Category: Reviews – Opera and Ballet

NZ Opera presents:
Giuseppe Verdi’s LA TRAVIATA

Cast: Lorina Gore (Violetta) / Samuel Sakker (Alfredo Germont)
David Stephenson (Giorgio Germont) / Rachelle Pike (Flora)
Jarred Holt (Baron Douphol) / Andrew Grenon (Gastone)
Kieran Rayner (Marchese) / Wendy Doyle (Annina)

Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus (director – Michael Vinten)
Orchestra Wellington
Conductor: Emmanuel Joel-Hornak

Director: Kate Cherry
Assistant Director: Jacqueline Coats
Designer: Christine Smith
Lighting: Matt Scott
Choreography: Jesse Wikiriwhi

St.James’ Theatre, Wellington

Friday 11th July 2014

(subsequent performances 13th, 15th, 17th, 19th July)

Call it what you will – an operatic masterpiece, a tried-and-trusted favorite, or a sure-fire tear-jerker – La Traviata again exerted its considerable emotional and theatrical “pull”, this time on the hearts and minds of an appreciative audience at the St James’ Theatre on Friday evening.

This was opening night of the production’s Wellington season, the Opera Company having first taken the show to Auckland a few weeks’ previously, to a good deal of acclaim. From the moment the curtain rose during Orchestra Wellington’s playing of the properly frail and tremulously-sounded Prelude, one’s attentions were properly caught and held fast. And this was due to a production whose direct and coherent accord between sounds and imagery was brilliantly established at the outset and never seriously faltered throughout the evening.

One didn’t realize until the final act the full significance of the brief opening vignette and its setting, played out during the Prelude. Violetta, the opera’s heroine, clothed in ghostly sick-bed-like garments, rose from either sleep or death and confronted the image of herself, resplendent in gorgeous red, dressed for a party and waiting for her guests – the figures were separated by the parameters of a giant glass cube, one which served throughout both to give a theatrical kind of “shape” to the action, and to represent the boundaries confining the characters in the drama.

Here the wraith-like Violetta, next to a fallen chandelier lying at an awkward angle on the floor, was outside the cube watching herself through the glass as the beautiful courtesan she once was, the “fallen chandelier”, one supposes, representing her spent radiance, a kind of glory come to grief, and a contrast with the cube’s suggestion of a beauty in a gilded cage.

The Prelude having sounded its last few soft notes, the ghostly Violetta departed, the chandelier was slowly lifted, and the cube revolved around to its open side – the party could now begin! Throughout the evening the production demonstrated a similar sharply-etched focus on the story’s essentials which allowed the music and the text to suggest to the observer whatever elements of time and place seemed most appropriate.

For instance, I thought the cube a brilliantly-employed structure in this respect, facilitating the different “character” of each of the acts, while binding the overall story together with certain themes suggested by its physical appearance. Thanks to expertly-modulated lighting, the structure’s sparkling glitter, both in a reflective and transparent sense, at once glamourized and laid bare the shallowness of the social interactions of the First and Second Acts which defined Violetta’s world as a courtesan, while those same transparencies underlined the vulnerability of her and her lover Alfredo’s situation, their desire to start a life anew together thwarted by pressures exerted by their all-too-publicly-proclaimed union.

So, while Act One and the second scene of Act Two were all glitter and sparkle, their counterparts expressed vastly different scenarios – the opening scene of Act Two evoked a house in the country, the cube beautifully allowing a suffusion of light throughout Violetta’s and Alfredo’s living-space, via glowing backdrops of panels featuring flower patterns saturated with bright, warm orange hues. As the scene proceeded, and Violetta’s happiness was gradually turned to despair and grief the backdrop colours changed, orange fading and giving way to blue – so simple and yet so affecting!

As for Act Three, we were suddenly presented with that opening, Prelude-accompanied vignette once again, with Violetta (the real Violetta, this time, ill, and close to death) in her ghostly, sick-bed garments lying next to the fallen chandelier, this time one of several of varying sizes, the surrounding hues having no warmth, no comfort. The cube, of course conveyed the privacy of a bedroom, but also the sense of something skeletal, stripped of flesh, bare and unremitting. What radiance occasionally flickered did so coldly and mercilessly – the sense conveyed by the scene was of a place of departure (“Alone, from this world…..”).

All of this wonderful work by the “creative team” (sorry – an awful phrase) deserved to be matched by stellar musical and theatrical performances from the performers both on stage and in the orchestra pit – and by and large the singers and musicians delivered the goods. In fact, musically, I thought this Traviata very satisfyingly of a piece, with the cast, conductor and orchestra players exhibiting a kind of rapport that never lost its “charge”, and in places positively radiated across the footlights and into the auditorium. One constantly sensed a kind of fusion among singers and instrumentalists tingling along the whole spectrum of musical impulse.

This was no better exemplified than by episodes like the frisson of heartless gaiety generated by the chorus of party-goers’ farewell to Violetta in the First Act, by the superbly-realised clarinet solo accompanying Violetta’s letter-writing in Act Two, and then by Violetta’s affecting declaration to Alfredo of her love for him – soprano and orchestra at full stretch, here – at the end of that scene. Then in the following scene came Alfredo’s and Violetta’s very different but equally gut-wrenching condemnations and protestations, strongly supported by supporting voices and orchestra, and in the final scene, the chilling depth of the death-tolling basses and baleful brass when Violetta gives Alfredo her portrait as a gesture of farewell at the work’s end.

