Stanford - The Critic (Wexford, 2024)

Charles Villiers Stanford - The Critic

Wexford Festival Opera, 2024

Ciarán McAuley, Conor Hanratty, Rory Dunne, Ben McAteer, Ava Dodd, Gyula Nagy, Dane Suarez, Oliver Johnston, Meilir Jones, Andrew Henley, Hannah O'Brien, Carolyn Holt, Mark Lambert, Tony Brennan, Jonathan White, Arthur Riordan, Olga Conway

O'Reilly Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford - 24th October 2024

Opera is usually considered a serious business and comic works are often neglected, confined usually to operetta in the opera houses and mostly to Offenbach and Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus. The greatest composers - I'm thinking of Mozart principally - manage to incorporate comedy as part of the wider richness of human experience. Works of pure comedy are relatively rare and perhaps don't stand the test of time: what is considered funny 100 or more years ago might not tickle the same way now. Such rare works are not neglected at Wexford, this year's festival theme almost inviting nothing but comedy, which indeed that turned out to be the case (unfortunately, from my perspective) to the exclusion of anything a little more substantial. When you have a pedigree like Charles Villiers Stanford working with a comedy written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan however, The Critic must be a promising prospect. Unfortunately, the 'Theatre within Theatre' idea that is the theme of this year's festival operas tends to neglect any meaningful commentary, and in the case of The Critic not much humour either other than in the broadest sense of laughing at bad opera.

Can you make a good opera out of bad opera? Well, Ariadne auf Naxos had already proven that point by the time Stanford came to compose The Critic, his penultimate opera, in 1916. Sheridan’s 1779 play pokes fun at critics, at the vanity puffery of writers, and the efforts of theatre producers to please everyone. In The Critic, Mr. Puff - the author and Mr. Dangle - the composer/impresario, have invited Mr. Sneer - the critic, to attend the rehearsal of a love story drama set around the invasion of the Spanish Armada. There is undoubtedly much here that could still be seen as relevant in its satire of theatrical conventions, but also a lot that isn't.

Essentially then The Critic operates as the rehearsal of a very bad opera with a ludicrous libretto and stagey acting, with occasional interruptions by the authors pointing out the cleverness of the drama, explaining some of the odder passages that seem to make no sense and appear to have no relevance to the main thrust of the rather disjointed drama. The first act of 'The Spanish Armada' involves a lot of posturing from Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Christopher Hatton at Tilbury fort about the approach of the Spanish Armada, followed by a lament from the heroine Tilburina about her forbidden love for the captured Spanish officer Don Ferolo Whiskerandos, where she is constantly forced to repeat and improve her movements. Act II shifts to what appears to be a scene from an entirely different opera, an obligatory fight scene that goes through a number of retakes before one of the protagonists walks off leaving the other to shadow fight, and the opera ends with an incongruous masque to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's victory over the Spanish Armada. 

The Critic definitely fulfills the remit of a play within a play, but unfortunately there is little real meaningful connection between the presumed opera and the framing device other than interruptions from Puff and Dangle insisting on the final moments of silly arias and pompous choruses being delivered in an even more ridiculous way. Since the framing device is entirely spoken by actors, that means that the fake opera 'The Spanish Armada' is what actually constitutes the opera The Critic proper. Which means for almost the entire opera, we - the contemporary audience - are treated to what is simply a dreadful opera of ham acting, constant interruptions and exaggerated flourishes delivering a portentous libretto and improbable nonsensical plot.

The names are at least amusing and I have to say I did laugh at the scene where Lord Burleigh silently and solemnly ponders some obscure dilemma before eventually grunting thoughtfully and walking off the stage. Perhaps that's because you could enjoy the actual music, which is of course ravishing, but how much of it is meant to be pastiche and parody? All of it? How do you judge whether it is good music to bad opera or pastiche bad music to match and highlight the absurdities of the plot and libretto? Can we take it seriously when it only emphasises the silliness of the plot? We are perhaps meant to recognise the styles being parodied? None of them are obvious, so any attempts to be clever there also failed.

