Tag: opera

Diverting variety of opera scenes in New Zealand School of Music’s annual opera fiesta

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

A Night at the Opera from the New Zealand School of Music

A review jointly composed by Rosemary Collier and Lindis Taylor who each attended one of the performances 

Eighteen singers accompanied by Mark Dorrell – piano;

A list of singers and the scenes in which they sang will be found at the end

Scenes from:
Mozart: The Magic Flute, The Impresario, The Marriage of Figaro;
A Hand of Bridge by Barber;
Anna Bolena by Donizetti;
Princess Ida by Sullivan;
La Bohème by Puccini;
Die Fledermausby J Strauss II

Director: Jacqueline Coats;
Vocal coach: Lisa Harper-Brown;
Tutors: Richard Greager, Margaret Medlyn, Jenny Wollerman

Adam Concert Room, Kelburn Campus

Friday 28 and Saturday 29 September at 7.30pm

This was a concert of opera scenes, arias and ensembles, a stand-in for the traditional opera production that the school of music has been mounting, with few exceptions, since the 1970s. In fact, considering that the former Polytechnic Conservatorium used also to stage an opera every year, Wellington almost always enjoyed two student productions a year, a valuable addition to the offerings (two or three a year) from the then Wellington City Opera.

The performance space was large with the audience spread round three sides and a huge white screen backdrop covering the chamber organ and the entrance.

Staging was minimal and with only the piano to support them, the singers were certainly more exposed than they would be in a full production. That probably made it harder to create a satisfactory depiction of a fairy-tale scene like Tamino’s meeting with the Three Ladies and Papageno, even with the brave attempt at projecting shadow puppets on the screen behind the performers.

The piano was played by Mark Dorrell who has made a deep impression in the city as an accompanist for singers as well as conductor of the Orpheus Choir. He drew sounds from the piano that seemed as if they had been written by the composer, conjuring such a variety of colours that I scarcely missed the presence of an orchestra.

Some of the singers in both The Magic Flute and The Impresario displayed some lack of ease in their performances, though most threw themselves into the roles with huge energy. Any weaknesses in the first half, however, were probably on account of the demands of Mozart which tended to test them both in terms of vocal refinement and variety, as well as being called on to express emotions of greater subtlety. Thus those same singers often seemed in slightly better control of their voices in later appearances.

Some of the male singers seemed unaware of the need to sing the words as though for the first time, in order to project the meaning and the drama.

The costumes and wigs of the Three Ladies (Christina Orgias, Awhina Waimotu and Rebekah Giesbers) were amazing, suggesting Valkyries perhaps, and they sang with Wagnerian strength. After one has become familiar with the Flute, any early impression that the roles of the Three Ladies are secondary is dispelled: not only are they vocally demanding but each needs individual characterisation, and the three singers showed a lively awareness of that, even if ultimate polish proved a bit further off.

The performances by Jesse Stratford and Rory Sweeney as Tamino and Papageno also showed that combination of good understanding and an awareness of what they aspire to.

The famous vocal duel between the two sopranos in Mozart’s one-act The Impresario (Der Schauspieldirektor) was a surprising offering, a particularly challenging scene to bring off with the necessary amount of hilarity.

The two roles are, of course, quite scary, and there was no concealing that in Esther Leefe’s and Tess Robinson’s daring and vivid performances of Madame Silberklang (Silverklang) and Miss ‘Sweetsong’ (Mlle Herz in the original), there were weaknesses which the nature of their ego-driven roles actually accommodated. In fact, the only other sung role in the original is that of Vogelsang, the company tenor who attempts the mediation. Here, that singing role was ascribed to ‘Eiler’, the banker, who, in the original, takes a non-singing role, threatening in the end to pull the funding in order to force the two vying singers to back off. The other spoken role is that of Frank, the impresario.

Esther Leefe, as the aging prima donna, wore a blond wig and carefully failed in her repeated attempts at top Fs. Tess Robinson’s voice was a little unsteady at the start but both did a great job. In the role of ‘Eiler’, William McElwee’s vocal colouring was a bit under-developed, but he showed more accomplishment in his later appearance as Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus, with fine comic flair.

The scene from Figaro was from the riotous second act in the Countess’s room from the point where Cherubino has jumped from the window as the Count and Countess return to break into the wardrobe where the Count thinks and the Countess fears that they’ll find him, through to the entrance of Basilio, Bartolo and Marcellina. Though all were costumed in period, the lack of stage amenities demanded more vigorous employment of audience imagination.

Angélique MacDonald’s Countess was visually and histrionically attractive though initially she was a little unstable in pitch. Robert Gray, the Count, didn’t really display the fury and frustration that is his hallmark in the entire scene, though his vocal quality is agreeable. Amelia Ryman created a spirited Susanna and Figaro (Christian Thurston), in a plum, velvet jacket, took his role excellently. Antonio the gardener was sung by Daniel Dew, who looked and delivered in perfect style.

The scene ends after the entrance of Basilio, Bartolo and Marcellina (respectively: William McElwee, Jamie Henare and Rebekah Giesbers) who reveal the earlier marriage contract between Marcellina and Figaro; their smaller roles at this point were very effective. The whole extended scene was carried of with as much wit and delight as could reasonably be expected.

After the interval Awhina Waimotu, Christina Orgias, Fredi Jones and Rory Sweeney entered chatting in good American accents before sitting down to a round of Bridge. It must be the shortest opera in the repertoire, allowing just one major monologue each to the four players, revealing their inner lives and suggesting two hopeless marriages, masked by social conventions. The performances were varied and variable, from the confident Bill of Fredi Jones to the pathetic lament of Geraldine excellently sung by Awhina Waimotu. In between were the slightly self-conscious performance by Rory Sweeney as David, dreaming of becoming rich, and the empty-headed Sally, whose childish longing for a fancy hat almost made us feel sorry for her.

The great scene from Donizetti’s Anna Bolena in which the name role (Amelia Ryman) and the woman who will be Henry VIII’s next wife, Jane Seymour (Angélique MacDonald), was a dramatic high-point of the evening. It rests as one of the pinnacles of the bel canto era, and one of the great scenes in opera. The Queen’s long solo grew in intensity and credibility as it unfolded, while Seymour’s responding monologue well displayed their entrapment. They were splendidly costumed, sang strongly if not with the ultimate degree of polish and accuracy, but compensating with the total conviction with which they invested their performances.

The scene from Princess Ida, one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s lesser operettas, did not much amuse me [comments in this paragraph are Lindis’s], though the three men (Daniel Dew, Jesse Stratford and Jamie Henare) carried it off with real flair, exposing individual delineation clearly, though they share the age’s ridiculously passé attitudes to women’s higher education. So the fundamental silliness of the piece rather got in the way of enjoying the quite well-executed nonsense.

The last scene of Act I of La Bohème gave two of the most experienced voice students a great opportunity: Tom Atkins as Rodolfo and Isabella Moore as Mimi created near professional performances, accurate in pitch, well phrased and finely detailed in timbre and dynamics. We heard both the great arias and the duet ‘O soave fanciulla’ splendidly sung, as well as the calls from the other three students from the street below, all of whom had featured in earlier excerpts.

The evening ended with the last phase of Prince Orlofsky’s party in Act II of Die Fledermaus. As with all the previous scenes, it was sung in the original language, with spoken parts in English, though the final ensemble was also in English. Imogen Thirlwall proved a most accomplished Rosalinde and Fredi Jones allowed himself to be gently disgraced in a convincing performance  of Eisenstein; we noticed earlier William McElwee’s well portrayed role as Orlofsky. All eighteen singers came to the party for the final ensemble which might have been one of the few places where the Straussian delight could have been heightened even more with the support of an orchestra.

The singers and their scenes:

Christina Orgias          Flute                Bridge
Awhina Waimotu        Flute                Bridge
Rebekah Giesbers       Flute                Figaro
Jesse Stratford            Flute                Ida
Rory Sweeney             Flute                Bridge
Esther Leefe                Impresario
Tess Robinson             Impresario
William McElwee       Impresario       Figaro              Fledermaus
Amelia Ryman            Figaro              Bolena
Robert Gray                Figaro
Angélique MacDonald Figaro            Bolena
Christian Thurston      Figaro              Bohème
Daniel Dew                 Figaro              Ida
Jamie Henare               Figaro              Ida                   Bohème
Fredi Jones                  Bridge             Bohème           Fledermaus
Tom Atkins                 Bohème (Rodolfo) I
sabella Moore            Bohème (Mimi)
Imogen Thirlwall         Fledermaus (Rosalinde)

Superb New Zealand premiere of Donizetti masterpiece in the Catholic Cathedral

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Opera in a Days Bay Garden – Opera in the Basilica

Donizetti: Maria Stuarda

Lisa Harper-Brown (Elizabeth I); Paul Whelan (Talbot); Benjamin Fifita Makisi (Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester); Matt Landreth (Lord Cecil); Clarissa Dunn (Anna Kennedy); Rhona Fraser (Mary, Queen of Scots)
Producer: Rhona Fraser; Michael Vinten (conductor); Sara  Brodie (director)
Chapman Tripp NBR New Zealand Opera Chorus; orchestra

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart

Friday, 10 August 2012, 6.00pm

This was New Zealand’s first performance of Donizetti’s great opera, one of seven (I’m open to correction) that he wrote based on English and Scottish history and stories.  This one had a turbulent early history of censorship and numerous revisions because of its theme of battling royals and the execution of a crowned monarch.

Days Bay Opera was not in a garden this time, but appropriately in a Catholic church bearing the inscription ‘Sub Maria Nomine’.  It was virtually full of people; they witnessed an absolute triumph!  Days Bay Opera, principally the work of Rhona Fraser, producer and soprano soloist), gave us a performance of a very high standard and fully professional in all its elements, while conductor Michael Vinten and director Sara Brodie allowed their experience and their imaginations to invest Donizetti’s great opera with musical and acting delights.  It is worth noting that the sponsor of this enterprise was none other than Jeremy Commons, world expert on the operas of Donizetti.

In 1992 I attended this opera performed by Australian Opera in the Sydney Opera House.  It was notable that not only was the essay in the lavish printed programme written by Jeremy Commons, but three of the six principals (though not Elizabeth or Mary) were New Zealanders: Rodney Macann as Talbot, Anson Austin as Leicester (who was indisposed the night I attended) and Heather Begg as Anna.  A brief quotation from the essay sets the scene: “A beautiful and rewarding opera in itself – a fascinating study of two queens held apart by politics – a sensitive and moving representation of the final hours of one of the most unfortunate figures in British history – an intriguing window upon the theatrical world of its day – Maria Stuarda is all of these things.”

This choice constituted a departure for Days Bay Opera, whose previous productions have been of a lighter cast: The Marriage of Figaro, Journey to Rheims, and Alcina (which is not as light as the other two, but has a happy ending).

The change to an indoor venue in winter from a beautiful garden and watery view in summer is also major.  Sara Brodie used the building to great effect, its architectural features enhanced by lovely lighting, with action taking place in various parts, although predominantly at the sanctuary end, where the small orchestra was placed.  Action further back could not readily be seen by those near to the front; however, the acoustics are so fine that the sound could be heard anywhere.  The action in the central aisle and side aisles enabled other parts of the audience to see and hear well at different times.  The use made of the many points of entry into the church was imaginative; the coup de grace (coup de l’église?) was at the end, when Mary and her retinue walked the length of the nave and out the west door (to her execution).

There were no weak links in this production; the cast was very thoroughly rehearsed, knew their words well, and projected them more than adequately. I noticed that the soloists seldom looked at the conductor, yet they were spot on in entries and timing.  The English version used was that of Amanda Holden, who created it for English National Opera in 1998.  It was described by the Sunday Telegraph as ‘Amanda Holden’s racy new translation’.

The orchestra comprised eight players, plus a pair of trumpets that appear only in one short scene, ‘off-stage’ (out the side door, in fact), when Elizabeth arrives to meet Mary.  Vinten’s reduction of the score was masterly, with sufficient of both volume and content to render the music with enough variety of timbre and dynamics.  The five strings, flute, clarinet and piano all worked hard and played extremely well, with many wonderful moments.  Early on, I especially noticed beautiful playing from the clarinet.  The piano never intruded, but gave a firm base for the other players.  Later in the first Act there was winsome flute playing accompanying Mary and Anna.  A lovely prelude preceded Act II (Act III in most 20th century performances), full of foreboding and anticipation.

Costuming a period production can be an expensive business.  The solution here was to dress the characters mainly in modern dress, including lounge suits and ties for the men (although Elizabeth’s queenly robe, and her hunting costume deviated from the modern), apart from Mary Queen of Scots and her attendant Anna, who wore period costume.  Director Sara Brodie explained to me in the interval (which was deliciously lubricated with mulled wine) that this was to convey the idea that Mary and her court were in a ‘time-lock’, while the court of Elizabeth had moved on in time.

The cast was uniformly good. What a coup to have Paul Whelan as Talbot – a bass-baritone who sings in opera houses around the world!  While he was the principal singer in that register, he was not the leading soloist.

Lisa Harper-Brown played Queen Elizabeth I with great dignity and hauteur, her vocal coloration and facial expression always apt for the moment.  Her voice was rich and expressive.  Donizetti took her to both the top and the bottom of her range in quick time, but this seemed to present no problem.

In the first Act, she had a delightful lilting solo with pizzicato accompaniment.  Her Scene Two solo in the presence of Mary was delivered with a sense of foreboding, as Mary and Talbot intoned their reactions against the floating notes of Elizabeth; Anna joined in to make a gorgeous ensemble.  There was a slight lack of co-ordination, but considering the distance the singers were from each other, ensemble was very good, featuring masterly, controlled tone, while Mary’s soliloquy that followed was dramatic and agitated.

Ben Makisi sang Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, with passion and to great dramatic effect.  His voice had full, ringing tones, producing (as always) lovely soft top notes; in the case of his duet with Elizabeth, these were unaccompanied.  The men’s duet that followed was full of drama, as was Elizabeth’s anger with Leicester. Makisi, of all the performers, managed to get a look in his eye that expressed his emotions and his objections to Elizabeth’s wishes (since his greater affection was for Mary).

