Tag: opera

Wellington Opera presents:
GIACOMO PUCCINI – Tosca (opera in three acts)
Libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa & Luigi Illica

Cast
Cesare Angelotti – Samson Setu (bass)
Sacristan – Wade Kernot (bass)
Mario Cavaradossi – Jared Holt (tenor)
Floria Tosca – Madeleine Pierard (soprano)
Baron Scarpia – Teddy Tahu Rhodes (baritone)
Spoletta – Manase Latu (tenor)
Sciarrone – Morgan-Andrew King (bass)
Jailor – Brent Allcock
Boy – Ivan Reid

Wellington Opera Chorus
Chorusmaster – Michael Vinten
Orchestra Wellington
Conductor – Brian Castles-Onion
Director – Jacqueline Coats
Set Design – Michael Zaragoza
Costume Design – Rebecca Bethan Jones
Lighting Design – Rowan McShane

St,James Theatre, Courtenay Place, Wellington

Wednesday, 11^th September 2024
(also September 13th, 14th, 15th)

This was, I thought, a “Tosca” from Wellington Opera to be relished. Giacomo Puccini’s three-act melodrama, has since its appearance fronted up to and triumphed over certain critical attitudes struck towards it that were, to say the least, less-than-positive. Critics both contemporary and retrospective have castigated the work with phrases like “three hours of noise”, “disconcerting vulgarities” and with a “tiresome, silly and gullible” heroine – and Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich once replied to being asked about “Tosca” with the words “A great opera, but terrible music!”  The invective surely reached its peak more than thirty years after the composer’s death via musicologist Joseph Kerman’s 1956 publication “Opera as Drama”, in which Tosca is summarily dismissed by the author as “A shabby little shocker”!

However, singers, conductors, directors and the general opera-going public have regularly defied and confounded such judgements, with the work recently ranked as the fifth most-performed opera in the world by the global opera data-site Operabase. Even if popular opinion and response hasn’t always necessarily reflected critical opinion, Tosca has flourished with flying colours thanks to its plot’s readily melodramatic scenarios, its vividly-wrought characterisations of the three main protagonists, and the enduring emotional “tug” of its two great arias, “Vissi d’arte” for the soprano and “E lucevan le stelle” for the tenor.

Director of this production, Jacqueline Coats, described the work as essentially a love story with a tragic outcome, one determined by outward forces which ultimately over-ride the personal concerns and aspirations of the protagonists. And on a wider political level one of those forces exerts his power to maintain a status quo of tyranny while simultaneously seeking to manipulate the fate of the two lovers for his own ultimate gratification. It’s an interplay of situation that feels both Homeric and Shakespearean, not to mention more recent contemporary resonances.

The joy of Coats’ direction was, for me, its unswerving focus on the interplay of these ruinously conflicting circumstances, in which the conflicting strands of the drama were allowed their full-blooded resonances. Everything was amply voiced and energised by the focused commitment of the singers, conductor and orchestral forces, and (particularly in the first two acts) the powerful simplicity of the stage settings, beautifully and atmospherically placed and lit for maximum effect. Nothing was allowed to distract from the essential fatalism of the work’s unfolding, even if I was initially nonplussed by the mysterious corpse who appeared at the Third Act’s beginning, thinking it belonging perhaps to a prisoner who’d fallen from the tower of the Castel Sant’Angelo while unsuccessfully attempting to escape (my sharper-eyed companion whispered the name “Angelotti” in response to my inquiring sideways look!). I was also surprised by the unexpectedly onstage “shepherd-boy” singing his folksong (admittedly rather beautifully) before being led away by his companions, and by groups of what seemed like various prisoners either in transit or allowed the freedom of a few minutes of fresh air before being reconfined.

The production maintained the story’s “Roman” setting throughout, from Act One’s traditional church interior scenario through Act Two’s depiction of the iconic image of a wolf feeding the twins Romulus and Remus surmounting the scene. This image presided over a more twentieth-century “look” to the headquarters of Baron Scarpia, the Chief of Police, its walls alternating iron-grey and blood-red pillars with menacing intent. Costumes reinforced a more contemporary, if non-specific sense of time, with Floria Tosca’s suitably beautiful and florid, her lover, Mario Cavaradossi’s casual and workman-like, and Baron Scarpia’s austere and business-like, with the latter’s minions (Spoletta and Sciarroni) suitably institutional.

The opening church interior scene with its “ecclesiastical” lighting amply engendered a kind of timelessness, reinforced by the contrasts with a near-contemporary-art Madonna statue, and the modern dress of the congregation who came to enact the concluding Te Deum. Here, the interplay between voices, bells and intermittent cannon-fire made by turns a splendidly celebratory and disturbingly remorseless impression – at once a kind of reminiscence of and antithesis to the exuberant energies of the conclusion to the Second Act of the composer’s “La Boheme”. In this very different résumé, it was all brought off superbly!

Vocally and dramatically, the work got an appropriately atmospheric start with the wonderfully black-voiced Samson Setu as the recently-escaped prisoner Angelotti seeking concealment in the church, the orchestra properly conveying his “flight” with urgent, desperately-voiced impulses. The subsequent appearance of the Sacristan, Wade Kernot, provided much comic relief in complaining of having to run around after his charge, the painter, Cavaradossi (currently at work in the church) and keep his brushes clean and his paints in order – a lovely, amusingly “holier-than-thou” cameo portrayal.

As Mario Cavaradossi, Jared Holt “warmed” and filled out his voice as the evening progressed – his early “Recondita armonia” I found precise and accurate but a touch effortful, as he seemed in places throughout this first scene when duetting with Tosca. What a change, however, had come over his delivery by the time he reached his second-act “Vittoria! Vittoria!” outburst of defiance of Scarpia – he was like a man possessed, completely inhabiting his energized person – a terrific performance! And he then realised with equal force the spectrum’s opposite and despairing end with a heartfelt “E lucevan le stelle” in the third act, when facing his execution and the loss of Tosca. It all made his tender “Amaro sol per te m’era il morire” to his beautiful would-be rescuer all the more poignant.

No greater contrast could be imagined than with the Baron Scarpia of Teddy Tahu Rhodes, a portrayal which sated all of his scenes with the character’s essential brutality. I could have imaged a suaver, more vocally charming (and perhaps, therefore, even more dangerous) Scarpia –  but his was a character obviously accustomed to getting what he wanted, and the unrelenting coruscating quality in the voice purely and simply gave tongue to that same quality In his character. Those wonderful soliloquies in both the First and Second Acts which revealed to us his remorseless drive and his insatiable desire for the thrill of sexual conquest made their mark with absolutely no doubt or misgiving, no skerrick of a qualm.

Against this rock, this seemingly immovable object, was cast the irresistible force of his adversary-cum-object-of-desire, Floria Tosca. I have to say that, in experiencing Madeleine Pierard’s astonishing portrayal, I was so taken up with the whole-heartedness of her characterisation I never once gave a thought of any other Tosca I’d seen or heard – from her very first entrance after her off-stage cries of “Mario! Mario!” when seeking her lover, Cavaradossi in the church, she gave to us as intense and all-encompassing a character as was her adversary-to-be, but in her case one filled with so much light-and-shade that one found oneself revelling in her sheer presence – her humour, her quixotic changes of mood, her passionate utterances, her tenderness and her moments of both desperation and resolve.

