Donizetti - Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali (Wexford, 2024)

Gaetano Donizetti - Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali

Wexford Festival Opera, 2024

Danila Grassi, Orpha Phelan, Sharleen Joynt, Paolo Bordogna, Giuseppe Toia, Matteo Loi, Paola Leoci, Alberto Robert, William Kyle, Hannah Bennett, Philip Kalmanovitch, Henry Grant Kerswell

RTE Player - 25th October 2024

I may have been a little bit harsh in my earlier review of Charles Villiers Stanford's The Critic - well, the clue is in the name of the opera - and about comic opera in general, but by way of defense against accusations of not having a sense of humour, I give you Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali by Donizetti, also performed as part of the Wexford Festival Opera's 2024 Theatre within Theatre themed programme. Now this is how a comic opera ought to be, hilariously satirical with a foot in the real world, sympathetically presented with original touches that keep it fresh, contemporary and hugely funny.

Such is the mastery of Donizetti's opera that it works as well today as it would have done 200 years ago. Written in 1831, it hasn't aged a day and retains its capacity to entertain and remain open to new ideas and interpretations. That applies to its sense of humour and its only slightly exaggerated satire of the stage, its theatrical conventions and characters, but also for its qualities as a fine opera. Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali ("The conventions and inconveniences of the stage") not only plays up to the absurdities of those conventions, it exploits them for good opera, as in the first scene with the Prima Donna soprano exhibits her range impressively in a rehearsal of one of her arias.

The original setting here might be a provincial theatre putting on a new musical setting of an opera seria, Romolo ed Ersilia, but the pressures and tensions are recognisable in many artistic contexts, not just operatic. Here the viewer is given backstage access to the rehearsals, where things aren't going well. There are a lot of elements that need to work together when putting on any opera, and with the impresario working under considerable budgetary constraints, not only are the timescales for the rehearsals tight, but the schedules for costume design, set building, lighting and choreography all have to come into alignment. Since the singers can't even manage to get along with each other or with the roles they have been given, demanding that the composer makes last minutes changes and rewrite whole new numbers for them, it's going to be a challenge, to say the least, to bring all the other elements together for opening night. Such are the conventions and inconveniences of the stage.

Among the many strands of humour and show-off ability on offer from the supposedly starring tenor and soprano roles, the principal entertainment here comes from Mamma Agata, the pushy mother who demands more of an eye-catching role for her daughter Luigia who she is determined is going to be a big star. She's not only contemptuous of the conventions by demanding a larger singing role for daughter, but she is quite content to undermine and cut the roles of the star tenor and soprano. The diva isn't going to be upstaged by a mere 'Seconda Donna' but Mamma Agata's ambitions don't even end there. When her actions start causing walk-outs, she ends up offering to take on a role herself, only managing to stir up more division. The poor music director hasn't a chance, as Mamma Agata takes over the choreography in the Second Act as well, and ends up running/ruining the whole show.

It's a gift of a role, involving a baritone dressing up travesti and acting outrageously as a domineering stage mother. You can't go wrong with Mamma Agata, but you can always find ways to make it better, and the best way is to play it straight, which is what bass-baritone Paolo Bordogna does. No exaggeration is required ...well, none more than is necessary. It's all written into the part; the mamma should steal the show and indeed does here. You couldn't fault any element of his performance, bringing complete conviction to the role with fine comic acting and dreadfully good singing. He has the impresario eating out of his daughter's hand and the audience too hanging on every gesture. But the opera has a lot more to offer in terms of humorous situations and great performances that include Sharleen Joynt sparkling and sprinkling venom as the diva Daria Garbinati.

Although there is room within the recitative passages for a director to introduce additional elements and modern references for a modern audience, the creative director can find many other ways to work within the opera's framework. Orpha Phelan is a director who is very capable of that, her previous work for Wexford Lalla-Roukh demonstrating that ability (even if her La Bohème for Irish National Opera was a little more respectful and traditional). One of the amusing features she introduces is the tenor turning up for the wrong performance believing that he is actually rehearsing for a performance of The Sound of Music and wondering where all the Nazis and nuns are. He certainly finds the 'Mother Superior' intimidating when he is paired up with Mamma Agata for a duet. Hilarity, inevitably and calculatedly, ensues.

Produced in many different forms, often to include local and contemporary reference, Le convenienze is also open to additions and changes, the whole chaotic nature of the backstage rehearsals indeed encouraging extrapolation and reinterpretation. Wexford’s production keeps the original Italian provincial location but in a generic modern setting that doesn't indulge in current day trends - there are no mobile phones, social media comments or Taylor Swift references (not that I would have noticed). Instead they delve into the historical origins and references of the work, with the traditional insertion of arias from other works (much like Buxton's version, Viva la Diva developed a whole prologue of auditions for the roles), but seeking here to make them historically relevant to the work. The dance scene at the beginning of Act II for example is taken from the overture to Myslivecek’s 1773 setting of Romolo ed Ersilia. These are good choices, all of them contributing to the tone and humour of the work.

