Smyth - The Boatswain's Mate (Buxton, 2024)

Ethel Smyth - The Boatswain's Mate (Buxton, 2024)

Buxton International Festival, 2024

Rebecca Warren, Nick Bond, Elizabeth Findon, Joshua Baxter, Theo Perry, Richard Woodall, Rebecca Anderson

Pavilion Arts Centre, Buxton - 19th July 2024

It’s worth saying a few words about Ethel Smyth, since she is a rare and unusual composer and not just because she is a woman - there are few enough of those achieving any prominence even today, never mind back in the early 20th century - although her gender is certainly significant and plays into her work. It may even be seen as a factor in a light comedy opera like The Boatswain’s Mate.

Ethel Smyth is English of course, but musically educated in Europe in Leipzig, where she was familiar with, studied alongside and was on speaking terms with many notable composers of the day. Aside from her scandalous affairs, mostly with women, probably the most significant thing about Smyth was her dedication to women's rights and the suffragette movement, which even led to her serving time in prison. She composed the anthem for the movement, 'March of the Women', and the music for that even appears within the overture to The Boatswain’s Mate. If it has any significance there however, it's only to the extent that the opera features a strong woman at the centre, one rumoured to be based on Emeline Pankhurst.

Directed by Nick Bond, the Buxton International Festival production notionally sets this in the 1980s, but it could be set in the original period of the composition (1913-14) or as an 18th century Richard Brinsley Sheridan comedy of manners for all the difference it makes. It has that timeless essential English character which even if you brought it up to date with mobile phones and social media (set in the 80s may be the most modern you can get without having to consider such technology), it wouldn't age or date the material in the slightest. The whole farce takes place within the most traditional of places that have scarcely dated over the ages; an English pub. It could even be an episode of EastEnders only for the fact that it's not full of miserable people.

Well, there is one miserable person. Harry Benn has been continually making what he believes are honourable advances on the widowed landlady of The Beehive, Mrs Waters, and he can't understand how she could possibly turn down a genuine catch like himself, a former services man, a retired boatswain. He enlists the services of a passing visitor at the pub, another former serviceman Ned Travers, to help him win over Mrs Waters. He arranges for Ned to break into the Beehive at night and stage a fake burglary so that he can come to an heroic rescue. Unfortunately, things don't go as planned and, catching on to the scheme, Mrs Waters gets her own back by pretending that she has shot the unknown intruder dead.

Based on a story by W.W. Jacobs, The Boatswain's Mate doesn't have the most complex of plots and the characters aren't particularly deep, but it's a very entertaining and amusing piece nonetheless. It's as quintessentially English as Gilbert and Sullivan or Britten’s Albert Herring and just as delightful. Whether you can apply the same judgement to Ethel Smyth's music is rather more difficult to judge from the Buxton International Festival performance in the Pavilion Arts Centre. The venue only really permits a reduced version of the score and it's not one authorised by Smyth herself; a piano trio, with violin and cello, led from the piano purposefully by musical director Rebecca Warren.

There is nothing that jumps out about the arrangements other than their suitability for the comedy drama. It starts out with some scene setting, some lager louts singing (another thing that never changes regardless of whatever period you set this in), some spoken dialogue observations by the main characters to inform the audience of their predicament, each of them given an aria to express that more lyrically. The score develops as the work progresses, dropping the spoken dialogue as the rolling drama takes over. It's light and very easy to just let the flow carry you along, none of the scenes, arias or colourful secondary characters overstay their welcome in a two-part one-act opera.

The singing from the three principals is excellent. Elizabeth Findon as Mrs Waters, Joshua Baxter as Harry Benn and Theo Perry as Ned Travers​ bring great character to their roles, each with voices that can carry much more forcefully than the reduced musical score and the smaller sized Pavilion Arts Centre theatre could reasonably accommodate. With a couple of good character roles from Richard Woodall as the Policeman and Rebecca Anderson as the barmaid Mary Ann, not to mention the boisterous singing of the chorus of drunks, all performed in an attractive and functional set, there was much to enjoy in this entertaining production.

There is however nothing here that you could reasonably characterise as 'feminist' by today's standards or even by the standards of the kind of roles male composers of the same period and even earlier were writing (Violetta Valery, Tosca). It is what it is however, a light comic opera, and you can't reasonably expect any great revelations here either musically or in the libretto other than observations along the lines of 'Men, they're all alike'. Other than a strong woman at the centre, I'm not sure you can even gain any real insight into Ethel Smyth, her musical character and what she is about from this work and this production. Perhaps a look at the other recently revived Smyth opera The Wreckers might help give a more rounded view. As rare works alongside the main stage opera at Buxton however, The Boatswain's Mate and Haydn's La Canterina provided a pleasant diversion that balanced out the rather heavier fare of Verdi and Handel in the festival's main programme.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Handel - Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (Buxton, 2024)

George Frideric Handel - Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno

Buxton International Festival, 2024

Christian Curnyn, Jacopo Spirei, Anna Dennis, Hilary Cronin, Hilary Summers, Jorge Navarro Colorado

Buxton Opera House - 18th July 2024

Performances of Handel operas can be hard work for the audience as much as a challenge for a director to make something of them, but they really shouldn't be. His oratorios works evidently need an extra little bit of dramatic action when performed as staged works, and those that you could categorise as allegorical fables even more so. The Buxton International Festival production of Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno ('The Triumph of Time and Disillusion' as it is normally referred to in English) does its best to find a suitable context to get across the moral message without being too stuffy about it, and if it doesn't entirely make it work dramatically, it at least succeeds in getting across the meaning of the work and highlights the extraordinary beauty of the piece.