So – what about those singers, then? Again, I thought they were musically very satisfying – Lorina Gore as Violetta I fell for in almost every way, singing and acting, as she seemed to do, with every fibre of her being charged with impulsiveness and commitment. Hers were high notes which poured out emotion – not just beautiful noise – and together with her Alfredo, tenor Samuel Sakker, she brought out the music’s great tenderness as well as its raw feeling. That was what I enjoyed most about hers and Sakker’s interaction – a sensitivity when duetting, almost an innocence of interaction (more of which, shortly).

I must mention Gore’s exciting high E-flat at the end of “Semper libre”, one not sanctioned by the composer, but not inappropriate, given Violetta’s euphoria in response to Alfredo’s attentions. It’s a note that singers tend not to try, mostly wisely (in my favourite non-Callas recording of the work, conducted by Carlos Kleiber, the gorgeous Roumanian soprano Ileana Cortrubas makes a brave if squally attempt at the ascent in an otherwise beautiful performance; though I must point out that Callas herself made several all-out, heart-in-mouth launches into the vocal stratosphere at this point in her various recordings, always effective, if not note-perfect!)….in Gore’s case I thought it again not the loveliest sound but an intensely musical, intense and dramatic one, a risk well taken!

I enjoyed Samuel Sakker’s Alfredo increasingly as the evening went on – I thought his singing accurate and musical to begin with, but not especially lovely – however, he either grew on my sensibilities or his tone warmed and sweetened as the story and character developed. He certainly had sufficient vocal heft for the role, but I was especially charmed by the tenderness of much of his duetting with his Violetta – especially touching were some of those First-Act exchanges, the sweetness and slight awkwardness of the boy-meets-girl scenario nicely-caught.

Unfortunately, that was where it all seemed to stay all through the evening as regards any hint of sexual chemistry between Violetta and Alfredo – their “clinches” in the succeeding acts were, to put it mildly, too chaste by a country mile, their body language conveying to each other (and to me) little of their singing’s animal passion or any hint of mingled physical intensity. Perhaps such reserve ran in the family in Alfredo’s case, as his father, Giorgio Germont, played by David Stephenson, came across as an intense and strongly focused, upright character, but ultimately something of a dry old stick – his physical response to Gore’s heartfelt “Embrace me as if I was your daughter” was out of its time, regulation PC to a fault. To be entirely fair, the gesture was of a piece with the character’s manner, business-like and unsentimental, even if Verdi’s music for Germont père suggests layers of warm feeling left physically undisturbed by Stephenson’s accurately-sung, but dry-voiced and rather detached stage portrayal.

Without wishing productions to indulge in what seems a current penchant for excessive bodice-ripping evidenced in some recent opera DVDs I’ve seen, I do feel that Traviata is a work in which one can’t underplay a certain level of romantic passion on the stage – in this case, as the saying goes, it surely comes with the territory. Lest I be accused of making too much of this, I quote a contemporary critic of the work who wrote, “The love depicted by Verdi is voluptuous and sensual, totally lacking in that angelic purity found in Bellini’s music….” I would think that says it all, really…..a certain abandonment in the lovers’ passion, a degree of rawness in their mutual desperation as the tragedy takes hold – neither state was, for me, given sufficient expression by the characters.

However, such was the musical strength of this production, the physical coyness of certain of these stage interactions didn’t fatally spoil our delight – the chorus work, by comparison, had terrific gusto in almost everything they did, apart from one or two “wandering strays” at a couple of points – especially praiseworthy were, I thought the sequences during the second party scene where firstly the women (as gypsies) and then the men (as matadors) of the chorus had different character dances to perform while singing, both of which came off splendidly, with touches of real panache! But the more conventional opening party scene also had plenty of musical bite and energy, the groups swirling around and about most satisfyingly while singing of their life of pleasure, and making their vapid progress from party to party.

Underpinning all of the musical trajectories from the pit was Orchestra Wellington, responding to conductor Emmanuel Joel-Hornak with, by turns, sensitivity, whole-heartedness and vigour. I’ve mentioned some of the most telling instrumental touches, but must pay tribute to maestro Joel-Hornak’s pacing of the work and to his flexible and sensitive direction of his singers during the music’s many tenderly heartfelt moments – his was the kind of direction that always seemed to give the music the time it needed and the musicians sufficient space to realize the same.

A friend who’s a bit of a “Traviata-buff” came with me to the performance – “A marvellous card-game scene! – I haven’t seen or heard better!” he exclaimed, afterwards. “But those two (Violetta and Alfredo) didn’t seem to know one another terribly well!” We hadn’t actually conferred, being too busy with ice-creams and friends at half-time – but he obviously felt the same way as I did. It would be interesting to learn what other people felt – like beauty, it’s all in the eye of the beholder. But I’m sure the strength and conviction of the music-making would have, for most people by far, enabled this production to carry the day, with great credit to all concerned.

