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Double Bill at Opera Holland Park (Susan Elkin reviews)

Margot La Rouge/Le Villi Opera Holland Park August 2022

Le Villi (2).jpeg

So what do Delius and Puccini have in common? Both entered short operas for competitions sponsored by the publisher Sonzogno – the former in 1902 and the latter (while still a student) in 1883. Neither won. But here they both are, courtesy of the ever imaginative Opera Holland Park.

It’s easy to see why Margot La Rouge didn’t impress the adjudicators. It’s a simple tale of a girl whose rediscovered lover is killed by another contender whom Anna kills in revenge. Although some of the orchestration is magnificent – including a storm with horns, timps, racing scales and I loved the passionate tenor sound of Samuel Sakker’s voice – generally speaking the piece is pretty one dimensional. He finds his former love, Margot (Anne Sophie Duprels) working as a prostitute so the piece is glued together with all the usual nineteenth century hypocritical moral horror of prostitution. And it’s a pity, English surtitles notwithstanding, when you can’t hear the diction. Had I not known, I probably would not have noticed that the piece is sung in French.

After the interval the mood is quite different. Puccini was a melodist though and through and much of the music in Le Villi is rich and warm with hints of what lay ahead in his later major successes. The piece opens with a big engagement party for Anna (Duprels again – really coming into her own this time) and Roberto (Peter Auty). A black clad chorus dance in lilting 3|4 round the front of takis’s ring-shaped stage extension with the orchestra behind them and we’re immediately in a very convincing dramatic world.

The construction is odd, though. Once Roberto has left on a business trip (sort of) to Anna’s distress, the plot snaps shut like a telescope. Stephen Gadd (lots of gravitas) explains in spoken words that Roberto has been corrupted and debauched. We see nothing of his journey or Anna’s death from a broken heart. Next thing you know she’s in a coffin while Puccini winches up the emotion as only he can.

It gets better after that. Roberto returns in agonised repentance (beautiful aria from Auty) and is then haunted and killed by Anna’s vengeful ghost. The dancing Villi, white veils and evocative choreography have terrific dramatic impact and Puccini’s use of violas to connote terror will stay with me for a long time.

The set by takis works well in both operas. We are given a centre stage building constructed with rough planks which is manually revolved to provide scene changes. Outside incidents, such as people running to escape the storm or Roberto returning from his moral wilderness are played elsewhere on Opera Holland Park’s vast stage.

Congratulations, too, to conductor Francesco Cilluffo who keeps orchestra and singers firmly but fluidly under control. Only once or twice did the balance go awry so that the orchestra was drowning out the singing.

First published  by Lark Reviews: https://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?p=6873

Le Villi (1)

Rose Tremain’s Lily was published last year and I’ve just read it in paperback which, unusually, was cheaper than the Kindle version.

We’re in the mid-nineteenth century. An abandoned newborn, Lily is rescued by a policeman and taken to the Foundling Hospital founded by Thomas Coram.  At this point I sighed. Not very original, I thought.  Jacqueline Wilson explored this territory pretty thoroughly in Hetty Feather (2009). From a different angle so did Jamila Gavin in Coram Boy (2000) and there have probably been others.  But I was wrong. Tremain turns it into something quite different: a suspenseful tale of love, cruelty, revenge and justice. In places it reminded me much more of Sarah Waters’s novels such as Affinity and Fingersmith than of anything about else I’ve read about Coram hospital.

The point – historically – about Coram Hospital is that was benignly set up to rescue the children of mothers without support and other orphans from a life of abject poverty, crime or worse. The intentions were good but, inevitably the routines were harsh by modern standards. And such places sometimes attract the wrong sort – sadists, paedophiles and the like – to work there. They always did. And despite the thoroughness of modern checking systems, tragically it still happens occasionally. And that’s fertile ground for novelists although it doesn’t make for easy reading.