Much as he 'excavated' Rossini's La donna del lago to bring it into the present day for Buxton in 2022, director Jacopo Spirei comes up with a fine modern-day situation that establishes the right character for each of the allegorical figures of Beauty, Pleasure, Time and Disillusion (or Disenchantment but closer to meaning Truth). Not quite as hard-hitting as Krysztof Warlikowsi's production for Aix-en-Provence in 2016, here these figures are at least more clearly of a whole, depicted as a family in a drab living room which you could probably call life. It's Christmas time moreover, so there is a little optimism at home even if it's just the delusion of Beauty who thinks this is the way it will always be, that nothing will ever change. Beauty and her sister Pleasure certainly live in the moment, but their father and mother, Time and Disillusion, have some harsh realities to lay out before them.

And they don't mince their words. Well, the words are fairly flowery, as you would expect in a Handel work one moreover with a libretto written by a Cardinal, Benedetto Pamphili, but the director has a way of making sure the truths hit home. Not so much perhaps in Act I, which drags its feet a little, as do Beauty and Pleasure who refuse to accept the wisdom and experience of their elders. The Second Act, which has one or two of Handel's most beautiful arias including the famous and beautiful Lascia la spina, is a different matter as reality starts to hit home. The opening of the Christmas presents for Beauty turns out to be is a disappointment, but it's not half as stripping of any illusions as Time dragging a coffin onto the stage to remind her that Beauty fades and dies. Nothing too subtle about the delivery of that message.

That's as much as you can do without going the full Warlikowski with this work, where the director of the Aix production layered on elements of the personification of these competing ideas as being on opposing hemispheres of the brain and made allusions to the works of Derrida. What designer Anna Bonomelli manages to do to elevate the Buxton production to a suitable sphere somewhere between reality and moralising is place this within a beautiful set with effective lighting design that contributes to establishing the nature and tone of the work.

It can still be a bit of a slog but that's the nature of Pamphili's somewhat overly florid and solemn libretto, and it's also the nature of Handel's graceful musical treatment, striking something of a mournful note throughout. There are no Vivaldi-like sprints to enliven the uniformity of tone here, but there are some nice directorial touches that find an underlying dark humour and bring out the poignancy that is most definitely there to be found in the music and the situation.

For all its moralising solemnity, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno is still an astonishing work of  great beauty, particularly if you are fortunate enough to hear it played live in a suitable venue with singers of quality and suitability for these roles. That is where the Buxton production succeeds brilliantly. The Buxton Opera House itself is also perfect for reduced orchestration, an ideal size for intimacy and acoustic fidelity. With Christian Curnyn conducting the period instrument orchestra of the Early Opera Company - as previously with their Acis and Galatea here in 2021 - it sounded marvellous, beautifully paced and measured, the music balanced with the singing, allowing you to hear and feel the playing of every instrument and get the meaning behind every sentiment.

Ultimately, the brilliance if the work is in the singing. These are gorgeous roles in a range of complementary voices and the casting was impressive, each of them given the opportunity to express their characters. I was particularly taken with the fullness of voice of Hilary Cronin as the Goth dressed Piacere/Pleasure. Hilary Summers' darkly seductive contralto made Disinganno/Disillusion an irresistible force for unwelcome truths, giving the role an otherworldly quality as well as making it feel real and something you could relate to. Which I suppose is the best you can do with a work like this, and it's clear that this is the intention of the director. Jorge Navarro Colorado as Tempo/Time was marvellous, blending beautifully with Summer's Disinganno in their Act II duet. There was some fine singing too from Anna Dennis as Belleza/Beauty, conveyed all the superficiality of the character as well as her deeper emotional response to the dawning - if never wholehearted - acceptance of her fate. 

Not a cheery work by any means, but as far as the Buxton International Festival's treatment of Handel's oratorio goes, this is one regard in which beauty and pleasure win out.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Verdi - Ernani (Buxton, 2024)

Giuseppe Verdi - Ernani

Buxton International Festival, 2024

Adrian Kelly, Jamie Manton, Roman Arndt, André Heyboer, Alastair Miles, Nadine Benjamin, Jane Burnell, Emyr Lloyd Jones, Theo Perry

Buxton Opera House - 17th July 2024

"Please be aware: This production involves death, blood, themes of physical and mental abuse, torture and suggestion of gun violence"

If you didn't know which opera you were going to see, the trigger-warning signs placed around the Buxton Opera House would at least give you a reliable hint that it could only be an early Verdi opera. In fact it could be any early Verdi opera. In this case it is indeed one of those rarely performed works, Ernani, with Act II just before the interval resounding to cries of "Sangue e vendetta!" ("blood and vengeance!"). I wonder how they managed without trigger-warnings in Verdi’s time when this was first performed in 1844. Perhaps that's why there was so much oppression and war being waged by authoritarian rulers and dictators back then, whereas now ...oh, hold on…