Opera in a Days Bay Garden presents:

L’Oca del Cairo – Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (edited by Michael Vinten)

English libretto by Michael Vinten

Producer: Rhona Fraser

Director: Sara Brodie

Cast: Roger Wilson (Don Pippo)

Rhona Fraser (Donna Pantea, his estranged wife)

Barbara Graham (Celidora, their daughter, betrothed to Biondello)

Christie Cook (Lavina, betrothed to Calandrino)

Imogen Thirlwall (Auretta, maidservant and sweetheart of Chichibio)

Christian Thurston (Chichibio, manservant and sweetheart of Anetta)

Andrew Grenon (Calandrino, betrothed to Lavina)

Oliver Sewell (Biondello, betrothed to Celidora)

John Bremford (Count Lionetto, friend to Don Pippo – non-singing part)

Chorus: Clarissa Dunn / Sheridan Williams / William McElwee / Howard McGuire

Orchestra of Opera in a Days Bay Garden: Leader – Anne Loeser / Continuo – Richard Mapp

Conductor: Michael Vinten

Canna House, Days Bay, Wellington

Sunday 8th December, 2013

Now here’s a diverting sidelight involving Mozart as an opera composer, one that will come as a complete surprise to some people, as it did to me. Thanks to the enterprise, vision, industry and sheer tenacity of conductor (and scholar and musicologist) Michael Vinten, light has been shed on some of the esteemed Wolfgang’s lesser-known operatic workings, to whit at least two unfinished operatic projects and certain other fragments from the master’s compositional workshop.

Mozart’s unfinished opera L’oca del Cairo (The Goose of Cairo) which he began in July 1783, is duly included in the Köchel Catalogue of the composer’s works as K.422. Shortly afterwards, in that same year, another operatic project was begun by the composer, one also destined to remain unfinished. This was Lo sposo deluso (The Deluded Bridegroom) catalogued as K.430. Mozart abandoned both for a number of reasons, the most likely scenario being that (a) he was displeased with the libretto of each work, and (b) he jumped at the chance when it came, to work instead with the poet Lorenzo da Ponte, with whom he then produced one of the greatest of all operas “Le Nozze di Figaro” (The Marriage of Figaro).

Given that Mozart actually expressed some satisfaction with the music he had written for “The Goose” (as opposed to his dissatisfaction with the libretto), it seemed a waste not to have the music re-employed in some shape or form. And, as there was another unfinished work by the composer in the same neck of the operatic woods, it meant that there was potentially a lot of good material waiting for a kind of rehabilitation.

Several attempts at reconstruction of the extant music from one or both works have already been made over the years, the first as long ago as 1867 in Paris. Of these, Michael Vinten’s seems to have gone the furthest towards creating a new work from what remains of the two unfinished operas plus various other Mozartean fragments from different sources written by the composer at around the same time. By comparison, a relatively recent (2002) British staging called “The Jewel Box” used the fragments of music but not the plots of the abandoned works.

To list all of the reconstructions and reinventions made by Vinten would turn this review into some kind of opera workshop inventory, albeit an impressive one. What he has done, in short, is to take the largely finished seven numbers from Act One of L’oca del Cairo, along with the five (mostly sketched-out) numbers from Lo sposo deluso (which however, do include a completed Overture, and one other finished item), and augment these with other pieces Mozart wrote for various projects at around the same time,  ending up with sufficient musical material for a newly-reconstituted work. As Vinten explains, the chosen time-frame gives the music a certain stylistic unity; and this was something which certainly fell gratefully upon the ear throughout the performance I was fortunate enough to hear.

When one discovers that, in Michael Vinten’s words, “of the 33 pieces used in the (reconstructed) opera, only 6 are totally completed by Mozart”, the full extent of these musical undertakings alone becomes apparent as well as a matter for great astonishment. But Vinten’s work didn’t stop there, as there were vexing questions posed by the two sets of libretti from the source-works, which also had to be addressed. This involved rewriting parts of the L’oca libretto so that it “fitted in” with aspects of the plot of Lo sposo. Throughout Vinten took pains to observe the conventions of the “known” Mozart operas, and paid special attention to social hierarchies of the kind found in other works by the composer.

As both Italian and a kind of “Viennese” dialect were used by the original librettists, Vinten decided to set the reconstruction in English, thus helping to unifying the modern conception – he also rewrote the recitatives, apart from one passage which appeared to have been written by Mozart himself. Apart from one or two modern colloquialisms which seemed somewhat cruder than Mozart might have allowed in public, given that, in private, he was excessively fond of crude scatological jokes and expressions (here, the word “bastard” seemed a bit excessive to me, as did the expression “giving the finger”) it mostly sounded to me like a thoroughly idiomatic opera buffa ought. All of of this seemed like the work of someone who had fully entered into the composer’s creative world, to the point where I’m certain it would have been the furthest thing from listeners’ minds during the performance to think “some of this is not Mozart’s work”.

So, how did it all come across at Canna House, Days Bay, this wondrous opera-rescue undertaking? Judging by the delight expressed in conversations I overheard both at the interval and afterwards, extremely well, indeed. Despite the weather shaking out its skirts in the wind occasionally, whipping away the occasional piece of stage-business paper, and at one point during the First Act showering scattered rain down onto singers, players and audience, causing a stoppage and a realignment of orchestral forces under shelter, there were no apparent major crises or glitches. A wonderful sense of ensemble between all participants prevailed throughout, one which, at this particular venue, readily spreads into and through the audience – and, of course, as seems to be customary, the occasional audience member is unexpectedly drawn into the action, to the delight (and relief) of the surrounding onlookers.

At Canna House, depending upon the particular production’s configuration, one can find oneself seated either down on the terraced lawn looking upwards at the higher terraces in front of the house, or in a vice-versa position, looking down onto the lower lawn. Here it was the former; and I had a seat which placed me handily to both stage action and the orchestra, quite a way over on my right. A couple of people I spoke to later said they were actually grateful for the rain, because it meant that the orchestra was reconvened for the restart in the middle of the stage action beneath the house veranda, and could be heard more clearly by those sitting on the left in the audience.

