Deutscher - Cinderella (Wexford, 2022)

Alma Deutscher - Cinderella (Wexford, 2022)

Wexford Festival Opera, 2022

Andrew Synnott, Davide Gasparro, Megan O’Neill, Corina Ignat, Leah Redmond, Sarah Luttrell, Michael Bell, Peter Lidbetter, Deirdre Arratoon, Peter McCamley, Eoin Foran, William Kyle

O'Reilly Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford - 4th November 2022

It probably shouldn't have come as a surprise considering the quality of the Pocket Opera elements of the Festival (Cellier's The Spectre Knight and Caruso's The Master), but I was impressed with another work that was not 'mainstage' - although it was performed in the main O'Reilly Theatre to a large audience - but part of the Wexford Factory development programme for new talent. Fairy tale operas aren't often the vehicle for greatness, although in the case of Cinderella Rossini and Massenet produced some of their best work with La Cenerentola and Cendrillon, not to mention Mozart's own fairy tale opera The Magic Flute to attest to what can be done in the field by a composer of extraordinary talent, and Alma Deutscher leans towards the latter in this youth work.

Composed at the age of 11, the was no concern about the quality of Deutscher's first opera; it's not as if her Cinderella would be performed in Vienna, Salzburg and indeed Wexford if it wasn't of a high standard, but I was very pleasantly surprised nonetheless by just how accomplished this opera was in musical character and in terms of doing something original with the concept. It's probably indeed her youth, Deutscher drawing from her own nature and character, from her experience and dreams (and talent), that allow her to put a fresh and meaningful spin on the Cinderella story. A fairy tale or a fairy tale opera is nothing without a message, and being young, it's a hopeful, optimistic and uplifting one.

Using what she knows then, Deutscher's version very cleverly couches the story within the world of musical creativity. Her Cinderella is a young composer, given drudgery tasks like copying scores by her stepmother for her two aspiring diva stepsisters to sing. Nonetheless her head is filled with melodies that take shape when she is given a book of poetry by an old lady she helps in the woods. The poetry has been written by the Prince, who handed it over to the woman looking for fuel to heat herself, assuming that he had no further need for them himself. Unusually, the Prince even has motivation in this version, being forced by his father to find a wife and carry on the family line, leaving him no more time for such frivolity.

Aside from the clever idea of matching the words of music to poetry - a much more convincing twist on a shoe fitting just one person as a way of finding the love match, although it doesn't totally reject this convention either - it's a tremendous way to celebrate the magic of opera, of art, creativity and imagination combining to generate something magical, something that has the potential to lift you out of everyday life. The music and English libretto fully live up to this ambition with witty situations and spins on the original, all beautifully arranged and melodic in chamber orchestra form. There's a lot of waltz-time music, light, happy music and romantic music; it's just a joy.

The singing was exceptionally good across every role, particularly from the two leads. The romantic leads can sometimes appear a little bland in fairy take works - even in The Magic Flute - but Cinderella and the Prince have a little more personality and character here and that was brought out with with lovely singing from Megan O’Neill and Michael Bell. Leah Redmond and Sarah Luttrell have plenty of fun with the stepsisters Griselda and Zibaldona - of course - but were almost outdone in the comic stakes by Peter Lidbetter as the King and Peter McCamley in a non-singing role as the Royal Minister. Corina Ignat as the stepmother and Deirdre Arratoon as the old lady/fairy took the remaining roles in this well-cast performance perfectly.

Cinderella is simply a charming opera and it was charmingly directed and performed. Davide Gasparro took a chance on placing it all within the context of a dream rather than a straight fairy tale, but that helped overcome the number of slightly sickly and overlong happy-ever-after scenes, the only real weakness in the opera. A little touch of realism was needed here. Or, depending on what you want from an opera, maybe not. Either way, there was a wonderful lightness of touch to the humour and the comic situations elsewhere and it fitted well with Eleonora Rossi's creative use of an all-purpose bed/stage. In every aspect, from creation to performance, this Wexford Factory production fully merited a place on the main opera stage of the National Opera House.