Sangue e vendetta indeed, there is not a lot of subtlety in early Verdi, but as was noted recently in the early Verdi compilation opera Rivoluzione e Nostalgia at La Monnaie in Brussels, there is quite a lot of rousing music and singing and a lot of full-blooded drama in these works. Engaging plots not so much, in fact with three powerful men struggling for the hand of one woman, Ernani is not unlike the situation that La Monnaie developed for their early Verdi mixtape, in as much as it's fairly standard plot fare. Attila, I seem to recall, has much the same situation. It's tempting to compare this one with Don Carlos, which itself isn't perfect, but it shows up the vast difference between early and later Verdi. One need only compare how Don Carlo (later to become Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor) here reflects on power in his aria at the tomb of Charlemagne with a similar tomb scene in Don Carlos (over the tomb indeed of Charles V) and the difference in emotional torment and soul searching is apparent.

Not that it matters greatly as far as Ernani is concerned. Plot and character isn't everything. Well, it is perhaps for most other works of opera and drama, but Verdi is a special case. In some respects the composer is tied to tradition and to the taste for historical melodrama of the day, to characters making wild romantic gestures and binding themselves unforced into grand promises that only serve to make the plot even more dramatic. There is only one thing that can make that even more dramatically powerful (powerful doesn't necessarily mean credible) and that’s Verdi's music played at full tilt.

And he really goes for it in Ernani, as does the Opera North orchestra under conductor Adrian Kelly at the 2024 Buxton International Festival. The music is not as heavy-handed as you might think, but never passes up an opportunity to throw in a huge chorus with a punchy flourish at the end. The main feature that Verdi also relies on is the need for singers of an exceptionally high standard for the four of the demanding central roles. You get that right and you have something powerful on your hands, but weaknesses in any of those roles and the whole thing falls apart. There is no question that the exceptional cast assembled here were as good as you could hope for this opera a fighting chance of success, but the options for the director Jamie Manton were limited and despite the strengths elsewhere in the music and the production, he wasn't able to find a way to make it work successfully as a drama.

Considering what he had to work with as a plot, it seems like a reasonable idea to focus instead on character and the interaction between the principal figures of the drama. It's an option I suppose, but it turns out not to be a particularly fruitful avenue to explore. The plot and the motivations of the characters are not complicated as much as a bit daft, or daft to non-existent, certainly in the first two acts. Somehow all three pretenders for the hand of Elvira all contrive to be in the same place as the unfortunate lady is being prepared for marriage, and they have a big row about it. That's about the height of the first half of the work. 

Acts III and IV involves some contrived twists around a secret society of conspirators,  the secret identity of the bandit Ernani being in reality Don Juan of Aragon, a king in disguise and an unusual vow where Ernani promises to kill himself on the sound of a bugle. You would hope that he doesn't come within earshot of just some random bugler. If it wasn't for the fact that they are notable medieval historical figures all squabbling for the hand of the Duke's niece (including the Duke himself), it would be a banal romantic drama. Which, since it's not being played historically in this production, I'm afraid that's how it comes across. It's undoubtedly hard, but with Verdi's score surely not impossible to make these figures something a little less one-dimensional.

The stage production design relied on dramatic lighting which was highly effective for the charged scenes, the all-purpose triangular recessed set serving well for bedroom, court and crypt. Not related to any period however, it felt rather generic and it didn't place the drama into any kind of meaningful context that would make it feel relatable or even credible. That's a tall order I must admit, and based on a previous viewing of this opera in a more traditional setting it may indeed be an impossible ask, but it didn't get a lot of help in direction and character that lacked the conviction to match the overheated drama.

The singing and dramatic performances however were not lacking in any way. Let's start with the chorus as they play a major role in ramping up the tension throughout. They were in fine voice here, providing those big moments to lift the work up above the banal individual romantic and personal dramas. All too often in these Verdi works it's the female soprano in an extremely demanding role that is often the weak link, but that certainly wasn't the case here. Nadine Benjamin was simply outstanding as Elvira with a big voice and fiery delivery. Roman Arndt was terrific as Ernani, presenting a strong pairing with Benjamin's Elvira. The the other two pretenders for her hand also have to be made of stern stuff, as Don Carlo is a king and Don Ruy Gomez de Silva is a duke, both needing to be formidable challengers to Ernani. André Heyboer and Alastair Miles ensured that was the case.

Musically, this was a thrilling account of Ernani, certainly worthwhile to demonstrate the often underrated qualities of Verdi's early work, particularly when you have singing and musical direction of this calibre. Unfortunately, Francesco Maria's Piave's libretto for this old-fashioned romantic melodrama does not hold up well, and despite his best efforts of the director Jamie Manton, there is little depth of human character to be found in these stock historical caricatures.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Wagner - Götterdämmerung (Zurich, 2024)

Richard Wagner - Götterdämmerung (Zurich, 2024)

Opernhaus Zürich, 2024

Gianandrea Noseda, Andreas Homoki, Klaus Florian Vogt, Daniel Schmutzhard, Christopher Purves, David Leigh, Camilla Nylund, Lauren Fagan, Sarah Ferede, Freya Apffelstaedt, Lena Sutor-Wernich, Giselle Allen, Uliana Alexyuk, Niamh O'Sullivan, Siena Licht Miller

Zurich Opera Ring für alle - 26th May 2024

If there's initially a sense that the 2024 Opernhaus Zürich's Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle is getting a little tired and lacking in surprises by the time we get to Götterdämmerung, it's probably as much to do with the opera itself as the production. When you get this far, it can sometime feel like a duty just to see the cycle through to the end rather than any expectation of surprises or twists being pulled out at this late stage in a production. But see it through you must, just for the powerful conclusion that the whole story had been moving towards from very early on, and even if those surprises are fewer, the quality and consistency that has characterised the previous parts is carried through here impressively.