I'm not sure the period setting, Conor Hanratty's direction or the production design really helps. The stage within the stage set and the costumes are marvellous, the opera looking absolutely gorgeous. Some 'cheap' props and effects are thrown in for additional amusement, but it's all very obvious. Although the intent is that the performers are taking it all very seriously, it's not really funny if it's played as broadly as this. There is nothing to let the audience find their own amusement or any clever device that might hint at a relevant satire they can recognise. I'm thinking for example of the Buxton Festival's 2022 production of Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali (as Viva la Diva), an opera that is also part of the programme in Wexford this year (an obvious choice considering the theme), which satirised all manner of modern production excesses, as well as modern theatrical practice. (I await the Wexford production to see how they fare, but they have a lot to live up to).

Putting the deficiencies about my sense of humour and expectations aside, there can be no dispute about the quality of the orchestra playing under the musical direction of Ciarán McAuley or the singing performances here. The singing was definitely good, or at least good at being bad - I'm not sure how you would evaluate it on that basis. A challenge for the critic indeed. No, the singing was of a high standard, but there was nothing too challenging here, not even the traditional 'mad scene'. The libretto was atrocious, intentionally so, the plot nonsensical, but everyone has different tastes, so if you find that amusing - and the gentleman in the box beside me in the O'Reilly Theatre chuckled away throughout - then The Critic is a definite hit. Just not with this critic*. (But judge for yourself). Certainly we can all do with a little bit of lightness considering the state of the world at the moment, but this was a disappointing year at Wexford Festival Opera for lovers of 'serious' opera. Next year's programme of rare Verdi (Le trouvère), Handel (Deidamia) and Delius (The Magic Fountain) however promises to be very serious indeed!

External links: Wexford Festival Opera, RTE Streaming on YouTube

The critics about The Critic

★★★★★ “Outstanding … doesn’t miss a trick.” - The Irish Times ★★★★★ “Hilarious … a Wexford Festival Opera knockout.” - Bachtrack ★★★★★ “Impeccable.” - The Stage ★★★★ “A superb Ava Dodd … an equally terrific Dane Suarez.” - The Arts Review ★★★★ “Ciarán McAuley’s superb conducting” - The Arts Review ★★★★ “Conor Hanratty’s masterful direction” - The Arts Review *Somehow I can't see my review being added to the above

★★ 'A very bad opera with a ludicrous libretto and stagey acting' - OperaJournal

Dvořák - Armida (Wexford, 2022)

Antonín Dvořák - Armida

Wexford Festival Opera, 2022

Norbert Baxa, Hartmut Schörghofer, Jozef Benci, Jennifer Davis, Stanislav Kuflyuk, Jan Hynk, Rory Dunne, Gerard Schneider, Josef Moravec, Thomas Birch, Andrii Kharlamov, Libuse Santorisova, Chris Mosz, Josef Kovačič

O'Reilly Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford - 2nd November 2022

Harking back to the standard 19th century operatic tensions involving war and love, based on Torquato Tasso’s La Gerusalemme liberata during the time of the crusades, you would think that it shouldn't be too difficult to make a version of Armida exciting and dramatic. Dvořák's dynamic music in his final opera certainly lives up to the drama, expressing high passions of love and betrayal where the stakes are high between the opposing forces of Christian and Saracen armies. Add in some magic, sorcery and an Act II finale that includes a swooping dragon to stage a dramatic escape at a critical point and this seems tailor-made for the 71st Wexford Festival Opera's Magic & Music theme. And yet, something is lacking in this production.

It's definitely not Dvořák's music. There is no fake Eastern exoticism here, there are no romantic light arias; it's straight ahead drama and high passion on a war footing. Ismen, ruler of Syria and sorcerer, is however under no illusions as to the limits of his powers to make Princess Armida love him. He knows she loves another, but he and King Hidraot, the father of Armida, believe that she is better placed to infiltrate the enemy camp and use her magic powers against the mighty forces that have already gathered to take the city of Jerusalem. Armida however has other ideas having been bewitched herself by the appearance of the knight Rinald out hunting. There is powerful vocal writing to match these emotions, not least of which is the inexplicable passion that grips Armida and leads her to side with the enemy.