That lightness of touch was employed also in the musical direction of Andrew Synnott with the chamber orchestra arrangements. Synnott - who has had his own opera work performed at Wexford in recent years (Dubliners, La Cucina) - again making a strong contribution here and elsewhere in the vital choral management of the mainstage operas during the Festival. Everything was kept simple, every note and gesture aiming to engage and entertain. There was some lovely comic interplay, the witty dialogue was delivered well, every character made an impression. If the intention was to demonstrate the power and the beauty of opera through the marriage of music and words, Cinderella made a convincing case for itself.

Links: Wexford Festival Opera

Synnott - La Cucina / Rossini - Adina (Wexford, 2019)

Andrew Synnott - La Cucina
Gioachino Rossini - Adina

Wexford Festival Opera, 2019

Michele Spotti, Rosetta Cucchi, Máire Flavin, Manuel Amati, Emmanuel Franco, Sheldon Baxter, Luca Nucera, Rachel Kelly, Levy Sekgapane, Daniele Antonangeli

National Opera House, Wexford - 31 October 2019

With the spotlight is on the older undiscovered works of mostly 19th and early 20th century at Wexford Festival Opera, there was a danger that a new work, the first new Irish opera composition ever presented there, might not get sufficient recognition or attention. La Cucina however turned out to be one of the great surprises of the festival. That's perhaps not entirely unexpected, as Andrew Synnott had demonstrated wonderful dramatic writing for Dubliners at the 2017 ShortWorks programme. Although La Cucina is also a shorter work, modest in its ambition to serve only as a starter for Rossini as the main show, it's a work of great quality in its own right.

Rossini's Adina is the inspiration but so too it appears is the experience of the new director of the festival Rosetta Cucchi who wrote the libretto for La Cucina. In a way, the work is a tribute to opera, as she explains in her programme notes, the challenges of putting on an opera like making a cake, getting all the ingredients and the timing right. What's also apparent however is that the work also serves to bake a cake as a tribute to the departing director of the Wexford Festival Opera David Agler, under whom Cucchi served as assistant for much of that period.

That's very much reflected in the subject, a new apprentice hoping to learn from the master, inevitably makes some mistakes along the way, but the maestro too comes to realise when the time has come to put aside his ways and let his team grow and develop their own ideas and forge their own direction. That could come across as heavy-handed but the piece is scored and staged wonderfully, allowing a lovely variety of events, mishaps and expressions that work on a number of levels. Whether in the workplace, whether in recognition of the situation to a cookery programme fan - the maestro here more fearsome than Gordon Ramsey - or even in everyday situations, there's a recognisable and universal application here.

It's important that we have a meaningful libretto, and with that essential ingredient you have the makings of a wonderful confection. Andrew Synnott's score brings it vividly to life, in the process perhaps even reflecting the Festival's underlying ethos of celebrating the history of opera. In terms of expression, it's very much latter day Puccini in vibrancy, drama and situation, and I'm sure La Cucina would work perfectly alongside one of the parts of Il Trittico, having very much the same tone as that comic masterpiece Gianni Schicchi. There's a touch of Richard Strauss too in the vocal scoring, Máire Flavin gifted with the creation of the role of the sous-chef Bianca that she more than lives up to.

Written as a complementary one-act opera for Rossini's Adina, the connection established here is that the cake being baked in La Cucina is the important wedding cake being baked might well have been for Adina and her forthcoming marriage to the Caliph. La Cucina set Adina up in another vital way and that was the spirit of the production. Adina, it has to be said, is for the most part Rossini by numbers, but as La Cucina notes in its closing observations, quoting Rossini, what matters is that you make the most of life, and if you don't you're crazy.

Wexford played up the exaggeration of life and its crazy idea of a plot in their production of Adina. Essentially there aren't any greater complications or roles or types than you find in L'Inganno Felice (another short given a reduced performance outing at the festival) but Rossini is eminently scalable, reduced or enlarged, and Wexford successfully went for it big time. The previous baking a cake theme also effectively pushes aside any of the dodgy Orientalism that Rossini was fond of using for comic romantic complications in his operas.

Designed by Tiziano Santi, the stage set is a huge cake that contains the lower quarters of the Caliph, the middle section holding Adina's room and the upper level with real life-size wedding cake figures, is used for other purposes, such as the jailing of Selimo when he tries to spirit his love Adina away from a fateful marriage to the Caliph (none of them yet knowing that the Caliph turns out to actually be Adina's father!)

