Giacomo Puccini - Turandot
NI Opera, 2015
David Brophy, Calixto Bieito, Orla Boylan, Marc Heller, Anna Patalong, Stephen Richardson, Christopher Gillett, Paul Carey Jones, Andrew Rees, Eamonn Mulhall, Padraic Rowan, Gemma Prince, Heather Fogarty, David Lynn
Grand Opera House, Belfast - 31 October 2015
I have to admit that although I am by no means fond of Pasolini's 1975 brutal and near-unwatchable final film 'Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom', it has to be said that it remains an important and influential work that still has the power to shock and horrify. Like it or not, references to the work in an opera production are still guaranteed to cause controversy and raise an outcry, but you'd have to ask serious questions why such an extreme outlook needs to be brought onto the opera stage in the first place, as for example in Andrea Breth's production of Verdi's La Traviata at La Monnaie. The director made a strong case for it there, but references to 'Salò' accompanied by equally disturbing imagery in Calixto Bieito's production of Turandot for the NI Opera is surely taking things too far?
It is hard to imagine quite how such an extreme treatment could be applied with any validity to Puccini's colourful fairy tale opera, nor is it immediately obvious as you are watching the production, since the scenes enacted here scarcely bear out what is detailed in the libretto. But then of course nothing about Calixto Bieito's productions are ever obvious. It is interesting and fortuitous (but maybe not all that surprising) that elements of this production just happen to echo current events relating to the increased prominence of China on the world's political and economic stage. There was the state visit of the President of The People's Republic, Xi Jinping, signalling closer economic union between Britain and China last week, and the newprint ink was still damp on reporting of the relaxation of China's one-child rule when this production opened at the Grand Opera House in Belfast. Still, what's that got to do with Turandot and why bring 'Salò' into it?
Puccini never intended Turandot to make any kind of political statement, but there certainly is room to find a darker subtext in the bold new musical direction that the composer had embarked upon in his final few works. Turandot is, despite its fairy tale trappings, unquestionably a dark, sombre and even violent work, even more so than the traditional underlying subtext of most fairy tales. It's about a cruel princess who executes anyone who fails to answer her riddles. Many have come to her kingdom hoping to melt her frozen heart, but all of them end up beheaded, her regime also carrying out torture and executions. It's all there in the plot of Turandot and it's all there in the music too. The Chinese musical quotations are not there for exoticism this time with Puccini, but rather they are intentionally dissonant and jarring, accompanied by huge, heavy orchestration and powerful choral arrangements. Turandot herself is one of the most challenging soprano roles for any singer, demanding Wagnerian stamina with firm high coloratura.
Bieito evidently brings this dark undercurrent to the foreground by setting it in Communist China, although there is little to differentiate between China of the recent past and the more capitalist-friendly China of today. The workers, all in blue uniformed dungarees, work in a sweatshop that seems to trade in medical body parts ('Medorgan'), most of which seem to come from excess babies. Or dolls maybe, but they tend to bleed when bashed head-first onto the floor. It's a totalitarian regime with Ping, Pong and Pang less comedy figures and rather more authoritarian mandarins. Dressed in Communist military uniforms, they are shown brutally beating, stripping and raping the workers, mercilessly clamping down on them when they fall behind Calaf and his attempts to win the hand of the ice princess. They do a lot worse in their torture of Calaf, Liù and Timur in their attempts to uncover Calaf's identity. It's the use and abuse of the bodies of the people as the ultimate commodity in a consumerist society, and seen in that context, Pasolini's stark and bleak vision of 'Salò' is not only appropriate, but even more prophetic and relevant today.
Viewed realistically, Turandot is not a distant fairy tale unrelated to the real world either, but one which can be seen to say a lot about China, or indeed about pretty much any modern so-called democracy in our globalised times. You have authorities who keep their actions and activities hidden and unaccountable (presented as riddles) contrasting that with their desire to control the population through fear, seeking to gain access to the private information that they can use to undermine any individual or body (Calaf/Ai Weiwei/the Arts in general) who opposes, challenges or is a threat to their objectives. It's not just China either, but you can apply much of this kind of activity to what is going on all over the world today. The signs of 'Traitor' hung around the necks of artists and intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution are the character assassinations of the right-wing press of today. Chilcot, Guantanamo, Wikileaks, Snowdon, the government seeking powers to monitor the control the freedom of the internet, an unaccountable wealthy 1% elite exploiting and scapegoating the poor; all these apply. If Calixto Bieito had managed to get a pig's head somewhere up there on the stage, it could hardly have been more topical...