Director Sara Brodie’s placement of the opera’s action wasn’t at too specific a point of time, though the costumes had a reasonably “twentieth-century” feel about them, with accoutrements such as wind-up gramophones in attendance. I thought Act One in particular was splendidly staged, in fact, with properly comic comings-and-goings from principals and chorus members alike, as part of a “fluidity of irruption” that took its cues from the stream of wonderful music left by the composer and given new life by Michael Vinten. We particularly enjoyed detailings such as the desperate tennis ball-servings undertaken from the top of a tall tower by soprano Barbara Graham in the role of the unfortunate Celidora, daughter of the villain of the piece, the dastardly Don Pippo.

Though her tennis serves weren’t quite of the consistency of Serena Williams’, Barbara Graham made amends with a beautifully-characterised and excellently-sung portrayal of a wronged young woman, about to be forced by her father to forego her young lover and marry a rich elderly Count. Also held prisoner in the tower is the beautiful Lavina, sung by Christie Cook whom Don Pippo (bass Roger Wilson making the most of his villainous theatrical capacities!) hopes to marry. I liked Christie Cook’s warmly-wrought character and richly-produced tones, though she seemed over-taxed by some of the vocal runs, which didn’t sound altogether comfortable in places.

Roger Wilson’s splendid vocal focus served his character Don Pippo’s delusions of libido-grandeur to a tee, and, together with the two young women, made the most of the absurdities of the Second Act’s “dungeon scene trio”. At times there was scarcely enough room to turn around on the narrow terraces, let alone for the women to tie the unfortunate (and suddenly incapacitated) Don up with ribbon, with the help of the servant Chichibio (it can be gleaned from this that the plot is much too complex and absurd to be detailed). Act Two did have what seemed to me to be one or two congestion-like points in this respect, where the action needed I think to be more clearly focused – perhaps galvanized by great wonderment and astonishment at the Goose’s arrival, for example – before being properly “bumped on” for continuity’s sake.

All the characterizations undertaken by the singers were of a similarly engaging quality of focus and purpose. As the maidservant Auretta, Imogen Thirlwall was an absolute delight, voice production and stage movement so spontaneously “theatrical” in overall impulse one felt in complete and more-or-less instant accord with the character. Her worldly, Despina-like attitudes had a beautifully natural contrivance, much to the simultaneously-expressed joy and sorrow of her “often-behind-the-eight-ball” paramour, Chichibo, played with an engaging mix of wonderment and determination by Christian Thurston, holding on through thick and thin to the idea that steadfastness will come to be rewarded with love.

The two other young couples also had interesting differentiations, alluded to by Michael Vinten, what he called the mezzo carattere couple (Lavina and Calandrino) making a kind of foil for the seria twosome (Celidora and Biondello). According to Vinten this is what Mozart asked for from his librettist but didn’t get, at least to the extent that he wanted. Both Christie Cook as Lavina and Andrew Grenon as Calandrino had enough theatrical “presence” to establish strongly-etched, somewhat mock-serious characters, each thereby making up for a certain lack of vocal agility (Lavina) and weight of tone (Calandrino).

From both Barbara Graham (Celidora) and Oliver Sewell (Biondello) came show-stopping moments of vocal splendor – Celidora’s wonderful top-of-the-tower-captive aria, beautifully supported by a melting oboe solo and resplendent strings, was spectacularly delivered by Barbara Graham, leading then into some swinging duetting with Christie Cook’s Lavina, complete with phonograph-inspired flapper-dance movements. Some even more beautiful duetting from these two came at the beginning of the Act Two “dungeon” scene, the music almost Cosi-like in its loveliness, in places.

As for Oliver Sewell’s strenuously heroic Biondello, it was engaging boys-to-the-rescue stuff right from the start, complete with portable catapult and armies of plastic toy soldiers, all quite irresistible! And at the beginning of the Second Act he poured out his heart to the audience at his love-lorn plight before personalizing the plea with a hapless female audience member in the front row, who, however, gave as warm a response to his predicament as the occasion demanded!

It fell to the character of Biondello to assume the disguise of the eponymous Goose later in the act, a process initiated by none other than the estranged and supposedly banished wife of Don Pippo, the still-redoubtable Donna Pantea. Making her first appearance towards the end of the first Act, Rhona Fraser looked formidably resplendent in her pilot’s uniform, and bestrode the stage like an avenging angel, with a view to rescuing her daughter, Celidora, from her own father’s machinations. I thought the cast and energy of her recitative and aria uncannily anticipated something of the character of Leonore in Fidelio, such was the strength of her resolve and the focus of her singing.

Only at the point of reappearance of Donna Pantea disguised as the “Egyptian Dancer” and bringing with her the so-called “Goose” did I feel the staging lose something of what ought to have been its full dramatic punch, however parodic and ridiculous the sequence might have appeared. As I’ve already mooted in this review, ought the goose to have been made more of an object of mock wonderment and ritualized stupefaction on the part of those “in the know”, as much as with the hapless Don Pippo? Carefully though Michael Vinten crafted the sequences, I thought some kind of increased intensification in one or two places would drive the action forward where it seemed to sag ever so slightly, something that wasn’t ever apparent during the first Act.