What is great about Le convenienze and where for example Stanford’s The Critic failed to convince - for me personally, although everyone else seemed to love it - is that Donizetti paints a scene that is quite believable. You don't have to be involved with the theatre or opera to know that rivalry, backstabbing and positioning go on and that there are massive egos and artistic sensitivities involved. It's well known even from movie star behaviour and there are plenty of divas in the modern music industry as well. You could easily map some of the situations here directly onto many contemporary figures without losing any of the detail and the explosiveness of the bad behaviours, but this production lets you do that yourself without any heavy-handed references.

Donizetti is one of the mainstays of the Wexford Festival Opera, who over the last 70 years have been ahead of the game in bringing many of the composer's forgotten and lost operas back to the stage, their efforts instrumental in consolidating his reputation as being worthy of recognition for more than just Lucia di Lammermoor. Considering it's a real crowd pleaser, a genuinely funny satire and a delightfully composed work that is unquestionably the highlight of this year's festival, it's surprising that Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali isn't more widely performed and enjoyed. In a festival that this year seemed to have too much levity for some critics (I hold my hand up to that), Wexford Festival Opera showed why it remains a good idea to keep Donizetti in the frame when it comes to quality rare opera.

External links: Wexford Festival Opera, RTE Streaming on YouTube

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 doesn'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

Caruso - Lady Gregory in America (Wexford, 2024)

Alberto Caruso - Lady Gregory in America

Wexford Festival Opera, 2024

Alberto Caruso, Aoife Spillane-Hinks, Erin Fflur, Jane Burnell, Henry Strutt, Bríd Ní Ghruagáin, Deirdre Higgins, Holly Teague, Helen Maree Cooper, Lawrence Gillians, Christian Loizou, Gabriel Seawright, Michael Ferguson, Henry Grant Kerswell, Davide Zaccherini, Cathal McCabe, Vladimir Sima

Jerome Hynes Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford - 24th October 2024

Despite her importance as a major figure in the history of Irish drama, Lady Augusta Gregory is not a name that will mean a great deal to most people. Even in Ireland where her plays are also rarely performed, her name and contribution to Irish culture - and indeed politics, the Irish language and the country's folklore - is perhaps only really appreciated by those involved with the theatre. Mention Dublin's Abbey Theatre or the play The Playboy of the Western World and a much wider public will know of their significance, yet Lady Gregory is inextricably linked to both. For that reason if for nothing else - not least the almost total erasure of women’s historical contribution to the arts in Ireland - Lady Gregory is a name that deserves to adorn an opera, and Colm Tóibín working again with Alberto Caruso after the success of their previous opera for Wexford in 2022, The Master, duly obliges but perhaps doesn't quite hit the mark this time.

Along with W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory was one of the co-founders of the now prestigious Abbey Theatre in Dublin and was involved in the controversy that arose when J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World was first performed there in 1907. The play itself contributed to the status - not to mention the notoriety - of the theatre, for daring to present works that challenged or were seen as challenging the power of the Catholic Church who denounced the play as immoral and "mocking the purity of Irish women". Lady Gregory was not at the Abbey when the controversy, protests and riots erupted, but she did bring the play - and the uproar surrounding it - to America in 1911, where it was presented with the former President Roosevelt in attendance.

It's this aspect of her career that Colm Tóibín chooses to represent the significance of Lady Gregory's contribution to Irish art and culture in Lady Gregory in America. While choices have to be made out of necessity for the sake of dramatic presentation, omitting large proportions of her life, literary, theatrical and cultural achievements for the sake of finding an all-encompassing episode that reflects on her character and personality, there is a sense nonetheless that the opera is more interested in the cultural phenomenon of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World. Whether that does sufficient justice to Lady Gregory, it is a work that nonetheless does represent an important landmark and change in how Ireland would choose to represent itself to the world, and Lady Gregory was very much a part of that sea change.

As far as it is depicted in the opera, the troubles in bringing the play to America begin even before the theatre group leave Ireland. Anyone associated with the play, denounced by the Church as immoral and blasphemous with its use of bad language and referring to ladies wearing “shifts”, places their immortal soul in peril, and Mrs Kerrigan is not going to let her young son be part of it, playing that boastful murderer, Christy Mahon. The formidable Lady Gregory sees off any opposition however and young Kerrigan is won over by the promise of the delights of the tongue of Molly Allgood, who is to star opposite him as Pegeen in the play, so Kerrigan's mother disguises herself and sneaks into the Abbey Players performing Widow Quin to do what she can to prevent it being performed.

She need hardly have worried, as the reputation of the play is already known in New York, the audience primed to respond with shouted abuse, the throwing of stink bombs, rosary beads and holy water. This just isn't the kind of romantic view of Irish that the Americans want to see. Why couldn't they just do a nice play about girls saying prayers and boys playing hurling? When they arrive in Philadelphia, the nerves of the company are shattered and Mrs Kerrigan is ready to play her hand, warning the police that they have a duty to arrest anyone who utters the scandalous use of the word "shift" or should a lady actor dares to show an ankle. Arrests are made, the case only dismissed due to the intervention of the lawyer John Quinn, a friend and admirer of Lady Gregory.