Beito's production was of course developed long before last week's news, previously showing in Nuremburg and Toulouse and obviously it makes no such direct reference to any of these issues. Like 'Salò' however, it taps into the undercurrents and it's a measure of how the the subject is presented that it is relevant and can be applied meaningfully to what is going on in the world today. Seen in that light, Puccini's Turandot is a good vehicle for the ideas that Bieito draws out of it, the composer's through composition and the underlying dissonance suggesting something far more sinister lying behind the fairy tale imagery. It's using art to touch on a deeper reality, something that totalitarian states also fear and suppress. It's interesting (and not entirely coincidental I'm sure) that in a time that sees even greater government cuts to the arts (something that affects NI Opera), Calaf sings "Nessun Dorma", the most lyrical moment of the opera while turning around the 'Traitor' sign hung around his neck and writing 'Poetry' on it. And he is roundly kicked and beaten by the authorities, Pang, Pong and Ping for his troubles.
Turandot becomes darker still if it is only taken as far as Puccini composed it before his death, ending at the point where Liù takes her own life. Franco Alfano's completion of the work is abandoned here, ending on this bleak note, the full two-hour performance played without intermission and with no respite from the horror on the stage. There's no redemption for her sacrifice, no winning over of the cruelty of the heartless ruler. If there was anything that weakened the tone established here in NI Opera's production, it wasn't in the singing or the impressive performance of the Ulster Orchestra who were really on fire here, hitting home resoundingly under the baton of David Brophy. Orla Boylan was a formidable Princess Turandot, her mastery of the role impressive; Marc Heller was a lyrical Calaf; Anna Patalong an impassioned Liù; Stephen Richardson a grave, agonised Timur, and Paul Carey Jones' resonant baritone give us an implacably evil Pang. No, if there was any weakness - aside from the continued absurd policy of singing in English (even "Nessun Dorma"!) in a work pitched so high and to a thunderous score that renders the words utterly unintelligible without surtitles - it was that paradoxically the live stage may not really be the best place to highlight such horrors of the world today.
It is an extreme vision and no doubt some reviewers and audience members will be up in arms about the treatment of Turandot here, but despite the best efforts of the director, it can't help but feel 'staged' and tame in comparison to the reality. But it's all we've got, and it's an impressive effort that must be attempted. NI Opera have never shied away from challenges, not least the very threat to their continued existence that the NI Assembly present with their appallingly short-sighted and vicious cuts in funding for the arts. For that and for even daring to put this kind of production on the stage in Belfast, the overwhelmingly positive response from the audience was fully merited. "Not extreme enough" and "met with unanimous acclaim" are not phrases you often see applied to a Calixto Bieito production, but it says a lot for the confidence that NI Opera have in Belfast audiences (evidently a more sophisticated audience than the booing contingent that blights La Scala, Covent Garden and the Paris Opera) to support and recognise the importance of artistic freedom. This is what art can do and this is why we need the arts.
Antonin Dvořák - The Jacobin
Buxton Festival, 2014
Stephen Barlow, Stephen Unwin, Andrew Greenan, Nicholas Lester, James McOran-Campbell, Anne Sophie Duprels, Nicholas Folwell, Matthew Newlin, Bonaventura Bottone, Anna Patalong, Martha McLorinan
Buxton Opera House - 24 July 2014
There are a lot of lost or forgotten operas and they usually aren't performed for a good reason, whether it's changing fashions and taste, or the fact that they often they just aren't very good. The wonderful thing about the Buxton Festival's revivals of neglected operas is that you not only get a chance to determine whether a rarely performed work has any merit, but you can be almost certain that if an obscure opera has been chosen to be produced at the festival, it's usually because it's worth it. Dvořák's The Jacobin is, on this showing, clearly an opera worth reviving.
Musically, at least. Anyone who has had the opportunity to hear The Jacobin before (it was performed in concert version at the Barbican a year or so ago), will certainly have noted the beauty and the richness of melody in Dvořák's writing. There's more to an opera than just music however, it has to work dramatically on the stage. While the merits and pacing of the plot here are rather more open to question than the qualities of the music, the success of such a work can often depend on the interpretation and direction. In both respects, The Jacobin is traditionally in good hands at the Buxton Festival.