The only ones indeed not able to predict how the remainder of the production play out are ironically the three Norns. The universe of this Zurich production remains within the familiar backdrop of a rotating stage of rooms, the high panelled walls white again after the darkness of Siegfried. Or a little off-white maybe. The world of Götterdämmerung looks worn and neglected, a little battered, the white paint yellowing, cracking and peeling. The three Norn struggle to hold the strands of the rope of fate together, the events that the gods have enacted have worn it down, their fate is now unknown. We on the other hand have some idea of what to expect, at least as far as how the colour schemes present it.

A Rasputin-like Hagen is most definitely dressed in black for this work's divisions of those who serve nature and those whose actions hasten its destruction. The Gibichung break the simple colour coding however; Gunther and Gutrune, wearing red jackets, are of a different mold to the grand mythical forces of black and white in conflict. The time of the Eternal Ones and heroes is past, Siegfried's grey turning into a black and white suit by the time of his wedding to Gutrune and betrayal of Brünnhilde. The thread has been broken, the Sacred Ash destroyed. the Norn perhaps colour blind and therefore unable to see into the unknown future where now only destruction looms.

In this world where we are heading towards the end of an era, the key scene of Siegfried's betrayal of Brünnhilde is crucial and achieved highly effectively here. Siegfried wears the Tarmhelm while Gunther shambles on like a monster version of himself in a mask. Brünnhilde’s horror is felt, but there is the suggestion when she accidentally tears off the Tarnhelm in a struggle for the ring and momentarily glimpses the true face of Siegfried, that she lets herself succumb to the curse that has befallen all of them, a fate that she has already been forewarned off by her sister Valkyrie, Waltraute.

Again, it's the smallest of touches that make the difference here, such as a dejected Wotan making a cameo appearance in Valhalla, Freia's golden apples untouched. It might look like it's just trying to fill out what otherwise looks fairly bare minimal staging, but it's not. Such little details count here, making it feel relatable, like something human is really at stake and not just a grand myth. If you want to see the destruction of the World Ash and demand of Waltraute that Brünnhilde abandon the Ring and all it stands for as a commentary of capitalism exploiting the natural resources and the end of that road leading to climate change destruction unless nature (the Rhinemaidens) is respected, it's there clearly if you want to see it that way, even if none of it is made explicit in the staging. Not that I'm claiming that Wagner was a very early advocate of Green policies, but it's a theme that is large enough to be held within the grand mythology of Der Ring des Nibelungen.

The singing keeps up the remarkably high standards and consistency of the previous parts of the cycle. And when you have good direction as you have here under Andreas Homoki, it means you can enter fully into the purpose and intent of the work. Klaus Florian Vogt can still get away with an ideal mix of youthful naivety and enthusiasm, if not quite the vocal force you expect (but which it rarely attains) for this role. There is an excellent performance here from Camilla Nylund as Brünnhilde, particularly in her confrontation and accusations of the betrayal by Siegfried. It's fitting that she outshines Vogt in this scene in her outrage. I was really impressed with her performance throughout the second Act, necessary to gives the opera the weight, grief and tragedy it needs at the tragic conclusion. David Leigh, who was the dragon Fafner in Siegfried, here takes the role of Hagen with great power and depth, his delivery clear and ominous throughout. Daniel Schmutzhard and Lauren Fagan sing the roles of Gunter and Gutrune roles well. Christopher Purves is once again brilliant as the dark and bitter Alberich.

Again, I am in awe of the musical performance here of the Philharmonia Zürich under Gianandrea Noseda. I've never rated Götterdämmerung all that highly compared to the more popular and widely performed parts of Der Ring des Nibelungen, once in jest unfairly and inaccurately suggesting that it was little more than as a compilation of variations of the leitmotifs from the earlier works, but the beauty and delicacy of the score, particularly in the linking orchestral interludes, is brought out wonderfully in this performance. The weight is perfectly balanced and emotionally attuned without ever slipping into bombast. Perhaps the close attention paid to the detail of the drama and singing help this, but that's not to take anything away from the quality of the musical direction and performance.

As the opera moves towards its conclusion it's clear that there are no major new ideas or grand concept employed here and that the success of the production lies rather in the fact that it is just very good direction that is completely in service to the drama. You look at the deceptively simple minimalism of the sets and colour schemes and wonder how it can still be so effective in establishing mood and drama, and yet it is indeed one of the most effective stagings of Der Ring des Nibelungen that I have seen. It doesn't put a foot wrong anywhere. The mood is right, the acting and singing is of the highest standard, it works hand-in-hand with the musical performance, but what really drives it is the interaction between all those elements. These are not individual performances or creative indulgences, it's a collective ensemble performance, interacting, giving and taking, acting and reacting. And maybe it's there, in how it finds a way for the spectator to connect meaningfully with this grand formidable work of mythology, that this Zurich Ring succeeds so impressively.