With so much high-class and high-spirited fun already to be had from the proceedings, it seems churlish to criticize – it’s a small point. I must, before closing, mention the sterling efforts of the 4-part chorus, veritable jacks-of-all-trades in the hurly-burly of the action, the ebb and flow of their presence nicely directed by Sara Brodie. Steadfast, too, were the efforts of the off-stage/on-stage orchestra, constantly fulfilling Michael Vinten’s requirements for energized rhythms and singing lines, and supporting the singers to the hilt. Though ensemble wasn’t spit-and-polish perfect at all times, singers, conductor and players had a plasticity to their rhythms and phrasings that meant that things never came seriously adrift.

Very great credit to producer Rhona Fraser and director Sara Brodie, and all others concerned with bringing to fruition Michael Vinten’s (and something of Mozart’s) visions of musical and theatrical delight for our great pleasure.

New Zealand Opera presents:
Richard Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman”

Cast: Jason Howard (The Dutchman)
Paul Whelan (Daland, a Sea-Captain)
Orla Boylan (Senta, Daland’s daughter)
Peter Auty (Erik, a hunter)
Shaun Dixon (Steersman)
Wendy Doyle (Mary)

Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus
Chorusmaster: Michael Vinten

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Wyn Davies

Director: Matthew Lutton
Assistant Director: Andrew McKenzie
Designer: Zoë Atkinson
Lighting: Jon Buswell

St.James Theatre, Wellington

Saturday 14th September 2013

Aidan Lang, New Zealand Opera’s General Director, put it well in his welcoming foreword to the programme for this production – it’s been much longer than the mandatory seven years since the Flying Dutchman last “came ashore” here in New Zealand in search of redemption.

In fact, it’s been thrice that number of years since the 1992 Auckland Opera production which featured none other than Sir Donald McIntyre in the title role, and was conducted by a fellow-New Zealander with an international career in opera, John Matheson.

By all accounts that was a creditable production, an artistic, if not a financial success. New Zealand Opera would have been hoping to emulate that occasion’s artistic achievements, while having the advantage of working in partnership with Opera Queensland to assist the present undertaking’s considerable cost outlay.

Photographs of the 1992 production suggest that the conventionalities of the story – the sea, the ships, sailors, coastal townspeople – were pretty well in evidence. However, twenty-one years later, the Dutchman returned to an almost complete contrast of scenario –  and both the elements and the means of traversing them were here abstracted to the point of alienation. On the stage of the St.James Theatre, not a drop of seawater nor flurry of salt spray  actually registered – all of the oceanic turmoil was confined to the the orchestra pit from whence it welled up fiercely and splendidly.

The high-and-dry cell-like enclosure of the Norwegian sailors’ shelter at the very beginning suggested more a state-of-mind-siege than a ship, or even a touch of post-nuclear-strike refuge in appearance and human use. As for the Dutchman’s ghostly vessel, it hove to simply as an oncoming, imposing black wall from which mysteriously emerged the legendary figure, bearing more of a sinister Nosferatu-cum-Twilight-novels aspect than that of a tragic, romantic sea-faring character.

Underlining this was the figure’s use of what appeared to be a form of supernatural power over the sailors, to the point of causing one of them to cough up blood. Earlier, during the Steersman’s homesick love-song, just before the arrival of the Dutchman’s ship, an alluring naked woman eerily materialised among the Norwegian crew, disappearing as mysteriously as she appeared – a rather more “story-wise” event, I thought, than the gratuitously haemorrhaging sailor.

But the production’s application of these detailings throughout had a similar in-and-out-of-focus aspect, some telling touches rubbing shoulders with what seemed a “trying-too-hard” spirit born of wanting to be innovative for its own sake. I did like how the Norwegian sailors  sudden “found” treasures in their own pockets as part of the bounty promised by the Dutchman in return for some hospitality – it was a good way of dealing with what’s always seemed to me a rather gauche, tinsel-like “baubles, bangles and beads” transaction, here given a much more powerful, less pantomime character.

Act Two began with the famous “Spinning Chorus”, here sublimated into a kind of erotic wish-fulfilment ritual on the part of the women who assembled, polished and partly dressed a number of bare male mannekins – maybe psychologically apposite but visually incongruous, and somewhat at odds with the “spinning” music. Interestingly, the picture of the Dutchman was an ample piece of unframed canvas pop-art rather than an image presented to suggest any great antiquity. Although this was something Senta could literally “wrap herself up in” while singing the well-known “Ballad”, the image, in this medium, had an almost clip-art, “throw-away” quality, hardly designed to engender any sense of legend or mythology.

I thought the Ballad itself, by way of compensation, might have been theatrically framed by some kind of ambient intensification, lighting or staging depicting the storms and emotions described by Senta’s narrative. But no – music plus imagination triumphed, as there were no externals bringing about any kind of startling “picture come to life” metamorphosis when the Dutchman in person entered the room.

Blood figured yet again in the exchanges that followed – blood from the inside of the Dutchman’s coat which Senta had dreamily picked up and put on, then relinquished, leaving her bare arms almost sacrificially smeared – a tangible warning, perhaps, of the fate accorded to vow-breakers?

Whatever the case, singers, conductor and orchestra drove the music excitingly towards the Act’s conclusion, and straight on into Act Three without a break in the music, though the curtain allowed plenty of music-only space for a scene-change – here were the Norwegian crew’s homecoming revels, and the imminent marriage of the Steersman presumably to the girl whose charms he conjured up in his Act One night-watch song.