Stephen Barlow and the Northern Chamber Orchestra clearly relished the opportunity to explore and give full expression to Dvořák's warm melodic writing for The Jacobin. It's not the most sophisticated music, but it's full of wonderfully simple but catchy tunes that are appropriate for the content and the context. In addition to some beautiful arias and some fine multi-layered ensemble singing, Dvořák uses folk music as a basis for the arrangements, particularly the choral pieces that give it a strong national character. The influence of Wagner is not so evident here as much as Bellini, if you can imagine Bellini writing national anthems, or perhaps think of a more melodic Wagnerian flow in a Massenet style.
As a Czech national opera however, and as a comedy moreover, The Jacobin must also look to Smetana's The Bartered Bride. While it relies on many of the characteristics of the comic opera - arranged marriages to horrible old men that threatens the pure love of a young couple, dark family secrets that come to light when a long-lost family member returns - there's a feeling that The Jacobin almost tries to be too clever and risks trivialising or at least marginalising the simple mechanics of the plot for the sake of enriching it musically.
The actual plot is not the most sophisticated, operating on two main situations - one dramatic and one comic. The dramatic plotline involves the return of Bohuš with his new wife Julie back to his Bohemian hometown, where rumours have been spread of him becoming a Jacobin revolutionary during his stay in Paris. This rumour suits his brother Adolf, who stands to gain the inheritance of his father, Count Harasova, in the absence of his disinherited brother. Fully aware of the danger, Adolf ensures that his steward Filip has the stranger with false papers arrested. The comic plotline involves Terinka, the daughter of the music teacher Benda, being forced into a marriage with steward, when she is in love with Jiří. As the leading voices in Benda's choir, they use the occasion of singing rehearsals for a celebration for the Count to find a way of being together and thwarting Filip.
The choral practice takes up rather more of the opera than you might think relevant to the plot, and it seems a little indulgent on the part of the composer - Dvořák that is, as much as on the part of Benda who has pretensions to be the new Mozart. While this does give Dvořák the opportunity of writing serenades and anthemic choral pieces and blending those into the simple folk melodies and dramatic situations, it's not entirely gratuitous. Music does indeed play an important role in The Jacobin. The major resolutions are brought about not so much by revelations about identity as character. Julie's recollection (in a beautiful rendition by Anne Sophie Duprels) of nostalgic folk songs she has learned from her husband, ensure his release on the principle that they can't be bad people if they love the music of our country this much. In many ways, the music also saves Jiří and Terinka, who are indispensable to the music master.
As such, the quality of the singing is by no means a small matter in this opera, and this is a not a consideration neglected in Buxton productions either. There's a recognition that it's in the supposedly secondary characters where the real charm of The Jacobin lies and in this respect, the casting of Benda, Filip, Jiří and Terinka is perfect. Between them there's plenty of enthusiasm, bluster and good-humoured conflict. The singing is just delightful, as much in individual voices as in the blending of them (the English translation moreover working superbly in bringing together all those interweaving voices expressing conflicting sentiments. The staging, updated to a 1930s setting, was deceptively simple but worked remarkably well, Stephen Unwin focussing on the direction and interaction of the diverse characters, making them work well with one another. The Northern Chamber Orchestra were on outstanding form, showing a real feel for the drive and melody of the work, bringing it all together and showing just how wonderfully entertaining The Jacobin can be.
Gaetano Donizetti - L'Elisir d'Amore
NI Opera, 2013
David Brophy, Oliver Mears, Anna Patalong, John Molloy, Anthony Flaum, James McOran-Campbell, Sarah Reddin
Theatre at the Mill, Newtownabbey - 27 September 2013
If there were some concerns that NI Opera's 2013-14 season looked a little thin and reliant on co-productions that would be less specific to the province (we've been spoilt, I know), there was at least a sense that there was something in the programme for everyone. The forthcoming production of Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest notwithstanding, it could however also be said to lack the ambition of the first two inaugural seasons of the newly formed opera company. Certainly Donizetti's comedy L'Elisir d'Amore, sung in English, would hardly appear to be the most challenging choice for a season opener, but it did prove to be a popular and accessible one and perhaps that's just as important a factor in this era of continued budget cuts to the arts.