To pinpoint everything she did to bring the manifold aspects of the character to life would require an essay for which there would be no time or space here, and, certainly, in places produce a “words fail me” result. Suffice to say that for me it was an utterly memorable performance, one whose heart-melting “Visi d’arte” represented for a few precious moments a kind of entering into the apex of the dramatic soprano’s art. But also, it was an undertaking which in itself paid tribute to the quality of interaction between her and her two principal onstage partners. As much as did any of the individual performances discussed above, it was a give-and-take quality which helped make this “Tosca” such a special musical, theatrical and dramatic experience.

I hadn’t encountered the well-rounded voice of the Sciarrone, Morgan-Andrew King, before, but I had of course, previously heard the Spoletto, tenor Manase Latu, in a completely different operatic world, that of Rossini’s “Le Comte Ory”, the juxtapositioning of the two roles in my head alone giving me a kind of refracted pleasure in having such a different experience from a voice this time round! I’ve already mentioned the “shepherd boy” and his lovely folk-song at the beginning of Act Three – a young man, Ivan Reid, whose beautiful tones could well take him places. The choruses played their impactful parts in the awe-inspiring “Te Deum” that closes the opera’s first Act, as well as mellifluously underpinning the first part of Cavaradossi’s fateful interview with Scarpia in Act Two.

Heroes of a similar “cut” were conductor Brian Castles-Onion and his players, Orchestra Wellington, supporting all the singers up to the hilt, and responsible for some equally stirring and heart-melting sequences throughout the evening – what springs to mind are, of course, the “Scarpia” moments, delivered by the brass with the utmost vehemence, and the contrasting episodes of tenderness from strings and winds – playing in my head at the moment is the clarinet theme which introduces Cavaradossi’s third-act “E lucevan le stelle”, for instance – and alternating with the ominously-cheerful early-morning strains of winds and bells heralding the new day, which begin the same third act. All was part of that overall impression of an embodiment of something special.

I dips me lid in gratitude to Jacqueline Coats – her sensitive overall direction resulted in a production which seemed to me to enable the work to speak its own innate character (which is increasingly rare in an operatic world bedevilled by, in the words of Michael Flanders of “At The Drop Of A Hat” fame, the impulse of “Anything to stop it being done straight!”). Her team of Michael Zaragoza (set design), Rebecca Bethan Jones (costume design) and Rowan McShane (lighting design) were all obviously on the same wavelength, with a result that, as I’ve indicated above, gave us what seemed like “the real thing”.

All the more reason to rail against the news, contained in a note in the programme, that Creative New Zealand has declined funding for Wellington Opera for 2025. It will be no surprise, of course, to the politically aware who read this, considering that the arts in general seem more-than-usually under siege via the present Coalition Government’s current strictures. Creative New Zealand will, of course have its priorities within the framework of its own limited resources – the problem is a much bigger picture which poses the question in (and towards) our society of “What’s important?” Let’s hope we can convince more of those who need convincing that among what constitutes the right answers to that question are the arts! – and Wellington Opera’s Tosca has just furnished palpable proof that such is very much the case!

Gioachino ROSSINI – Le Comte Ory
Original libretto by Eugenè Scribe and Charles-Gaspard Delestre-Poirson, freely adapted for NZ Opera by Simon Phillips
NZ Opera June 2024, St.James Theatre, Wellington

Act One:  Wade Kernot (Coach), Manase Latu (Count Ory), Moses MacKay (Raimbaud), NZ Opera Chorus – photo credit: Lewis Ferris

Cast: Manase Latu (Count Ory), Emma Pearson (Countess Adele), Hanna Hipp (Isolier), Moses Mackay (Raimbaud), Wade Kernot (Tutor/Coach), Andrea Creighton (Ragonde), Tayla Alexander (Alice)

New Zealand Opera Chorus Wellington /Te Whanganui-a-Tara
Orchestra Wellington (Concertmaster: Amalia Hall)
Brad Cohen (conductor)

Simon Phillips (director)
Tracy Grant Lord (set and costume designer)
Matthew Marshall (lighting designer)
Luka Venter (assistant conductor)
Matthew Kereama (assistant director)

St. James’ Theatre, Wellington
Thursday 13th June, 2024

New Zealand Opera continues its progressive “new look” agenda for 2024 under its new General Director Brad Cohen with a rarity for local audiences, Gioachino Rossini’s penultimate opera, Le Comte Ory. Regarded by many as the composer’s comic masterpiece, the opera has a story whose exploration of sexual deception, disguise and manipulation not only adroitly ticks all the boxes of its own time and place, but responds remarkably well to a near-complete reworking in its relocation to Aotearoa New Zealand, with all of the associated updates necessary for the change of scenario amusingly (and in places disconcertingly) kicking in with a vengeance!

It took a while to win me over to director Simon Phillips’ in places radical reworking of the libretto’s English translation (a French speaker would have been totally nonplussed attempting to marry a good deal of the words enunciated by the singers with the surtitle texts!), but I eventually “gave in” to the idea – I think the moment of my actual capitulation was when the story’s young and inveterately libidinous “Count Ory”, posing as a spiritual guru at a wellness retreat for women, was spectacularly unmasked as his true lecherous self at the end of Act One by the appearance of his own rugby coach, plus team-mates, hot on his AWOL trail and intent upon returning him to “the fold”. This near-apocalyptic moment all but transfixed our sensibilities when the singers’ exclamation “Ciel!” (Heavens!) appeared on the surtitle screen as “What the f….?” All reservations from that point onwards were made null and void by the sheer crypto-current impact of the subsequent revampings! My misgivings, despite themselves,  knew no more that evening!

I’m still tickled by the thought of the transcription of the words “du sang du Sarracin” (the blood of the Saracens)  as “Springboks’ blood” in the husbands’ homeward message of triumph on the contemporary field of battle to their wives! In Act Two the updated amendments came thick and fast, most of them funky and to the point, even though some didn’t seem worth the effort (one of them to do with “an over-forward forward” and another making reference to a “coccyx”) – and Ory’s slip of the tongue when first calling his sisterhood “the squad” didn’t work as well as the original’s faux pas “ce sont eux…..er, ce sont ells!”. A by-product of the surtitle rewritings was that I felt they became a kind of “reality TV” in themselves in places, frequently taking our attention away from what the singers were actually doing with the words on the stage. Most of what Phillips came up with I enjoyed, but, as I’ve said, it was for me laid on a tad too thickly at times.