Although likewise premiering in Wexford as a 'Pocket Opera', the setting and musical treatment of Caruso and Tóibín's previous work The Master, based on the life of another major literary figure Henry James, felt like a true opera, bringing an insightful melancholic beauty and tragedy to its subject. For Lady Gregory in America however Tóibín chooses to represent this episode as a something of a farce, playing the outdated religious notions of propriety from 100 years ago as something laughable. And indeed they would be farcical if they weren't so serious and had real implications for Catholics in Ireland, which were particularly oppressive towards women. The Playboy of the Western World was an important work for changing or at least challenging those attitudes, but it's the choice to present this as a wholly comic episode that fails to do justice to both the play and Lady Gregory's role in the greater scheme of things.

While Erin Fflur is excellent in the role of Lady Gregory, her role as a principal is somewhat downplayed then, the focus rather turning to young J.M. Kerrigan and Molly Allgood. There is definitely something worth exploring there in how it reflects the challenges facing young people and the changing times, the relationship between them blooming when removed from the oppressive society back home. It's there indeed that the lyrical qualities of Caruso’s score come to the fore and this central transformation is extended to the rest of the troupe, the police officers and even Kerrigan's mother finding love with the judge she tried to influence to lock them all up. The central theme then becomes one that gives love and the freedom to choose who we love as the engine for great social change.

Lady Gregory in America however doesn't have the lyrical quality of Caruso and Tóibín's previous work to allow for such reflection. The larger part of the opera is played for laughs and feels like light opera or even a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, with jaunty rhythms and chanted repetition of mocking absurd phrases. It makes for a very enjoyable light opera certainly, tightly scripted, Tóibín providing plenty of exposition and never taking it all too seriously, but in doing so it fails to give us anything of any great depth or insight into the reality of the times. Of course that's easy to say when the attitudes are in the past (although some have persisted and have held influence up to not so long ago) and easier to make fun of how absurd they seem now, but it does make light of how difficult and necessary it was to challenge those ideas.

With much of the libretto being delivered Sprechstimme fashion, and the focus being on comedy rather than seeking to find any lyrical content, there is a sense that Lady Gregory in America would work just as well or better as a play. There is little here that gains any deeper meaning through the musical setting. When Alfredo Caruso, taking on the duties of music director and orchestra with solo piano accompaniment, is allowed to delve a little more into the relationships that develop - Lady Gregory inexplicably being largely neglected on that front, her relationship with John Quinn not really developed - the opera does gain a little bit more of a sparkle. 

The singing performances contribute to that also with excellent singing from all the leads. Lady Gregory, not as imperious as you might expect considering the role she assumes here, is nonetheless well characterised and sung by Erin Fflur. There is a mighty performance from Henry Strutt as J.M. Kerrigan and the duets with Jane Burnell's Molly Allgood are quite special. The comic tone of the work however presents a wonderful opportunity for Mrs Kerrigan to lead the way and Bríd Ní Ghruagáin almost steals the show with a very entertaining and superbly sung performance. As with The Master in 2022 in the small Jerome Hynes Theatre at National Opera House in Wexford, the production flows wonderfully from scene to scene, this time under the direction of Aoife Spillane-Hinks. Not a great opera, Lady Gregory in America is an enjoyable enough entertainment based on a worthy subject, but its treatment is not one to make a sufficiently lasting impression.

External links: Wexford Festival Opera

Mascagni - Le maschere (Wexford, 2024)

Pietro Mascagni - Le maschere

Wexford Festival Opera, 2024

Francesco Cilluffo, Stefano Ricci, Lavinia Bini, Benoit Joseph Meier, Ioana Constantin Pipelea, Gillen Munguia, Matteo Mancini, Rory Musgrave, Andrew Morstein, Peter McCamley, Giorgio Caoduro, Mariano Orozco

O'Reilly Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford - 23rd October 2024

There is always a risk that Pietro Mascagni's Le maschere - like many operas that operate in a metatheatrical style - can appear to be too clever for its own good. Le maschere's conceit is not so much the 'Theatre within Theatre' theme of this year's Wexford Festival Opera however as in how it plays on traditional commedia dell'arte archetypes. Those closer to that theatrical tradition that was prominent from 16th to 18th century tend to fare rather better - Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, for example. Later works - Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges and Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos -  tend to be a little more self-referential and need to be handled more carefully, with perhaps a little bit of tongue-in-cheek. The 2024 Wexford production of Le maschere attempts to minimise the danger of the opera running away with itself by taking a more simplied approach that humanises by unmasking the commedia dell'arte figures.