The worst thing about Coram Hospital to any common sensible, decent 21st century person who has ever been responsible for children is that the babies were sent to foster homes – often quite kind and loving ones. Then when they were six they had to be returned to the hospital never again to meet the family which had nurtured them.

Thus Tremain’s fictional Lily is blissfully content on a farm in Suffolk with people who love her for six years. The return to Coram’s Hospital would be brutal by any standards but Lily is targeted by a staff member called Maud who treats her with violent cruelty and it gets a great deal worse as she gets older.

The story is told on two time levels so that we meet the teenage Lily managing to live independently by working for a wigmaker who “freelances” privately as a high end prostitute. This alternates with Lily’s experiences at Coram Hospital until in the end the two strands meet.

Along the way is Lily’s childhood friend Bridget, another desperately traumatised child who doesn’t get any sort of peaceful ending. Sam Trench the policeman who finds her and re-enters her life later is an interesting character too and his wife epitomises decency and kindness. Conflicts of interest abound.

But the very best thing about this meaty novel, which I liked so much that I gobbled it in two days, is the ending. The adult Lily is expecting something terrible to happen to her because of something she’s done. In the event it doesn’t and if this were a piece of music I’d describe it as ending in a very gentle but hopeful major key with the dynamic at a tender mezzo piano. Tremain is very good indeed at nuance.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Black Ivory by Norman Collins

LILY

This show is deeply moving on at least two levels. First, there’s Jessica Duchen’s story for our times about a young Syrian refugee in Britain who finds herself through cricket and is then reunited (sort of) with her own mother. Second, it’s both inspirational and impressive to stage a community opera with 180 all age, diverse performers including – via video – youth choirs from Damascus and Bethlehem and a small group of professionals

Roxana Panufnik’s music is often beautiful, always colourful and makes aptly dramatic use of a wide range of orchestral sounds. There’s some exquisite harp work, for instance, under the rich bass-baritone of Jonathan Lemalu, who plays Harry, Dalia’s foster father in Britain. When there’s conflict in the action Panufnik gives us discordant, strident music – all nicely managed by Douglas Boyd and the Philharmonia Orchestra in the pit.

The sober opening to this uplifting opera presents distressed, depressed people, listless in a refugee camp. Then Dalia (Adrianna Forbes-Dorant – a warm, vibrant singer) arrives at the home of Harry and Maya (Kate Royal – good) where she is made warmly welcome although everyone has to do a lot of adjusting. Their children are played by Erin Field and Joshey Newynskyj, who both sing well. Of course there’s some hostility from the local community especially from cynical, critical Roger (Andrew Watts) at the cricket club. Watts is a counter tenor with a very high range whose troubled, piercing, bitter interjections work perfectly, Eventually coached by Fred (Ed Lyon, tenor) Dalia finds a talent for spin bowling and grows in confidence.

In many ways, though, the high point of this show is the arrival of Dalia’s mother Aisha (Merit Ariane) at a refugee detention centre in Dover. Ariane sings an Islamic lament full of quarter tones sounding like articulated vibrato which is intensely powerful and the scene in which she meets her daughter again is gut wrenching because there is no definite prospect of a happy ending.

There is much about this fine show to commend. It makes excellent, imaginative use of big video screens to show, for instance the choirs elsewhere which haunt Dalia or to stress the tension of the car ride to Dover with just the wing mirrors and the motorway flashing past. Then there’s the oud, played evocatively on stage by Rachel Beckles Willson, the brief appearance of the cream Labrador – part of the community – and the set by Rhiannon Newman Brown which understatedly links the quasi prison at Dover with a cricket net. Moreover the idea that Dalia finds acceptance through cricket sits beautifully at Wormsley which is famous for its historic ground. And full marks to Karen Gillingham for her undaunted direction of this huge cast and enabling them to force this hard-bitten critic to grope for a tissue several times.

First published by Lark Reviews: https://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?p=6867

This was an interestingly paired concert: It’s hard to think of two more contrasting pieces than Jennifer Walshe’s The Site of An Investigation and Brahms’s German Requiem.