The rest of the updated on-stage detailings hardly missed a trick, with many a delightful and amusing touch – the birdsong right at the start, the “Hi-de-hi!” welcoming entourage at the station, complete with a truly wonderful steam-train entrance, and the preponderance of cell-phones among the “guests” invited to the “Chateau Whareora”. Word has spread regarding the presence of the “guru” thanks to the efforts of his right-hand man, Raimbaud, who prepares for Ory’s entrance with a red carpet and coloured flags, and various “gifts” donated by people who have heard of the hermit’s “healing powers” and helpful advice. We meet Ragonde who’s the PA for the Countess, and worried about both her mistress’s melancholic state and her own husband’s continued absence, then afterwards Isolier, young, feminine and sporty, who’s Ory’s personal physio, but in love with the Countess, and Tutor, the rugby team coach who’s looking for Ory, having heard about the “guru” and having his suspicions as to where “Horny McOry” is.  Another red carpet entry, complete with photo-popping paparazzi, brings us the extremely chic Chateau-owner, Countess Adele, to the joy of the love-sick Isolier – but just as the goatish guru-in-residence thinks he has Adele at his fingertips and outmanoeuvred his rival, the Coach suddenly reappears and denounces Ory by revealing his true identity (see above!)….

Le Comte Ory – Act Two  (beginning) – NZ Opera Chorus, with Emma Pearson (Countess Adele),  Tayla Alexander (Alice) and Andrea Creighton (Ragonde)

The Second Act features Ory’s follow-up plan to gain access to the Countess, disguising himself and his teammates as women members of a local religious sect being pursued by the same Ory and his men. The so-called pilgrims are let into the lodge when a fierce storm breaks – wonderful sound and lighting effects – and the women/men are given shelter by the Countess and her women. Left to themselves the imposters show their true colours with a round of drinking songs (did Berlioz take a leaf out of Rossini’s book here for his roistering  Auerbach’s Cellar Scene in “La Damnation de Faust”?) as all make merry while anticipating further sport afterwards (“There’s nosh as well as potential nookie”) but they retire at last. When Isolier arrives with news of the womens’ husbands’ unexpectedly early return, she warns the Countess that in fact the pilgrims they are housing are Ory and his men in disguise! This is resolved by a delicious trio where the principal randy intruder is tricked into bed with the two women and then tied up, having to admit defeat and leave, taking his “entourage” with him as (thanks to adroit changes behind the scenes) none other than the All Blacks (in traditional uniform to boot!) arrive home to their wives, as champions – and all is well.

Whatever one’s opinion of the antipodean reworkings of the original scenario of the opera, one couldn’t help but admire the zest, energy, enthusiasm and the palpable enjoyment that emanated from the St James’ stage this evening – everybody I spoke with afterwards had that sense of experiencing something of what Simon Phillips called the vibrancy and amusement of human behaviour’s foibles in what they’d seen and heard in this modern realisation of the opera. And as Phillips also put it, even if such treatment was not to some people’s taste they would still have revelled in what he called the “sheer virtuosity of this dazzlingly talented cast” in bringing the performance to life.

One couldn’t help but reflect on how the transformation of the original opera’s time-and-place scenario resonated in the present, however unexpectedly and incidentally – simply the Countess Adele’s idea at the beginning of the Act Two to provide shelter for whom she considered at first to be homeless people, and then more seriously refugees fleeing from oppression straightaway reflected contemporary situations of which we’ve been all too regularly made aware. And the libretto’s crudely reworked translations brought into focus a long-held feminist viewpoint that opera seems to regularly institutionalise the undoing of women as victims of male brutality; and that the “calling out” of certain attitudes and behaviours as exhibited by Count Ory for what they represent in a larger picture is in fact long overdue. The recent “me too” movement has also reflected a change in the balance of power regarding interaction between the sexes that these  candid commentaries from both sides resoundingly echo.

In whatever sense, each cast member brought a distinctive quality of whole-heartedness to his or her role – as Count Ory, Manase Latu seemed to fill out every cubic measure of his character with roguish intention of a concupiscently self-serving kind, almost Falstaffian in his buffoonish scheming and ultimate humiliation – his voice impressively negotiated the numerous stratospheric notes in a way that readily conveyed his character’s overweening confidence. Equally compelling was Emma Pearson’s enticing portrayal of the Countess Adele, by turns confidently imperious and vulnerably girlish, and with a vocal armoury that seemed in charge of every emotion – an enthralling performance.

Ory’s partner-in-crime, Raimbaud, was sung by the mellifluous-voiced Moses Mackay, the first solo voice we heard in the opera, summoning the people who had gathered to attend to his master, his tones ringing and clear, his presence persuasive and credible. And in Act Two his retelling to the disguised “pilgrims” of his liquor-collecting adventure became a tour de force when echoed by the chorus’s enthusiastic interjections. Another voice we heard early on was that of Andrea Creighton’s with her steady, whole-hearted and ever-solicitous assumption of Ragonde, the Countess’s PR agent and confidante, one whose husband was among those absent on the “field of battle”, and, along with the other women, intrigued by the presence of the “holy man”.

I enjoyed Hanna Hipp’s whole-hearted Isolier, completely at ease with her character’s delightfully equivocal function in the story’s re-working of the “trouser-role” practice common in opera, here as a same-sex would-be lover of the Countess. As in last year’s “Cosi fan tutte” I found her singing and absorption of her character totally compelling, with her devotion to the Countess touching and resonant throughout. She also effectively established her connection as team masseur with Wade Kernot’s authoritative Coach, with whom she arrived at the resort, in search of the missing Ory, Wade Kernot then riveting us with his imposingly-voiced “tale of travail” regarding his troublesome protégé!

Rossini always writes engagingly and excitingly for his choruses in opera and “Le Comte Ory is no exception – particularly in the Second Act there’s fun and games aplenty, which  the “Wellington Chapter” of the New Zealand Opera Chorus took to like the proverbial ducks to water. In terms both of singing and stage deportment, the singers achieved marvels of evocation, delighting us with their antics in all manifestations.  Of course it was Michael Vinten in Wellington doing the honours as Chorus Director in his accustomedly splendid manner.

All of this, of course, was conceived, planned and executed with aplomb by director Simon Phillips, set and costume designer Tracy Grant Lord and lighting designer Matthew Marshall, whose efforts couldn’t have helped but been admired in regard to their (at times) breathtaking daring but still ultimately well-grounded sense of what was possible to make work on a stage in Aotearoa New Zealand. As Oscar Wilde once put it, the important thing is “being talked about” – and this is what’s been here achieved.

As befits somebody who’s actually made a recording as a conductor of this very work (Naxos 8.660207-08 – https://www.naxos.com/CatalogueDetail/?id=8.660207-08), conductor Brad Cohen (who also happens to be the current General Director of NZ Opera) seemed to bring to the performance all the musical and theatrical qualities needed to put across the zany escapades of the work with burning conviction. Perhaps the charm of a previous generation of Rossini conductors I’ve encountered on recordings (Vittorio Gui, Tulio Serafin, Carlo Maria Giulini) has been of late overshadowed by a more up-to-date snappiness of manner and generally higher-octane virtuosity among today’s maestri and their musicians. That old-world charm is something I occasionally find myself again yearning for – but there was no doubting the brilliance of both individual and corporate skills from Cohen and Orchestra Wellington in the pit of the St.James Theatre on this particular night, garnering a well-earned tumult of applause and appreciative shouts at the work’s conclusion from an obviously well-satisfied audience.