Simplify maybe, but in doing so it also risks missing the point of the work, not really fulfilling the intentions of the composer or indeed the premise of Wexford's Theatre within Theatre theme. A spoken introduction attempts to introduce the commedia characters and their associated behaviour for an audience who might not be familiar with the tradition, before they remove their costumes and become 'real' people. It feels a little unnecessary, but it is one way of keeping in with the intentions of Mascagni and his librettist Luigi Illica, suggesting that we all wear the masks of roles we are expected to fulfil, and they have to be removed to find the truth and overcome the challenges that those roles - whether social, class, familial or otherwise - can end up boxing us in and come to define us.

If the choice is made to abandon the commedia dell'arte imposition of masks as a way of presenting the opera on a modern stage, the director and designer Stefano Ricci finds another amusing and suitable way of showing these 'masks' that we sometimes wear, masks that are imposed rather than those we would consciously chose for ourselves. Here, set in a Wellness Centre which doesn't overly impose on the drama, they initially even wear facial masks which works well and even suggests cleansing and detoxification. It has to be said however while there is some amount of convention in the use of a 'magic powder' to rectify the troubled situation that they characters find themselves in, Mascagni's score works its own magic to intoxicate the listener into acceptance of the familiar devices of the plotting.

Because essentially it's the age-old plot of an arranged marriage being proposed that is going to break up one or more couples, preventing them from choosing to be with the one they love. Rosaura, the daughter of Pantaleone, the owner/manager of the wellness spa here, is in love with Florindo but discovers that her father intends to marry her to Captain Spavento, a horrible military man full of his own power and proud of his killing prowess. Her maid/friend Colombina who has intentions towards Brighella, the 'medicine man' of the wellness centre, is also threatened by the advances of Spavento's sidekick Arlecchino. Spavento has no time to waste and hasty arrangements are made for a wedding the very same evening. Brighella comes up with the idea of using a 'magic powder' that will reveal truths 'in vino veritas'-like that will upset the wedding plans, but unfortunately all of them end up imbibing the powder as well.

For all its conventionality, Mascagni clearly had tremendous fun with the plot of Le maschere, the ability to play with commedia dell'arte characters and the resultant chaos that ensues between they roles they play and the truth of their inner selves when unmasked. What is also evident is the composer's desire to engage with the essential Italian character that is unique to Italian opera. It's a character that he of course more famously expressed in his hugely successful Cavalleria Rusticana - now the only work of his that still remains popular and just as powerful today - and there are signs of the epic greatness of that work in Le maschere, but somehow the subject doesn't seem to merit the passion poured into it. There is a beautiful heartfelt duet between Rosaura and Colombina, for example, that expresses the women's dilemma, but it doesn't have the tragic sense of life or death behind it. 

Mascagni also introduces lovely instrumental passages and intermezzos which might lack dramatic intensity and meaning, but are at least imaginatively staged here with dancers and comic routines. There is even an amusing homage to Rossini in Tartaglia, who stutters and stammers, but after imbibing some of the magic powder becomes a rapid fire fluid tongue-twisting Rossinian singer. If Mascagni's ambitions get a little bit above themselves with a grand celebratory conclusion that proclaims the commedia dell'arte as the great Italian art that brought the world laughter and tears, that claim could perhaps have some validity for opera, which has incorporated so many of the elements of commedia. Mascagni, less influential now, but at the time more popular than Puccini, certainly still has an important part to play in bringing that to the world.

With wonderful singing and invigorating music it's like the opera itself wears a mask, imposing heartfelt sentiments upon a slight plot. In simplifying and modifying the opera's ambitions, Stefano Ricci redirects it towards the necessary complexity of human interaction and sensitivity that Mascagni pours into the score, the production design itself another mask that serves to present another version of the truth, bringing out those human elements of warmth, love and humour. Whether the opera merits it, it's a delight nonetheless, further enhanced by some superb singing from Lavinia Bini as Rosaura and Ioana Constantin Pipelea as Colombina. The quality of the singing was fine all around and the performances wonderful, but it seemed harder for the others to break out of their character's defined and caricatured roles and express a deeper human side.

Le maschere is about masks coming off as well as being put on and the Wexford production successfully dressed this one up beautifully, striking a wonderful balance that brought the very best out of the work. The music itself is ravishing and conductor Francesco Cilluffo, as ever, succeeded in arranging, balancing and managing the sometimes overpowering sentiments of the music to match the wonderfully staged drama. Other than using a framing device, I'm not sure the opera fully lived up to the intent of the 'Theatre within Theatre' theme, but the production matched the spirit of the work in other ways and perhaps thereby may even have redeemed some of its weaknesses. 

External links: Wexford Festival Opera, RTE Streaming on YouTube

Verdi - Don Carlo (Vienna, 2024)

Giuseppe Verdi - Don Carlo

Wiener Staatsoper, 2024

Philippe Jordan, Kirill Serebrennikov, Joshua Guerrero, Asmik Grigorian, Roberto Tagliavini, Eve-Maud Hubeaux, Étienne Dupuis, Dmitry Ulyanov, Ivo Stanchev, Ilia Staple

ARTE Concert - October 2024

The intent of a director to modernise an opera production, particularly a work based (loosely) on historical sources but often dubiously dramatised for the original audience of its time, should in theory be to make it more relatable to a modern audience less in thrall (in theory) to wealth and power being held by a monarch. Some directors admittedly take that to strange places to impose their own vision and concept, but the intent must be to bring out the essential humanity and tragedy between the private lives of such figures and their public face. Don Carlos is just such a work where those matters are to the forefront and given a remarkable musical treatment full of ambition towards Grand Opéra by Verdi, here stripped back to its essentials in the Milan version, so one would hope that a director would confront those issues head-on.