Walshe is an Irish composer born in 1974 and her twelve section, 33 minute piece is a mixed-genre hybrid which sits somewhere between a concerto and a play with music. For this London premiere Walshe herself was the soloist – starting dramatically, with hand held mic standing behind the brass, moving to the middle of the percussion and finally coming down stage next to the conductor to the traditional soloist spot.

She speaks to the music and sings: sometimes with silvery lyricism and sometimes with strident forcefulness. She ruminates – with passion, wistfulness and occasionally humour – on the state of the world. So we are led to think about what we’re here for, ocean pollution, the pointless arrogance of the space race and the absurdity of AI-induced “eternal” (sort of) life, among many other things.

The orchestral colour in her composition is striking. The large orchestra gives us, for instance, some lovely discordant trombone glissandi, percussive harp, glorious woodwind detail and a couple of passages in which the whole brass section are required to shout “Break over them like the sea…” at angry fortissimo. There’s never a dull moment for the percussion section either. As well as playing a wide range of relatively conventional instruments they are required to pop bubble wrap, swirl coloured streamers and built a pyramid from plastic storage boxes which they then knock down. I struggle, it has to be said, to see the point of placing a four foot high model of a giraffe on a plinth and then noisily wrapping it in crinkly paper.

And so, after the interval, to the glorious familiarity of Brahms and his very personal take on the concept of a requiem – lots of Lutheran Bible, no Latin and no Christ.

The National Youth Choir of Great Britain makes a strong, energetic sound carefully managed by Ilan Volkov from the podium. It’s good to see so many fine tenors and basses with plenty of diversity and, of course, because this is a youth choir they are well able to stand throughout the work, thus precluding the need for tiresome bobbing up and down.

Bass baritone Shenyang brings terrific warmth to Herr, lehre doch mich and I really liked the pointing up of the fugue at the end of the movement. And soprano Elena Tsallagova sings with great sensitivity in Ihr habt nun Trauigkeit especially in rapport with flute.

But, for me, the best bit of this enjoyable performance was the choral singing. Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen is very well known as a standalone but this time, sung with explemplary tenderess, it sounded as fresh as if one had never heard it before. Similarly there was admirable drive in Denn wir haben and real minor key menace in Denn alles Fleisch especially in the fortissimo recapitulation.

First published by Lark Reviews: https://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?cat=3

Show: Room On The Broom

Society: London (professional shows)

Venue: Lyric Theatre, 29 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 7ES

Credits: By Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. Presented by Tall Stories

Room on the Broom

3 stars

Academics and literary theorists have sometimes argued that the world has just seven great stories and that all fiction derives from them. Room on the Broom, written as a preschool picture book by Julia Donaldson with illustrations by Axel Scheffler (2001) is a good example of that. It is essentially a quest narrative spliced with seeing off the monster so it feels very safe for a young audience. Everyone, even the very youngest, knows how it has to go. Yes, they will deal with the dragon and yes, the story will end where it started – although the framing device adds little or nothing.

Directed by Olivia Jacobs, this 60-minute, four-actor show uses much of the catchy rhyme from Julia Donaldson’s original book.

A witch (Jessica Manu) and her cat (Hannah Miller) set off on the former’s broomstick to confront a dragon (Jake Waring- great fun). Various other characters played by Waring and Peter Steele, join them en route. Friendship, teamwork and trust are, they gradually realise, vital to the success of the mission.

I admired the way several times, characters changed dramatically into something else on stage and Steele’s perky, tail-wagging puppeted dog is delightful. The distinctive accent work is also commendable: a plummy witch, a northern cat,  American frog and estuary parrot, for example. It’s a witty mix.

On the other hand the songs (by John Fiber and Andy Shaw) are pretty feeble and forgettable until you get to the music hall pastiche sung by Jake Waring as the parrot (nice piano underneath) and the  country and western number  beautifully delivered by Steele with banjo accompaniment.  The music is, of course, pre-recorded so some of the singing isn’t always as together as it might be.