So Adina is pretty much by-the-numbers material, Rossini providing the usual insistent rhythms and rapid-fire singing with some challenging vocal lines for Adina and Selimo, challenges that are capably met by Rachel Kelly and Levy Sekgapane who ring out those high notes beautifully. Musically there's a little more sophistication in the arrangements that is immediately apparent, although there is still some recitative here, Michele Spotti keeping the urgency and lightness of the plotting in place.

Directing both pieces, Rosetta Cucchi's production was certainly impressive in capturing the whole tone of the Rossini philosophy of living life to the full. The stage was filled with extras, all bringing little side-shows of humour, Alfredo the master chef ever present to emphasise the connections between Adina and La Cucina. Perhaps a little too much going on for a relatively simple piece, but life's a big cake and you just have to eat it, and why not add some special icing sugar on top. You can't get too much of that.

Links: Wexford Festival Opera

Bizet - Le Docteur Miracle (Wexford, 2019)

Georges Bizet - Le Docteur Miracle

Wexford Festival Opera, 2019

Andrew Synnott, Roberto Recchia, Lizzie Holmes, Kasia Balejko, Guy Elliott, Simon Mechlinski

Clayton White's Hotel, Wexford - 31 October 2019

The libretto and situation for Doctor Miracle, as you could tell from a cursory glance through the short synopsis of Bizet's one-act opera, is very silly indeed. Silliness however should be no hindrance to producing a clever and skillful comic opera. Offenbach excelled at it, Bizet too by all accounts, but we haven't had the same opportunities to sample them, Bizet remaining basically unknown in the wider opera world outside of the ubiquitous Carmen and, if you're lucky, Les Pecheurs du Perles.

If Doctor Miracle is anything to go by you're not missing any great lost comic masterpiece, but like Offenbach's lesser known works that I've seen, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, Les Brigandes, or Chabrier's L'Etoile, if played right it has considerable potential to be hugely entertaining. Filled with silly situations involving disguises, impersonation and unlikely twists of plot, there's only one way to play such material and that's play up the silliness factor.

In Le Docteur Miracle Laurette is in love with an army captain Silvio but her magistrate father has an objection to her marrying a soldier. Undeterred, Silvio first disguises himself as a quack remedy seller Dr Miracle, selling potions out on the street as a means to surreptitiously (i.e. conspicuously) serenade Laurette. Then he disguises himself as handyman Pasquin and manages to gain a position in the household as a cook among his many duties. The omelette he makes for the family doesn't go down terribly well however, leaving them believing that they have poisoned. Fortunately Dr Miracle just happens to be nearby with a cure, provided he is given the hand of Laurette in exchange.

If Doctor Miracle has any hidden musical qualities that have eluded the attention of the opera world they weren't evident in the reduced piano score of the Wexford Festival Opera production, even when played with a lively spring by Andrew Synnott (whose own short opera La Cucina involving more unfortunate cooking consequences was premiering in Wexford this year). The opéra-comique does have one famous song, the omelette song, which is surely notable for being one of the silliest in opera, not least because the singer in this production makes an omelette live on stage during the course of the song.

And it's the making of the omelette that delivers much of the opera's fun, not only in the mouth-watering anticipation that the magistrate, his wife and daughter have to eat this delicious meal, but for the trouble it causes when it turns out to be poisoned. Not really poisoned of course, but it's enough to cause a lot of fuss and amusement, nay downright hilarity among the audience in the Roberto Recchia directed ShortWorks production of Doctor Miracle for the Wexford Festival Opera at Clayton White's hotel.

I tend to believe that only the French can really do justice to the opéra-comique farce, but quite honestly you couldn't fault the cast here for comic timing and delivery, running around and into the audience, and undoubtedly there was a good hand at work in terms of direction. Simon Mechlinski playing the Magistrate was terrific, Guy Elliott's Silvio sprightly and mischievous, Lizzie Holmes's Laurette bright and playful, Kasia Balejko the magistrate's wife Veronique also providing great comic moments in writing-off her 'poisoned' husband long before he's dead. Sung in English there wasn't anything spectacular in the songs or arrangements, but you'd be hard pushed to find a more entertaining hour at the opera.