First the sailors and then their womenfolk attempted to rouse the sleeping crew of the Dutchman’s ship – their figures to one side, in full view, sitting asleep with bowed heads, as still as death, splendidly resembling pre-Raphaelite spirit-wraiths. I thought the moment of their awakening a gripping and effective piece of theatre, the figures instantly shedding their somewhat androgynous quality and generating real deadly menace, even if the singling-out of the Steersman for some extra “treatment” became a bit schoolboyish in effect.

However, such was the power generated by this scene and its music (off-stage voices sang the Dutch crew’s music while the on-stage wraiths choreographed its demonic character most threateningly), that the sudden unscheduled technical “glitch” which brought about a reassuring announcement of continuance after a down-curtain luftpause actually gave us all a breathing-space with which to prepare for the final scene.

Again it was left to the orchestra to conjure up the oceanic furies as Senta and the Dutchman drove towards their intertwined fates. Senta “summonsed” a chasm in the raked floor with a blow from a chair and ritualistically flung herself into oblivion, followed by the ecstatic Dutchman.  At this point the massive wall representing the ghost-vessel dramatically and spectacularly collapsed towards the audience, making for a wonderfully visceral effect of dissolution.

I’ve begun this review and discussed these points at some length, not because I think production the most important aspect of opera, but because these days a lot of people involved with opera do seem to give it over-riding importance, to the point where putting a new “update” upon any work seems to have become a priority. As comedian Michael Flanders prophetically said regarding a proposed musical setting of the sixteenth century play Ralph Roister Doister, in his and Donald Swann’s comedy revue At the Drop of a Hat all those years ago – “Anything to stop it being done straight!”

I’ve tried to fairly balance what I thought “worked” and what didn’t in this process, though I couldn’t help thinking some violence was done to the opera’s libretto and music by inconsistencies and contradictions between words and music and stage action. For example, removing from right at the beginning any visible trace of the ocean’s presence and direct influence  from the stage, however clever an idea on paper, sapped from the work, I thought, much of its inherent sense of elemental power and human interaction with such forces.

At the beginning of Act Two the chorus of “smart young misses” in the clothing factory called all the shots (and, despite the evocative music, not a spinning-wheel, or even a sewing machine, was within coo-ee!). But then, part-way through Senta’s Ballad a regressive thrall seemed to remarkably grip these bright, worldly-wise young things. I thought their sudden wide-eyed interest in and fascination with the legend at odds with their initial hard-bitten mode and deportment at the outset – perhaps it was more demonic trickery from the Dutchman?

If the stage action and design characteristics had their challenging aspects, far less equivocal was the quality of both individual and group performances. Incongruities of placement and manner apart, the choruses were wholly committed dramatically and superbly full-voiced musically right throughout, reaching a thrilling and incisive level of interaction throughout the opening sequences of Act Three, when the Norwegian sailors and their women attempt to rouse the ghostly, slumbering Dutch crew, to alarming effect.

Though perhaps a tad too youthful of appearance, Paul Whelan sang a rich and satisfying Daland, the Norwegian captain, his manner emphaisising the character’s goodness of heart alongside his eagerness for the chance of wealth in marrying his daughter to the Dutchman. I felt sorry for him having to sing the redundant line, near the beginning, to his Steersman “Am Bord bei euch, wie steht’s?” (How’s everything on board?) – when in this staging he had left his crew for what seemed less than a minute, simply going up a ladder and putting his head out the hatch for a look around!

His Steersman, Tokoroa-born and Auckland-trained Shaun Dixon, made the most of his lovely solo while on watch, his voice strong, focused and romantic,  floating his phrases heroically and mellifluously through the stillness – the singer is this year’s Mina Foley Scholar, and on this showing, a credit to the award. His tones sharply contrasted with those which broke the eerie quiet in the wake of the ghostly ship’s arrival – the tortured, and in places harshly-sounded voice of the Dutchman, Welsh baritone Jason Howard.

This was a Dutchman whose business was tragedy and grim desperation more than romantic heroism. His opening monologue set the tone, his voice accurate and incisive, though in places gravelly and uningratiating. Resembling in appearance more a silent movie villain than a seafaring sea-captain, his brief demonic-like gestures did less for me than his consistently haunted demeanour, and fiercely-focused vocal quality when duetting with Senta – not beautiful sounds but filled with an anguished mix of hope and despair that dramatically carried the day.

His rival for Senta’s love, the poor, infatuated hunter, Erik, was sung by English tenor Peter Auty (remembered for an intensely-portrayed Turridu in NZ Opera’s 2011 Pagliacci), here richly interacting with Senta and  conveying all the frustrated passion of doubt and uncertainty regarding his love for her, singing and acting with great conviction.

The role whose character I thought got little chance to make anything coherent and meaningful from was that of Mary. Normally Senta’s nurse, she was here relegated to the thankless position of superviser of the “smart-set” factory-girls, and whose contribution seemed to centre around an attitude of petulant disapproval of Senta’s obsession with the picture, and not much more. Wendy Doyle did what she could with the character, but she was placed rather too far back onstage for some of her contributions to make their real vocal”point” –  which could account for some of her gesturings towards Senta coming across as a shade over-emphatic.

Which brings me to the heroine, whose voice and demeanour both had a somewhat wild and undisciplined quality, but whose commitment to the role of Senta was never in doubt. Irish soprano Orla Boylan took a no-holds-barred approach, one which I thought gradually came into focus and sharpened as the Ballad ran its course. I thought at the scene’s beginning she was too much the odd-ball, dressed differently to the other women, and distracted in manner and movement to the point of serious disturbance, obviously feeling the oncoming presence of the “pale man” in the picture.