At the raising of the curtain on the 2024 Vienna production directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, opening in a modern laboratory environment, a single person in the audience can be heard on the live ARTE transmission voicing their disapproval before a single note has been played, not even waiting to see what the director's intentions are, presumably since it doesn't look like it is going to correspond with how he personally feels it should be, showing no regard for what anyone else thinks. It's clearly someone either seeking attention or ignorant about the creative team involved at this production at the Wiener Staatsoper and the nature of opera itself as a modern progressive art form. Probably all of the above. Personally, I find Serebrennikov a director of interest from past productions of Wagner (Parsifal in Vienna, Lohengrin in Paris). And if the lone booer has any sense of shame, he ought to be humiliated at the conclusion that reveals itself as a thoughtful challenge to the fetishisation of the past set against the imperatives of the present.

Serebrennikov's version of Don Carlo is undoubtedly convoluted in its treatment, adding additional levels to an opera already filled with contradictions and contrasts. Using mirror images with actors in authentic period costume doubling for their counterparts in the present day, the director actually manages to present the attraction of the historical costume drama element of the work, while making the romantic and emotional content of the personal drama work on a contemporary human level, furthering and deepening those contrasts and contradictions that fire the drama. Despite the contemporary setting appearing to be of lesser significance than the war and political events within the royal court of King Philip II in the mid-16th century, Serebrennikov also successfully finds a way to make this distant and for many, obscure historical period meaningful and contributing to the turmoil faced by the figures in the opera. 

The laboratory that so appalled at least one member of the Vienna audience is a Costume Research Institute, where scientists are studying historical clothing and recreating the dress of the period of Philip II for their research. Elisabetta, a scientist in the laboratory, is troubled over her betrayal of Carlo by her marriage to his father, the chief director of the Institute, who is a bit of a tyrant. Working in such an environment, the workers, scientists and costume designers at the institute perhaps then see their own lives and troubles reflected in the past, and it's interesting to note when seen in this context how much attention is brought to and importance given in the libretto to dress, appearance and elegance. Rodrigo and Eboli in an early scene even have a moment to discuss the beauty and grace of French women, while projections on a screen above the stage show fetishistic images of the costumes detail and fitting. Combined the opera and this production show that there is limited benefit in trying to understand people in the past through the costumes they wear, that the truth about what went on is more likely to be reflected in how people behave now.

What the production doesn't do then is examine the political and historical conflicts of the 16th century, and I think most of us can live with that. For Carlos, Elisabetta, Philip and indeed Rodrigo and Eboli - and through them - we experience human conflict, their stoicism to contain deep feelings and emotions against a world that puts obstacles in their path, obstacles that don't necessarily need to include the conquest of Flanders. The horror of the war there is compared here to an Asian sweatshop being exploited for cheaply made clothing, the associated environmental catastrophe it entails all for the folly of keeping the human mannequins of the western world in the latest fast fashion. Consumerism as oppression. Carlo just wears a plain T-shirt with a 'Liberta' slogan attached with sticky tape. Rodrigo's states 'Save our Land' and those messages are what is really important and it is given real force here. Mainly thanks to Verdi's score of course, but the scenes and imagery are equally as effective, the auto-da-fé enacted here on climate change activists disrupting the historical fashion show in protest against the destruction the environment. The burning here is the burning of the planet.

To be fair to the lone booer (and the few hesitant followers who later join him at the end of Act III) it's a valid question whether an opera like Don Carlo really needs all this directorial intervention to work effectively, or is the director just using the composer's masterpiece to impose his own views? That's a judgement call, but it can be both. Don Carlos/Don Carlo is a difficult opera to make work effectively, in my experience of seeing many productions of it. With Verdi and this work in particular, the true challenge in presenting the work lies more often in how well you can cast singing roles that are technically and dramatically challenging. It's a factor that is just as essential to overcome any perceived weaknesses or flaws in the production or indeed the opera itself. A weak link can be particularly critical in Don Carlos. Saying that, there is little to fault here in either performance or the director's presentation, which is more nuanced than the brief description I've provided above. The historical models, for example, are dressed up in the first half and stripped back in the second as their true selves are revealed. There are many other touches to make the historical converge with the modern, including biographical notes of the real life figures added in projections, and a context that permits a wider examination of the use and abuse of power.