External links: Opernhaus Zürich, Ring für alle Video on Demand

Photos - Monika Rittershaus

Ensemble Écoute - Across Borders / entre les horizons

Ensemble Écoute - Across Borders / entre les horizons

Ensemble Écoute, 2024

Fernando Palomeque (conductor), Rachel Koblyakov (violin), Emma Lloyd (solo violin), Emmanuel Acurero (cello), Samuel Casale (flute), Youjin Jung (clarinet), Ezequiel Castro (piano), Quentin Dubreuil (percussion)

The Night With... at the Black Box, Belfast - 6th July 2024

Emma Lloyd – Orbites
Rebecca Saunders – the under-side of green

David Fennessy – The room is the resonator
Matthew Whiteside – Points Decay
Sofia Avramidou – An absurd reasoning
Pierre Boulez – Dérive I

A France-Ireland-UK project, the aim of Across Borders / entre les horizons is to bring new works commissioned from three young composers and present them side-by-side with three complementary works from notable well-established 20th century composers. Whether intended as a means of providing variety and some familiarity to the programme, as a means to reflect contrasts or commonalities, the first night presentation of these works at the Black Box in Belfast as part of composer Matthew Whiteside's The Night With... series succeeded in a number of ways. Played in pairs it seemed obvious to reflect on a dialogue between the two pieces, but perhaps unexpectedly the dialogue tended to be a two-way conversation, each showing the other in a particular light that might not have been the same in a different context. The same sensibility of a two-way dialogue also played into the instrumentation, with groups of instruments playing, responding, coming together to explore possibilities. It also reflected or highlighted the different approaches taken between the older and newer works, some of the newer pieces employing pre-recorded sounds in new ways with new technologies, working with and sometimes against traditional instruments.

Scottish composer Emma Lloyd's Orbites set the tone for this idea, using cycles of playing groups of instruments within the ensemble (woodwind, strings, piano and percussion with Emma leading on solo violin), each of the short cycles initiated by a bell. It's a delicate but deceptively simple work that gains complexity as the work progressively accumulates new sounds and resonances through MIDI samples automatically triggered by the tapping of the singing bowl and with the musicians in the ensemble even taking up glass harp wineglasses in one section. Even the conductor Fernando Palomeque had a hand - literally - in contributing to the variations of modulation, sending samples from a motion sensor glove. Orbites maintains a sense of delicate fragility even though the louder sections, constantly changing, creating a sense of breathless anticipation of what the next cycle would reveal. Even though controlled by pre-programmed triggers, the performance allowed room for the natural sounds to collide and resonate with the technological elements and it came across wonderfully in the clear acoustics of the Black Box concert hall. There was so much to take in here in this piece that it was a good idea to repeat it as an encore at the end of the programme, revealing in the process how tricky and delicate a piece it is to hold together.

Orbites was paired with Rebecca Saunders' the underside of green (1994), which came across as relatively straightforward in comparison, or as straightforward as any Saunders work can be, particularly one that is part of a cycle of works influenced by Molly Bloom’s closing monologue from James Joyce's Ulysses. Its musical contours play on notions of colour and shades of colour, how it reacts and changes barely perceptibly from moment to moment according to the interaction of fluctuations of light and shadow, a similar notion to the changing tones and resonances introduced in Emma Lloyd's piece.

Another world premiere, Northern Ireland composer Matthew Whiteside’s Points Decay was likewise a perfect accompaniment for Michael Fennessy’s The room is the resonator. The latter, a piece for solo cello with live electronics, is a thing of great beauty whose concept makes it essential to hear in a live context, and with some wonderful playing by Emmanuel Acurero on cello it succeeded brilliantly here in its aim of bringing other rooms into the room of the Black Box. The symbiosis was perfect, one drawing from the other, the cello’s acoustic bowing, plucking and tapping electronically amplified, bringing Fennessy's recording of the harmonium in a garage in Aberdeen into the room, forming a whole new unique resonance that was warm and compelling on a July evening in Belfast.

Following it almost in response, Whiteside’s Points Decay struck out with intent, working with the full ensemble, each instrument asserting a strong presence before falling into the pace and sound of the pre-recorded ambient backing track until the ambience ended the piece. In the context of the Across Borders programme and its emphasis on interaction, you could see it as an embracing of the old and new with the new winning out, or you could consider it reflective of the natural world being subsumed by technology. Either way it's an entrancing piece that could have lulled you into a sound-world of ambient contemplation if it were longer, but its necessary concision gives pause for thought on how much we could let ourselves - or perhaps have already let ourselves - hand over control to technology without a thought for the consequences, letting the decay set in.

There was no obvious contrast between acoustic and electronic sounds in Greek composer Sofia Avramidou’s short but intense piece An absurd reasoning. If there was any dialectic, it was in contrast or in response to the quote from an essay on Absurdity and Suicide by Albert Camus reproduced in the concert programme. Rather than take a contemplative approach, violin, cello and piano seemed to be in a furious battle with each other, each nonetheless finding space to say their piece in an attempt to reconcile conflicting, not to mention absurd, ideas.