The famous Ballad generated considerable musical excitement, the singer working thrillingly with conductor and orchestra to evoke the Dutchman’s tragic scenario and her own involvement with the legend. The voice wasn’t consistently attractive, spreading when under pressure, but at all times conveying great immediacy and character.  I thought she was a “giver” on stage regarding whomever she interacted with, firstly the anxious and despairing Erik, and then with her ghostly wanderer – in fact her dealings with each would-be “lover” were both whole-heartedly and satisfyingly contrasted, the effect deeply-felt rather than contrived.

Though the impression given by Senta’s plunge into the newly-created abyss  seemed more of an abandonment to the “bowels of the earth” rather than to the depths of the sea, the singer’s unflinching physicality and emotional desperation made the gesture work at the end. Again, it was the orchestra whose efforts under the baton of conductor Wyn Davies created the elemental fury of oceanic context, as they had been doing throughout the evening – if (like Anton Bruckner was supposed to have done on his visit to Bayreuth to hear “Parsifal”) we had shut our eyes throughout the performance, the music alone would have here given us what we needed to become caught up in Wagner’s drama.

Whatever one’s reaction to the provocative stagings and the different, and thought-provoking emphases thus given to the presentation by director Matthew Lutton and designer Zoë Atkinson, one could feel unequivocally that justice was done on this occasion by singers, musicians and conductor to this thrilling work’s inspired composer.

NBR New Zealand Opera presents –

Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly

Cast: Antoinette Halloran (Cio-Cio-San) / Lucy Schaufer (Suzuki) / Piero Pretti (Pinkerton)

Peter Savidge (Sharpless) / James Rodgers (Goro) / Richard Green (The Bonze)

Jared Holt (Yamadori) / Bianca Andrew (Kate Pinkerton) / Kieran Rayner  (Commissioner)

Edward Laurenson (Registrar) / Lesley Graham (Cio-Cio-San’s mother)

Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus

Orchestra Wellington

Conductor : Thomas Ringborg

Chorus Master: Michael Vinten

Director: Kate Cherry

St.James Theatre, Wellington

Saturday 11th May, 2013

This “Butterfly” has already flittered, swayed, dipped and floated her way down the island from most of the way up north – so quite a few people will by now have seen and heard her. I’ll go out on a traditionalist limb and declare that most of these people, I feel certain, would have been pleased to find her heart-rending story more-or-less conventionally staged and costumed, though with enough creativity and flair to make something uniquely beautiful and memorable.

How refreshing to be able to concentrate for once upon the musical aspects of a standard repertoire opera, instead of having to fight one’s way through some hot-shot director’s quirkily modernist and sometimes fatally intrusive “production take” on the well-known story (“Anything to stop it being done straight!” as comedian Michael Flanders says at one point in his and Donald Swann’s legendary revue “At the Drop of a Hat”, regarding a musical adaptation of a seventeenth century novel.)

Before the bright things of the revisionist world begin casting their barbed spears in my direction, I must emphasize that I’m not against the idea of taking a new look at any such performance-art-form, provided that its impulse to do thus comes from inner conviction on the part of those responsible, not merely a desire to be superficially “trendy” or “fashionable”. Then, of course, the conviction has to be intelligently thought through and applied, at the very least as coherently as the work would have been wrought by its original creator.

Apart from one or two brief and unnecessarily gratuitous touches, I thought, for example, the recent NBR NZ Opera production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” was a brilliantly successful rethink of the work’s original setting. As I believe many people would also, I would nevertheless be eminently satisfied with seeing the work staged as the composer himself would have had it presented. With all  the recent emphasis in the music world on “authentic performance” it’s interesting that there isn’t a parallel set of impulses to try and recreate original stage settings as faithfully as possible as well – in fact, especially in the case of baroque opera, there’s sometimes a kind of schizophrenic dislocation between what happens in the orchestral pit as opposed to the goings-on up on the stage!

It will be obvious by now to anybody reading this review that I loved this production of “Butterfly” – its predictable aspects concerning the Japanese setting somehow had a freshness which transcended any feeling of routine or tired tradition, as if the “obvious” had been completely rethought, and emerged as something original. As an example of this, I liked the uses of the sliding doors to create different spaces and ambiences, with not a single movement unmotivated by text or music.

With a set at once fixed and yet extremely fluid, lighting had an enormous part to play in the creation of a distinctive ambience, and there was a similar sense of the “expected” still being able to take us by surprise. Butterfly’s Act One entrance was suffused with light (firstly through screens, and then spilling gloriously through the opened spaces) – as it should, the music giving ample demonstration of what’s required at this point – but our senses were suitably enraptured by the whole sequence in a way that joined us with the onstage spectators witnessing this Venus-like arrival.

The Act One love-duet took us to the opposite end of the lighting spectrum, with suspended, descending lamps both literally and metaphorically signifying the onset of the mysteries of night and the consummation of ardent expressions of love at the scene’s end – again, a beautiful, uncontrived effect. In the Humming Chorus, lamps were this time carried by the watchers, and extinguished one by one, the effect of “going into the night” tellingly contrasted  with the wide-wake steadfastness of Cio-Cio-San (Butterfly), waiting for her lover, Pinkerton.

