too-distant future – as well as invaluable performing experience for the students (of a kind our home-grown singers don’t get as readily as they might in certain quarters), these efforts, always eagerly awaited, bring to our local operatic scene some much-welcomed enterprise, in the form of repertoire that we wouldn’t otherwise get to see. More power to Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music!