Absurd ideas are what keeps contemporary music progressive, restless and challenging, never accepting the limitations of what has been defined as natural and acceptable within music. When it comes to crossing borders and extending horizons Pierre Boulez was one of the most important driving forces in the creation of, the promotion of and the gaining of acceptance for new music. In live performance his major works, even his Dérives explorations while composing Repons, show that he is still a force to be reckoned with. Dérives is a reminder of his mastery of bringing together the instruments of a small ensemble and taking them to adventurous places within highly original structures. It's simply a joy to see Dérive I performed live in a room by an experienced new music ensemble.

Such a legacy also presents a challenge that each of the three new composers of different nationalities in this programme nonetheless met successfully in their own works, each in their own way, and they could hardly be more varied and individual in style, technique and delivery. Highlighting significant works and pushing new ways of expression in music forward, contemporary music is all about crossing borders, and the vitality and range of what it can be was illustrated brilliantly in this programme.

External links: Ensemble Écoute, The Night With...

Ashley - The Bar, from Perfect Lives (Dundalk, 2024)

Robert Ashley - The Bar, from Perfect Lives

Louth Contemporary Music Society, 2024

Gelsey Bell, Brian McCorkle, Paul Pinto, Dave Ruder, Aliza Simons, Amirtha Kidambi, Caoimhe Hopkinson, Sean Carpio, Steve Welsh 

The Spirit Store, Dundalk - 15th June 2024

A performance of Robert Ashley's The Bar could in the context of the Louth Contemporary Music Society festival be considered a moment of light relief, a bonus extra in addition to the full performance of the composer's final opera Crash the previous evening, but it was also - as the performances at the Spirit Store in Dundalk are turning out to be - an essential and somewhat wayward element that contributes to the remarkable variety that is typical of Eamonn Quinn's programming for the LMCS's annual summer festival.

The second day of the 2024 two day festival opened with Linda Catlin Smith's Dirt Road at the church in St. Vincent's Secondary School. A seemingly austere, delicate, slow moving hour-long piece, the performance explored the interaction of violin and percussion with subtle variation and progression. The afternoon concert featuring Hamza El Din’s Escalay presented an extraordinary combination of Eastern meeting Irish traditional sounds, following on from an Irish traditional version of In C last year. A complete one-off, you only get this kind of thing in Dundalk, only at the LMCS. Before the immersive surround sound performance of Stockhausen's extraordinary Stimmung echoed around St. Nicholas church to close the festival however, we were invited to The Bar at the Spirit Store.

The Bar is just one section of a seven-part opera Perfect Lives that Ashley originally developed as an opera for television in 1983, back in the days when TV music programming was a little more adventurous (or existed even). As one of the more widely seen Ashley operas, Perfect Lives consequently has become almost a definite example of his style, although this is more extensively explored and expanded as it forms part of his Now Eleanor‘s Idea tetralogy. As far as Perfect Lives goes, it at least has that familiar rhythm and meandering philosophical exploration of ordinary people's lives in the Midwestern States of the USA.

"These are songs about the Corn Belt, the people in it, or on it." as Ashley narrates with variations of delivery and intonation for each section of the opera. The characters in Ashley's operas are all regular people, all have plans, but perhaps lulled by Ashley's own voice as the narrator in the recordings of his work, they seem to be subject to a kind of dream logic, getting distracted from their purpose through meetings with others, getting bogged down in details. Ashley's voice gives the impression of it just being a part of the way things go. In another work, Celestial Excursions, he explores how some old people talk endlessly, randomly, with a kind of verbal incontinence. These matters are of interest to the composer and recur in different forms in his work.

Words, as seen in Crash, have a musical quality of their own in Ashley's operas, in the abstraction of the texts, throwing out ideas that may or not be picked up later, that develop into a refrain and are echoed by a chorus. You can no more make sense of way the individual words and phrases fit together than you can 'explain' why one note follows another or how it adds up to create a narrative, and yet patterns emerge, elements connect. It just feels right. Language and communication are very much a part of what defines the character of his works.

The opera Perfect Lives revolves around two characters 'R', an Ashley-like figure and Buddy "The World's Greatest Piano Player", based on "Blue" Gene Tyranny, Ashley's musical collaborator. They arrive in a small Midwest town to entertain the locals at the Perfect Lives Lounge, but end up getting involved in an unusual kind of bank robbery where the money is just "borrowed" for a day. In Part 1. The Park, a man from country in hotel room in small Midwestern town pours a drink, picks up a phone and considers such philosophical matters as how can we pass from one state to another. In Part 2. The Supermarket we meet Helen and John who book adjacent rooms ("This is not very interesting, I know", the narrator admits). In Part 3. The Bank, Gwyn works at the bank. ("That's her job. Mostly she helps people count their money. She likes it.") Gwen is eloping to get married and takes day off work.