There are, as I said, no real weak links in the singing either. Indeed the roles of Carlo and Elisabetta are as good as you could expect. Asmik Grigorian sings Elisabetta with her usual conviction and skilled dramatic interpretation. Joshua Guerrero's Carlo is also well-characterised and sung, again with the necessary ability and conviction. Eve-Maud Hubeaux's Princess Eboli is excellent, her confession to Elisabetta in Act III intense and tragic. There are deep emotions stirred on all sides, love and betrayal of friendship valued over position is an important aspect of the opera and this carries weight in all the principal roles. As such Rodrigo’s role is important too and Étienne Dupuis brings that out well in his performance. Only Philip II perhaps suffers from the direction. You don't get a sense that he really has anything grand at stake as he would were he genuinely a King under the yoke of the Catholic church's Inquisition while he is also facing a personal humiliation in his love life in his 'Ella giammai m'amò'. Roberto Tagliavini's singing isn't able to bring out the heaviness of the head that wears the crown.

Don Carlos/Don Carlo, in whatever incarnation, is one of Verdi's greatest works, or at least the one I always find that has real meaty issues as well as intriguing flaws and challenges that have to be creatively confronted by a stage director. It is also, despite the many revisions and versions, musically one of the composer's finest works, through composed but incorporating utterly beautiful melodies (although personally I'm less fond of the Spanish flavours) and wonderful attention and attunement to character detail and expression. It sounds absolutely marvellous here under Philippe Jordan and the Vienna Orchestra. If there were any sceptics left in the audience by the time the devastating conclusion was reached, they were drowned out by the deserved applause for a thoughtful and powerful account of this tremendous opera.

External links: ARTE Concert, Wiener Staatsoper

Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin (Belfast, 2024)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin (Belfast, 2024)

NI Opera, 2024

Dominic Limburg, Cameron Menzies, Yuriy Yurchuk, Mary McCabe, Norman Reinhardt, Sarah Richmond, Carolyn Dobbin, Jenny Bourke, Aaron O'Hare, Niall Anderson, Matthew Jeffrey, Seamus Brady, Anne Flanagan, Adam Ashford, Gerard Headley, Alice Johnston, Maeve McGreevy, Sean O'Neill, Mira Renilheiro, Emma Scott

Grand Opera House, Belfast - 17th September 2024

I know I have complained in the past about the Northern Ireland Opera programme being reduced to one fully staged opera a year, but if you are going to do one opera and have already got the usual suspects of Italian opera out of the way (La Bohème, La Traviata, Tosca), now is the time to be a little more adventurous. If you want to introduce the Belfast audience to a glorious work that will still please those who will be less familiar with the opera world (and one opera a year doesn't provide much opportunity), then with a little nod to the glamour of Bridgerton, Downton Abbey and the currently popularity of TV costume dramas to give the audience something familiar to latch onto, you can't do much better than Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece Eugene Onegin.

Taking on a great Russian opera however can't have been an easy decision when the more obvious route would have been Carmen or a Mozart opera, all the more so considering the current ambivalence towards some Russian artists due to the war in Ukraine. A Russian opera however brings it own artistic challenge for a relatively young opera company, singers and orchestra, not least in choosing to present the opera in the original Russian, but Eugene Onegin is worth it, the opera having all the elements to engage an audience in a heartfelt emotional, romantic and human drama. And so it proves to be in its short run of four performances at the Grand Opera House in Belfast. If not quite hitting the full range and dynamic of the work, NI Opera under the direction of Cameron Menzies delivered an impressive account of an exceptionally beautiful work that has all the deep personal engagement of the composer poured into every note.

Incredibly, aside from the role of Onegin, most the other main roles were taken by local artists and there were few weaknesses of any significance in the singing. That's quite an achievement. Usually a more mature singer, preferably of Russian or East European origin, is required for the role of Tatyana, so it's all the more astonishing that a young Northern Irish singer with limited experience of leading soprano roles can handle the demands of the role so impressively. A little more depth to the voice would add to the character, but since the larger part of the opera features Tatyana as a young and inexperienced young woman, Mary McCabe is able to make her character much more convincing. That pays dividends for the opera's final scene when the older Tatyana is assailed by doubts on her re-encounter with Onegin, her assurance crumbling as she reverts back to the emotions and circumstances of her younger self that shaped her life. It's a faultless singing performance, perhaps only let down by a lack of clear direction.

There have been many ways of bringing out the reflective nature of Tatyana’s life experience, her journey from a naive young woman in the country to a mature lady of elegance and outward assurance who nevertheless holds searing memories and past regrets. It's not unusual to see other productions relying on doubles - actors or dancers - to bridge the scope of her enthusiastic youthful bookish idealism into mature acceptance of duty and routine. And indeed, Menzies method of bringing this element out of the opera is to view the events as the revisiting of the past by an elderly lady in a wheelchair in the present day. She remains onstage almost throughout, at least in all the scenes where Tatyana appears, which suggests that it is Tatyana herself. Although she engages with her younger self on one or two occasions, it's hard however to reconcile the time discrepancy between the two periods.