And yet, much of what passes for drama in the first two acts feels detached from the characters and more like symphonic colouring and scene setting as characters define their position and plan their course of action. Director Hartmut Schörghofer doesn't have any great ideas to make it visually more engaging as a human drama, keeping it in a First Crusade (1096 - 1099) setting, using the backdrops for projections of locations with the principals and choruses filling a mainly bare stage, often singing outward. Norbert Baxa's rousing conducting makes this sound terrific and the singing is outstanding, and that proves to be more than enough for a satisfactory presentation of this rarely performed work, but you are left feeling that it could do with a little more action or activity. And contemporary relevance, possibly.

There really isn't much to help the audience engage with the predicament at hand, the festival theme of Magic & Music taken a little too literally here and not enough attention given to the human side, or to the reality and scale of the war being played out. You can hear it ok, not least in the fine singing of Jennifer Davis as Armida and Stanislav Kuflyuk as Ismen, and the impressive choral work certainly suggests the might of the Christian forces on one side and the women of the court of King Hidraot on the other. The set relies on a mirrored background cutting the stage diagonally to visualise the divisions, with screens that open up and supply depth on one side, and computer generated projections of the army camp on the other. A huge dragon on the screen swoops down and explosions of magic do a little to match the content, but it still feels distanced and stage operatic.

You might expect the opera to pick up after this pre-interval magical intervention by Ismen, but the sorcerer for some reason leaves Armida and Rinald to wander and wonder in an enchanted garden in the third act. It doesn't really work musically or dramatically in any sense of taking the opera forward - feeling more like an operatic convention to have a romantic interlude - and here the director also fails to find a way of making this engaging or even capitalise on the visual splendour and magic that such a scene offers. Projected computer graphics are used and, like the movies when they are overused (Avatar came to mind in this scene), it lacks a sense of real substance, a sense of reality. Perhaps if you are seated lower and at a better angle it might have looked more enveloping (the accompanying images seem to testify to that), but from the left of the stage and above, the mirrored effect wasn't visible.

The final act should bring about action and passion, and musically it really did. Down in the orchestra pit Baxa and the Wexford Festival orchestra delivered the rolling punches, the fearsome chorus of Crusaders - superbly managed by Andrew Synnott - even though only a representative handful, completely gave the impression they could overrun Jerusalem themselves. The principal singers raised their game also, striking blow after blow. Partly however because there was little conviction behind the buildup of the previous acts to merit it - in the dramatic content of the opera as much as in the stage direction - it still appeared to fall short of what was needed to make this opera work.

Still, any opportunity to see a rare Dvořák opera performed live is an occasion to relish, and although it is imperfect in conception and with the death of composer in 1904 there was no opportunity for revision, it didn't disappoint in a fully orchestrated live performance. The timing was a little bit off between orchestra and chorus in the opening scenes, but there were no issues elsewhere. I was concerned that conductor might be a little heavy-handed and sacrifice melody for overstatement, but it was wholly appropriate for a staged version of Armida, attempting to make those high emotions, passions, conflict and heightened magical content all blend with the intent of the drama, and it sounded terrific in the O'Reilly Theatre of the National Opera House.

The performance certainly revealed some excellent singing. Looking like she hadn't been given a great deal of direction, Armida spent much of it almost looking like she was in a state of trance, but Jennifer Davis sung out those passions impressively. Ismen is a choice role, a rather more interesting figure than Rinald, and it was taken superbly by Stanislav Kuflyuk. Gerard Schneider did what he could with Rinald, but the character is not greatly defined in either the music or the direction. As already noted, but it's worth saying again, the male and female choruses were outstanding, giving the work that extra edge of lyricism and dramatic dynamic where needed.

Links: Wexford Festival Opera

Deane - Vagabones (Dublin, 2019)

Raymond Deane - Vagabones

Opera Collective Ireland, 2019

Sinéad Hayes, Ben Barnes, Crash Ensemble, Rory Dunne, Carolyn Holt, Kelli-Ann Masterson, Sarah Power, Rory Musgrave, Ross Scanlon, Fionn Ó hAlmhain

The Civic Theatre, Tallaght - 6 September 2019

Do I detect a certain amount of revived hostility towards the English in recent new Irish opera works? It's not hard to note a growing frustration bordering on disbelief at the handling of Brexit in the UK and the serious collateral damage that this English vanity project might inflict on the people and the economy of Ireland. Old grudges haven't been forgotten, the wounds run deep and it looks like they might be coming back to the surface.