Rhona Fraser’s singing as Mary Queen of Scots was magnificent.  I have heard her sing in each of the operas.  Here, her role was much larger, more dramatic and more difficult than those she had previously essayed, and she rose to the occasion superbly.  Her intonation was perfect, her runs thrilling, and her acting thoroughly in keeping with the role, as indeed was the acting of all the cast.  Her tirade against Elizabeth in the second Scene of Act I incorporated coloratura runs, +and was impressive, the voice ringing out strongly, but with no hint of forcing.  Again at the end of Act II there were superb coloratura passages, while Fraser’s low notes were dramatic and mellow, helping to bring the audience into the passion and drama.

The following duet between Leicester and Mary, in waltz time, revealed a wonderful bloom to Fraser’s voice, and how splendidly both singers used their resonators.

At the beginning of Act II there was a stunning duet between Makisi and Whelan, as they discuss plots against Elizabeth, their double lives, of service to Elizabeth, but their love for Mary, and in Talbot’s case, the fact that he was a clandestine Catholic. Whelan was at his best in the scene with Mary, his voice fully resonant in the sanctuary of the church.  Here, Mary had yet more beautiful period clothing.  Her solo with chorus, Talbot and Anna was mellifluous, enhanced by the acoustic.

Mary’s prayer was exquisitely sung, and Fraser’s facial expression conveyed tragic feeling.  The lighting contrasted the light and space of Elizabeth’s court of the first scene with the confined, darker castle at Fotheringay where Mary was imprisoned.  Presumably for this reason also, there was less movement in those scenes.

In the final scene, leading to the execution, the crew erected barriers to keep back the crowd.  The chorus began here rather weakly, but improved as they went on, though facial expressions were mostly too dead-pan.  Their placards read “Shame on England”, “We love you Mary” and other 21st century phrases; very telling.  Makisi was very strong here, and the chorus became more involved.

Clarissa Dunn was effective as Anna, Mary’s companion.  Her acting as the calm, comforting, dutiful servant was just right; her relatively small amount of singing revealed a very attractive voice, and good enunciation.  She acquitted herself well in the ensemble in the first Act with Mary and the soldiers, and again in the final scene.

The chorus was first heard behind the audience, in the gallery, making a great impact and their work, vocally, was consistently good.  Paul Whelan also first sang from behind where I was seated; he produced a magnificent sound, powerful and intense and projecting the words strongly. The brass and off-stage chorus were sonorously splendid as they announced Elizabeth’s arrival at Fotheringay Castle to visit Mary (historically, this never happened).

This opera features many duets and ensembles.  Early on, Elizabeth and Leicester  sing a tender duet that soon turns to fire; this was splendidly done – but so were all the ensembles.

Some aspects of the production were less convincing than others.  Both Elizabeth and Mary used the pulpit on occasion; the first time, it was Elizabeth, holding a dog, which she hands to Cecil (Matt Landreth, a cynical courtier who sang expressively, though with sometimes insufficient volume though at others, strongly) while she sings her first aria; this was excellent.  But the photographers doing a photo-shoot of Elizabeth in the first scene (complete with make-up brush) was perhaps a little OTT, especially the distracting flashes.  Elsewhere in the production had Elizabeth using a laptop, Cecil using a cellphone, but these features were not overdone.

The only slightly negative note was the appearance of the chorus.  Most had not memorised their music, which was perhaps understandable, but their scores were held at sundry angles, and in the last scene some of the chorus held protest placards as well, which added to the problem. More uniform handling of the scores would have improved the look. Nevertheless, the chorus shone vocally.

Here we had a team of individuals performing impeccably, both dramatically and vocally, conveying expertly Donizetti’s music and drama at his melodic, harmonic and rhythmic best.  Congratulations to all concerned with this stunning production – not forgetting the effective lighting.  Particular praise must go to the two female leads, who were outstanding, and to Rhona Fraser for producing a performance of such quality, with tension, drama and momentum maintained throughout the performance, with no dead spots.

The second and final performance is on Saturday, 18 August at 8pm.  Go if you possibly can!

 

 

Views of the NZSO’s epic “Valkyrie”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

WAGNER – Die Walküre

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Pietari Inkinen (conductor)

Cast:  Simon O’Neill (Siegmund) / Edith Haller (Sieglinde) / Jonathan Lemalu (Hunding)

Christine Goerke (Brünnhilde) / John Wegner (Wotan) /  Margaret Medlyn (Fricka)

The Valkyries : Morag Atchison, Amanda Atlas, Sarah Castle, Kristin Darragh,

Wendy Doyle, Lisa Harper-Brown, Anna Pierard, Kate Spence

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Sunday 22nd July, 2012

Antony Brewer – guest reviewer

Wagner wrote works of enormous complexity. They make extraordinary demands on conductor, singers and players especially the music-dramas of Der Ring des Nibelungen. So performing Die Walküre in New Zealand is ambitious to say the least. We certainly have the orchestra and, somewhat to my surprise, the conductor Pietari Inkinen. We also have our own Simon O’Neill, a leading artist at Bayreuth, Covent Garden, La Scala and the New York MET. We have a riveting Fricka in Margaret Medlyn, we have the Walküren (a fabulous team!) and a Hunding of ideal voice in Jonathan Lemalu. Australia provided the (unfortunately indisposed) Wotan, John Wegner, whose efforts to stay the course were  extraordinary considering the demands of the role. The Sieglinde and Brünnhilde were non-antipodeans and also magnificent.

I do not share the belief, expressed in another review, that we should put up a totally Kiwi cast for such an event. If we have the singers, as we did for the Parsifal, we can do so with pride. Already for our size we have had and have New Zealand Wagnerians who can shake the stages of the world. Pushing the wrong voices at the wrong time into Wagner is both unnecessary and damaging.

And what voices we had! Simon O’Neill’s Siegmund rang out with intensity and a touch of real metal in the voice. As do most Siegmunds, he made a bit of a meal of “Wälse, Wälse” but that was easily forgiven when his “Winterstürme” was phrased with such rare beauty. His Sieglinde, Edith Haller , was that operatic rarity, a singer whose singing and acting were outstanding while she also looked the part. It was a wonderful experience to feel convinced at the visual level as well as the aural. Her instrument is not unlike that of classic Sieglinde Leonie Rysanek, a full and beautiful mid-voice with a clarion top register: “O Herstes Wunder” rang out with full and intense tone, supported magnificently by Inkinen and the orchestra.

John Wegner’s indisposition has already been noted. Yet he held the stage as a Wotan should, despite a disappearing voice. He has that special ability to be still without seeming immobile and because of the stillness, movement and expression gain in power when they occur.

Fricka can be a bore if she be more sanctimonious than angry. The great Frickas ( e.g. Elisabeth Höngen, Rita Gorr, Christa Ludwig) always have a more or less imperious outrage barely concealing the painful indignation of a woman scorned by her partner. I admit to being a huge fan of Margaret Medlyn. She was in fine voice and she was Fricka. What an artist she is.

Jonathan Lemalu was HUGE as Hunding. The voice and expression worked superbly, especially his ability to darken the voice and inject it with so much menace.

I’ve left Christine Goerke as Brünnhilde to the end because of the singers she was, for me, the great discovery of the evening. Her stage presence, her facial expressions and her acting in general were quite magnetic: she has that rare ability to draw attention to herself without compromising the other artists, in fact enhancing what they are doing by association. I felt myself involved with Brünnhilde’s dilemma in a way that only the great Brünnhildes manage to convey. Obviously her interpretation will mature; in many ways it is fine and wonderful already.

As to the voice, WOW. Used as I am to the dearth of true hochdramatisch voices available to sing these roles since Nilsson retired, it is amazing to hear not a spinto voice pushed out of it’s natural fach but a richly coloured and powerful dramatic soprano with the top gleaming, the middle darkly tinged and lower register (so crucial, say, in  “War es so schmälich” ) full-toned without that “chesty” quality.

My sense of Pietari Inkinen’s conducting in the past has been of refinement and structural cohesion rather than emotional intensity. Even in the music of Sibelius which he conducts so well, I have experienced a feeling of emotional restraint and even compression of climaxes. He has certainly refused to flirt with brass in full cry and timpani, for example, at levels of ear-thwacking intensity.

Die Walküre is clearly different emotional territory for him. His direction of this performance had all the qualities of his best work and a new frisson of freedom and excitement. The orchestra provided some of the finest climaxes I’ve ever heard in Wagner, along with some exquisite playing in soft passages: the shaping and sifting of the orchestral tracery in the introduction to Siegmund’s “Winterstürme” was simply magical, just as it should be. I’ve seldom heard this wonderful orchestra of ours play with such unanimity and beauty of tone. The strings in their many hushed passages played as if their tone were suspended in mid-air, tangible but of the finest grain.

Inkinen’s decision to seat the orchestra with violas to the right front and cellos behind was inspired. Wagner’s orchestration is masterly and his writing for violas crucial to the “mix”. We heard every detail, while the cellos and basses (who were missing a player I heard later) had plenty of power to be heard perfectly.

*   *           *   *           *   *           *   *           *   *           *   *           *   *

Die Walküre – another review of the Wellington performance, by Peter Mechen

Mention Wagner to the average person in the street, and if you get a response it’s more than likely to be along the lines of something to do with the “Ride of the Valkyries”, one of those pieces of music that have become icons in their own right and perfectly capable of standing alone and being appreciated in splendid isolation. I myself still remember as a musically inexperienced twenty year-old hearing a recording of Die Walküre for the very first time, and being electrified by the beginning of the opera’s third act, which of course opens with those well-known irruptions of orchestral energy that herald the Valkyries’ wild ride.

But as for the other four hours’ worth of music, I was equally captivated, drawn into a fantastic world by the range and scope of Wagner’s creative imagination. I recall on this first occasion late at night playing the opening of the first LP side of the impressively packaged set (the famous Decca recording with Solti conducting) which I’d borrowed from the Palmerston North Public Library, intending to “sample” a few minutes of the music and play the rest in the morning if I liked what I heard. I think it was at about 4:30am or thereabouts that I finally came out of my trance, having ignored sleep and simply kept going to the very end of the opera, all ten LP sides of it – I was unstoppable, and so, it seemed, was Wagner.

On Sunday afternoon at the Michael Fowler Centre just as captivating (and unstoppable) were Pietari Inkinen and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, plunging whole-heartedly into the Prelude from Act One of Die Walküre (which the publicity called “The Valkyrie”) and never relinquishing their grip upon the music throughout, right to the last few strains of the glorious “Magic Fire Music” which concludes the work. What followed was, in my experience, unprecedented, a standing ovation from the MFC audience for all of those performers concerned, a tribute whose enthusiasm truly reflected the efforts of singers and players and conductor to present to us something very special indeed.

This Walküre, though worth the wait, was a long time in coming to Wellington, fifteen years after the groundbreaking concert performances of Das Rheingold which the orchestra had given, also in semi-staged form in the Michael Fowler Centre, under the leadership of its conductor-in-chief at the time, Dr. Franz-Paul Decker. My belief at the time was that the NZSO and Decker were planning to work their way, at various intervals, through the remaining “Ring” operas, making the venture a “first” for this country. Alas, due to sponsorship difficulties, the plan was scuppered, or at least put on indefinite long-term hold.  I greatly admired Decker as a conductor of the Austro-German repertoire, and loved his Rheingold, as I had equally enjoyed his concert-hall performances of Mahler and Richard Strauss. It was a numbing disappointment that we weren’t able to experience any further Wagnerian efforts on this kind of scale from him and the orchestra.

So, it was in this context that I awaited the present Walküre, my excitement at the prospect coloured, I admit, by my previous encounters with the conducting of Pietari Inkinen. I’ve had occasion to admire him greatly in the past as a musician – his technical aplomb, his intellectual grasp of scores and works, and his ability to extract beautiful and accurate playing from the orchestra. But up to now, I had always thought his music-making somewhat inhibited emotionally – to my ears he seemed reluctant to bring out from his players any kind of no-holds-barred realization of what was in the music. It seemed enough that he was getting the orchestra to play beautifully, and at times brilliantly, and thereby avoiding those moments when the music’s expression demanded a darker, deeper, more desperate and urgent approach – when, in fact, beauty and brilliance were simply NOT enough to realize the music’s fuller expression.

Perhaps it took me the whole of the first Act of Walküre to be completely and utterly won over by Inkinen’s conducting – but there were plenty of excitements and intensities along the way. The tempestuously-driven Prelude was a great start to the performance, the string-players bending their backs to the task, and the winds and brass sounding the growing warnings of the storm’s thunderous arrival (the timpani absolutely shattering at the climax). By contrast, the tenderness of the string-playing throughout the first exchanges, sung and unsung, between the fugitive Siegmund (Simon O’Neill) and his long-lost sister, Sieglinde (Edith Haller), was heart-melting, with Andrew Joyce’s ‘cello solo one to literally die for.

I did think the playing of the motif associated with Hunding (Jonathan Lemalu), Sieglinde’s husband, needed more brassy girth, a blacker-toned brutality (Hunding is a particularly nasty customer, after all!). But the bite and impact of the orchestral accompaniment to Siegmund’s account of his earlier encounters with Hunding’s own murderous kinsmen was thrilling projected, as was the trenchant support for Siegmund’s scalp-prickling cries of “Wälse”, desperate invocations of his father’s guiding spirit, underpinned by fierce string tremolandi, and radiant contributions from trumpet and winds pinpointing the presence of the sword in the tree. And there was more orchestral radiance framing Siegmund’s poetic “Winterstürme”, the excitement building within the orchestra surrounding the singers’ exchanges as they ascertain their true brother/sister identities as well as acknowledging their love for one another. The Act’s last couple of pages were a ferment of newly-awakened passion between the lovers and great orchestral excitement, by which time I was convinced this was a different Pietari Inkinen at the orchestral helm to that which I’d encountered before.