Miller’s cat gives us plenty of feline movement and behaviour. And she finds all the petulance and jealousy the human side of the character needs before gradually settling into happy collaboration.

Manu gives us an engaging witch who commands the stage with her striking looks (red, purple and a really good hat) and fluid movement work.

The show is, however at least 10 minutes too long. Although the young children I saw it with were keen to join in the interactive bits – shouting “whoosh” to launch the broomstick and supplying missing rhymes from the narrative which many of them evidently knew well – there was also a lot of restiveness especially towards the end. A case for dropping the camping bit and starting with the real action perhaps?

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/room-on-the-broom-2/

Photographs by Mark Senior

Of course I’ve read the occasional John Agard poem in anthologies. And one of the schools I taught in invited Grace Nichols for an author visit so I knew they were a couple: a pair of poets as it were. And I read some of her work at that time. But I had never read him seriously until his latest collection Border Zone was sent me recently by one of the magazines I review for. So this book, which I read with a lot of pleasure, is a fairly new arrival on my bookshelves.

Agard grew up in Guyana and arrived in Britain in the 1970s. He is witty, lyrical, insouciant, sometimes a bit rude and good at satire, especially about immigration.

He writes, as you would expect, in a wide range of poetic forms because he’s a fine technician.  Quizzical poems, including one purporting to be written by a potato and another by ice, sit alongside moving tributes to poet Derek Walcott and to Agard’s old English teacher back in Guyana

I giggled my way though Bowdlerising the Bard which begins: “To delete or not to delete/ that is the delicate question /But even the Bard of Avon,/We daresay can be improved on./However timeless his timely lines./I, Thomas Bowdler, and my dear sister,/ will attempt to make them more refined.”

Best of all, though are poetry sequences which begin and end this volume. The book opens with an 86 stanza (seven lines in each) narrative poem about Victor, a Windrush generation man who eventually finds love in Britain. It ends with a 40 sonnet sequence presented as Casanova’s autobiography – another immigrant and the narrator is shamelessly honest so it’s often funny.

Like all poetry Agard’s work warrants reading more than once in order to absorb the finer points and enjoy the neatness and cleverness of his technique. Nonetheless it’s pretty accessible stuff with lots and lots of talking points for, say,  a book group or an A level English class. I’d have a lot of fun sharing this if I were still teaching. How about Three Siblings of the Word which begins: “Meet three siblings of the Word,/the Bronte lasses whose quills ventured/upwards from the blank of a page/yet rooted to a hill top parsonage/among those moors which beckon surrender.” Or from Meeting Old Father Thames: “Welcome to my well-trod guide book towpath /Enjoy my shores, stranger, whoever you be. / But pray, tell me, have you travelled from afar/ just to take that selfie standing here beside me?”

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Lily by Rose Tremain

 

Little Women Mark Adamo Opera Holland Park July 2022

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The UK premiere of Mark Adamo’s 1998 two act opera was an interesting event. It sits well with Opera Holland Park’s policy of mixing the very well known work with the much less familiar within a single season and features some talented singers at various stages of their careers. It was also good to see the composer there, clearly moved by this account of his work.

We’re in the world of Louisa M Alcott’s famous 1868 novel with glances at its sequels as the four March sisters reflect from maturity on the events of their childhood. As with Carmen and Eugene Onegin the set by takis brings some of the action into the space between the audience and the orchestra which conveys a strong sense of immediate intimacy. For this show the main stage is dominated by a series of huge, distressed picture frames which make the small room scenes convincing and contained.

Adamo’s score – of its time, obviously – is short on sustained melody but strong on orchestral colour. During Brooke’s (Harry Thatcher) impassioned courtship of Amy (Elizabeth Karani) for example, with Jo (Charlotte Badham) trying to stop them, we get timp glissandi, snare drum tattoos and glockenspiel. And I like Adamo’s use of tubular bells. Both percussionists (Glynn Matthews and Jeremy Cornes) work very hard in this opera and the results are often arresting. Meanwhile there’s some good work in other sections in a piece which often sets up unusual combinations of instruments all well managed by Sian Edwards on the podium. The sympathetic playing here is testament to the long partnership between Opera Holland Park and City of London Sinfonia.