In the context of such “charged” naturalness throughout, the costumes were of a piece with the sun’s radiance and the night’s gentleness. The Japanese/European contrast was necessarily marked, the Americans’ naval uniforms and the woman’s elegant western garb at the end having a plain, almost functional beauty which contrasted with the colourful oriental styles and hues worn by the Japanese characters.

With so many visual and functional felicities in play, the stage was, as it were, beautifully set for the singers and orchestral musicians to contribute their particular magic. Happily, they responded with a wholeheartedness that I felt matched the inspiration of the work’s creators, here brought out by astute, sensitive direction. Kate Cherry and her assistant Jacqueline Coats, together with stage and lighting designers Christina Smith and Matt Scott had, I thought, between them captured a kind of essence of universal human emotion, exotically but subtly flavoured, so as to retain our audience-connections with the situations of the characters.

First to impress (and weakening my resolve to castigate the NBRNZ operatic powers-that-be for casting so many non-New Zealanders in major roles) was the engagingly-acted and superbly-sung Goro (the marriage-broker), of Wellingtonian James Benjamin Rodgers, his demeanor capturing the bumptious servitude of the character to the full and his voice impressively clear and communicative at all times. His dynamic of interaction with Butterfly’s maid, Suzuki, was flecked with delightful self-righteous impulses tempered with proper “knowing-one’s-place” decorum; and American mezzo Lucy Schaufer’s Suzuki gave as good as she got. Elsewhere Schaufer’s attendance upon her mistress, Cio-Cio-San, took her character to another expressive level, beautifully mirroring Butterfly’s hopes and fears throughout.

Overshadowed by the loquacious Goro when he first enters, Italian tenor Piero Pretti as Lieutenant Pinkerton nevertheless quietly and confidently eased his character’s presence into the scenario, from the beginning his manner hinting at a none-too-subtle disdain of things Japanese. Then with the entrance of his friend, the American consul Sharpless (sung by English baritone, Peter Savidge), both tenor and baritone had to open their respective vocal throttles, partly to cope with an accompanying orchestral fabric which I thought was too fulsome and insistent in many places throughout the scene. Thankfully, Swedish conductor Tobias Ringborg thereafter seemed to pick up on the balances between singers and orchestra more surely, getting more clarity and coherence from the stage as a result, and some beautifully sensitive work from the pit.

I thought Piero Pretti a strong, heroic-sounding Pinkerton, sounding as though he had to push his tones over the orchestral fabric during those first exchanges with Sharpless, but thereafter responding to Butterfly upon her entrance, and during the love duet, with great tenderness and ardour. As Sharpless, Peter Savidge’s baritone also struggled to make his words be heard during his first scene, and similarly benefitted from the more diaphanous orchestral textures accompanying Cio-Cio-San’s entrance. Later, in Act Two, he again needed to be more incisive at first, but then settled and deepened his voice in time for a well-acted, extremely touching letter-reading scene with Butterfly.

And so to the heroine – Antoinette Halloran was the second Australian soprano I had seen and heard sing the role of Cio-Cio-San in Wellington (Rosamund Illing was the first, back in 1990), and like her distinguished predecessor she didn’t disappoint. Butterfly’s approach and entrance, as previously mentioned, was here a wonderful moment, the character’s appearance personifying both radiance and simple beauty, aided and abetted by a profusion of bright chorus colours and sunlit tones. Like many an operatic Butterfly, Halloran didn’t look particularly Oriental, but she nevertheless presented a believable portrayal of an exotic young girl on the brink of womanhood, readily and innocently putting her trust in a man she hardly knew, but had nevertheless fallen in love with.

Perhaps her voice wasn’t always ideally steady when under vocal pressure, though she delivered the well-known “Un bel di” with just the right amount of growing intensity towards a powerful, and properly fraught conclusion. Just once I felt her acting more workmanlike than inspired (her response to the Bonze, her uncle’s angry public condemnation of her marriage) – but for the rest of the time I thought it a beautifully-wrought and deeply touching portrayal. Among a number of enduring impressions of Halloran’s Butterfly, my most vivid is of her whole person’s transfigured intensity during her all-night vigil, throughout both the Humming Chorus and the orchestral prelude to the final scene, waiting for Pinkerton’s return.

Solid, reliable work from both the chorus and singers in smaller roles rounded out the picture – though of the latter only Bianca Andrew in her brief appearance as Pinkerton’s American wife, Kate, seemed entirely at one with her character, her poised elegance barely disguising her awareness of Butterfly’s situation. And, mention must be made of Butterfly’s child Sorrow, engagingly and winsomely played by Finn Bowden.

Apart from that first-Act sequence during which I thought the orchestral playing a couple of notches too insistent and unvaried against the tones of Pinkerton and Sharpless, conductor Tobias Ringborg and the Orchestra Wellington gave us both sensitive and spirited playing, illuminating the score’s most telling moments with tones ranging from finely-crafted diaphanous texturings to deep, louring portents of the ever-resonating tragedy. The playing fully realized the composer’s fascination with and use of exotic colour and piquant harmonies, both through individual instrumentalists’ skills and finely-judged ensemble work – a “moments per minute” scenario of continuing delight.

I thought this production brilliantly (and triumphantly!) gave the lie to the idea that today’s audiences require opera to be “updated” (I use the word euphemistically) in order to be able to connect with the stories, themes and characters. This was something “whole”, its power and impact the result not of outward titillation but inner conviction.