Links: Wexford Festival Opera

Offenbach - Tales of Hoffmann (Dublin, 2018)

Jacques Offenbach - Tales of Hoffmann

Irish National Opera, 2018

Andrew Synnott, Tom Creed, Julian Hubbard, Claudia Boyle, Gemma Ní Bhriain, John Molloy, Andrew Gavin, Brendan Collins, Carolyn Holt, Fearghal Curtis, Kevin Neville, Peter O’Reilly, Cormac Lawlor, Robert McAllister

O'Reilly Theatre, Dublin - 14 September 2018

At this rate I could get to like Tales of Hoffmann. Up until fairly recently it's been an opera whose attraction and qualities have mostly eluded me. Part of the problem could be down to the work having been left unfinished, Offenbach dying before his only full opera (as opposed to his numerous operettas) was completed. Subjected to cuts, revisions and additions from sketches left behind by the composer to try to approximate what Offenbach might have had in mind, there's never been any clarity over the intended final shape of the work. But then, I've never been taken with the idea of purpose of the work or find that it has any great insights or truths to reveal.

It's a romance above all, a single troubled one taking shape across four different incarnations, but drawn from stories by the German writer ETA Hoffmann, Offenbach includes Hoffmann as the main character in the work, making a connection between the creator and his creations, the inspiration for them and the suffering an artist has to endure to bring them to life. That's all well and good, but the stories themselves are strange, fantastical and almost hallucinogenic in their obsessions, fuelled by alcohol and tainted with madness, the music likewise somewhat overblown.

There's a lot to work with here and certainly richness in the situations, but a good production should be able to draw it all together, bring some kind of coherence and try to make sense of it all. My experience of Tales of Hoffmann however - until fairly recently - has been that directors similarly tend to go overboard and add another level of complication and distraction. A stripped-down reduced-orchestration production by the English Touring Opera however demonstrated for me that there is much to enjoy in the work, and following a similar policy in their new production, the Irish National Opera have confirmed that impression.

Of course what is true of the approach taken towards Tales of Hoffmann is true of any opera; it can be seen at its best when music, direction and singing all come together in a cohesive production with a strong central theme. The central theme of the varied three related love stories that attest to Hoffmann's unfortunate choice in women is of course his singular love for Stella in all her varied moods and character (and an opera singer to boot!). Offenbach of course makes the connections by having not just Stella in the roles of Olympia, Antonia and Giulietta, but he keeps a thread of adversity in the combined villains of Lindorf's Coppélius, Dr. Miracle, and Dappertutto.

Created as a INO touring production and having to work within the limitations of the O'Reilly Theatre in Dublin, which is not equipped for major scene changes or special effects, director Tom Creed is somewhat limited as far as stage designs go, but in a way this helps consistency and fluency not just between the stories, but with the framing device of Hoffmann the storyteller and the connections the stories have to Stella. The lack of atmosphere in the venue also threatened to work against the efforts of the production which with only a reduced ensemble of seven players felt initially cool and detached, not really engaging with the audience. By the time Claudia Boyle's Olympia took to the stage however, that all changed.

The detached from reality aspect of the stories can still be a problem, but Tom Creed finds suitable modern updates that take some of the old-fashioned eccentricity out of the work. Rather than an automaton or living doll, Creed re-envisions Olympia for this production as a robot AI, Hoffmann dazzled by its brilliance of science but disillusioned by its lack of humanity, immune to the charm of his poetry. In the second story Hoffmann's trust in love is dashed by the inadequacy of medicine to cure Antonia if she sings. Hoffmann is charmed in the third story not by a seductive courtesan who is charged with stealing his reflection, but by a performance artist in the Venice Biennale who attempts to destroy his soul through drug addiction.