We come to Part 4. The Bar, where the star and a slightly seedy older man (Buddy and R) turn up on their day off at the Perfect Lives lounge and get into a philosophical conversation with the owner, Rodney. ("We don't serve fine wine in half pints, Buddy"). What happens in The Bar is no more enlightening or even entirely comprehensible than the previous sections (synopsis interpretations differ wildly), but there are familiar ideas that Ashley revisits in one form or another, such as the body having four ages (The Seed, the Root, the Trunk, the Branches), but also thinking about how we pass from one state to another. All of this is set to a music bar room Boogie-Woogie on piano, using preset rhythm templates derived from the Gulbransen 'Palace' organ.

As ever, there are much more complex ideas involved in Perfect Lives than the simple flowing and often abstract narration suggests. Improvement (Don leaves Linda), the first Ashley opera I discovered via a radio broadcast of a live performance in Vienna, another part of the Now Eleanor's Idea tetralogy, is described as "an extension 500 years later of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 as an allegory for self-realisation". The stated purpose of Perfect Lives is 'Rebirth', or as I've seen it described "A banal road movie and at the same time a cultural-historical reappraisal of European-American mythology" and "a comic opera about reincarnation". As with Linda's surreal and comic encounters with an airline ticket sales person in Improvement having been abandoned by her husband Don at a service station, it's hard to match the verbal descriptions of everyday problems of ordinary people with such high-minded intentions. 

The question of rebirth does float into view on occasion in those reflections on passing from one state to another and these questions come up time and again in Ashley's works, perhaps most specifically in Crash, which considers the average life as being divided into distinct 14-year periods. The music for the operas also appear to be far from the high concept technical exercises in musical virtuosity that you would expect from avant-garde opera. The dominant music in Perfect Lives sounds like jaunty keyboard rhythms that resemble pre-programmed organ tracks or synthesiser backing tracks, which when combined with the dry drawl of the abstract and digressive narration can prove to be hard to remain focussed on and yet fascinating in their flow. It might sound like basic Boogie-Woogie rhythms but the lightness is deceptive, the music clearly intended to evoke an almost trance like state, while being more complex than it appears to be on the surface.

If there are numerous levels and ideas to be teased out of Ashley's Perfect Lives, the Varispeed Collective have their own unique interpretation when bringing The Bar to a live audience, preferably putting it on at a bar. Rebirth not so much, this version is all about the Boogie-Woogie. And at the Spirit Store pub in Dundalk, which is also a notable music venue in the town, that means involving the locals, having a pint of Guinness and having fun. This is not the time for any deep probing of the philosophical content of Perfect Lives, or even the content of this section of it. And you can't really fault them for that, choosing instead to contribute to the wonderful, almost unimaginable range of what Eamonn Quinn has in mind for the LCMS annual celebration of contemporary music.

Ashley's characteristic cadences and dry midwestern drawl are almost impossible to imitate, at least with the particular emphasis he brings to his own words. The composer recognised however that it's necessary for performers to bring something of themselves to a performance, and they certainly did that at the Spirit Store in Dundalk. Neither can you or would you want to replicate the musical rhythms of "Blue" Gene Tyranny. The piano bar room boogie is taken up by Brian McCorkle and Paul Pinto from the Varispeed Collective, the main vocal duties shared between Aliza Simons, Dave Ruder, Gelsey Bell and Amirtha Kidambi special guesting as Rodney, alternating also to provide the chorus backing vocal reactions and interjections, all getting down in the spirit of the boogie. 

It's part of the spirit of the Varispeed Collective's arrangement of site specific performances of The Bar not just to perform it in a suitable location - and the venue at the Spirit Store could not be more perfect - but also involve local musicians. That's a philosophy that also fits perfectly with the philosophy of the LCMS, and what makes their festivals unique, celebratory and inclusive. Caoimhe Hopkinson on bass, Sean Carpio on drums and Steve Welsh on saxophone all joined in with the unique character of the work and the performance. This was a very different interpretation then from the familiar Robert Ashley version, and it would be hard to define it as opera in any classical sense, but you could say that about any Ashley opera. As an element of the LCMS however, who hold to no rules or narrow definition of what contemporary music should be, it was just perfect. Lovely music indeed.

External links: Louth Contemporary Music Society, Lovely Music, RobertAshley.org

Ashley - Crash (Dundalk, 2024)

Robert Ashley - Crash

Louth Contemporary Music Society, 2024

Gelsey Bell, Brian McCorkle, Paul Pinto, Dave Ruder, Aliza Simons, Amirtha Kidambi

An Táin Arts Centre, Dundalk - 14th June 2024

The LCMS, the Louth Contemporary Music Society, have been hugely imaginative in their programming over their 18 year history, finding accessible yet challenging and innovative ways to bring new music to a wider audience. Some of the names invited to put on performances of their work in Dundalk include Terry Riley, Philip Glass, John Zorn, Salvatore Sciarrino and Kaija Saariaho, but founder Eamonn Quinn makes great efforts to involve local musicians and present challenging but still accessible material to the local audience. In 2018, Gavin Bryars led world class musicians and local children's choir and music students through a moving rendition of 'Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet' and last summer's Folks' Music festival saw a thrilling rendition of Terry Riley's 'In C' played in a completely unique fashion by some of the finest Irish traditional and folk musicians. For their 2024 festival, going under the title of Lovely Music, the progamming of Robert Ashley alongside Linda Catlin Smith, Hamza El Din and Stockhausen is equally inspired.