If Act One had built gradually to that point of intensity, Act Two was on fire orchestrally right from the beginning – and so it went on with scarcely a falter, right through to the end, Inkinen seeming to revel in the intensities and unleash his players’ capabilities to realize those same impulses. My notes are filled with comments such as “wonderful atmosphere – orchestra terrific!” during the exchange between Wotan (John Wegner) and Fricka (Margaret Medlyn), and “the music’s darkness strongly brought out by Inkinen” when Wotan voices his fear of the Nibelungen, and “terrific vehemence in the orchestra” during Wotan’s grief at “Das Ende”. Tremendous stuff from conductor and players, here, as well as throughout Act Three.

All of which would have gone for very little without the singers, who with one disappointing exception made the most of the wonderfully-wrought orchestral support. To get it out of the way, the disappointment came with German-born Australian John Wegner’s Wotan, the singer developing problems with his throat during the course of Act Two, and having to seriously conserve his voice right throughout the following final Act. As the latter contains some of the character’s most significant and memorable moments of the entire cycle Wegner’s ailment was a blow not only for him but for his Brünnhilde and for the audience – instead of the glorious and heartfelt resolution of father-daughter conflict which makes the third Act so very memorable, we had the admittedly absorbing spectacle of an experienced singer intelligently using what vocal resources he still had to get through an extremely demanding series of episodes. He succeeded creditably, but I thought that there ought to have been some kind of announcement made beforehand concerning his ailment, as is done in opera houses, to put the audience in the picture, as it were.

By way of compensation (one of many), we were able to enjoy American soprano Christine Goerke’s debut as Brünnhilde, an assumption that I found gave so much pleasure for a number of reasons – for a start I loved the SOUND of her voice, rich, warm and flexible, drawing me further into the character she was creating with her whole demeanour. Everything her face and body did seemed to flow from the text and its meaning, giving a natural, organic quality to her impulses towards interaction with the others (generally, the three leading women seemed more at ease than did the men in their use of the narrow stage and their interplay with other characters). But Goerke and John Wegner, despite the latter’s vocal ailments, managed to convey plenty of musical and dramatic ebb and flow between them, especially in their Act Two confrontation over the fate of Siegmund. And Goerke brought the same heartfelt qualities to her interactions with each of the Volsung twins, a gravely beautiful Todesverkündigung (announcement of death) with Siegmund, and great and vigorous compassion for the bereft and defenceless Sieglinde.

As Siegmund Simon O’Neill was truly resplendent of voice, if not quite as easeful and fluent in his gestures and movements as his Act One on-stage partner Edith Haller, who took the role of Sieglinde. The “edge” to O’Neill’s bright, heroic tones I always find takes a bit of getting used to at first – but there’s straightaway also that wonderful freshness of aspect and manner, which gives me the impresion that he’s singing all of his music for the first time and is enchanted by its discovery. By the time O’Neill had reached the point of recounting his adventures to the vengeful Hunding, the voice had relinquished its “bleat” and acquired proper warmth and girth, exemplified by those thrilling cries of “Wälse!” already referred to. His delivery of “Winterstürme” was sheer poetry in its effect, and his wholehearted give-and-take with Sieglinde in their increasingly passionate exchanges towards the end of the Act had just the right amount of animal energy and excitement, singers and orchestra catching fire and conveying the sheer exhilaration of it all to us in no uncertain terms.

As his partner and lover-to-be Sieglinde, Edith Haller looked and sang like an angel. She brought to the performance recent experiences in the role at both Bayreuth and the Vienna State Opera, and thus seemed readily able to turn her uncompromising “acting-space” into a vibrant and believable world of repressed emotion, which was then unleashed by Siegmund’s arrival. Equally telling was her desperation in flight from Hunding with Siegmund, and her fierce joy at the thought of carrying her brother/lover’s child, though she suffered, along with everybody else on the platform, through a lack of strong dramatic direction and vision regarding the actual staging of Siegmund’s death. But her Sieglinde was a joy, an unalloyed delight to encounter.

Besides Simon O’Neill, two more New Zealanders took important roles, Jonathan Lemalu as Hunding, the brutal husband of Sieglinde, and Margaret Medlyn as Fricka, Wotan’s long-suffering wife, and guardian-goddess of marriage. Jonathan Lemalu’s darkly-resonant tones made Hunding sound a truly menacing figure, his singing compensating for a rather too-static stage presence – I couldn’t understand why he and Edith Haller didn’t seem to take any notice of Wagner’s quite explicit music-cues during the sequence when Hunding orders Sieglinde to bed, for example. By contrast Margaret Medlyn as Fricka was able to demonstrate her wonderful stage-instinct throughout her scene with Wotan, conveying both the umbrage of a dishonoured goddess and the frustration of a long-suffering wife. I thought her voice seemed more effortly-produced, and not as resplendent as with her Kundry of a few years ago on the same stage – but she successfully brought the character and her underlying motivations to pulsating life.

There would be no show without the Valkyries, “those noisy girls” as comedienne Anna Russell called them during her famous tongue-in-cheek analysis of the Ring Cycle. Here they were gloriously noisy, mainly due, I think, to their forward placement on the platform, in a “stand-and-deliver” line singing directly at the audience (again, a stage director would have almost certainly effected a more interesting configuration), as opposed to their usual deployment in places around the stage. It was all extremely visceral and thrilling!

Again, the “evening dress” made initially for an incongruous effect (what today’s young Valkyrie is wearing when she rides into battle…), which was soon forgotten in the cut-and-thrust of the singers’ exchanges with one another and with the orchestra. I liked the differentiations between the individual voices, some stronger than others, some differently focused – just like any average group of people – but no-one should be singled out, because each voice played its part in giving the scene its astonishing impact.

I’ve already mentioned the “semi-staged” aspect of the performance – the singers were able to use a narrow space in front of the orchestra and conductor, with entrances and exits on each side. There were no costumes as such, and no props at all, so what was mentioned in the libretto – a sword, a spear, a drink – had to be mimed (Wotan’s plastic drink-bottle which he discreetly brought on during Act Three hardly counted – and it was certainly no drinking-horn!). It all worked sufficiently well to further the drama, even if some of the movements, particularly from both Siegmund and his enemy Hunding seemed too stilted and contrived.

The women, I thought, were at an advantage over the men in the matter of “concert attire”, because they were at least able to dress colourfully and suggest different personalities, while the men were confined to their very formalised tuxedos. This seemed to work against whatever theatricality the singers were trying to generate – Siegmund at the very start looked as if he had just come home from an all-night party somewhat the worse for wear, for example. However, as the work progressed we were able to shift our focus away from what people were wearing, and instead concentrate on what they were doing with their faces, bodies, and, of course, voices.

The other thing I thought could have been given more thought, to the work’s overall advantage as a piece of music-drama, was the lighting. Nothing needed to be distractingly over-the-top – just subtle touches letting the music give the cues, would have, I think, enhanced the feeling of a story being enacted. Who would possibly want to insist that a “concert version” of an opera has nothing that suggests the theatre? I thought the red glow which grew out of the opening strains of the Magic Fire music at the opera’s end was entirely apposite, and thought that there were other places throughout the work where changes of ambient light would have added to the sense of dramatic action initiated by the music.

These criticisms are like thistledown planted on the wind, as Denis Glover’s Harry might say, blown away by the staggering achievement of singers, players and conductor with this presentation of one of the world’s mightiest music-dramas. It joins a small, but significant and ever-promising group of Wagner productions in this country, each of which represented for its time hitherto undreamed-of heights of local performance achievement, and has since become legendary. The NZSO and Pietari Inkinen can be justly proud of what they have done to add to that list of legends.

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A magnificent Rigoletto, almost too close for comfort….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Giuseppe VERDI – RIGOLETTO

Production by NBR New Zealand Opera  / Director : Lindy Hume

Cast:  Warwick Fyfe (Rigoletto) /  Emma Pearson (Gilda) / Rafael Rojas (Duke of Mantua)

Ashraf Sewailam (Sparafucile) / Kristin Darragh (Maddalena) / Rodney Macann (Monterone)

Emma Fraser (Countess) / James Clayton (Ceprano) / Wendy Doyle (Giovanna)

Derek Hill (Borsa) / Matthew Landereth (Marullo)

Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus  (Michael Vinten – Chorus Master)

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Wyn Davies (conductor)

St.James Theatre, Wellington

Saturday 19th May 2012

Very much an opera-going experience for our time (and thus ostensibly at the mercy of the “updating” phenomenon which subjects present-day opera-goers to all kinds of directorial mayhem), this latest NBR New Zealand Opera production of “Rigoletto” seemed to me to be a triumph of substance over flash, of intelligence over sensation-mongering.  One goes to the opera these days ready for anything, expecting to be challenged as much as entertained, and in some cases as affronted as much as delighted by what one encounters (and not always merely on stage). One or two semi-gratuitous “blips” aside, I thought this production delivered a well thought-out and properly mind-provoking  set of scenarios which brought the original impulses of Verdi’s inspiration all-too-close for comfort to aspects of the 21stCentury world we live in.

I know a number of opera-lovers who won’t go to contemporary productions any longer because of what they consider to be “violence done to the original” by presentations which seem deliberately to set out to gratuitously either titillate and cheapen, or else  shock and affront audience sensibilities. While there’s nothing wrong in principle with certain of those processes being brought to bear on people’s experiences in the opera house, it’s obviously too much for some people to stomach when a theatrical work’s traditional ethos is jarringly overlaid with elements suggesting imported and irrelevant agendas.

Nowhere did I feel that director Lindy Hume’s setting of Rigoletto’s story within a contemporary scenario of razz-matazz politics did either Victor Hugo’s original story or Verdi’s own conception of his work any disservice. True, a Mediterranean ethos was suggested by things like the overtly demonstrative and masochistic manner of the Duke, the Mafia-like aspect of his henchmen (though the “gorillas-in-suits” phenomenon is a commonplace, these days), and the dubious “imprimatur” of a Catholic cleric in full regalia among the entourage – a cardinal, or monsignor at the very least! But it was actually a way of giving the problematical “curse”,  brought down upon the head of Rigoletto by the wronged nobleman Monterone,  rather more “clout” than is usually the case with modern recastings of the story. No matter how sophisticated, worldly-wise and updated the setting, such dark, forceful utterances of vengeance  for wrongdoing can still pack a primordial punch. And especially in this context  –  an old-world culture beset by superstitions and haunted by gods both ancient and more recent, whose shadows of influence can still come out at night and linger beyond realms of reason.

And it is night and darkness that largely predominate in the opera’s action – only the third Act  suggests “the morning after”, while the other three parts of the story are played out against the dark. It’s a world of concealment (Rigoletto and his daughter, Gilda), of dark business (the courtiers’ abduction of Gilda), of murderous intent (the assassin, Sparafucile), and of secret trysts (the Duke, first of all with Gilda, then with the assassin’s sister, Maddalena). Right from the beginning, there was darkness at the heart of it all – the curtain slowly lifted as the orchestra tuned up, showing Rigoletto sitting alone in a room in the dark, except for a “home theatre” screen which gave us none too naturalistic footage of ravens during the Prelude  (supposedly portentous imagery, but surely the music alone at this point was doing enough!), fortunately uncharacteristic of the production over the span of the evening.

Contrasted with this was the glitter and sparkle of the Duke’s residence, which the preludial scene “morphed” into cleverly, walls and doors lowered, furniture revolved, and  the darkness flooded with light, all done expertly and unobtrusively. The characters were suddenly animated and vibrant, Warwick Fyfe’s Rigoletto breaking his dark reverie to become the Duke’s energetic factotum,  part evil genius, part buffoon, cynical and dismissive of all, seemingly unmoved by his master’s political success of the evening.  As the libertine Duke, Mexican tenor Rafael Rojas (a splendid Canio in last year’s NBR NZ Opera’s Pagliacci) looked and acted the part from the beginning, revelling in the media attention (the group photograph splendidly choreographed to be “captured” at a musical climax) and readily displaying his lascivious impulses (with plenty of noticeably bimbo-ish allurement close at hand throughout).

It’s the Duke’s voice which is the first of all to compel attention with “Questa o quella”,  delivered by Rojas with plenty of insouciance and nicely ringing top notes, his energies and tones echoed by the Vector Wellington Orchestra’s expert accompanying under conductor  Wyn Davies.  The others, including Rigoletto, have mostly one-line declamations and conversational utterances throughout the act, with strong contributions throughout the opening exchanges from Derek Hill’s Borsa, and then from Matthew Landreth’s Marullo, when breaking the news to the “chapter” regarding Rigoletto’s supposed  mistress.  As well, we were given convincing cameos from both Emma Fraser’s glamorous Countess Ceprano and James Clayton as her boorish husband.

It’s not until right at the end of the act that Warwick Fyfe’s vocal mettle as Rigoletto is really tested, with his mocking  response to the tragic entrance and vengeful utterances of Count Monterone, come to denounce the Duke for misusing his daughter. Unfortunately, that fine singer Rodney Macann seemed to me vocally out of sorts on the night, not able to muster up the power and focus needed to make his curse really sting.  If the intention was to convey a man already broken by his daughter’s downfall at the Duke’s hands, then this Monterone certainly succeeded, but in the process the curse’s power was somewhat muted, and made Rigoletto’s horror-struck reaction a shade pantomime-like. To Fyfe’s credit his character steadfastedly maintained an agitated state right into the heart of the Second Act’s opening, convincing us that Monterone’s pronouncements had indeed struck home.

Back to darkness with the beginning of Act Two, out in the street and next to a bus shelter, from which came the assassin (or, in present-day vernacular, the hit-man) Sparafucile, sung by Egyptian-born Ashraf Sewailam, physically threatening and vocally imposing, his exchanges with Rigoletto beautifully underpinned by rich, grainy string playing and voice-of-doom percussion work from the pit.  The whole scene was brilliantly effective, with its urban jungle backdrop of darkness, against which Warwick Fyfe was finally able to open up his soul and bemoan his fate as a misshapen jester, as well as ruminate further upon the curse. A revolve of the stage and we were taken to Rigoletto’s house, and to his daughter Gilda, Emma Pearson’s silvery tones, physical beauty and add-water vulnerability straightaway capturing audience hearts.