Katie Davenport's set designs cleverly provide suitable locations for Creed's updated settings that bring more of a sense of reality to the metaphor, but it still looks magical and just as importantly retains a sense of humour. The consistency and continuity is brilliantly maintained in the three major singing roles, with Claudia Boyle in particular simply outstanding. The ability to sing all the four highly challenging soprano roles is never in doubt, but there's personality and presence there as well, which makes a difference in this opera. Julian Hubbard also sang well but wasn't quite as successful in finding any deeper humanity in his character. The multiple Lindorf villain role posed no difficulties for John Molloy, an expert in this register, but he was perhaps a little too declamatory for the reduced instrumentation. Gemma Ní Bhriain's Nicklausse was exceptional and Andrew Gavin provided good support for Molloy's different incarnations. With fine performances in secondary roles and a fine chorus, the INO clearly have a strong ensemble of singers.

It was in that reduced seven-piece instrumentation, alive to the subtleties of the melodies that I feel that the Irish National Opera's production was truly successful in revealing the qualities of Offenbach's writing for Tales of Hoffmann. Andrew Synnott directing from piano is always strong with this kind of arrangement (his own composition for Dubliners at the 2017 Wexford Festival benefitted from the same treatment). As well as simply being able to appreciate the detail of the instrumentation and quality of the playing, too often lost in larger arrangements, it more than anything else helped bring consistency and cohesion to the work, while still finding plenty of room for colour and expression.

Links: Irish National Opera

Synnott - Dubliners (Wexford, 2017)

Andrew Synnott - Dubliners

Opera Theatre Company, Wexford Opera Festival, 2017

Andrew Synnott, Annabelle Comyn, Emma Nash, Anna Jeffers, Andrew Gavin, David Howes, Peter O' Donohue, Cormac Lawlor

Clayton White's Hotel, Wexford - 1 November 2017

The two short stories that Andrew Synnott chooses from James Joyce's Dubliners don't strike you as being the sort of thing that operas are made of, but then again I'm sure that it would have been hard to imagine The Dead from the same short story collection being adapted into a feature film. Composer Andrew Synnott and librettist Arthur Riordan however succeed with Counterparts and The Boarding House in exactly the same way that John Huston did with The Dead; they give due attention to the fact that the forces that exist in and around the characters are far more important than the narrative itself.

These are more than just stories to be told, and they are more than just depictions of Dublin life at a certain, albeit significant time in Ireland's history at the beginning of the 20th century. There are all kinds of social and political undercurrents running around in 1914, with the Great War just around the corner and with the Republican Easter Rising not far away, but the idea of identity and change, of the times mirroring a significant moment in individuals' lives can also be found in Dubliners.

In Counterparts and The Boarding House (and indeed The Dead), events come to a point where there is no return to the past. The characters find themselves obliged to reassess their lives and try to assert some kind of authority over their own destiny, only to find that there are external forces that are beyond their ability to control or influence. The stories that make up Synnott's two short Dubliners operas are not connected and the tone and the revelations reached in each is markedly different, but Synnott's brilliantly brings out the respective commonalities, differences and qualities that lie at the heart of both works.

There's an almost impressionistic flow to both pieces, but in Counterparts it's one that is determined by the alcoholic haze and rush of emotions that course through the day of a Dublin office clerk. Farrington has already nipped out for a few quick ones during his breaks and all he can think about is getting back out to the warm happy glow of being in a pub with his friends. There are however all kinds of competing forces at work that prevent Farrington from mastering his situation, and not just in the workplace where his boss is putting pressure on him to urgently to copy documents for a contract.

Alcohol is a force, desire is a force, conceit is a force, masculinity is a force and all of them give Farrington a misplaced sense of self-worth. His bragging to his friends of his witty put-down of his boss when he asks him if he takes him for a fool ("I don't think that's a fair question to put to me") only carries so much weight, and as his money runs out, the alcohol buzz wears off and Farrington receives a few injuries to his pride, so too does his sense of humour. None of his efforts have brought him any satisfaction, and when he returns home he exerts his dwindling sense of control and authority by beating one of his children.

It's hardly the stuff of opera, but Synnott on piano with a string quartet, gives this narrative a wonderful coherence and a feeling for mood, but it only really holds together when it is played alongside and contrasted with The Boarding House. It's a story that seems even less likely to work on the stage, but Synnott's response to that is to just be even more creative with rhythms, with the overlaying of vocal lines and with a construction that wonderfully leap-frogs from one character focus to the next.