Another new Irish opera premiered in Dublin just a few weeks ago. Donnacha Dennehy's The Hunger dealt with the Irish Famine, and while its focus was on the suffering of the ordinary people, taking the perspective from historical accounts and the roots of suffering in traditional Irish music, it was made clear in the contemporary interviews with academics that it's a historical accepted that the English were certainly not blameless for the severity of the situation. As well as continuing to export grain from Ireland during the famine, it's clear that there was a general indifference to the suffering of the Irish people in favour of a hands-off approach to non-intervention in market forces that contributed to the severity of the resulting famine.

Showing that Irish opera seems to be going through a rich phase at the moment, it's hard not to see similar political undercurrents and contemporary resonance in Opera Collective Ireland's commission of Raymond Deane's new opera Vagabones. Whether it is indeed in reaction to contemporary events, Brexit and border issues being revived by the English is probably too early to say, but it's interesting that Deane also chooses to delve far back into Irish history to another episode where a sense of English entitlement and ruling superiority can be seen as being responsible for the oppression of the Irish way of life in the sowing of hatred and suspicion.

Based on the play 'Trespasses' written in the mid-1990s by Emma Donoghue, Vagabones dates back long enough before the current fiasco and cause of divisions, but it also derives in part from the writer's experience of being Irish and living in England in the period leading up to the Good Friday Agreement. It's based on an account of a witch trial of Florence Newton, which took place in Youghal in Co. Cork in 1661, one of the few witch trails that took place in Ireland. Perhaps, if Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible' is anything to go by, the accusation made against Florence Newton is inspired by jealousy more than any deeper political intent by Mary Longdon, a maid of English origin. Afraid that she won't be able to marry her master John Pyne because she suffers from epileptic fits, Mary blames them on the curse of old Irish woman, accusing her of being a witch.

Ben Barnes's direction of Opera Collective Ireland's world premiere production of Vagabones keeps to the 17th century period setting and doesn't set about introducing any modernisms or revisionism, or indeed anything that would point to any contemporary allegorical or political element. The locations are all based in and around Florence's prison cell and her being brought to trial, those scenes contrasted with the finery of the English landlords and ruling authorities. The sense of injustice is strong, heightened by entitlement of the authorities that even if they know they are wrong they must be seen to be right. Sharing a cell with Donal a young boy jailed for a minor theft, there is a sense of the poor being made to pay for the indulgences of the rich. In the hierarchy here, even an English maid is more important than an indigenous Irish person.

If the historical subject matter and treatment of Irish matters in their new opera works suggests a common purpose when seen in close proximity, Raymond Deane comes from a very different musical background to Donnacha Dennehy. Deane, who studied composition under Stockhausen in Cologne, is more from the European modernist tradition open to experimentation, whereas Dennehy has a strong connection to the peculiarities of Irish trad for rhythm and sensibility and a foot in American minimalism. There are no obvious Irish musical references in Vagabones, although there is some use of accordion and harp, but if there are similarities between Dennehy's The Hunger and Dean's Vagabones it's probably highlighted by in the use of the Crash Ensemble and a similar scale of chamber orchestration, with an ensemble of 13 musicians conducted by Sinéad Hayes.

Deane's music and his development of Vagabones from a play gives the work a more traditional dramatic character with nothing overtly experimental. Deane does develop a technique here, creating a unique voice for each of the six main characters by superimposing scales on a pitch structure to develop a unique voice for each of the characters. Whether that's evident or not, it at least gives the something with which to establish a sense of character and personality. The scoring certainly has mood and impact, the music appropriate in scale and delivery for the intimacy of the subject, supporting the drama and letting its undercurrents come through.

The singing performances are all very good, inevitably somewhat Sprechgesang and traditionally dramatic. It's delivered as such with nothing unconventional or experimental here, and no unnecessary flourishes. Vagabones is a smaller scale chamber work and it might not be particularly ambitious in staging or conception, but it certainly finds an intriguing subject that works well on its own terms as a drama and even in a wider context, presents a interesting bigger picture of where contemporary Irish opera and maybe even Ireland is at the moment.

Links: Opera Collective Ireland