On stage Kitty Whately finds plenty of vocal warmth in Meg using her wide vocal range and depth to bring the most matronly of the sisters to life. Charlotte Badham delights, using body language and lots of notes to connote Jo’s confusion, intelligence, love for her sisters, anguish and – eventually – the hope of a happy ending for herself. Benson Wilson is terrific too as Friedrich Bhaer. His richly resonant bass voice would have captivated me too, had I been Jo.

There are a few problems with this show, though. There is a quartet of women who sit on stage, busy at various pursuits, almost continuously, occasionally singing. They are oddly dressed – one is a knight, another a Bohemian artist-type and the other two in 1920s-style slinky cocktail frocks. I spent much of the 2 hours and 50 minutes (including interval) of this show trying to puzzle out who exactly these women are and why they’re there.

And, good as the orchestra is, it occasionally overpowers the singers. There were times, for example, when I couldn’t hear Charlotte Badham. And there is a problem with accents – I suppose the cast has been directed to sound American. In fact it is not sustained and the odd word you hear pronounced other than in RP it sounds like Cornwall. Moreover the diction is often fuzzy. One really shouldn’t need surtitles for an opera sung in one’s own language but in this case you certainly do, so I was glad they were there.

There is, however, plenty to admire in Little Women and I hope Mr Adamo was pleased with it despite the flaws.

First published by Lark Reviews: https://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?p=6855

Show: Coram Boy

Society: Tower Theatre Company

Venue: Tower Theatre. 16 Northwold Road, London N16 7HR

Credits: By Jamila Gavin, adapted by Helen Edmundson with original music by Colin Guthrie.

Coram Boy

4 stars

Originally staged at National Theatre, Helen Edmundson’s adaptation of Jamila Gavin’s young adult novel is big-cast theatre on a grand scale. So how do you make it work in a small space without the Olivier Theatre’s revolve and other high tech facilities? With elegance, flair, black curtains, mini rostra and a great deal of creative imagination from director Simona Hughes is the answer. She shows that this fine play can work anywhere if you give it free rein.

And Colin Guthrie’s evocative, clever original music is a magnificent addition with its Handel references and use of dissonance to connote fear, anxiety or anger. Pre-recorded by a small orchestra and effectively “led” by an on-stage professional violinist (Kate Conway) it adds a huge amount of atmosphere and colour.

Coram Boy is a complicated story set in the eighteenth century. It touches variously on slavery, the murder of babies by the sinister “Coram Men”, the significance of Handel in London, sex trafficking of very young girls for prostitution abroad, inheritance, paedophilia, empowerment of women, the redemptive power of music and our old friend “Sua padre” aka an unexpected (although the audience knows) paternity revelation – among many other things.

In a strong, all-age cast, Matt Tylianakis stands out as the dastardly Otis ruthlessly murdering infants (one of whom is, poignantly named Mercy) that he’s paid to deliver to Coram Hospital in the first act, He is then reborn as an utterly evil, smooth-talking, wheeling and dealing nobleman in the second. Paul Graves gives us a warmly sustained performance as the troubled, traumatised, epileptic Meshak and Nia Woodward delights as the initially playful, but then abused, Toby. Frankie Roberts, playing the music-focused reluctant inheritor of a big Gloucestershire estate – and then his son – is feistily boyish. She sings with sweet, intense musicality too so we are persuaded that, yes, Mr Handel would be impressed.

There’s also some pleasing choral singing in this moving show because one of the plot strands has Handel (who was a Coram Hospital donor) rehearsing a performance of Messiah. The whole cast rendering of “Hallelujah” at the end, once justice has been done and love has prevailed is a wipe-your-eyes moment – one of the many high spots in this well paced, sensitive production.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/coram-boy-2/