It even starts with a narrator, Jack Mooney, who lets it be known that the moment of truth is dawning for one of the guests at his mother's boarding house. Bob Doran has been carrying on with Polly who works there, and it appears that her mother Mrs Mooney has permitted the liberty to be taken or at least turned a blind eye to it; but in reality she has just been biding her time. Doran's fate is sealed before the opera even starts, but he just hasn't realised it yet. He thinks he still has a say in the outcome, but when the summons comes from Mrs Mooney, his bachelor days are effectively numbered.

The forces he has to contend with are brute force (Jack Mooney), the bonds of family, the ideas of right and wrong that are ingrained in this society by religion, and with it the irrefutable certainty that one has to pay for one's sins. The personal wishes of the individual are rendered insignificant in the face of such huge social and cultural forces, and the inevitability with which they pile up on Bob Doran, as well as the inherent humour that lies in the situation, are brilliantly brought out in this wonderfully constructed opera version of the story.

The flow of words and impressions, the flow from one character's perspective to another is brilliantly brought out in the flow of the musical score that Andrew Synnott leads from piano, but this is more than just musical accompaniment and more than an exercise in craft. Between the music, the words and the staging, the operas bring out the deeper essence and universality of these timeless stories. The gorgeous set designs by Paul O'Mahony who also worked on the OTC's gorgeous Acis and Galatea (there's a man who knows his pubs!) and Joan O'Clery's costumes retain something of the period, but Annabelle Comyn's direction ensures that the situations, experiences and the nature of the characters remains recognisable and relevant, and not just to early twentieth century "Dubliners".

The complementary nature of Counterparts and The Boarding House can also be found in the lyrical treatment and Synnott and Riordan have created wonderfully lyrical and poetic vocal lines with rhyming couplets for both pieces. Using the same cast members for the two short operas allows further connections to be drawn; not so much in characters as in their predicaments and expression of them. Cormac Lawlor however only has a singing role in Counterparts as Farrington, but it's one that evidently carries the whole tone of the piece and his timing and delivery of each of the varied moods the alcoholic clerk goes through is superb. The Boarding House has a larger number of leads from Emma Nash's Polly, Anna Jeffers's Mrs Mooney, Andrew Gavin's Bob Doran and David Howes's Jack, who all impress on an individual level, as well as giving wonderfully complementary performances.

Premiered at the 2017 Wexford Festival Opera, Opera Theatre Company's production of Andrew Synnott's Dubliners has a further three performances at the Samuel Beckett Theatre in Dublin from the 9 - 11th November 2017, but I would hope and expect that this lyrical, thoughtful and entertaining work will have a longer life beyond its initial run.

Links: Wexford Festival Opera, Opera Theatre Company

Cleary - Vampirella (Dublin, 2017)

Siobhán Cleary - Vampirella

Royal Irish Academy of Music, Lir Academy of Dramatic Art, 2017

Andrew Synnott, Tom Creed, Sarah Brady, Philip Keegan, Tim Shaffrey, Eimear McCarthy Luddy

Smock Alley Theatre 1662 - 23rd March 2017

Aside from Marschner's Der Vampyr and one or two other obscure early 19th century works based on John Polidori's creation, the vampire story is one aspect of mythology that hasn't really been explored in opera. Bram Stoker's Dracula however has tended to present the myth in a relatively more modern context with Gothic overtones that tap into deeper psychological drives and impulses arisng out of a specific period in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century when psychoanalysis was starting to probe the dark horrors of the repressed Victorian-era mindset. Rational thought was starting to replace barbarism and superstition, but in spite of this the modern twentieth century would unleash two greater monsters in the form of two world wars.

If opera hasn't yet seen fit to explore these areas and open up the themes of vampire mythology, film and literature has; particularly in the writings of Angela Carter. It's somewhat appropriate then that it's a female composer who writes a contemporary opera based on an Angela Carter story and radio play and that Siobhán Cleary's second opera should also have its world premiere in Dublin, the home town of Bram Stoker. Vampirella manages to draw from that sense of shared history and the collective fear that Stoker tapped into, but applies it to the modern imagery of the Goth and Carter's modern feminist interpretation - some might say subversion - of myth and fairy-tale. There's something of an overturning of the roles here from the traditional fairy-tale, with the Prince of modernity not so much coming to wake the Sleeping Beauty of the past as unwittingly kill her and all that she stands for.