Orchestra Wellington presents:

RED MOON – Alban Berg’s opera “Wozzeck” (1925) arr. Eberhard Kloke

Cast: Wozzeck – Julien Van Mallaerts
Marie – Madeleine Pierard
Captain – Corey Bix
Drum Major – Jason Collins
Doctor – Paul Whelan
Andres – Alex Lewis
Margret – Margaret Medlyn
First Apprentice – Robert Tucker
Second Apprentice – Patrick Shanahan
Soldier – Richard Taylor
Idiot – Corey Bix
Marie’s Child – Ivan Reid

The Tudor Consort (Music Director – Michael Stewart)
Schola Cantorum of St Mark’s School ( Music Director – Anya Nazaruk)
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (Music Director)

Director – Jacqueline Coats
Stage Manager – Janina Panizza
Lighting Design – Daniel Wilson

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 11^th November, 2023

It’s the stuff this country’s musical legends are made of, joining occasions notable for their uniqueness such as (off the top of my head) Igor Stravinsky’s conducting of the then NZBC Symphony in 1961, the first-ever “at home” performance of Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger” at the 1990 Wellington International Arts Festival, Michael Houstoun’s ground-breakingly-complete cycle in 1993 of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas, and the first all-New Zealand cast performance of a Wagner opera, Parsifal, in 2006 in Wellington – readers with longer and/or sharper memories than mine will doubtless construct their own “pantheon “ of legendary home-grown occasions to which this one might well be added.

I’m referring by association to the incredible achievement of all the people involved with Saturday evening’s performance in Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre of Alban Berg’s opera “Wozzeck”, a work which had its own first performance in 1925 in Berlin, and has thus taken almost a hundred years to get to these shores and be performed “live”.  But that’s just what Marc Taddei, Orchestra Wellington, the singers and the associated creative team managed to finally “bring off” – and, to add appropriate lustre to the occasion, with the confidence and surety that gave the presentation the kind of elan and brilliance that took one’s breath away! Though it was one might call a “semi-staged” production, and the deployment of the singers might, in my opinion, have on occasions been differently undertaken to the work’s greater advantage, the sheer commitment, verve and aplomb of the singing and playing never faltered throughout the entire evening, as evidenced by the sustained applause at the work’s end.

Conductor Marc Taddei in his pre-performance talk earlier in the evening characterised the performance of “Wozzeck” as the culmination of Orchestra Wellington’s 2023 season of works which had been “looking to opera for increased representation of the “human” spirit”, and finding at the end an opera which presents that very spirit in totally unvarnished form – it “lays bare the lie that the poor can simply get on with their lives and survive”, though Berg himself was adamant that “what happened to Wozzeck can happen to anyone who is subjugated by others and cannot defend himself”. In this opera there’s no institutionalised or miraculously-produced “force for good” which speaks up for Wozzeck, alerting us to the uncomfortable fact that it will have to be us, the audience members, who will need to do so, to look at the tougher parts of life and not look away. As one commentator wrote of the character of Wozzeck – he is “a metaphor for one of the opera’s fundamental concerns – the generative, toxic force of societal humiliation”……

Jacqueline Coats’s production here put the performers together on the normal orchestral platform of the Michael Fowler Centre, giving each of the singers a degree of  elevation in their scenes but keeping them largely behind the orchestra. This certainly directed one’s focus onto the opera’s music rather more than its stage action – something that I didn’t object to in principle, it being semi-staged anyway – but here it had the disadvantage of distancing each singer’s character from the audience, both physically and vocally, the faces and figures of the singers feeling somewhat “removed” from us, and the voices having to cut through from the rear the sometimes crowded acoustic sound-picture taken up by the orchestra.

It wasn’t until Act Two’s Scene Four (the dance-scene in the beer garden), that the Two Apprentices and Wozzeck were brought forward, almost to the front of the stage, the Apprentices with their “brandy wine” verses, and Wozzeck’s bitterly-voiced condemnation of his wife Marie’s dancing with the handsome Drum-Major – suddenly, what a difference to the immediacy of the characters before us this closeness made! In the following scene in the Soldiers’ barracks the sleepers were arrayed again out the front on the floor, which surely should have been where the Drum-Major’s and Wozzeck’s confrontation took place – but they were returned to behind the orchestra once again. Both voices could clearly be heard, but if only they had been closer to give us more of the physical flavour of their set-to! True, the singers acted primarily with their voices rather than gesture and movement, but simply their closer physical proximity would have brought more of the characters’ salient defining features into focus, advancing the story’s theatricality and impact.

If I seem to be making too much of this “placement” of the singers, I should emphasise all the more that all of the voices had sufficient strength to properly sound their words from wherever they were placed – so while it often looked more oratorio-like than operatic in terms of stage action, it was all well-served by both voices and instruments as regards the work’s musical values. And as we had briefly but tellingly observed with Orchestra Wellington’s recent foray into the music of one of Berg’s contemporaries Anton Webern, Marc Taddei and his players seemed to revel in the complexities and varieties of the composer’s scoring, unflinchingly addressing the expressive power of countless moments in the work, examples being the two horrifying orchestral crescendi following Marie’s murder by Wozzeck, and the naked anguish of the full orchestra’s final interlude separating  Wozzeck’s drowning from the children bringing news of Marie’s death to her child, who in a wrenching moment of bathos concludes the opera by continuing to ride his hobby-horse (these and other moments seeming to lose nothing of their power in arranger Eberhard Kloke’s judicious score reductions). But in addition, all of these things were set in stark contrast to the opera’s manifold beauties and delicacies of scoring in places, stressing the piteous aspect of the work’s tragedy  – for example, the beautiful sonorities of the string and brass playing echoing Wozzeck’s fearful rant while in the fields, with his  “Ein Feuer! – Ein Feuer” outburst; and again when accompanying his friend Andres’s tender concern as the latter led his disconsolate friend away to home. Conductor Marc Taddei’s wondrous grasp of the ebb and flow of these disarming contrasts and his players’ ability to deliver the full range and force of their extremes made in itself an unforgettable impression.

Just as astonishing were the performances of all of the singers, triumphing over their at times awkward stage placements with what seemed like the utmost commitment and confidence. In the title role, Julien van Mellaerts laid bare the both the quiet desperation and the frightening hallucinatory torment of the poor soldier, his piteous attempts at explaining his situation falling on deaf ears all about him, undermining his relationship with his wife Marie and driving his desperation to an abyss of madness. He conveyed so many telling vocal contrasts in places such as between his first-scene phrase “It must be fine indeed to be virtuous”, and the following cry “If we should go to heaven we shall be thunder-makers!” – again, I thought his all-too-brief front-of-stage moments in the Act Two dance scene after he witnessed Marie’s consorting with his rival, the Drum-Major, straightaway conveyed by dint of his immediacy more of the sense of a theatrical character, something his performance as a whole deserved to be allowed to generate more often. Alex Lewis as Wozzeck’s more straightforward friend and fellow-soldier Andres consistently used his fine voice freshly and lyrically, such as in his attempts to distract his friend from his disturbing hallucinations when together in the fields, and in the Act Two dance-hall scene with his guitar-accompanied ballade.