More than that however, it's really not enough to bring the fullness and richness of the emotional range required here, or the complexity of the misplaced or mistimed feelings that exist in the Tatyana/Onegin relationship. Ukrainian baritone Yuriy Yurchuk sang Onegin well, but the direction here also didn't allow much space to explore the character. In the first part of the opera Onegin is somewhat arrogant, aloof and detached, in his relationship with Lensky he is apparently oblivious of any fault - although it's true that Lensky here appears to be unreasonably jealous to the minor social indiscretion of Onegin dancing with his partner - and in the final scenes all his character seems to have precipitously dissolved into him becoming a figure of regret, disappointment and disillusionment, seeking to find a way out of it by trying to return to the past.  

These are challenges that exist in the opera itself, which Tchaikovsky envisioned as seven fairly austere scenes based on Pushkin's verse novel rather than an opera with a cohesive dramatic flow. Nonetheless, what is elided is alluded to and given weight in the huge emotional undercurrent of the music score, and a production can make use of other means to bring those elements out. Set in what looks like an abandoned warehouse of concrete blocks, on one hand the director adheres to the intended austerity of the piece, the costume drama taking place within this environment highlighting the romantic ideal of the elderly woman viewing it from the sidelines. With projection on the back wall of the changing conditions of the seasons contributing to a sense of this being more of an emotional and mental representation than a physical environment, it does succeed in finding it own way of presenting the conflict of romance and tragedy, the painful memories lived afresh within the opera. Just not strongly or convincingly enough for the deeper complexities of the work.

By any standard however, the musical and singing performances gave an impressive account of the work. Aside from the two main leads, Norman Reinhardt’s rather Italianate Lensky was strong and emotionally charged. As Olga, Sarah Richmond was as ever excellent, but again without the direction sufficiently differentiating her nature from her sister Tatyana. Carolyn Dobbin was a strong Madame Larina, making an great impression particularly in her first scene and Jenny Bourke was a sympathetic Filipevna. Well done to Aaron O’Hare for a stand-out performance as a suitably flamboyant Monsieur Triquet. It can be a trivial role, but he brought real character to the part and its place in the opera. Although only appearing at the close of the opera Gremin is not an easy role to sing and usually requires a bass singer to intone the dull and serious but genuinely devoted nature of Tatyana's husband, but baritone Niall Anderson handled it well.

It was such deeper resonance that was missing here, as much in the music and singing as in the direction. There is no getting away from the impact of the key scenes that Tchaikovsky so brilliantly arranged and composed, and the sweeping tug of the melodies and dances under the direction of conductor Dominic Limburg and NI Opera Orchestra concert master Joanne Quigley was superb, but it could definitely have had a little more of the depth and impact that is usually more apparent when you have native Russians in the chorus and singing roles. You can't justifiably criticise anyone for not being Russian however, particularly these days, or NI Opera for the ambition to present such a work under current arts funding restraints.

External links: Northern Ireland Opera

Karlsson - Melancholia (Stockholm, 2023)

Mikael Karlsson - Melancholia

Royal Swedish Opera, 2023

Andrea Molino, Sláva Daubnerová, Lauren Snouffer, Anne Sofie von Otter, Rihab Chaieb, Ola Eliasson, Jens Persson Hertzman, Johan Edholm, Mikael Stenbaek, Anton Textorius, Klas Hedlund

ARTE Concert - 2nd November 2023 

I don't envy any composer - and to be honest can't even understand their motivation - for choosing to make an opera based on a fairly recent film. It's not that it's necessarily a bad idea in itself; cinema is a valid source of inspiration to opera and theatre directors and Kryzsztof Warlikowski and Ivo Van Hove in particular have drawn on movie and film techniques for some excellent productions. The challenge of making an opera based on Lars von Trier's Melancholia however is considerable. Since the original soundtrack of the film heavily featured Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, how would a composer put that out of his head while approaching a new musical version? But more to the point, does it even need to be made into an opera when the successful film is readily accessible.

Well the truth is that you could pose the same question to Lars Von Trier, since as a filmmaker he has followed - like many - in the footsteps of Andrei Tarkovsky. That influence has been obvious throughout his career, in the visual style of his earlier films, and Melancholia bears more than a passing resemblance in tone with Nostalghia and the apocalyptic subject matter of The Sacrifice. Von Trier nonetheless has managed to establish his own vision, and Melancholia proved to be one of the director's best films up to that point, one where he didn't need to court controversy for attention. The discovery of a hitherto unknown planet on a crash course for Earth as a metaphor for a young woman with mental health problems facing a devastating breakdown on the day of her wedding was a powerful one, related one supposes to the director's own mental health issues. "Melancholia is on her warpath".

It's a powerful subject, but there is no reason a composer couldn't bring out another dimension to the subject, particularly when it doesn't have to rely on Wagner as a generic musical accompaniment, no matter how well that works as a soundtrack for the film. An interview with the composer Mikael Karlsson on the bringing the premier of this opera to the Royal Swedish Opera, shows he was familiar with the film but clearly able to put the presence of Wagner aside and use his own musical language to work in service to the libretto written by Royce Vavrek. And it's a very modern approach that Karlsson takes, using a traditional orchestra, opera singers and chorus, but supplementing it with electronic rhythms, synthesisers and sound effects, not so much to create a 'science-fiction' feel as much as find a way to represent two different worlds, the external one and the interior struggle that Justine grapples with.