There is a similar blend of historical and modern revisionism in the Dublin world premiere of Vampirella. The set designs adhere closely to the familiar imagery of the dark and Gothic almost to the point of caricature, with dry-ice aplenty and dark figures in black cloaks bearing candles populating the stage. The venue of the Smock Alley Theatre, originally built in 1662, added an historic quality that if it didn't exactly give it a sense of authenticity at least provided the same kind of contrast between the historic and a modern outlook on mythology that seeks to reinterpret it for a new age. If nothing else, it provided acres of atmosphere.

Even though the story remains set in the year 1914, the plot itself is very much concerned with bringing the vampire myth into the modern age. Count Dracula is dead, killed by a virgin on a virgin horse, but his spirit and practices live on in his daughter, the Countess. It's another innocent who will be the death of the last of this line, a young English soldier called Hero travelling on bicycle through the Carpathian mountains while on furlough. The storyline follows along much the same path as the original Dracula story; Hero encountering strange locals from a village near the castle, becoming somewhat bewitched by the presence of the Countess despite her unusually pointed teeth, accidentally cutting himself and witnessing the troubling response that she has towards the spilling of his blood.

Despite the Gothic trappings and imagery of the traditional vampire story, the more modern outlook upon it is brought out in librettist Katy Hayes' adaptation of Angela Carter's story. Hero is versed in the psychoanalytical investigations that have recently been documented in Vienna, particularly in relation to female behaviour, and he can't help but apply them to what he knows of the Countess. At the same time he is aware of natural drives and impulses and cannot deny an erotic attraction in the deadly situation that can't be entirely rationalised. For a young reserved and somewhat innocent Englishman, this presents quite a complicated set of feelings.

Nature is evoked in a number of ways, again much in the same allegorical 'children of the night' way that Stoker may have applied it in his story. It's a cat who scratches the young Englishman, unable to resist its nature and the implication of course is that the Countess and her line - as a representation of the barbaric ways of the past - are no more capable of resisting those same natural urges and inclinations. In 1914 however, we are now on the cusp of the modern age, capable of analysing and understanding behaviour, but despite the apparent victory of rationalism over barbarism, Hero will end up dying in a war that takes blood-letting to an even greater and more impersonally mechanised scale.

There's a collision of ancient and modern in the storyline and the challenge for composer Siobhán Cleary is to find a match for that in the music. What kind of influence can you draw upon to create a contemporary Gothic score? Some of the influences might be evident and others surprising, but Cleary comes up with an unusual blend drawn from a number of sources that successfully finds its own voice specific to the drama. There's frequent use of a chanted chorus with tight harmonies, some traditional European folk influences, some string quartet arrangements that suggest the romanticism of Schubert (Death and the Maiden?) or something more like Brahms in order to evoke a sensibility closer to the turn of the twentieth century setting.

The hints of older forms of music are blended with a more modern use of sounds, electronics and atmospherics that have more to do with the Spectralism of Grisey and Murail, but greater use of the harp gives a softer and more romantic edge that is more akin to the music of Kaija Saariaho. Individual instruments are also assigned to individuals, but even the singing of each of the characters has its own style. Sarah Brady produces a beautiful and assured lyrical soprano for the Countess; Tim Shaffrey's narrative baritone is electronically enhanced and supplemented for the observing spirit of Count Dracula; Philip Keegan's no-nonsense Hero is given more spoken dialogue than singing; as is Eimear McCarthy Luddy as Mrs Beane, although with her character's sing-song Scottish accent, she is more prone to breaking out into lyrical phrasing in a lovely singing voice that isn't used enough.