In the very opening scene we relished Corex Bix’s Captain conveying all of his character’s patronising and judgemental sanctimony in his attitude to Wozzeck, the latter becoming both the vehicle for and object of his superior’s derision, a default setting which stretched like a spider’s web over most of the drama. In addition, he ably brought to life the small but significant part of the Idiot at the dance who tells Wozzeck that he “smells blood” as Marie and the Drum Major are flagrantly dancing, while the drunken Apprentices (Robert Tucker and Patrick Shanahan in turn, sounding nicely unbuttoned and with alcohol having unloosened their tongues, to risible effect) are philosophising on the nature of human existence.

As Wozzeck’s ill-fated wife Marie, Madeleine Pierard conveyed a splendidly rich and tangible vocal presence, her voice easily riding atop the orchestral textures, and relishing the score’s tenderer moments with her (here invisible) child in places like her Act One Scene Three “Lullaby” song “Hansel, spann Deine sechs Schimmel an….” , so very beautifully accompanied by the orchestra’s  tuned percussion, and also in her gloriously guilt-ridden “jewel song” (her feelings underlined by lurid stage lighting) when considering the Drum Major’s gift to her of a pair of earrings. Though she wasn’t ever brought to the front of the stage during the production, her interactions with various other characters, such as her neighbour Margret, and the Drum Major, not to mention Wozzeck himself, were admirably conveyed by vocal means, even if we missed the dramatic impacts of more tangible physical gesturings in places such as her tryst with the Drum Major – it was left to the orchestra to express all too graphically the paroxysms of desire and lustful action between the characters.

As Margret, one of Marie’s neighbours well aware of what was going on and constantly at logger-heads with Marie, Margaret Medlyn (who had previously played Marie’s character in an Australian production some years ago) made a suitably inquisitive and self-righteous-sounding bystander, both in the street when watching the Drum Major passing with his band, and at the second dance scene in Act Three. Though essentially one-dimensional a character, Jason Collins’s libidinous Drum Major readily conveyed his character’s concupiscent appetites and brutal nature by dint of his boastful, vainglorious tones and gestures, his word-made-flesh moment being the beating he gave the unfortunate Wozzeck in the soldier’s barracks at the end of Act Two.

Another authoritative symbol of Wozzeck’s oppression was the figure of the Doctor (assertively and sonorously  portrayed by Paul Whelan), with whom Wozzeck had entered a kind of arrangement involving various idiosyncratic medical theories which the Doctor tests by using Wozzeck as a kind of guinea-pig, and for which he pays the latter a mere pittance. Though not an actual physical assault, perhaps the opera’s most mean-spirited act of humiliation inflicted upon Wozzeck was perpetrated by both the Captain and the Doctor together, meeting Wozzeck out on the street and callously insinuating to him the gossip involving Marie’s infidelities with the Drum-Major, leaving him distraught and undone at the realisation of his wife’s betrayal.

The opera delineates processes by which human capacity for suffering can reach destructive limits through unrelieved and often institutionalised neglect and abuse – Wozzeck’s tragedy is his victimisation through such processes, giving him insufficient means of escape from such a descent and from such a place. Besides its individualisation such processes can have effects which are both transmittable and hereditary – though Marie’s murder is shocking, just as disturbing and piteous are Wozzeck’s visions and phobias which took him to such a murderous state. Also just as disturbing is the opera’s final scene, in which Marie’s and Wozzeck’s child is confronted with the news from his playmates of his mother’s death (and later, by extrapolation his father’s death by drowning at the same time) – to which the boy’s response is to repeat a simple playground chant as he rides his hobby-horse off somewhere – a moment’s stunned silence after the child leaves brought home to us the idea that the child now has no-one to take care of him, his parents having been obliterated in a suitably shocking manner, and he is left in a world which has demonstrated over the past hour and a half of operatic presentation little or no sign of caring, and left us with the realisation that unless we care about such things nothing of the kind will change.

After that “moment” there was heartfelt and sustained applause for all concerned, with the reaction continuing afterwards with talk into the night as to what it had all meant, a removal from our (well, for most of us!) normal experience and an immersion into the stuff of nightmares resulting in desolation and despair – and all rounded off with a repeated childlike cadence that bleakly commented on existence emptied-out of hope and redemption. What a work, and what an experience for us all!…….

(m)ORPHEUS –
a reimagining of Gluck’s “Orfeo ed Eurydice” (reorchestrated by Gareth Farr)

Cast
Samson Setu – Orpheus
Madison Nonoa – Amor
Deborah Wai Kapohe – Eurydice

Production Design : Tracy Lord Grant
Director: Neil Ieremia
Assistant Director: Jacqueline Coats
Lighting: JAX Messenger
Conductor: Marc Taddei
NZ Opera Chorus, Black Grace Dancers
Orchestra Wellington : Concertmaster – Amalia Hall
Violin (Vivian Stephens ), Viola (Susan Fullerton-Smith), Cello (Jane Young)
Clarinet & Saxophone (Mark Cookson)
Trumpet & Flugelhorn (Matt Stein)
Trombone & Euphonium (Peter Maunder)
Marimba (Naoto Segawa &Yoshiko Tsuruta)
Guitars (Gunter Herbig)

Opera House, Wellington September 23^rd 2023

I didn’t know until I began exploring the recent performance history of Gluck’s opera that Orpheus and Eurydice had been “reimagined” here in Aotearoa New Zealand before – a 2018 production at the Auckland Arts Festival presented the work as “A Dance Opera” directed and choreographed by Michael Parmenter, and designed then by the present designer, Tracy Lord Grant – on that occasion the opera was sung as the action was “danced”, with everything integrated into a contemporary-style presentation, including numerous visual ”links” and various enactments of and between the opera’s action and everyday society. From the reviews I have read I’m compelled to say that it was certainly something I greatly wished I had seen.

This very different 2023 reworking of a “dance-opera” idea came from director/choreographer Neil Ieremia, one unhesitatingly presenting a Pasifika view as confidently and naturally as one would a world view – throughout, the confidence and surety of the chorus regarding both singing and movement drew me into the central idea of the story’s world, the Samoan words at the extremities of the action effectively “ritualising” the storytelling as potently as any non-vernacular opera libretto does as a matter of course. In fact the chorus here under Ieremia’s direction were as much a “fulcrum” to the action as in any classic Greek play, thus forging links on a number of counts between times and places delineating humanity at large – a heartwarming achievement on the part of both director and players.

Further advancing both the Pasifika and classical European view of life and death is the concept of an  “underworld”, here brought to visual, though not especially dramatic use in the story, being used more effectively in stasis than in movement between. Perhaps the most effective moment confounding this assertion was the staging of the Furies at the beginning of Act Two hanging upside down from an elevated level like predatory bats before realigning themselves firmly on the floor of Hades itself to challenge Orpheus’s presence. These were Neil Ieremia’s own dance group Black Grace, dancers who have already made an impact with both traditional and contemporary presentations, and here they excelled as much with their aggressively baleful aspect as the Furies as with their contrastingly lyrical dance depictions of hero and heroine as a couple and what seemed like stylised re-enactments of Orfeo’s attempt to lead Eurydice out of Hades and back to life.