What a psychoanalytical field day a modern family therapist would have with Rigoletto’s relationship with his daughter! Perhaps a casualty of the opera’s updating to the present was Rigoletto’s refusal to allow his daughter any sense of her own identity, a situation one imagines any modern child would rebel against and probably have the means to do something about. Of course, whatever the time or place, such parental strictures produce time-bombs, intensities producing like intensities, whose explosions may be delayed, but not denied – and so the case proved with Gilda, her father’s intransigence merely fuelling the underground fires further.

The Duke’s appearance out of the dark which surrounded Rigoletto’s house, and his complicity with the servant Giovanna to gain entry had a “Marriage of Figaro” air about the proceedings, (and Fyfe’s admonishing of Wendy Doyle’s servant by means of a less-than-convincingly-delivered slap in the face was not a great moment). More important were the passionate declarations of promised love between the Duke and Gilda, those breathless figurations at the end of their farewell duet understandable in the circumstances. Then came Gilda’s beautifully introduced “Caro Nome”, orchestral winds catching in advance the character’s purity of utterance and direct and unequivocal wholeheartedness. It took Emma Pearson’s voice a few measures to settle, but then it found its poise, the singer by the end integrating it all so naturally into a most believable stage presence.  And while the aria spoke of visions of love’s delight, the prevailing dark around the edges of the stage relinquished darker purposes – this time the courtiers from the Duke’s palace, who proceeded, with clever use of powerful, blinding torches, to outmanoeuvre Rigoletto, and abduct his daughter.

By this time we had surrendered ourselves to the drama entirely, irrespective of time or place, so focused were the different elements which made up the experience, to the point where the nude figure on the Duke’s couch at the beginning of Act Three scarcely made any lasting impact as the form stood up, re-vested and moved away. More to the point was the Duke’s lament at losing Gilda, as he had found the house empty – Rojas’s pitching of the notes showed some strain, at this point, though his interactions with the spry, well-drilled chorus seemed to refocus his efforts. In the following scene with the chorus, during which Rigoletto reveals that Gilda is not his lover but his daughter, I thought Fyfe extremely fine, terracing his intensities unerringly, and conveying the sense of someone in the grip of a deadly obsession,  vowing after the brief reappearance of the disillusioned and downcast figure of Monterone that he, Rigoletto, shall avenge the wrongdoing of the Duke once and for all.

One doubts whether there exists a more perfectly- and potently-conceived final operatic act than this of “Rigoletto”. It abounds with imaginative touches, such as the wordless chorus intoning in places the moaning of the wind, a haunting, scalp-pricking effect. The music surprises us with things like the Duke’s famous “La Donna e Mobile” aria, and afterwards the wonderful vocal Quartet, an episode which both unites and underlines the barriers between two sets of people, while the situations unpredictably swerve and double back on themselves. Fittingly, the prevailing dark has the last word, as the story’s convolutions lead to the death of Gilda instead of the Duke as the jester intended. As the assassin Sparafucile’s sister, Maddalena, whom the Duke makes love to and who enables his life to be saved, Kristen Darragh exuded a vamp-like allure, along with an ever-burgeoning murderous determination to sacrifice another person for the sake of the life of the Duke, her new lover. Naturally, heartrendingly, the other person is Gilda, the graphic depiction of her despatch, fittingly by Maddalena herself (often not shown onstage), both shocking and piteous, but I thought not inappropriate.

Hence Rigoletto’s moment of intended triumph turns to tragedy, a cruel twist of fate I thought brilliantly, searingly conveyed by Warwick Fyfe, with at first almost public-servant detachment when taking receipt of the body he imagines is the Duke’s, but allowing flashes of anticipation of his revenge’s fulfillment, before cooly gathering his thoughts and energies to focus on the act of despatch – only to hear the Duke’s voice right at that moment of owning his triumph – what devastation, what new anguish followed! As with Shakespeare and other great theatre, we may already know the end, but the situation has the power, as here to move us anew, because we are not as we were – and therefore it touches us in different places every time. Warwick Fyfe and Emma Pearson, as Rigoletto and his dying, transfigured Gilda, their characters borne upwards and onwards as throughout by wonderful orchestral playing from the Wellington Orchestra and conductor Wyn Davies, spoke volumes to us at the end on behalf of all who had contributed to a marvellous production,  with so many things to say – a stunning achievement by Lindy Hume and her entire creative team.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hutt Valley Orchestra – “What did you say they were playing?….!”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

RACHMANINOV – Piano Concerto No.3 in D Minor

MASCAGNI – Cavalleria Rusticana (Concert Performance)

Melanie Lina (piano)

Hutt Valley Orchestra

Brett Stewart (conductor)

(Cast of Cavalleria Rusticana: Ruth Armishaw (Turidda) / Sharon Yearsley (Santuzza)

Kieran Rayner (Alfio) / Jody Orgias (Mama Lucia) / Alison Hodge (Lola) / Chorus)

Expressions Art and Entertainment Centre

Upper Hutt

Saturday 5th May 2012

I must confess to surprise upon hearing about the Hutt Valley Orchestra’s proposed Sounds Expressions concert – the Rachmaninov Third Piano Concerto? And Cavalleria Rusticana? – the whole of it? Perhaps my response was due in part to my experiences as a player in an amateur orchestra in Palmerston North during the 1990s, though I must say we also attempted things of reasonable difficulty, like the Borodin Second Symphony and the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony, and had a lot of fun, and made splendidly outlandish and occasionally reasonably musical noises.

I had heard pianist Melanie Lina being interviewed on RNZ Concert, and liked what she had said about performing the Rachmaninov Concerto, and was impressed by the quiet confidence she exuded about it all. So I was intrigued, but thought that, however good the soloist might be, the work would still be quite a challenge for the orchestra, in fact, any orchestra. Again, I was basing these reactions upon what I knew of amateur orchestral playing, and wondered whether the Hutt Orchestra (whose work I didn’t know at all – in fact, I didn’t even know they existed!) was going to be up to the task – and then, after the Rachmaninov, there was Mascagni’s “Cav”, for goodness’ sakes!

It turned out to be an evening of surprises, involving a full gamut of reactions, a process whose exact order had considerable bearing on my own responses to the evening’s music-making. It was very much a concert of two halves – first up was the Rachmaninov Concerto, one which soloist Melanie Lina began confidently and nearly always securely, with steady, if rather muted support from the orchestra. I noticed from the outset that the orchestral winds seemed to find it difficult to actually “sound” their notes, though the violins were a little better – though somewhat “seedy” the first orchestral tutti had recognizable shape and form. And conductor Brent Stewart seemed to make all the right gestures and work collaboratively with his soloist throughout.

The only problem was that Stewart seemed to have considerable difficulty getting any actual tone from many of the players, who appeared for long stretches as if they were “cowed” by the music. It was left to Melanie Lima to make her own performance of the work for much of the time, because despite the conductor’s best endeavors, she got precious little help from the orchestra, save for one or two details, such as a sensitive horn solo answering one of the piano’s phrases in the second subject group. The horns actually seemed in places reasonably onto things, because I picked up some nicely etched-in muted notes from them just after the pianist’s reprise of the opening theme.

During the piano-and-orchestra exchanges that followed the players kept things rhythmically together,  though the lack of any impactful tone from the orchestra made the episode a one-sided affair, the brass hardly registering at all. I found it difficult to understand why the players didn’t seem to want to “play out” more – as I said earlier, my own orchestral experiences involved at least making with my colleagues plenty of noise, quite a lot of which was musical. I wanted these players to similarly hurl themselves into the fray, take more risks, and in the right places, roar, blare, rasp and bray, but at least give the soloist something reasonably substantial in places to actually play along with or against (this is a romantic concerto, after all!). Perhaps Brent Stewart had been reading Richard Strauss’s tongue-in-cheek essay “Advice to conductors”, containing statements such as “Never look at the brass – it only encourages them”!

The soloist made a good fist of her “dying fall” music just before the cadenza – she played the shorter of the two written by the composer (though probably the more difficult, less chordal and more quicksilver an affair),achieving real grandeur at the climax.Though entering late the flute sounded its solo evocatively, as did all the winds and the horn. In fact the horns again stood out, making the beautiful “sounds of evening across the meadow” sequence (my favourite bit in the first movement) just before the final reprise of the opening, really tell, with secure chording and nicely-floated tones.

I hoped that, with more room to breathe, away from the strictures of the first movement’s driving rhythms, the orchestral tones would sound more fully during the slow movement – but apart from a nice-phrased oboe solo, the rest of the orchestra, alas, sounded fairly inert and hardly preparing of the way for the piano’s tragic downward entry, here beautifully sounded by the soloist, moving from anguish to warmth as the music proceeded. What passionate writing here! – and how involved Lina sounded! To my delight she and conductor Brent Stewart kept intact the vertiginous passage that’s often cut, the sequence thus able to fully express the music’s somewhat Bronte-ish wildness and gradual descent into loneliness. I thought Lina everywhere had the full measure of the work’s emotional contourings, setting romantic sweep next to poetic expansiveness, but always with the music’s overall shape kept in hand.

Occasionally the winds would nose their way up and out of the misted orchestral textures and make a phrase “tell”, both clarinet and oboe managing to sound some of their counter-theme against the pianist’s skittery central-section waltz-like rhythms. And the strings did conjure up enough tone to recognizably sound the final tragic outburst of the movement, just before the soloist’s dangerous-sounding flourishes heralded the finale.

The “galloping horse” motive rang out splendidly from Melanie Lina’s piano throughout the finale’s opening, the violins actually managing to sound their counter-melody against the pianist’s forthright second-subject measures. Then, in the haunting nocturnal episode that followed the orchestral tones filled out and the players made something of the music’s dark pulsings underneath the piano’s quixotic chirruping. Another section sometimes cut in performance was here restored, with swirling figurations from the piano supported by strings, and with the flutes sounding their repetitions of the piano’s nocturnal birdsong.

A pity the violas and cellos couldn’t muster up enough tonal weight to help usher in the beautiful return of the first movement’s second subject – like an old friend returning after a long absence! Happily flute and horn amply supported the piano here, just like during the “old times”. For the rest of the work, the piano took charge, driving the music towards the “big tune” at the end, Lina phrasing her lines expansively and romantically, pulling the orchestra along with her, and achieving real grandeur to finish.

The pianist was accorded a great ovation, and, I thought, deservedly so. I wondered in fact whether it was I who was at fault here, underestimating the demands made of the players by the sophisticated nature of the work’s sinuous, often somewhat elusive orchestral quality. Still, even so, I found it hard to understand the lack of sheer orchestral NOISE in places where surely the musicians would have “felt” the need to fill out tones and expand phrases naturally.

Judge of my surprise after the interval, when, right from the beginning of Mascagni’s score, the orchestra came alive! The strings dug into the melody and actually made it sing, while the winds and harp made a lovely impression, leading up to the first singer’s entry. This was Turidda (not Mascagni’s original “Turiddu”), sung by Ruth Armishaw, the character’s sex-change presumably the company’s response to the lack of an available tenor for the part. At least one hoped so, because despite one’s most liberated and politically-correct instincts, the scenario was always going to flounder spectacularly with the so-called “duel to the death” between the wronged husband and his wife’s lesbian lover at the story’s denouement – even in an age ridden with wholesale scuppering of traditional operatic presentations, this seemed a more than particularly perverse way of rearranging things.

Though obviously a concert performance, surely it would have been better to present the character as a “trouser role” in this case, a la Baroque opera, or one of the Richard Strauss stage works such as “Rosenkavalier”? Still, all credit to Ruth Armishaw, whose stylish singing certainly didn’t lack ardour – whether or not it was latent homophobia on my part, or merely my inability to make the “leap of imagination” required, I must confess I found myself ignoring her feminine attire, and responded to the strength of her commitment to the role as if she was a “Turiddu”.

Once again, the “second-half” orchestra amazed me with its energy and fullness of tone after the bells sounded, and the waltz tune took up its insinuating gait – the Italianate winds did exceedingly well, especially the piccolo. The chorus, seriously lacking weight of numbers, made up for a lack of tonal splendour with energetic and accurate singing. The brass seemed to have found their voices, and with the timpani, made telling contributions to the cadence-points. Everything had the kind of “schwung” (yes, I know, this isn’t German opera!) that one imagines one would find in the average Italian provincial opera house in this repertoire.

Sharon Yearsley (as Santuzza, the would-be lover of Turidda) and Jody Orgias (as Lucia, Turidda’s mother) made the most of their exchanges in their somewhat fraught opening scene – both alive to their characters’ dramatic possibilities and using their voices accordingly, Yearsley’s particularly heartfelt. Also right into his part, as with almost everything I’ve seen him do, was baritone Kieran Rayner as Alfio, the village carrier, his voice bristling with energy and rustic directness, unaware at this stage of his wife Lola’s affair with Turidda, and single-mindedly intent about his business.

The whole Easter Hymn sequence that followed swept us up satisfyingly and carried us along – it’s music that almost blackmails the listener emotionally, so direct is its lyrical and cumulative appeal. Everybody on the performance platform seemed totally committed and involved, at one with conductor Brent Stewart’s impressive control of the buildup to the soprano’s’ thrilling climactic note at the chorus’s end.

Wholly admirable was Sharon Yearsley’s pacing of her role, outlining the complex history of the knot of relationships between the main players in the story to Jody Orgias’s patient and responsive Mama Lucia, then pulling out the stops with Turidda’s entry. With two women singing the impassioned encounter between them that followed, the scenario seemed almost to transcend time and place and take on the power of an opera seria scene from a work by Handel – great singing from both Armishaw and Yearsley, nicely interrupted by the flirtatious Lola (Alison Hodge oozing charm and insouciance with her Waltz-Song), but rising again to a furious climax as Turidda rejects Santuzza and follows Lola, voices and orchestra again delivering plenty of raw power.

More goings-on bubbled up with Alfio’s arrival, Yearsley and Kieran Rayner making the most of their dramatic exchange, as the hapless Alfio was told by Santuzza of his wife Lola’s renewed involvement with Turidda. Not surprisingly, at one point Yearsley almost faltered, but rallied splendidly – throughout, the orchestra surpassed itself. with splendidly baleful tones. What an emotional contrast provided by the famous Intermezzo! – the violins struggled a little at first, but were more securely-toned when doubled by the lower strings for the “big” melody – the whole nicely shaped by Brent Stewart, and marked by some sensitive harp playing.