The latter character also introduces an element of humour into the otherwise moody proceedings, a tone that is undoubtedly in the spirit of the original to prevent it from being taken too seriously or gothically, but it doesn't always seem to sit well. The varied patterns, textures and styles of the music however do manage to acquire an unexpected coherence through Andrew Synnott's conducting of the RIAM chamber orchestra. Lyrically and dramatically Vampirella might not make any great statement, but it shows Siobhán Cleary as a composer willing to try to find an appropriate lyrical style for the needs of a dramatic situation that incorporates many of the characteristics of the Gothic-Romantic; not so much viewing the horrors of the past through the eyes of today, but reflecting on today with a foot in the past.

Links: RIAM, Smock Alley Theatre, CMC Ireland

Frid - The Diary of Anne Frank

Grigory Frid - The Diary of Anne Frank

Opera Theatre Company, 2011

Andrew Synnott, Annilese Miskimmon, Ingrid Craigie, Ani Maldijan

Waterfront Studio, Belfast - 20th October 2011

As the recent rediscovery of Weinberg’s The Passenger has shown at its long delayed premiere at Bregenz in 2010 and in the transfer of that highly acclaimed production to the English National Opera, in the hands of a good composer stories around the Holocaust can be dealt with in opera not only in a sensitive manner, but in a way that manages to get to the heart of a subject that is difficult to express through a more conventional dramatic format. As the title and consequently the source of Grigory Frid’s opera work suggests however, a rather different and more intimate approach is required for such an important and well-known work as The Diary of Anne Frank.

Composed in 1972 as a one-act mono-opera (to be sung by one person), there is thankfully no attempt by the Russian composer, now 96 years old, to extend the scope of the diary by dramatising scenes and introducing any of the family or peripheral characters that Anne Frank writes about. While this maintains an integrity and an intimacy to the nature of the diary-format, it provides other considerable challenges for the composer. Not only does Frid have to compress Anne’s thoughts and remarkable observations down into a work that is under an hour long while retaining the essence and importance of what she writes about, but the sheer enormity of expressing those thoughts and emotions through music, through a chamber orchestra of nine musicians moreover, must also surely have been a daunting prospect.

It’s to the credit of Grigory Frid – and also to the performers of the Opera Theatre Company’s 2010 production of The Diary of Anne Frank revived here for the 2011 Belfast Arts Festival – that the qualities of Anne Frank’s writing and its impact is perfectly accompanied by the music in a manner that is wholly appropriate. There’s a difficult balance to maintain however in accompanying the libretto (taken directly from Anne’s diary and not rewritten) with theatre music that matches the tone and the tempo of the writing, but which is also expressive in its own right without over-emphasising the words and without imposing any false sentimentality, which would be so easy to do. The piano led-score with the chamber orchestration however is surprisingly varied and inventive, slightly avant-garde in places, jazzy in others, plaintive and reflective when necessary, yet always seeming to be perfectly pitched towards the content, the emotions and the underlying implications about the Holocaust that aren’t directly expressed in the libretto.

It’s difficult also to approach a staging of such a work with only one singer, but the production design by Nicky Shaw and the simple but remarkably effective lighting design by Tina MacHugh were equally as impressive here, the staging as imaginative and inventive and as complementary to the opera work as anything I’ve seen on a grander scale. With only a single piece of background, the stage was nevertheless transformed by its opening up, like a book or diary flipped open by the singer herself, the “pages” containing windows and relief designs that evoked the enclosed world of Anne Frank. Other props were drawn from under floorboards, again giving the impression of hiding and secrecy, of being pop-ups from a book, as well as being imagery drawn from Anne’s own personal world. The simple profile outline of a child, reflected in light and shadow during Anne’s dream of her friend Liess, perhaps the best example of enormous effectiveness through such simple means.

That applies to the score, it applies to the staging, but it also applies to the singing. A perfectly pitched performance from Ani Maldijan took into consideration the nature of the subject of the libretto as well the fact that it is being delivered by a young girl and she sang it simply, heart-felt yet unadorned, allowing the strength of the words – drawn directly from Anne Frank’s writing – to speak for themselves without any inappropriate or unnecessary over-emphatic mannerisms. A beautiful and powerful little work, the Opera Theatre Company’s impressive staging and performance of The Diary of Anne Frank was not only considerate of the nature of the work and its source, but like Frid’s composition itself, it helps keep the meaning of Anne Frank’s diary relevant and alive, reaching out to more and more people. Long may it continue to run.