Interestingly, this production styled itself in its title as Orpheus alone, but with a parenthesised “m” suggesting both the power and influence of sleep (“Morpheus”) over the title character, while also playing down the role of Eurydice almost to the point of being a dream-like figure who, having already died before the story’s beginning lived only in Orpheus’s imagination. Neil Ieremia advances the view that, with Eurydice’s loss, Orpheus is now without his “feminine” side, namely his “compassion, empathy and sensitivity”. Still, we couldn’t help but respond to what happens between then during the course of the story as a kind of lovers’ tragedy, as in the Gluck original of 1862, even if the presentation’s final scene has Orpheus and Eurydice parted once again, with the hero up the stairs in isolation while Eurydice’s body lay inert on the level below…….one is reminded, amid the tragedy, of a phrase such as “did we dream you or did you dream us?” underlying the feeling of isolation and bewilderment of human loss……

The voices of the principals uncannily reflected their situations both during and at the conclusion of the opera – Samson Setu’s rich, golden tones beautifully filled out Orpheus’s fully-committed anguish and grief at the opera’s beginning, strengthening his tones with resolve when confronting the Furies, and melting with tenderness at the thought of seeing his Eurydice once again. However, neither his voice nor his body language “caught” for me the ambiguities of his despair at firstly having to “give in” to Eurydice’s pleas that he look at her at the climax of their flight from the Underworld, before helplessly watching her die. As Eurydice Deborah Wai Kapohe similarly charmed us with heartfelt and delicate sounds at first but couldn’t then summon the vocal heft to “galvanise” my sensibilities with her despairing cries as her end approached. Of the three principal singers the most flexible and responsive to both text and situation was Madison Nonoa as Amor, at once girlish and worldly, pink-puffer jacketed and denin-jean shorted to boot, as if she’d just drifted in from Courtenay Place here in Wellington, her laid-back humour a perfect foil for the seriousness of the other two characters.

Composer Gareth Farr responded to the challenge of “reinventing” Gluck’s orchestration of the work with Pasifika-like elements and gesturings, bringing into play an amalgam of brass and woodwind mixed with marimba, and underpinning the soundscape with a string-quartet like continuo for the action’s unfolding, along with a guitar (played by Gunther Herbig) as Orpheus’s lyre idea, all of which sounded “similar yet different” to the 18^th-century original. Conductor Marc Taddei’s robustly controlled trajectories kept the action moving, getting playing from the Orchestra Wellington musicians that was spot-on in terms of accuracy, ensemble and atmosphere. Tracy Lord Grant’s stunning designs, Jacqueline Coats’s able directorial assistance and JAX messenger’s lighting all played their part in evoking in the Wellington Opera House’s atmospheric precincts this resonantly Antipodean realisation of the age-old darkness-and-light story of love and loss.

New Zealand Opera presents:
MOZART – Cosi fan tutte (1790)– Opera Buffa in Two Acts

Cast:  Emma Pearson (Fiordiligi), Hanna Hipp (Dorabella), Jonathan Abernathy (Ferrando)
Julien van Malaerts (Guglielmo), Georgia Jamieson Emms (Despina), Andrew Foster Williams (Don Alfonso)

Director: Lindy Hume
Assistant Director: Matthew Kereama
Set/Costume Design: Tracy Grant Lord
Lighting Design: Matthew Marshall
Chorus Director: Michael Vinten

NZ Opera Chorus Wellington
Orchestra Wellington
Conductor: Natalie Murray Beale

St.James Theatre, Wellington

Wednesday 14^th June,  2023

This production of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte opened in Auckland on May 31 for three performances before coming to Wellington mid-June for another three nights, the season concluding in Christchurch in July following another trio of performances. The production coincided with the conclusion of NZ Opera General Director Thomas de Mallet Burgess’s five-year tenure in that role, one which featured plenty of incident and not a little controversy, as well as bearing the brunt of the effects of the pandemic for a good deal of that time. In view of what he called these “extraordinary times” de Mallet Burgess would have been well pleased with having Cosi as a fitting finale to his stewardship of the company, and especially in the light of the critical response garnered in the press by the production’s Auckland season.

Already in Wellington, the reception accorded this, the opening night at the capital’s  splendidly refurbished St.James Theatre has reinforced the general enthusiasm accorded  the new production. Cosi fan tutte has probably been the most trivilised, misunderstood and  belittled of all of Mozart’s operas over time; and even now commentators seem to disagree as to what Mozart’s and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte’s real intentions were in bringing to life a drama whose story-line seems so overtly cynical and even misogynistic. Two young blades make a bet with an older, cynical friend regarding the constancy of their respective lovers, which involves each wooing the other’s amor in disguise – outwardly each succeeds, but with not altogether expected confusions and doubts resulting from the exercise.

Australian director Lindy Hume’s own response to the work has, as she told us in an illuminating programme note, undergone a definite change over the years, one that’s certainly been reflected in other productions I’ve seen and heard from different parts of the world of late, nearly all involving a definite shift in attitude towards human relationships and societal sex-roles. For Hume the essential message concerning the characters and their interactions in the story is conveyed by the “before” and “after” aspects of the various emotional topographies that everybody has tumbled into, which, in effect, turn them all into “strangers to each other”.

As one critic perceptively pointed out, da Ponte might well be accused of misogyny in his libretto, but Mozart in his music more readily refutes such a charge, even given the men’s statement of the “Cosi fan tutte” motto, which rings hollow in the light of both their own connivance, and its undermining of their original partners’ resolve. And the final lines of the work, which propound a “let reason be one’s guide” resolution to the affair, is sung by all of the personalities with bewilderment rather than certainty, conveying the conclusion’s ambiguities with unnerving dismay, rather than falling back on the somewhat relieved “as we were” scenario beloved of countless earlier productions over the years.  Of course both Mozart’s and da Ponte’s work give the listener/observer/reader ample conjecturings along the way, with words and music which seduce and conceal as much as expound and illuminate. What Hume’s production brings out is the extent of the epiphany undergone by all the characters during the evening, disconcertingly made evident at the end.

Set and costume designer Tracy Grant Lord used a fluidly-employed revolving stage brilliantly mirroring the uncongealed nature of the work’s constantly-evolving interactions with the inestimable help of Matthew Marshall’s lighting designs. While from the very beginning the settings established and maintained a contemporariness throughout, other aspects seemed to underline a transformational fairytale air, such as during Act Two’s Garden scene, with shades of The Magic Flute in the appearance of the chorus in animal masks, and the full-length flowing gowns worn by the two girls, in a sense anticipating their transition into proper womanhood which the story and its circumstances bring into bitter-sweet effect.

All involved – soloists, chorus, conductor and orchestra – gave their all in the enterprise, the singers at once doing full justice to the “ensemble piece” aspect of the work (famous sequences such as the gorgeous Act One Terzettino “Soave sia il vento”; and the brilliantly disputatious full-cast finale to Act One were brought off magnificently), as did the various “couples” with their frequent duetting numbers and solos alike. Both sisters, Emma Pearson as Fiordiligi and Hanna Hipp as Dorabella, were nicely differentiated vocally and physically, Pearson’s constancy of character and elegant beauty of voice contrasting well with Hipp’s more adventurous inclinations and her compelling and engaging gusto.