The few bars of waltz music that follows always makes the hairs at the back of my neck stand up, for some reason, and this performance made no exception – Ruth Armishaw, chorus and orchestra tore into the Drinking Song with gusto, despite a few scratchy ensemble moments, and caught the excitement of the last few bars with a will. The baleful brass accompanying Alfio’s entry, and the subsequent viola solo  (so darkly poised) helped create real menace, even if the ‘cellos couldn’t advance the feeling with the same surety.

Plenty of support was forthcoming from the strings for Turidda in her impassioned “farewell” aria, and the orchestral energies continued right to the end – here was the “noise” that was wanted so badly earlier in the concert. Throughout the fateful offstage cries announcing Turidda’s murder and the subsequent whiplash chords, the sounds struck home splendidly.

So, very much a “tale of two halves” here, I felt, as far as the orchestra was concerned. Perhaps most of the rehearsal time was taken up with the opera (in which case it certainly showed) – but there again, perhaps it was the music. Mascagni would have had a fair idea of what the average Italian opera orchestra could play and tellingly deliver – raw emotion taking precedence over subtlety and shades of expression – and so his music would have probably been an easier proposition, especially for non-professionals, than that of Rachmaninov’s. Whatever the case, all credit to pianist Melanie Lina for her marvellous exposition of a redoubtably difficult work, both technically and interpretatively – I hope we see her back in the Wellington region before too long – and to the concert’s second-half singers, players and conductor for a thoroughly invigorating “slice of Italian verismo life” (with intriguing variations) – hugely enjoyable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great enthusiasm at Jenny McLeod’s “Hōhepa” premiere

Posted on by Peter Mechen

JENNY McLEOD – HŌHEPA (opera) – World premiere performance

New Zealand International Festival of the Arts / NBR New Zealand Opera

Cast: Phillip Rhodes (Hōhepa) / Jonathan Lemalu (Te Kumete) / Deborah Wai Kapohe (Te Rai)

Jane Mason (Jenny Wollerman) / Nicky Spence (Thomas Mason) / Martin Snell (Governor George Grey)

Narrator (Te Tokotoko /Te Waha): Rawiri Paratene

Director: Sara Brodie

Members of the Vector Wellington Orchestra

Conductor: Marc Taddei

Wellington Opera House

Thursday, 15th March, 2012

I’m not sure whether I ought to admit to readers of this review that, earlier in the same day that I attended the opening of Jenny McLeod’s “Hōhepa” I took up a friend’s invitation to accompany him to a screening of the latest New York Metropolitean Opera production of “Götterdämmerung”.

Perhaps my abrupt juxapositioning of the two experiences was foolhardy, considering the chalk-and-cheese aspect of the works involved. But I found the inevitable comparisons thrown up by these “close encounters” thought-provoking, residues of which have undoubtedly coloured my reactions to Jenny McLeod’s work, outlined below.

The first thing that must be said of “Hōhepa” is that it’s a pretty stunning creative achievement on McLeod’s part, in line with Wagner’s achievement of writing his own texts for his stage works. And as with Wagner in his “Götterdämmerung” I felt an incredible emmeshment of words and music throughout the work, if at the opposite end of the grandly operatic textural and tonal spectrum.

Employing a moderately-sized cast and chorus with a small orchestra, McLeod created an evocative and enduring variety of ambiences throughout the story’s presentation, the sounds shaping and enlivening the narrative with firmly-focused contouring and colorings. In a sense I thought the orchestral score the most consistently dramatic protagonist, one from which nearly everything on the stage seemed to take its cue. One’s ear was constantly being drawn forwards and into that “world of light”, the sounds suggesting an order presided over by ancient gods and disrupted by unexpected change.

To briefly outline some background – Hōhepa Te Umuroa was a Whanganui Maori living in the Hutt Valley during the 1840s, one who, though well-disposed towards the European settlers he met and befriended, opposed the land-confiscation policies of Governor George Grey and took arms against the British militia. Captured, he and others, including his friend Te Kumete, were exiled to a penal colony in Tasmania, where Hōhepa died. His forgotten grave was rediscovered by a New Zealand child visiting Tasmania, whose parents alerted the authorities, and began a process that would see the remains of the exiled chief returned to New Zealand in 1988.

Through her involvement with writing church music for use by Maori people in the Ohakune district, Jenny McLeod had developed an association with Ngati Rangi. She was asked by Matthew Mareikura, elder, and leader of the mission which brought home Hohepa’s remains, if she would undertake to write the history of the entire saga – not as an opera, but hopefully in book form, a task she accepted. She was then approached by the current director of NBR New Zealand Opera, Alex Reedijk to write “a New Zealand work” for the stage, and she thus decided that it would be appropriate to adapt Hohepa’s story for the purpose.

In the course of her compositional career, McLeod has, in a sense, covered more territory than most, her works ranging from avant-garde innovation and her own brand of neo-primitivism, through popular styles, including hymn-writing for present-day worship, to a re-thinking of an avant-garde “tone-clock theory” involving innovative use of the chromatic scale, something she found influenced her writing of “Hōhepa”. She’s refreshingly pragmatic about her use of such techniques in as much as they have an impact on what the ordinary concert- or opera-goer hears in her music – in a recent “Listener” interview she talked about listeners not needing to know too much about the technicalities, expressing confidence that people would instinctively sense a “structural coherence” in her work.

I wondered, as I listened to the evening’s finely-wrought tapestry of sounds, whether this “structural coherence” of McLeod’s would generate sufficient energy of itself to implant a stage work with requisite dramatic possibilities. What I felt must have posed an enormous challenge for director Sara Brodie was how to respond to McLeod’s writing – how to render it onstage as “dramatic” or “theatrical” in an operatic sense. The presentation involved a great deal of “storytelling” via a narrator, one self-styled as a “talking stick” – Te Tokotoko, who is also the hero’s spirit guardian. Actor Rawiri Paratene looked and sounded the role to perfection, though I wondered whether his prominence throughout actually diminished the impact made on the proceedings by Hōhepa himself, whose dramatic character could have “taken on” more of his own story and enhanced the depth of his onstage presence in doing so.

In an article in the programme, Diana Balham writes of Hōhepa that he “is really an ideal opera leading man” – an ordinary man caught up in events which lead to his wrongful exile, imprisonment and eventual death, his fate leavened by a kind of post-mortem coda of wrongs addressed and put to rights. On the face of things that’s perfectly true – but the writer’s words created an expectation that, as a character Hōhepa would behave more “operatically”, which didn’t seem to be the composer’s (and following on, perhaps not the director’s) intention.

McLeod’s work itself seemed to me stylistically more like a kind of “dramatic legend” – something of the ilk of Berlioz’s “La Damnation de Faust”, a work which is equally successful in concert as when staged. There were occasional moments during Hōhepa of physical energy and dramatic movement (a brutal killing was depicted at one point), but in general the stage movement and configuration had a gradually unfolding aspect suggesting pageantry or ritual more than theatrical cut-and-thrust.

This impression was heightened by the composer’s use of some of the drama’s supporting characters, as well as the chorus, to advance the narrative – while the effect wasn’t unlike stylized classical drama, I felt the balance between storytelling and theatrical depiction was pushed away from the latter to the point of dramatic dilution. Ironically, I also thought that Hōhepa himself wasn’t given sufficient prominence throughout the first two acts to capture our attention, to train our focus upon him with sufficient force so that his fate as the tragic embodiment of a victim of gross injustice would later have its full dramatic impact.

Phillip Rhodes, who played Hōhepa, did everything he could with the part – he looked and sounded splendid throughout, and had both powerful and touching moments, the most enduring of which for me over the first two acts were the imposing warrior’s delight in his Christianity-inspired “Holy Family”, and his teaching of the names of birds to his children. But the Pakeha settler couple, Jane and Thomas Mason, made even more of a lasting impression on me, dramatically (splendid singing from both Jenny Wollerman and Nicky Spence), while Deborah Wai Kapohe’s Te Rai (Hōhepa’s wife) and Jonathan Lemalu’s Te Kumete (Hōhepa’s friend), both richly-characterised roles, seemed just as prominent in the scheme of things as the eponymous hero.

And yet – perhaps one shouldn’t be making such an issue of this. After all, in Maoridom it is the whanau, hapu, iwi, and the associated whakapapa which matters more than the individual; and Hōhepa’s tragedy was essentially a communal one, given that he endured great personal privation of both a physical and spiritual kind up until his death in exile in Tasmania. In that sense it’s appropriate that the character be portrayed as an integral member of a group as much as an individual, particularly as the Western operatic concept of a “hero” doesn’t sit well with the scenario that McLeod evokes. Should the work, then, be actually called “Hōhepa”? Is it more about a darker aspect of this country’s history than about what actually happened to him? Is it even more universal than that?

At the time, in the opera house, I felt myself musically entranced by it all, despite some bemusement – upon reflection, and having read back through what I’ve already said in this review, I feel myself beginning to incline towards taking the things I saw and heard on their own terms, and greatly enjoying them. Above all was, as I’ve said, the beauty and variation of McLeod’s illuminated tapestry of instrumental sounds, rendered with the utmost skill by a chamber-sized group of players drawn from the Vector Wellington Orchestra, here under the guidance of conductor Marc Taddei.

Then there were the voices, at the beginning of the work as people of the land enacting the rituals of acknowledging the tipuna, and paying homage to their living descendants. These choruses then merged with the drama, as Hōhepa’s descendants witnessing the recovery and repatriation of his bones, and afterwards as his contemporaries, expressing in heartfelt tones the shared ignominious humiliation of displacement, and the sorrow of his loss to exile and death.

Each of the solo voices suggested oceans more capacity for characterization than was allowed by the composer – apart from those I’ve mentioned, Martin Snell as Governor George Grey quickly established the character’s arrogance and implaccable nature, again largely with audience-directed pronouncements, though in places with engagingly jaunty (and ironic) Stravinsky-like accompaniments.

Given that McLeod’s treatment of the subject-matter demanded a good deal of recitative-like storytelling on the part of the characters, director Sara Brodie wisely responded with stagings designed by Tony de Goldi that emphasized and underpinned the ritual-like aspect of the drama. Her “less-is-more” instincts gave our imaginations space to augment the physical movements of the characters with impulses of our own, suggested either by music, words or backdrop images, sensitively applied here by Louise Potiki Bryant.

Opera is meant to be a visual as well as an aural experience – while this unconventional work of McLeod’s seemed to me to work just as effectively as abstract music and storytelling as it did as a theatrical event, the production’s feeling for ritual and atmosphere grew beautifully from the sounds made by voices and instruments. An enthusiastic and heartwarming reception was accorded the composer, along with her singers and musicians and her creative team, by an enthralled audience at the final curtain. I thought it richly deserved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stravinsky at the Festival: Distinguished performances of powerful works heard by too few

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand International Arts Festival

Stravinsky:   Symphony of Psalms and Oedipus Rex

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus (Michael Vinten, chorus master), Joana Carneiro (conductor), Stuart Skelton (Oedipus, tenor), Margaret Medlyn (Jocasta, mezzo-soprano), Daniel Sumegi (Creon; Messenger, bass-baritone), Martin Snell (Tiresias, bass), Virgilio Marino (shepherd, tenor), Rawiri Paratene (narrator, speaker)

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday, 24 February 2012, 8pm

As a Festival opener, this programme obviously did not have the appeal of the Mahler Symphony no.8 performed at the last Festival, when the hall was packed, and there were people sitting out in Civic Square watching the performance on a huge screen and hearing it relayed on loudspeakers.  Another draw-card on that occasion was the presence of the famous Vladimir Ashkenazy as conductor.

This time, by no means all the seats in the hall were filled, which was a pity, because these were fine and powerful performances.

My first reaction was pleasure at the appearance of the programmes.  The printed programmes in 2010 had a ghostly pallor, and the letters so skinny you could have driven a bus between them.  This time, the font was Times New Roman or similar, there was plenty of ink, no back-grounding of text, and they could be read even during the performance – most important when full libretti and translations into English were generously provided.

The other feature of the programmes were the copious and detailed notes provided.  There was far too much to read before or during the concert, but they make very interesting reading afterwards.  The New Zealand Opera Company has in the past sent programmes ahead of the season to those who book in advance; this practice could have been adopted here, with benefit to the audience’s understanding and appreciation.

The Chapman Tripp opera chorus was obviously augmented; some familiar faces that one doesn’t usually see in the chorus, graced it on this occasion.  My first impression at the opening of the Symphony of Psalms was that the choir was too far distant from the orchestra and the audience, making the sound likewise distant, and therefore the words did not have the clarity they should have.  We got volume at times, but seldom clarity.  This was the fault of the hall and the placement of the choir, not directly of inadequacy on the choir’s part.  If the performance had been in the Town Hall, the problem would not have existed; there would have been more impact.   The problem did not exist with the Mahler two years ago, because the choir was very much bigger, though so too was the orchestra.

Stravinsky’s unusual orchestration for this work provides plenty of wind players, and cellos and basses plus harp, two pianos, and percussion, but no violins or violas.  Therefore there was lots of rich, resonant low bass sound, while the incisiveness and wonderful colours of the winds were more apparent than usual, especially in the delicious melodies with cross-rhythms, played between Psalm 38 and Psalm 39.

Psalm 38 opened with spiky rhythms but they didn’t continue.  Instead, the effect was of long melismatic lines, like old Russian chants, though the work was sung in Latin.

The verses from Psalm 39 were given gentler treatment than the incisive previous psalm.  Sonorities built up; there were dense harmonies and clashes providing a rich sound – although some of the sopranos were a little too strident.  The final verse, ‘He put a new song in my mouth…’ was thunderous in its praise to God.

An Alleluia preceded Psalm 150.  These passages were quiet; the distance between choir and orchestra didn’t matter so much here, and there was some lovely singing. However, the choir, while good, and obviously very well rehearsed, sounded rather pedestrian in the psalm itself.   It again emphasised that a bigger choir would have coped better.