I can't say for certain whether there has ever been a Robert Ashley opera performed in Ireland before, but it's hard to imagine anyone being as bold and adventurous as the LCMS. Holding a two-day festival dedicated to new music every June, bringing in some of the major figures as guests and featuring some of the best new music ensembles in the world to this small town, they don't usually feature opera as a rule or indeed have the resources to stage full operas, but then rules about what we think of as opera don't really apply to Robert Ashley’s works. There are several companies that specialise in performances of his operas and - I say this as someone who has long awaited for the opportunity to see one performed live - we were fortunate enough to have the Varispeed Collective come over and perform two works, Crash and The Bar (a section from the TV opera Perfect Lives).

Crash, Robert Ashley's last opera, was first performed just after his death in 2014. Like all his works, it's based around voices and a concept, but appropriately for a work that feels closest to autobiographical, there is a refinement of both those features. Crash consists of just voices: there is no music, not even the plinkity-plonk (apologies for using advanced musicological terms) electronic keyboard backing that often features. As far as concept goes, Crash appears to be a little more straightforward than some of his works in its structure into sections that advance the underlying concept. Of course many of his works start out that way and are far more sophisticated in their structure than they appear, but quickly meander down inexplicable and unpredictable twists and turns. As indeed does Crash.

There is at least an effort to hold that concept together a little more tightly than usual. As is announced at the start of the opera, it's based on the idea of life being divided into stages, not unlike Shakespeare's seven ages of man, but in the theory Ashley works with that was inspired by a book about Hindu belief, it sees it being divided into distinct 14 year cycles that govern our lives, each with their apogee and nadir that bring times of fortune and misfortune. That's 14 years for the masculine part. The feminine part is a 10 year cycle and one might be more dominant than other or become more dominant at different stages. The idea is one that the narrator(s) say is one that many religions hold to, seeing it as being related to the physical manifestation of the body as impure and evil, while the spiritual aspect has now been lost.

Structurally then Crash is divided into six Acts of 14 year cycles; Act 1 years 1-14, Act II is 15-28 through to Act VI covering 71-84, each section around 15 minutes long. The narration likewise has three interweaving narrative voices and three backing voices, which makes it somewhat easier to follow than Ashley himself doing all the main voices and appearing to go off in tangents, as in other works where the structure is less immediately evident. One voice sings as if they are talking in a conversational manner on the phone, another has a floating meditative singsong voice, the third exhibiting a mild stammer or halting glitch. All of these are styles that Ashley would have adopted himself in other works as the main narrator/actor.

The first voice talks about the basic concept (initially anyway) of the 14 year cycles, the second has a detached poetic quality that seems to relate to the main character's out-of-body experiences (electrocution, fainting, allergic reaction) and the third voice relates life experiences through those ages, covering the highs and lows of his career as a composer and musician. The other three backing voices recite vocalisations and chanted refrains of words from the main narration behind the narrative voices. Along the way, the text hits upon all variety of subjects including small people, neighbours and the discovery and meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The choices of what is expanded on as significant moments in the main figure's life are almost inexplicable, but of course they all relate to an examination of a life subject to forces outside oneself, or within oneself.

Just to complicate - well, not just to complicate but to adhere to the idea of cycles where dominant forces appear - the three singers doing the conversational, poetic and glitch voices switch with the 'backing' voices, and each of the two groups of three take their turn as one of the three voices in each of the sections. These are complex musical ideas, arrangements and leitmotifs, all presented in an unconventional manner, hugely distinctive and quite unlike anything else, but which nonetheless are surprisingly easy to grasp. Grasp perhaps, but not necessarily fully comprehend. You are kept on your mental toes trying to relate the interweaving stories and ideas and it requires intense concentration. There is no time in the flow to stop and consider an idea, so it's almost impossible to take everything in. There inevitably comes a point in Crash, like all Ashley's work, where you think either you or the work has wandered off and lost the meaning at some point.

Unless you see it performed. In that respect at least, Crash is much like traditional opera. With six people sitting at desks with no musical instruments and essentially reciting the text into microphones, you might think there is nothing that can be gained here that you can't get from listening to the exact same thing on CD, but the performance is a vital element. It's not that it varies to any degree from the recorded version, and I'm not going to claim that you can glean any greater meaning from the text, but there is definitely a truer connection established when you see people involved who can't help but bring themselves into the interpretation, allowing you to see as well as hear the quirks of Ashley's score presented to you. And yes, the visual engagement does certainly helps focus and the mind is less likely to wander, or at least not wander any more than is intended.

There are a few other reasons why this performance for the LCMS's Lovely Music festival was special, it being the 10th anniversary of the opera's first performance and the 10th anniversary of Robert Ashley's death. To make it even more of an occasion, it was performed by the original cast who worked with the composer on this final opera, the Varispeed Collective (including Amirtha Kidambi, whose solo musical career with the Elder Ones I am a big fan of). To be honest, just seeing a Robert Ashley opera performed is something I never even expected to see and that it didn't disappoint. It's a promising sign that Ashley's work still has followers, admirers and supporters (including Lovely Music that publishes his recordings) all contributing to keep his legacy going. This was an utterly fascinating performance of the work of a truly unique and inimitable composer.

External links: Louth Contemporary Music Society, Lovely Music, RobertAshley.org