Their lovers, Julien Van Mellaerts as Guglielmo and Jonathan Abernathy were similarly contrasted, the former’s sonorous and outgoing good humour a perfect foil for the latter’s more serious, heroic intensity, qualities which were to be thoroughly put to the test by the plot’s convolutions. Conspirators Don Alfonso (by turns rigorously and urbanely sung by Andrew Foster-Williams) and Despina (with Georgina Jamieson Emms here revelling in not only her character’s upwardly-mobile status promotion as bar-manager, but in her two famous cameo appearances as a doctor and a notary) brought their different kinds of  gravitas and comedy to bear at cardinal moments.

And conductor Natalie Murray Beale’s vital, pliable direction held cast, chorus and orchestra, together with distinction, making the most of the NZ Opera Chorus’s Wellington contingent’s infrequent but always mellifluous and characterful contributions to the settings; and securing from Orchestra Wellington a richly-varied set of reponses, both solo and corporate, to Mozart’s ineffably beautiful score. In this way conductor and players became the fulcrum around which the opera’s equivocations were most successfully and thoughtfully delivered throughout, for our pleasure!

Wellington Opera presents:
Gaetano DONIZETTI – Lucia di Lammermoor (1835)
(Libretto by Salvadore Canmmarano after Sir Walter Scott’s “The Bride of Lammermoor”

Conductor: Tobias Ringborg
Wellington Opera Chorus
Orchestra Wellington
Director: Sara Brodie
Cast: Normanno (Jordan Fonoti-Fulmaono)
Enrico (Phillip Rhodes)
Raimondo (Samson Setu)
Lucia (Emma Pearson)
Alisa (Hannah Ashford-Beck)
Edgardo (Oliver Sewell)
Arturo (Emmanuel Fonoti-Fulmaono
Assistant Director: Waitahi Aniwaniwa McGee
Set Design: Marc McIntyre
Costume Design: Tony DeGoldi
Lighting Design: Rowan McShane
Chorusmaster: Michael Vinten
Bridget Carpenter – Stage Director
Theresa May Adams – Production Director

St.James Theatre, Wellington,
Saturday, 25^th March, 2023

Gaetano Donizetti’s opera “Lucia di Lammermoor” is one of the most famous of all musical stage creations on account of a single sequence in the work, the memorable “Mad Scene” which takes place midway through Act Three. It’s an on-stage happening whose haunting, chilling impact can’t help but dominate the average audience member’s memory and overall impression of the entire opera. On this count alone, Wellington Opera’s latest production at the capital’s resplendent St.James Theatre over a week of performances would have almost certainly satisfied and thrilled every audience member, from the wide-eyed opera-beginner to the most avid opera-goer alike.

The scene depicts in effect the aftermath of an enforced marriage, that of the opera’s heroine, Lucia (Emma Pearson), to a man she does not love, Arturo (Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono) – at the height of the post-nuptial celebrations among the wedding-guests, the new bride appears at the doorway of the banqueting hall covered with the blood of the husband she has just murdered in their chamber with a knife. She is in a delirium, imagining that she can see the man she really loves waiting for her, so she can join him at the altar, before reliving her rejection by him and her feelings of imminent death, and finally telling him she will wait for him in Heaven. The onlookers are awe-struck, while those directly responsible for enforcing the marriage are overcome with grief and guilt. No operatic scene in the entire repertoire surpasses this one in depth of feeling; and this performance certainly doesn’t disappoint in terms of its sheer impact, visual, aural and emotional.

Part of what gives the scene such poignancy is the near-visceral involvement of everybody else in the story with Lucia’s situation – in fact even her lover, Edgardo (Oliver Sewell), who so brutally rejected her in a previous scene is a “presence” here, foremost in her delirium and to the exclusion of everybody else in her mind, apart from a brief reference to the ghostly fountain-phantom of the story’s Act One and the “cruel brother” of Act Two. Director Sara Brodie had obviously marshalled her forces here to a nicety, a kind of acme of dramatic potency, the peak of which was expressed by soprano Emma Pearson’s masterly performance as the deranged Lucia (I still remember the latter’s similarly heart-rending, if differently constituted “Gilda” from a “Rigoletto” some years ago at the St.James with NZ Opera). Her “Lucia” was one whose overall focus and care for detail across the spectrum of characterisation was near-impeccable (as was the orchestral playing which via conductor Thomas Ringborg’s direction and Karen Batten’s flute-playing gave us constant pleasure) – and if Pearson’s most stratospheric top notes lacked the ultimate amplitude, the sense of a character abandoning all caution and reaching for the heights was nevertheless thrilling.

Though I thought nowhere else in the production so surely reached those same heights, a certain determined unanimity of purpose played its part in the stage action scaling those lower slopes that led up to the opera’s aforementioned climax.  I noted a mention in one of the programme’s foreword presentations that this production was set in “our own country’s Scottish-influenced Southland”, but couldn’t for the life of me equate any on-stage happening with such a location. And the set struck me as being a fairly utilitarian affair, a quality which straddled various of the story locations – castle grounds, a fountain, various rooms, a great hall, ruins, a graveyard – and with different lighting providing various contrasts, though again, hardly evoking any kinds of specific proximity to places such as Gore, Winton or Balclutha.

The supporting characters fit all the more readily into these all-purpose scenarios, with both the already-mentioned Oliver Sewell’s Edgardo, and the character of his chief adversary, Lucy’s brother Enrico (Philip Rhodes) creating suitably strong and purposeful figures central to the storyline. I thought Sewell brought an appealing tenderness to his character’s love for Lucia, making an effective contrast with his hostility towards the latter’s family, in particular Enrico, and adding the extra ballast of his fury at believing that Lucia had spurned him for another! Central to this Machiavellian plot is, of course, Enrico, with Philip Rhodes brilliantly amalgamating his character’s desperation at the state of the family fortunes with his hatred of Edgardo and his marriage-designs upon Lucia! What fertile soil in which to sow the musical seeds of an operatic plot!

Just occasionally I found both of their characters’ stage movements a trifle unmotivated, wanting them to move less at times and let their voices go more with the music to express their emotions and motivations and their faces “engage” the audience more readily –  there wasn’t much menace between Sewell’s Edgardo and Philip Rhodes’ Enrico in the marriage contract confrontation scene, just noise and bluster, though the first Act Three scene in the Wolf‘s Crag ruins generated rather more deadly intent. As with all the characters, their individual focus seemed to sharpen more noticeably as the evening proceeded.

The singers in smaller roles fulfilled their functions more than adequately, seeming to me to “fill out” their personas as the drama evolved – I came to really like Samson Setu’s Raimondo, especially his stirring warning to the guests in the Banquet Hall concerning the imminent and shocking arrival of Lucia. Because I wasn’t sitting especially close to the action I confused the two brothers Jordan (Normanno) and Emmanuel (Arturo) Fonoti Fuimaono when the latter arrived on stage as Lucia’s prospective husband in the opera’s second act! Each brother sang so splendidly in his role, I doubt whether either would be offended at this mix-up on my part. Another reliable vocal presence throughout, and an imposing figure in the drama was Hannah Ashford-Beck who sang the role of Alisa, Lucia’s nurse.