The psalm speaks of trumpets and other instruments; the NZSO instrumentalists fulfilled their parts radiantly, especially the ‘loud clashing cymbals’.  Despite their presence, this was a very lyrical verse, with the last section, ‘Let everything that breathes praise the Lord’ having an ethereal quality.

The pianists, Donald Nicolson and Rachel Thomson, had a very busy part in this last psalm. It ended with another Alleluia – quiet and exultant in tone. The growing woodwind tone against the choir’s soft intoning, along with piano and strings, was magical.  Stravinsky’s constantly shifting chords and soundscapes provided an experience unlike that to be had from any other composer; the result, satisfyingly unique.

Joana Carneiro is petite and very youthful in appearance, yet she conducts with energy and commitment.  In a radio interview prior to the performance, she remarked how good it was to have the narration in Oedipus Rex, since the music was so intense, complicated, yet direct, that time to breathe was needed.  She stressed that the music was not indulgent of the tragedies in the story; rather it was ‘about’ the story and characters.

One suspects that Festival Director Lissa Twomey (an Australian) programmed Oedipus Rex based on the success of this work at the Sydney Festival a couple of years ago, with the same conductor.  But with a much smaller population to draw on, and no full-time opera company here, its drawing power could not be relied on to be the same as in the much bigger city.  Maybe a semi-stage performance would have been more appealing – and it certainly would have conveyed the story in a more meaningful way.

Carneiro also said, and we experienced, that the choir was well-prepared.  The music of Oedipus Rex, she felt, was a pre-cursor of minimalism through its economy of means, but also employed leitmotif.  The latter helped to tie the story together musically, and gave something of a guide to the hearers.

Oedipus Rex, an opera-oratorio, was something completely different from the Symphony of Psalms, composed three years later.  Its similarity to the latter was probably confined to its reference back to polyphony, in the form of breaking up of the words, and the long lines.

Outstanding here, aside from the astonishing music, was the singing of tenor Stuart Skelton, as Oedipus.  This Australian singer has had great international success, and we were fortunate to hear him at the height of his powers.  His voice is  quite brilliant, and he has a wide range.  It cut through the textures without difficulty – strong, with great carrying quality, but never harsh or strident.  When he sang the words translated as ‘Your silence accuses you: you are the murderer! (to Tiresias), there was drama in every syllable.  His further accusation of Tiresias ‘Envy hates good fortune…’ featured high notes that were quite lovely, poignant and eloquent.

The other soloists could not measure up to Skelton, which is not to deny that they were good.  Their roles were all much smaller than that of Skelton.  Daniel Sumegi had the two roles of Creon and the Messenger, and his robust bass-baritone was effective and expressive, with wonderful low notes.  He had a very powerful passage in Act Two, singing ‘Jocasta the Queen is dead!’

Margaret Medlyn sang the mezzo role of the queen with perhaps less force at times than the part required, but nevertheless with appropriate levels of dramatic intensity.  Sometimes her music had echoes of the cabarets of Berlin.  The small part of the Shepherd was well sung by tenor Virgilio Marino.  (Was it really necessary to bring someone from Australia for a role with so little singing?).  He was particularly noteworthy for the duet with the Messenger, where they explain in Act Two that as a baby, Oedipus was found in the mountains.

Martin Snell’s smallish role as Tiresias was confidently and expressively sung, with lustrous resonance and deep, rich tones, but he did not always cut through the orchestra sufficiently.  However, his words were excellent.

An important role was that of the narrator, taken by well-known actor Rawiri Paratene.  He fulfilled it extremely well.  As Rachel Hyde said in her radio review, he was controlled and dignified.  His amplified words were very clear, his tone rich, and neither pompous nor intimate.  He struck the right note in giving the background commentary.

The male chorus sang for all they were worth in their demanding music, but occasionally were out of synch with the orchestra; more often the problem was that the words could not be sufficiently conveyed because the volume of the orchestra overwhelmed them.  At the distance the singers were, it was surprising that they kept together with the orchestra as much as they did; a tribute to their thorough preparation which meant they could keep eyes on the conductor much of the time.  Perhaps the conductor should have done more to tone down the dynamism of the orchestra.  However, it is really more a matter of the size and placement of the choir.  As Rachel Hyde said, the music in this work is really driven by the chorus, which has a large part, but too much in the background in this performance.

The orchestra was returned to its full glory with violins and violas, for this work.  The opening sound from choir and orchestra was tremendous.  Everywhere, we heard Stravinsky’s intriguing and innovative orchestrations brought out relentlessly; his invention knew no bounds.  The orchestra has a major role in Oedipus Rex, compared with its role in most operas or oratorios.

The chorus had its very effective moments, too: when they cry to Oedipus to solve the riddle of who murdered the king, Laius, their intoning of ‘Solve! Solve, Oedipus, solve!’ was startling.  It was strong again in the appeal to the goddesses that followed soon after; here, there was little accompaniment, allowing them to shine.  Soon incessant drumming was heard, adding to the doom-laden atmosphere, as they spoke of the many dead in Thebes, from the plague.

Again with incessant drumming, and with cymbal crashes, the chorus ‘Glory! Glory! Glory!’ sung in praise of the queen Jocasta (Margaret Medlyn) at the end of Act I was very fine, with tremendous unity in declamation.

In the second Act Margaret Medlyn had a long aria with piano – a most difficult part sung in very queenly fashion, and ending with swoops of agitation from the clarinet.  The chorus followed with a beautifully quiet entry, the singing continuing very smoothly over wonderful strumming on the strings.

One of Oedipus’s many notable moments came when he finally confessed to his crimes.  A fanfare followed this despairing utterance.  Skelton was a tremendous and very worthy Oedipus.

More good moments for the chorus: a very incisive short burst stating ‘The shepherd who knows all is here’, and strong, accurate and rhythmic singing of ‘He was not the true father of Oedipus’ (referring to Polybus).  Later, the difficult music for ‘The woman in the chamber…’ was rendered heartily and with precision.  The final chorus ‘Behold!  Oedipus the King!’ spilt out into immense noise from orchestra and chorus, but when full orchestra was employed, the chorus was overwhelmed.

Despite all, the chorus covered itself with glory, especially as amateurs amongst a stage full of professionals.

The performance of Oedipus Rex gave us a tremendous work, brought off with distinction.  It was powerful, shocking and complex, and a triumph (despite its flaws) for the performers and their unassuming young conductor, who held everything in suspense for an appreciable time at the end, so that the impact was not immediately lost in applause.

 

 

Handelian enchantment upon Alcina’s magic island

Posted on by Peter Mechen

HANDEL – Alcina

Presented by Opera In a Days Bay Garden

Producer – Rhona Fraser

Director – Sara Brodie

Conductor – Michael Vinten

(orchestra led by Donald Armstrong)

(sung in English, translation by Amanda Holden)

Cast: Alcina (Bryony Williams) / Ruggiero (Stephen Diaz) / Bradamante (Bianca Andrew)

Morgana (Rhona Fraser) / Oberto (Olga Gryniewicz) / Oronte (Thomas Atkins) / Melisso (Kieran Rayner)

Chorus: Amelia Ryman, Imogen Thirwell, Emily Simcox, Natalie Williams, Fredi Jones, Laurence Walls, Thomas Barker, Ken Ryan

Canna House, Days Bay, Wellington

Saturday, 11 February

Magic of a kind was certainly in the air both leading up to and throughout the performance of Handel’s Alcina, staged in the garden of Canna House, the Days Bay home of one of the singers in the cast, soprano Rhona Fraser, who took the part of Morgana in the production. With a director, Sara Brodie, whose vision, theatrical instinct and creative capacities made light of the difficulties of a very “Baroque-opera” story-line, the out-of-doors production by turns sparkled and glowed, judiciously balancing and shaping the drama’s movement and energy with cadence-points of heartrending beauty and reflection.

We were seated on terraces in front of the house on various levels, our vistas taking in the largest of the grassy areas, on which most of the theatrical action took place, and thence to bush-clad valley-sides framing a harbour view, the picture redolent of the opera’s actual setting, the magic island realm of the enchantress Alcina. The only slight inconvenience we experienced was directly facing the sun for the time it took to move across the wedge of sky in the west during the opera’s first half – by way of “compensation by enchantment” we were, throughout the second half, able to enjoy the evening star in all its crepuscular glory, prompting thoughts of imagining that a production of “Tannhauser” would go down well in such a setting (I can almost see and hear the chorus of Pilgrims slowly making its way up the arc of the driveway from the road…..)

As one might imagine, the setting provided all kinds of opportunities for different exits, entrances and “layered” action – at the very outset of the story we were intrigued and amused with the sudden pursuit of a silver-haired figure by several “gorillas in suits” down the path towards the front gate. Presumably, an escape of some kind was in mind – but, alas for the “inmate” concerned, freedom was not achieved. Nevertheless, with the singers freely coming and going on all different levels, and practically brushing past audience members in some instances, it wasn’t difficult for spectators to be drawn into the actual physical ebb-and-flow of things, sharing, as we seemed to be for much of the time, the same living-and-breathing-spaces. I ought to report, however, that a friend, sitting on the lawn in the third row, over to the right, had a less-than-good view of some of the action, and a tad too much sun in her eyes for a while – so obviously not ALL of the seating was without some compromise.

The opera’s original story was taken from the epic poem Orlando Furioso by the sixteenth-century Italian Ludovico Ariosto, and involved plenty of fashionable enchantment and magical transformation, liberally taken up by Antonio Marshi’s libretto for Handel. Of course, the current trend vis-a-vis opera production is to update such scenarios (as comedian Michael Flanders once said in a slightly different context, “Anything to stop it being done straight!”) so that opera-goers find themselves fair game for directorial reworkings that can in the wrong hands vary between the prosy-dull and the downright offensive. Sara Brodie’s design and direction adroitly maintained a tantalizing modicum of the sorceress’s mystery, while suggesting in parallel some kind of medico-scientific experimental scenario involving the ageing process. One of the characters, Morgana (sister-enchantress of the Circe-like Alcina) sported a nurse’s tunic at the start, and seemed in charge of a chorus group of “inmates” whose aspect presented ghostly decrepitude and bewilderment – though the “suits” in their shades were designated as security guards rather than caregivers.

In this way the production certainly toyed most imaginatively with the ideas floated in the programme’s “synopsis” note, concerning reality and illusion, and the power of true love. The flights of fancy which cropped up in the updated libretto for the most part seemed actually to counterweight some of the original ones (the soldier, Melisso, imitating an apparition and declaring to the ex-soldier Ruggiero that he, the former, is the latter’s old sergeant – instead of his old tutor – for example)! Of course, however cardboard cut-out some operatic situations might be, it’s invariably the music which ennobles and crystallizes thought, word and deed on stage – and in my view any recasting of these pieces in whatever style or era will work if the composer’s intentions are properly honoured. As recitative followed dialogue followed aria and back to recitative, music and dramatic action seemed to fit hand-in-glove on the terraces and pathways of this wonderful Days Bay garden – obviously all kinds of enchantments were at work, here.

Still more connection was readily provided by the orchestra, seated to one side, but sharing the main stage level area with the singers. This meant that the players and conductor seemed more than usually involved with the drama, and the choreography of instrumental gesturing, so often concealed in the opera house here became almost part of the stage action. At one point Handel nicely underlines this singer/instrumentalist relationship with extended passages for solo violin accompanying Morgana’s aria “He loves, he sighs”. This took on the intent of a true operatic duet up to a break-point when Alcina, agitated by the thought of her lover’s infidelity, hustled the poor violinist from the stage!

Having had limited experience of out-of-doors opera, I was prepared for a somewhat compromised orchestral sound with little or no resonances – and was instead delighted with the al fresco effect, the players’ tones nicely activating the receptive stillness of the evening in that sheltered spot. I also liked the musicians’ dress and wigs, none more so than that sported by conductor Michael Vinten, the effect being almost as if the shade of the composer himself had miraculously materialized to conduct the performance!

So, at the story’s beginning, following the excitement of the thwarted breakout, we witnessed the commando-like arrival on Alcina’s island of Bradamante and her colleague Melisso, dressed as soldiers in camouflage gear. They were looking for Bradamante’s lover, Ruggiero, who had, like many others, fallen under Alcina’s enchantment. Mezzo-soprano Bianca Andrew played Bradamante, suitably boyish in military attire, and a perfect foil for baritone Kieran Rayner as the hard-bitten Melisso, the pair as well-disciplined with their tactical manoeuvrings as with the focus and direction of their singing and characterizations. Their first encounter was with Rhona Fraser’s Morgana, her nurse’s garb straightaway all a-quiver, conveying her instantly combustible interest in Bradamante. Before long she had coquettishly dismissed out-of-hand her hapless current lover, Oronte, a tenor role played by an engagingly boyish Thomas Atkins, who was understandably put out by the arrival on the island of these troublesome visitors.

When Ruggiero arrived in tow with the beautiful Alcina, they presented as a well-established “item”, the pair utterly besotted with one another, to Bradamante’s scarcely-concealed distress. Soprano Bryony Williams and counter-tenor Stephen Diaz made an exceedingly glamorous-looking couple, throwing into bold relief the chorus of spectre-like ancients, grey of hair and decrepit of aspect, almost ghost-like, carefully watched-over by Morgana and her Mafia-like cohorts. The remaining player in the scenario was the boy-scout-like figure of Oberto (a late addition by Handel to the story, apparently, to include in his cast a famous boy-treble of the time, William Savage). Soprano Olga Gryniewicz brought a charmingly boyish manner and a silvery voice to her portrayal of a young man looking for his lost father.

The “adventures on a magic island” theme has many rich and strange instances throughout world literature and theatre from Homeric times and beyond. Most recently there’s been the New York Metropolitean Opera’s live-streamed production “The Enchanted Isle”, an amalgam of fantasy works for the stage (mostly a combination of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “The Tempest”) placing characters from these various works on Prospero’s magic island and developing various conflicts and romantic entanglements.