It might not really be the end of the world, but it certainly feels like it to Justine. This breakdown, coinciding with news of the appearance of the planet Melancholia, doesn't come from nowhere of course and there are many elements to explore in the young woman's relationships with her family; an overbearing mother who isn't satisfied, her father complaining that she isn't happy enough for all the expense he has put into the wedding, doubts about commitment in the marriage to her new husband, and issues with her father-in-law who is also her employer in a job where Justine is something of a workaholic. All of her frustrations, pressures and anxieties come to a head in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of the wedding reception. All of this takes up Act I of the opera, which really amounts to little more than the wedding from hell, but all the underlying issues individually as well as cumulatively are clearly traumatic.

The looming planet that appears in the sky hurtling towards Earth could be just a metaphor for an impending mental breakdown on an apocalyptic scale, but even if it is real, Justine's condition is such that the complete obliteration of Earth would be welcomed. There are several levels that have to be worked on then. Since it is not a movie, there is evidently little room for the kind of cinematic techniques, montage and special effects employed by Von Trier, but the composer - if he is good enough - has the most powerful element of all at his disposal, which evidently is the musical expression of the layered issues. Karlsson's music needs to be more than just a soundtrack and it needs to avoid the danger of being bombastic on the progress of a planet hurtling on a collision course, as much as it has to depict the inner disintegration of Justine's mental breakdown.

Karlsson's use of electronic effects and synthesiser rhythms alongside the more traditional orchestral and arioso singing arrangements works quite well. It's a unique new sound I haven't heard used so extensively in opera before and it suits the subject. There's a bit of predictable ominous choral backing of haunting oooohh and aahhhh vocalisations, but there is also strong use of the chorus for reaction to the declining situation. In the first Act, it sounds not unlike John Adams, quite dynamic, rhythmic and melodic, curiously establishing a mood that reminded me more of Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love than Von Trier’s Melancholia, the former perhaps also closely related thematically and in a similar social and familial milieu.

As with the film version of Melancholia however, the second half seen principally from the perspective of Justine's sister Claire has an entirely different character, her view on motherhood giving a less self-absorbed view. It still has a melancholy and oppressive character, but it's one related to a wider existential concern; the thought of annihilation and extinction, whether personal or global, and the sense of sadness and loss of everything and everyone we know. Karlsson's approach to the music is accordingly quite different in response, as you might expect really, blending the electronic and acoustic well, with electronic sounds, samples and distortion replacing the ordered progress of the music.

While Karlsson succeeds in placing his own stamp on the story of Melancholia, it has to be said that the stage director Sláva Daubnerová and set designer are not so ambitious, or perhaps is less able to avoid the pull of the planetary force of the original, since it remains very close to the visual colour scheme and feel of the film version, certainly in Act I. On the plus side, the single location of the luxury hotel and the wedding reception adds to the intensity of the situation, an oppressive stressful occasion in proximity to family. Nor can they resist a stage version of special effects, having the wedding guests resort to strange movements, speeding up, slowing down and freeze-framing. Act II uses other techniques to close the world down, the stage darkening as the sun is blotted out by the mysterious planet growing larger as it bears down on them, clawing branches reaching down, the borders of the lawn curling in on the remaining figures of Justine, Claire and her son Leo. The projection effects built in intensity alongside this up to the spectacle of the finale.

I'm not sure whether you could say that the opera sufficiently establishes own distinct character from the original film, but you might feel differently if you haven't seen the film. On its own terms Vavrek's libretto, while heavily reliant on the film for situations, does nonetheless have its own expression. "Even as the bride wore white, inside the gown the bride was blue turned black" the chorus intone gloomily at the end of Act I, and I don't recall anything like the Act II hunter's scene in the original film, or certainly not like this and the way the opera slips into a surreal dream or nightmare world. There is definitely an effective equilibrium achieved in the contrasting tone of the two acts, the perspective of the two sisters, and in the music composed for them in each act.

It can't be easy to likewise balance all the varied tones of the drama in the unconventional electronic instruments and sound effects with the acoustic orchestral instrumentation, but the effectiveness of the musical direction under Andrea Molino is evident and impressive. As is the singing. The opera relies on two central performances from Justine and Claire, and it has two superb singers in Lauren Snouffer and Rihab Chaieb, but also solid performances from Jens Persson Hertzman as Michael, the husband and Ola Eliasson as the father. As Justine's mother Gaby, Anne Sofie von Otter must break some kind of record for the most use of the word 'fuck' in the aria 'Fuck you and your fucking rituals'. There is no reason that strong language can't be used in a modern opera, but it feels a little gratuitous here. Then again, why not? There are many ways of expression and this is just another one, which is no less effective than the others so well employed in Karlsson's Melancholia.

External links: Royal Swedish Opera