The chorus was another group whose contribution for me “grew” in intensity throughout the evening – they survived a moment of shaky ensemble early on, getting ahead of the conductor’s beat for a measure or two, at “Come vinti da stanchezza” (during their “reporting back” to Enrico on catching sight of an intruder in the grounds, in the opening scene). Easily their best singing and stage presence was during the famous “Mad Scene”, where their support of the singer and their contribution to the situation couldn’t be faulted.

I wasn’t at all surprised at the excellence of Orchestra Wellington’s response to the music of the drama throughout the evening, with conductor Tobias Ringborg getting playing of a high class, throughout, by turns dramatic, lyrical and atmospheric (I’ve already mentioned Karen Batten’s flute solos) – however, I was pleasantly surprised to see NZ String Quartet violinist Monique Lapins’s name as the orchestra leader on this occasion (what one might term luxury substitution – with, of course, no reflection upon the equally wonderful Amalia Hall, I hasten to emphasise!)….

In conclusion, congratulations to director Sara Brodie, in particular for being the presiding genius in enabling us opera-goers such a gripping first-hand experience of that unforgettable Act Three scene, the description of which I began this review with – a precious recollection!

New Zealand Opera presents:
VERDI – Macbeth

Cast:  Macbeth – Phillip Rhodes
Lady  Macbeth – Amanda Echalaz
Banquo – Wade Kermot
Macduff – Jarred Holt
Malcolm – Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono
Lady-in-Waiting – Morag Atchison

With Orchestra Wellington
Conductor: Brad Cohen

Director: Netia Jones /Lightmap
Assistant Director: Jacqueline Coats
Lighting Designer: Matthew Marshall
Chorus Director: Michael Vinten

St James Theatre, Wellington

7th.October 2022 (also 9th October 2:30pm,)

The dark stage is raked up to the left. Not steeply, but enough to throw all the lines and angles off plumb. It is bare and black, with a gauze at the front creating spatial ambiguities.

Long before the last audience member has taken their seat, we are in the dark, crooked world of Macbeth, in which fair is foul and foul is worse than you imagined.

This is a reimagined Macbeth. There is nothing historic and Scottish about it. These are not – despite what the programme says – the brutish leaders of brawling clans, dashing from one pele tower siege to the next. Nor has it been updated to the unstable present. No one carries blue and yellow flags as Birnam Wood retakes Dunsinane.

Instead, the drama is set on the stage of the imagination.

What happens when someone conceives of a wicked act to advance themselves, and then carries it out?  Shakespeare imagines that they become unhinged.  Lacking a moral compass, there is no guide for where to go next. Verdi agrees, though he points to the political and human consequences (the refugees in Act 4). And the director of this production thinks that the desire to kill may be accompanied by other beastly proclivities. In this Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is ravenous for power and sex. She is powerful and controlling. He is weak and often uncertain.

The stage in the opening scene reminded me of a black-and-white television set.  Lots of black, with ambiguous straight lines. Then a woman enters, dressed in black and white, reading a piece of paper – followed by another and another. Finally there are about 20 of them, lined up along the wall on the left-hand side of the stage. They are the witches; in Verdi’s version not three women but ‘three groups of witches’. This is an unfortunate decision on the part of Verdi or his librettist. If they had asked me, I would have argued against it. It sacrifices the particular drama of the three weird sisters, each individualized, for a mass effect – and in this scene the witches look like a group of schoolgirls diligently studying their homework.

Indeed, in his essay on Macbeth the play in the programme, literary scholar Tom Bishop says that the witches ‘were a strong selling point’ in Shakespeare’s productions and the many subsequent revivals. (Samuel Pepys saw it nine times, calling it ‘one of the best plays for a stage … that I ever saw’.)

When Macbeth (Philip Rhodes) enters, he is wearing a stylish dark overcoat that he is careful to show us has a scarlet satin lining. The colour symbolism of the production design is straightforward: lots of black and dark grey, some white (but it doesn’t indicate purity), splashes of scarlet standing for death and lust, sometimes relieved by an intense turquoise. And that’s it.

The lighting design is simple. The stage is mostly shadowed with one or two points of light. Sometimes there is a kind of inhospitable grey light – the blank grey of a black and white television screen with the power off. But creative energy has been poured into the projections. Branches indicate a wood; an enormous closeup of Macbeth’s face with touches of red and turquoise indicates his power as king; giant hands covered in blood or washing themselves indicate guilt. Almost everything is in monochrome, maintaining the moral murk of the action.

With the visual language so simplified, the focus is thrown on the singers. Again, Verdi’s choice of voices is interesting. Macbeth is a baritone, as are Banquo (sung by Wade Kernot), the singing Assassin (Stuart Coats), the Doctor (Matthew Landreth), and the male Apparition (William McElwee). There are no tenors on stage until Act 4, when Macduff (Jared Holt) and Malcolm (Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono) arrive to defeat Macbeth’s army at Dunsinane and take back the throne of Scotland. It is a relief.

The baritone rumble throws the soprano of Lady Macbeth (Amanda Echalaz) into the spotlight. She is the most animated character, with a full emotional palette from ambitious to exultant, lascivious, frustrated (by Macbeth’s weakness), and finally remorseful and unhinged. Accordingly she is given terrific clothes as well as great arias. My favourite outfit was the black and red dress in the Act 2 banquet scene. She vamps around the stage in what seems to be a scarlet skirt with black leggings underneath, throwing herself at her husband with all the propriety of a pole dancer, eventually throwing off the scarlet skirt to show her true self in trousers, taking action.

This being NZ Opera, the production is musically stunning. An essential Orchestra Wellington played well under Brad Cohen, with some great brass playing at portentous moments, and some lovely clarinet and bassoon solos. The chorus sang well, and the soloists were fantastic. I have always been a fan of Philip Rhodes, and he and Wade Kernot (Banquo) carried much of the opera on their shoulders.  South African soprano Amanda Echalaz was excellent. She has a lovely voice with all the brilliance required, and acted well. Readers of my review of Opera Wellington’s recent La Traviata will recall my excited rave about newcomer Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono. He did not disappoint here as Malcolm, mastering the right amount of youthful nobility and strength of purpose, and singing beautifully alongside the experienced Jared Holt (an audience favourite, to judge by the applause).

My favourite moments concerned the apparitions. After the interval, the raked stage is revealed to have a huge fissure in it.  I thought at first it was symbolic of a rift in something – the body politic? – and was painted on. But in Act 3, summoned by the witches, the apparitions rise up from it, singing their fateful prophecies, and eventually a series of nine little child kings emerge, all dressed in red, with small iron crowns on their heads, like Macbeth’s own. They are Malcolm’s children, who will inherit the throne despite Macbeth having murdered their ancestor Duncan.

This is a theatrical device that Shakespeare would have approved of, having used the trapdoor in the stage of the Globe Theatre to have the witches suddenly appear and disappear.  In fact, I think he would have enjoyed the whole production. Verdi’s libretto is more economic than the text of the play – which is itself concise. But this production carried the same diabolical power as the original, and the same ghastly depiction of evil and its effect on the human mind.