Obviously, there’s something about an island environment that lends itself to a kind of other-worldliness, where mainland traditions are tested, modified and even transformed by different orders of things. Such is certainly the case with the plot of Alcina, even if on the face of it, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s Miss Prism, “the good end happily, and the bad unhappily”. By far the most interesting character is Alcina, herself, at least as characterized by Handel’s music, some of the greatest for the stage he ever wrote. One or two malevolent impulses and actions aside, she garners the listener’s sympathies by dint of her extraordinary declarations of love and piteous laments, suggesting that Ruggiero’s sojourn with her has somehow humanized her nature to the point that her dark arts no longer work as she would desire.

From her first entrance Bryony Williams’ Alcina dominated the proceedings – striking to look at, her characterizations compelling and her singing simply captivating, she lived the part throughout all of its different aspects. She encompassed the erotic sensuousness of her opening aria “Show them the forests”, and through the sudden tribulations and heart-break of her hurt at Ruggiero’s accusations  in “Yes I am she” to the despair at the loss of his love in “Ah, my heart”. Her soft singing in particular, throughout, touched our inner places; and though some of her more vigorously-produced tones tended to splinter at their effortful edges she always conveyed an impressive totality of characterful feeling, so that our sensibilities at her eventual fate were beset at the evening’s end by a good deal of ambivalent impulse (all the fault of the composer, of course).

Her ownership of the role was never more evident than in her Act Two aria “Ah, my heart”, an affecting concentration of emotion, the veiled tones exquisitely shaped and coloured, even more so at the reprise, after her energetic resolve with “But can this be Alcina?” . The whole strengthened one’s ambivalent sympathies for a character whose cruel customs and tender emotions were at such odds with each other and with the beauty of some of her music – a state of things strongly and tellingly advanced by the singer. Again, with both her dark and impotent invocations at “You pale shadows” (generating plenty of exciting vocal virtuosity), and her broken utterances with “Only tears remain to me” she commanded our attention for whole vistas – and Michael Vinten and his players were right with her throughout, the instrumental sounds breathing and mirroring the same heartfelt phrases in complete accord.

Opposite her as Ruggiero, counter-tenor Stephen Diaz used well a natural and easeful stage-presence, his soft singing a joy (the Act Two “Verdant Pastures” was beautifully and raptly sung), and his unfailing charm of manner carrying him through the occasional phrase of borderline intonation – though I thought his reaction to Bradamante’s identity revelation surprisingly ingenuous in manner. Happily, he more readily captured the audience’s attention with a nicely-pointed sotto voce delivery of the asides in the aria “My cherished love” – and it was a nice idea to blindfold him and lead him to the tent where his faithful and frustrated Bradamante had earlier rendered herself comatose with an unaccustomed puff from a hookah – a nice way to end the opera’s first half.

Bradamante is reckoned by some commentators as representing reality, common-sense, duty and fidelity, as opposed to Alcina’s escapist romantic fantasy-allurements – though such readings conveniently play down the heroic and romantic nature of the former’s escapade in attempting to regain her lover. Bianca Andrew had the presence and vocal strength to convey the character’s firm resolve and steadfastness, standing up to the threat posed by the fury of Oronte in her aria “I see you are jealous”, during which she skilfully negotiated a touch of rhythmic insecurity at the words “you feel offended”. Even stronger was the exciting use she put to the coloratura runs of “I long to be avenged”, by way of expressing her frustration and anger with Ruggiero, after he refuses to believe she is who she says she is, and then all but baring her womanly breast to make the point more graphically.

In a sense, Morgana, Alcina’s sister, is just as much Bradamante’s opposite – the latter’s Leonore-like steadfastness a stark contrast to Morgana’s coquetry, the irony being that it is the disguised Bradamante whom Morgana falls for at the outset. Rhona Fraser acted superbly, using her face nicely in tandem with her voice, and eagerly expressing the exuberance of her “Come quickly back” to Bradamante, believing that he (she) returned her love. Though not every note was ideally secure, her singing was invariably expressive, the effect always musical – and what a lovely duet she made with violinist Donald Armstrong in her “He loves, he sighs”! – attempting to explain to both Ruggiero and Alcina that the new boy on the block, Bradamante, is already “spoken for”.

Morgana’s hapless lover, Oronte, is really too straight-down-the-middle a guy for such a flirtatious partner, though his susceptibility to womanly charms is all too obvious in his “One moment’s happiness” aria. Thomas Atkins seemed just the man for the job, bright-eyed and ready for whatever main chance might present itself. Though his wide-ranging vocal lines weren’t ideally pliant in places, he was never less than reliable;  and towards the end the choreographed ritual of his reconciliation with Morgana made their scene eminently worthwhile.

Even more ramrod-straight was Bradamante’s soldier-companion Melisso, though he obviously would have a future beyond the army as a virtual reality facilitator, demonstrated by his assumption of the role of a senior sergeant to bring Ruggiero to his senses. Kieran Rayner brought a lighter, more than usually agile and flexible baritonal voice to the part, though he generated plenty of authority when needed. He was thus able to make something both strong and elegant of his one aria, “Think of her who mourns” addressed to a somewhat bewildered Ruggiero. By comparison with the macho-Melisso, Olga Gryniewicz’s Oberto was a boy-soldier, touchingly gauche of manner, but sufficiently steadfast to defy Alcina’s command to kill the lion which the boy suspects is really his transformed father. Her singing-voice was exotically accented, but her superb diction really told as the boy lamented the loss of his father and gave tongue to his hopes of finding him again.

Having been held in a kind of thrall for so long by Alcina’s enchantments, the chorus members at the end perhaps understandably overdid their exuberance at being freed and returned to youthful vigor by racing ahead of Michael Vinten’s beat in their final chorus “After so many bitter trials” – necessitating some echt-Handelian gestures of frustration from the podium of the kind that would probably have had many a historical precedent! I’m certain my ears weren’t playing me false in imagining that it was Vinten’s voice I heard singing the first of the individual chorus members’ descriptions of their enchanted forms – a filling-in for an absent singer, perhaps, or merely an expression of solidarity?….. after that I almost expected to hear some admonishment from the conductor regarding the final ensemble, perhaps along the lines of Handel’s proverbially fractured English, thus: “You vatch my beatings and vave at the gallery aftervards!” – but perhaps that would have been applying historical verisimilitude a little too liberally.

Apart from these moments of excessive zeal the chorus acquitted itself sturdily and tellingly, if more often as a visual rather than a vocal presence. The orchestra was a band of heroes under Michael Vinten’s obviously inspired direction, the players’ sweetly-focused tones and elegant rhythmic figurations a joy to hear, providing the singers all the support they needed throughout.

Alcina is herself transformed at the end of the opera and her power is taken from her – though I felt her “closure” here somehow lacked true finality, perhaps in accordance with Handel’s own ambivalence towards her. Or again, as with other villains and their influences, it was intended that her spirit lived on, and that she would re-emerge in some parallel guise at another time and in another place. In a way it was characteristic of Sara Brodie’s direction to not cross and dot every “t” and “i” for us, but leave us tantalized by the experience of the encounter in an ongoing way.

At the time of writing, the production has two more nights to run (Thursday 16th and Friday 17th February) – it deserves full-to-bursting houses and clement weather of the kind we were lucky to experience. One sincerely hopes there will be more of these wonderful productions from Rhona Fraser and Opera in a Days Bay Garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PAG edges out CAV in double-headed NBR NZ Opera thriller

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NBR New Zealand Opera – CAV and PAG

MASCAGNI – Cavalleria Rusticana

LEONCAVALLO – Pagliacci

Casts: (Cavalleria Rusticana) – Anna Shafajinskaya (Santuzza), Peter Auty (Turiddu), Marcin Bronikowski (Alfio), Anna Pierard (Lola), Wendy Doyle (Mamma Lucia)

(Pagliacci) – Rafael Rojas (Canio), Elizabeth Futral (Nedda), Warwick Fyfe (Tonio), Marcin Bronikowski (Silvio), Andrew Glover (Beppe)

The Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus (Michael Vinten, chorusmaster)

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Oliver von Dohnanyi (conductor)

Directed by Mike Ashman

St. James Theatre, Wellington

Saturday 27th August, 2011

It was a points decision, and a close call, but most who attended the opening night of NBR New Zealand Opera’s double-header of CAV and PAG would, I think, have agreed that the latter (Pagliacci), boxing far above its weight on the night, landed too many telling counter-punches for the big guns of its glamorous rival (Cavalleria) – Intermezzo or no Intermezzo! Both operas gave their supporters plenty of thrilling moments, but PAG performed just a tad more consistently, with energetic and sustained focus throughout, both musically and dramatically.

To be fair, one perhaps ought to regard this particular presentation as a kind of fusion of the two operas by way of some well-placed connective tissue (I won’t spoil the surprise by undue description), though one does wonder how the tiny Sicilian community portrayed would in reality have coped with three violent murders in the course of a single day. The unities of time and place I thought suited Pagliacci better than it did Cavalleria, given that some compromises would have been made establishing commonalities between the stories. And I suspect Leoncavallo’s work responds more readily to updating than does Mascagni’s, with the latter’s depictions of old-fashioned religious observances strongly flavouring the story – though recent overseas productions of CAV seem to have hacked away at the Gordion Knot of the liturgical year by determinedly secularizing the settings. Director Mike Ashman didn’t go that far, but his Sicilian villagers seemed as well-versed in the use of cellphone technology as in the medieval pageantry of their Easter processionals.

In short the not-particularly-radical updatings therefore largely allowed both works to roar forth virtually unimpeded, which they did, thanks to singing and orchestral playing which gloriously filled the vistas of Wellington’s St James Theatre. Under the expert direction of conductor Oliver von Dohnanyi, the Vector Wellington Orchestra took to the music of both works with precision, energy and burning commitment, releasing all the overt passion in the instrumental writing, and occasionally and very properly overwhelming us with sounds. Mishaps and mis-hits amid the excitement were there few, the most noticeable being recalcitrant bells at one point! – but far more were there beautifully-turned solos and detailed and colourful episodes of ensemble work which did their bit in enhancing whatever aspects of the dramas they accompanied.

Sometimes in CAV the playing waxed eloquently to little theatrical avail – an expressively-turned passage for lower strings just before the “wronged” village girl Santuzza’s first entrance, so much deeper and darker than what had immediately gone before, seemed to fall on deaf ears stage-wise, when one would have thought it denoted some kind of dramatic action or response. Conversely, the famous mid-action orchestra-only Intermezzo was unnecessarily “choreographed” by Santuzza emoting hopes and dreams, in counterpoint to some equally gratuitous posing from a young man at the raised entrance to the church – both figures had, for me, a contrived presence, as the orchestral playing of the interlude perfectly expresses the moment’s peaceful “eye of the hurricane” without any additional illustration .

On-stage I thought the CAV chorus took a while to bring some purpose to what was happening – movements seemed tentative and lacking in motivation as if people were drifting in and waiting for the “real business” to begin. Gradually, things coalesced and began to liven up – the on-the-spot women’s choir rehearsal was a nice touch, and the business of getting dressed for the Easter Pageant afforded plenty of interesting detail (including, during the subsequent processional, a couple of self-flagellators whipping things along, though it has to be said, somewhat less than convincingly). But what helped redeem the chorus’s overall purpose was the ready-toned, superbly-disciplined singing, which I thought utterly committed throughout both operas, the result obviously a credit to the training of chorusmaster Michael Vinten.

Another feature which for me tipped an equable balance into distraction, specifically during CAV, was the revolving stage, employed brilliantly at one or two places – a veritable M.C.Escher effect at one point, with the villagers walking in one direction while being simultaneously taken the opposite way, during the Easter Hymn – but at other times moved, one felt, merely for the sake of movement, as if untrusting of the audience to make any kind of quantum adjustment of physical place on its own. PAG was better in this respect – every rotation had a clearly-focused motivation, the stage revolving as inevitably as a planet’s course around the sun.

Of course, opinion is a subjective beast; and my feelings may well run counter to what many people felt about the two operas’ respective merits – there was certainly much to enjoy, on both sides of the “divide”. Ultimately, though, these are singers’ pieces; and though a number of people I spoke to after CAV at the interval optioned that it seemed to their ears like “can belto” with a vengeance, I confess I didn’t feel quite so set upon because the singing was, for me, so committed, so heartfelt and involving. It wasn’t note-perfect, but despite emotion running freely and dangerously, the principals’ singing lines stayed remarkably intact throughout – Peter Auty, the British tenor, sang the role of Turiddu in CAV to great acclaim in Britain in 2008; and his ringing tones and wholehearted stage presence brought the free-wheeling, irresponsible and tragically fated village-boy-character to life with a vengeance. His pregnant and subsequently rejected ex-partner Santuzza was Ukranian-born Canadian-based soprano Anna Shafajinskaya, a singer diminutive in physical stature but not in stage presence. Her performance was one that lived every impulse of the part in both word and deed, her intensity occasionally risking her line in the name of heightened expression, but extracting a ready and immediate audience response to her predicament as the rejected “fallen woman”.

New Zealanders Anna Pierard (as a spunkily alluring Lola, Turiddu’s other” woman, the wife of Alfio) and Wendy Doyle (a severe but sympathetic Mamma Lucia, Tuiddu’s mother) turned in beautifully-focused singing and acting performances, though I thought Turiddu’s and Lola’s brief beginning-of-the-story tryst could have been lit and placed more suggestively, underlining both the clandestine and erotic in the encounter. Polish baritone Marcin Bronikowski’s initial engaging affability turned powerfully to vengeful rage upon discovering his wife’s infidelity – and though his acting didn’t entirely avoid the “stand-and-deliver” method, he still came across dramatically as a force to be reckoned with. However, his ear-biting encounter with Turiddu, I thought, generated far more deathly menace than the actual killing of the latter (done onstage, contrary to the composer’s directive, but par for the course in the anything-goes world of contemporary opera production). Presented this way the killing seemed a “pasted-on” act of over-the-top violence – but in an updated sense brutally true to the term “verismo”.