Popularity however need not necessarily mean any compromise in the high standards that we have come to expect from NI Opera. L'Elisir d'Amore might not break any new ground for the company, but with a cast as adept in comedy acting as they were agile in their singing, this was as delightful an entertainment as it ought to be. It isn't really necessary to have a concept with an opera like Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, but it helps if the approach is consistent, relatable and, most importantly, it's at least funny. Oliver Mears' clever and considered production not only met those requirements, it may even have offered something a little extra to think about in these times when money concerns are indeed foremost in most people's minds.
Oliver Mears' setting the opera in an 1970's college classroom might be nothing more than an indulgence of nostalgia, so it might be reading a bit too much into it to connect Donizetti's lighthearted play on the Tristan and Isolde legend with the earlier production of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman set in the same era. There is a consistency in the approach however and it does at least manage to bring the subject back down to something that everyone in the audience can relate to. Reading anything more than that into the settings of these productions is perhaps fanciful, but if so inclined, you could make a connection between The Flying Dutchman and the decline in traditional industries like shipbuilding during the Thatcher era, but can make L'Elisir d'Amore as a critique on Thatcherism in the same way?
Thankfully, Oliver Mears doesn't over-stretch the material and its comedy to fit any such dubious concept, but that doesn't mean that I can't. Just for fun. There's no doubt that the working class Nemorino becomes much more empowered when he partakes of the elixir, which in a way is investing in the enterprise of Doctor Dulcamara. He certainly receives a handsome return on his investment with regards to his middle-class aspiration to marry above his class, but it's still something of a high risk investment. The elixir on the other hand may in this case be nothing more than a splash of Brut or Old Spice for all the lasting impact it has on Adina's feelings for him, but the attraction of money in this Thatcherist era shouldn't be underestimated, particularly when Nemorino inherits great wealth from his recently deceased uncle.
With the dodgy Dulcamara slipping into a very broad Irish brogue on occasion, you could look further and see an early indication of the Celtic Tiger in this, which does suggest that the elixir business is built on some very shaky foundations indeed. It sounds plausible enough then, or at least the excellent comic acting of John Molloy in the role makes the proposition seem most persuasive. Or if not made plausible, at least made very funny and relatable to the audience. Throw in a few comments in the adapted translation that have Adina calling Nemorino an "eejit", and you're very much speaking about to the audience in their own language about a universal subject.
Putting such fanciful interpretations aside, the key to the work lies in giving due attention to that universal question of love. Those romantic sentiments also work very much more for a modern audience here by portraying the impossibility of a relationship between a peasant and a wealthy land-owner as the classroom crush of a college pupil for a sexy teacher well out of his league. With her hair in bun and wearing glasses only to be "revealed" in a much more glamorous light, Anna Patalong fits the bill rather well (and, having previously seen Ms Patalong in a maid outfit as Serpetta in this summer's Buxton production of Mozart's La Finta Giardiniera, I think I might be developing a bit of a crush there myself).
The clever set design then works well on a practical level, creating a classroom out of the chorus, setting figures and characters out in their marvellously recreated seventies fashions (by costume designer Ilona Karas). On an operational level too there were plenty of little comic touches such as the CND poster on the wall being ripped down by Sgt. Belcore when the soldiers arrive, in Dr. Dulcamara's mobile science laboratory, and generally in the comic interplay between the characters. The gym setting for Act II with the chorus as netball players is also brilliantly put together and hugely entertaining.
That all makes NI Opera's L'Elisir d'Amore sound like a nice light piece of fluff, but there are of course considerable musical and singing challenges in the work. The musical side of things was well catered for by the Ulster Orchestra led by conductor David Brophy. There wasn't always a great feel for Donizetti's sometimes rather conventional arrangements and the reduced orchestra couldn't consequently carry them off with sweeping flourishes, but between them they found the appropriate the lightness of touch required for the work, the size of the venue and worked well with the singing and timing of the performers.
The real challenges and character of the work however are to be found in the singing and here the casting and performances were outstanding. Anna Patalong's darkly rich soprano (and appearance) put one in mind of Anna Netrebko on occasion, but she tackled the role of Adina and all its high notes with great ability, relish and considerable character. The ever-reliable John Molloy, as noted earlier also made his role very much his own, while Anthony Flaum's Nemorino brought a new meaning to the term "vocal gymnastics" by singing some pieces while skipping and doing push-ups in Act II. Top of the class!