Warwick Fyfe’s ghoulish appearance as the unfortunate clown Tonio, announcing the players and their play, made a sensational effect at the second half’s beginning, bringing PAG to the same setting as CAV in what seemed like a macabre twist to the aftermath of Turiddu’s murder. It was as if a hole in the world’s fabric had suddenly been torn and a spectral being from “the other side” had climbed through. Fyfe’s singing and acting during the famous Prologue, apart from the slightest of strain on his highest notes, was stunning – though such was the “ensemble” quality of both productions, that it seemed as organically flowing in the scheme of things as any of the singers’ performances during the evening. Dohnanyi and the orchestra as well took to the brighter, more energetic atmosphere of the opening of PAG with plenty of engaging élan and muscle – an ever-so-slight horn blip mattering not a whit during the ensemble’s wonderfully sonorous precursor of the well-known “Vesti la giubba”.

As for the ill-fated couple, Canio and his wife Nedda, these were also memorable assumptions – Mexican tenor Rafael Rojas gave to his role of Canio a vocally heroic, though dramatically unattractive macho-plus flavour, one which underlined his dysfunctional relationship with Nedda, his wife (Elizabeth Futral). In fact, I felt his brutality deflected our sympathies away from the whole character of his gut-wrenching “Vesti la giubba”, his heartbreak at the discover of Nedda’s betrayal ringing hollow in the light of his previous behaviour towards her (despite this, his wonderful performance of the famous aria brought parts of the house to its feet). Futral’s portrayal of Nedda, beautifully voiced and nicely choreographed, was the very stuff of gone-to-seed male fantasy, using her physical allure with nicely insoucient but still visceral effect, while showing an underbelly of cruelty towards her besotted acting colleague Tonio. Its mirror-image was, of course, her love for Silvio, with whom she planned to escape that very evening. The duetting between Futral and Marcin Bronikowski (returning to the stage as Sylvio) transported us to realms of passionately lyrical pleasure, the more so against the aftermath of Canio’s rage against his wife for her refusal to tell him her lover’s name.

Act Two, featuring the players’ Commedia dell’arte-type presentation enabled us to enjoy the considerable theatrical skills of Andrew Glover, a reliable Beppe during the first act, but now a vibrant, attention-catching, guitar-playing punk-rocker Harlequin, the clandestine stage-lover of Columbina (Nedda), acting and moving with the greatest of confidence and surety. I did think the group’s performing stage rather too high, too removed from the on-stage spectators for meaningful interaction (more to the point towards the end, when it was next-to-impossible for Silvio to get to Nedda to try and save her). However the light-framing lines brought down from above were certainly effective, helping both to define the stage area and add to the occasion’s tinsel and glitter. From Canio’s entrance as Pagliaccio, the action rapidly became fraught, perhaps too quickly too soon, but certainly with dramatic impact, the curdling of the comedy’s fun-and-games burning and searing as Canio’s rage drove the action towards his brutal murder of Nedda, and throat-cutting of her hapless, ineffective would-be rescuer Silvio. Thus it was that PAG traversed a full, murderous circle in this production, the psychotic brutalities pretty much of a piece with the performance’s raw overall impact.

All-in-all, this is, to use the current jargon, a “must-see”! There are two Wellington performances left at this review’s time of writing, before the company moves on to Auckland, later in September (all details below). Though it’s strong and shocking stuff, it’s also great theatre, with some marvellous singing performances and high general production values. We’re privileged to have the opportunity of experiencing its resounding impact.

Wellington performances: St.James Theatre – 7:30pm Thursday 1st September; 7:30pm Saturday 3rd September

Auckland performances: Aotea Centre, THE EDGE – 7:30pm 15th, 17th, 21st, 23rd September – Matinee: 25th September 2:30pm

A night to savour – Britten’s “Dream” enchants at NZSM

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BRITTEN – A Midsummer Night’s Dream (opera in 3 acts)

The New Zealand School of Music, Wellington

Director: Sara Brodie

Cast:  The Fairies – Joe Baxter (Puck) / Bianca Andrew (Oberon) / Bridget Costello (Tytania) / Angelique MacDonald (Cobweb) / Amelia Ryman (Peaseblossom) / Daniela Young (Mustardseed) / (Christina Orgias (Moth)  Mitchell Chin (Indian Boy)

The Lovers – Imogen Thirwall (Hermia) / Thomas Atkins (Lysander) / Bryony Williams (Helena) / Kieran Rayner (Demetrius)

The Mechanicals – Simon Harnden (Peter Quince) / Thomas O’Brien (Flute) / Christian Thurston (Snug) / Fredi Jones (Starveling) / William McElwee (Snout) / Thomas Barker (Bottom)

The Royals – Robert Gray (Theseus) / Emily Simcox (Hippolyta)

Chorus: Awhina Waimotu / Rebekah Giesbers / Esther Leefe / Isabella Moore / Tess Robinson

New Zealand School Of Music Opera Orchestra (Leader: Arna Shaw)

Conductor: Michael Vinten

Memorial Theatre,Victoria University of Wellington

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011

Performances to come: Saturday 6th (sold out) / Tuesday 9th August

Enchanting! – put simply, a “must-see!” production – so all-pervading was the atmosphere emanating from the stage of the Memorial Theatre I found myself enjoying a child’s delight at the magical evocations of sight and sound, the production taking me to what felt like the beating heart of a creative fusion of words, movement and music. I did have wits about me enough to scribble a few things in the dark along the way, mostly hardly intelligible afterwards – but I had little need of these skeletal hieroglyphics, as only part of me was awakened at the end, leaving other parts even now still dreaming the wood outside Athens and the shadowy epilogues of the “most lamentable comedy” performed by the Mechanicals in the house of Duke Theseus.

Bearing in mind what I’d heard concerning the almost perversion-ridden and voyeuristic slants taken by some recent overseas productions of this opera, I read beforehand with some relief in director Sara Brodie’s notes her avowed desire to “celebrate and balance the scales in favour of revealing the lighter side of Britten’s genius”, thus holding at arm’s length the current, somewhat pathological urge on the part of opera directors to imbue established works with spurious, and often, at the most, peripheral up-datings and psycho-analytical re-workings. Brodie’s significant comment regarding directorial alternatives for this production – “such journeying…I suspect, would have led to darkness” is evidently well borne out elsewhere in the operatic world, and, one would think in some cases, to everybody’s cost in the long run. The power of mere suggestion was, by contrast, here amply brought into play by the Mozartean ambivalence (hang on, but who came first, da Ponte or Shakespeare?) of the lovers towards one another at the conclusion (well, maybe) of their confused and dream-like re-partnerings (echoes of another opera, Cosi fan tutte, indeed…perhaps I meant Britten – or Mozart!).

Britten’s genius was, I think, expressed in completely entering the Shakespearean world of “reality versus dream” that runs almost seamlessly through the latter’s works, with merely Lysander’s line “compelling thee to marry with Demetrius” being the sole, explanatory non-Shakespeare original utterance in the opera. Writing as someone who’s acted in the original play, I’m at every hearing struck freshly dumb at Britten’s imaginative response to words and dramatic situations I imagined I already knew, but realize how much more there is still to know. Far more than merely re-activating that process for me, this production stimulated wonder that Britten hadn’t subsequently turned to that most operatic of Shakespearean plays, “The Tempest”, one which might have, I suspect, as strongly fired his creative sensibilities (alas, my wish the stuff of different kinds of dreams, I fear.)

That chink of curtained magic and mystery which parted to the touch of the sweetly-pyjama-ed “Indian Boy” at the beginning drew us inexorably into the world of Faery, the orchestral playing darkly- and diaphonously-woven under conductor Michael Vinten’s direction (the orchestra on the stage), and the fairies of marvellously unearthly substance, singing with haunting tones, and galvanized by Puck’s equally fantastical but more visceral and volatile appearance, brilliantly realized throughout by Joe Baxter. Our audience-space was magically enveloped by the warring monarchs of Fairyland, Oberon and Tytania, hurling their opening disputations across the auditorium’s vistas, drawing us into the conflict over the “Indian Boy”. As Oberon, Bianca Andrew’s richly-wrought tones brilliantly and easefully negotiated music the composer originally conceived for a counter-tenor (the renowned Alfred Deller was the role’s creator), and her haughty deportment and piercingly-focused gaze powerfully informed her scenes with the equally implacable Tytania of Bridget Costello (who made a drop-dead stunning appearance upon the auditorium’s stairs). Though the latter’s singing wanted a shade more vocal allure in places (during her love-potion-induced reaction to the bemused ass-headed Bottom, for instance) she looked wonderful, and made something lasting of “Oh, how I love thee – how I dote on thee!”

Both fairy monarchs are slightly undone, Oberon by Puck’s injurious approximations with the flower’s love-juices, and Tytania by being, of course, temporarily “enamor’d of an ass”. Oberon’s thwarted desires brought out nicely-accented tantalizing touches of androgynously-coloured eroticism in his dealings with the hapless Puck, though I felt Tytania’s parallel journeyings through her dream-experience didn’t seem greatly to infuse her subsequent character (she’s somewhat inert and “unconnecting” with Oberon in the dance sequence when he sings “Now thou and I are new in amity”, thus failing to suggest that the experience of her “sleep” has actually touched her in any way). This certainly wasn’t the case with the lovers, whose experiences in the Athens wood (so rich a symbol of what outwardly conceals the inner fecundity and revelatory power of the mind’s explorations) were depicted as having changed them forever, in terms of both the world and their inner selves – their subconsciously-driven partner-exchange dance after their final awakening an insightful representation, I thought, of the deeply equivocal nature of things, akin to an “elective affinities” scenario, with which the story leaves us.

As much as the excellence of most of the singing I was struck by the security and confidence of the acting of the couples – they LOOKED so right, for one, and throughout their marriage of movement and gesture to their vocal declamations had a rightness that I felt faltered only during parts of the confrontation scene between Hermia and Helena, when for me the musical and dramatic focus was blurred with too much stage movement – we lost some of the poignancy of Helena’s grief at Hermia’s apparent rending of “our ancient love asunder”, much of which was sacrificed to excessive hurly-burly. This impression apart, I found so much to admire in each performance, securely sung and characterfully acted. I liked the differentiation between them – Thomas Atkins’ Lysander very boyish, overcoming some initial inertia and producing some beautiful singing of some of his later phrases, and Kieran Rayner’s more worldly Demetrius, the voice ever-sonorous and expressive as to word-values. The women were similarly contrasted, Imogen Thirwell’s demure aspect and beautifully modulated utterances as Hermia a perfect foil for Bryony Williams’ wonderfully uninhibited Helena, vocally and dramatically risking composure in search of the appropriate expression, and engaging our sympathy throughout.

Against these “real” people, the cardboard cut-out figures of Duke Theseus and his Queen Hippolyta were always going to struggle; and Robert Gray and Emily Simcox did their best with ungrateful parts, singing their phrases clearly and directly (dressed thus, I feel sure I also would have had trouble with Theseus’s words “Hippolyta, I woo’d thee with my sword and won thy love, doing thee injuries”….perhaps a notch or two more dramatic stylization of their characters might have helped overlay the occasional chinks of discomfort evinced by people with, in reality, very little to do – the “idle rich” personified, no doubt). However, there was definitely not a shred of doubt regarding the status of the renowned “Mechanicals”, the group of common workmen desirous of performing a play for the nuptial celebrations of their Master, the Duke. Their representation on stage was, here, simply a delight from beginning to end. The plum of the parts is, of course, Bottom, played and sung here with terrific energy and enviable dramatic skill by Thomas Barker – one imagines his skills would be as successfully applied to spoken theatre as to opera, though the latter would be the poorer if such a circumstance were to take him in the other direction. His command of the stage in places was unequivocal, though such was the strength of the production’s dramatic instincts for balance, his rustic collaborators were by no means overshadowed.

While Bottom more-or-less superimposes his own personality upon his part of the hero, Pyramus, in the play, the others, apart from the group’s nominal leader, Peter Quince, have “double-personae” with whom to engage. Firstly, William McElwee’s Snout diverted us greatly with his Wall and chink, while, together with Bottom as Pyramus, Thomas O’Brien’s Flute won our hearts against all good judgement with his tremulous portrayal of Thisbe, Pyramus’s would-be sweetheart. Christian Thurston’s Snug the joiner awakened our sympathies for the underdog before assuming the Lion in the play to wrathful effect; while Fredi Jones’s Starveling marvellously delineated his own discomfiture on stage as Moonshine, and his annoyance at being constantly interrupted! And finally, in the first utterances of the group’s nominal leader, Peter Quince, we enjoyed the sonorous tones of Simon Harnden, whose rich bass-baritone I would anticipate hearing more of, in years to come.

This was a stunningly-dressed production – there simply wasn’t a costume that I thought didn’t do its job nicely, a tribute to the expertise of designer Diane Brodie. The colours and configurations of these shone truly and satisfyingly throughout, apart from one or two upstage moments (generally avoided by the director, and with good reason) where people emerged from relative gloom into the full atmospheric splendor of Tony Rabbit’s fluidly-applied lighting scheme. Incidentally, the proscenium arch also seemed to my ears a barrier to vocal quality and volume, though again, Sara Brodie cannily kept things well to the fore as often as she could.

No praise can be too high for conductor Michael Vinten, and for his committed, hard-working musicians, whose realization of Britten’s score had, at their best by turns moments of such evocative mystery, gossamer loveliness, and bright, unequivocal gaiety as to take one’s breath away in many places. True, there were a couple of moments, especially towards the end, where the string tone faltered and some orchestral poise had to be regained. But my over-riding impression was one of kaleidoscopic beauty and infectious energy, with many and varied contributions (special mention must be made of trumpeter Raynor Martin, dragged around and about the stage on a leash by the mischievous Puck during one of the former’s fiendish first-act trumpet solos, yet managing to accurately hit nearly all of his notes in a spirited fashion!) Added to this was singing from the chorus that also made many moments unforgettable, none more so than the lump-in-the-throat conclusion to Act Two, when the assembled fairy group sings the unearthly “On the ground, sleep sound” to the exhausted and totally confused lovers. It was a moment that for me seemed to sum up the achievement of director Sara Brodie and all others concerned with this beautiful production – a New Zealand premiere of the work, incidentally; and one of which the same people (and opera-lovers in general in this country) can be justly proud.