Bernstein - Trouble in Tahiti & Poulenc - La voix humaine (Buxton, 2025)

Trouble in Tahiti - Leonard Bernstein
La voix humaine - Francis Poulenc

Buxton Festival Opera, 2025

Iwan Davies, Daisy Evans, Charles Rice, Hanna Hipp, Chloé Hare-Jones, Harun Tekin, Ross Cumming, Allison Cook

Buxton Opera House, 23rd July 2025

There have been double bills of short operas at the Buxton Festival in the past that have adventurously even managed to connect two different works that appear to have very little in common. I reviewed The Maiden in the Tower & Kashchei the Immortal by Sibelius and Rimsky-Korsakov in 2012 and La Princesse Jaune and La Colombe by Saint-Saëns and Gounod in 2013, but I don't think there has been one since then. This double bill for the 2025 Buxton International Festival is a hard sell however; two works with a very bleak outlook on relationships which, for all their differences, are actually complementary on some level. It still takes a little creativity to link Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti with Poulenc's La voix humaine, but in the Buxton tradition Daisy Evans managed to do that quite successfully, even if that meant doubling up the misery.

As bleak as the outlook is in each of these works individually, their strength is that they are very good at what they do. What they do is present a miniature opera with a concentrated intensity that suits material that would probably be less effective (and unendurable) if they were drawn out any longer. Their very concision make them special, allowing a singular mood to be explored, offering a rare intensity that would feel out of place in a longer work (although Ambroise Thomas has a go at rivalling such emotions with his long soliloquies and a mad scene that lasted a whole Act in Hamlet at the Buxton Festival on the previous evening). Whether the two works gain or not from being connected - or whether they even should be brought together - is debatable, but as far as the Buxton production went it did intensify the works without overburdening their inherent simplicity.

Trouble in Tahiti is a challenge in itself, almost setting itself up to be deeply unlikeable in a way that is hard to define. Bernstein's treads a tricky line between parody and satire, between seducing the audience with catchy show tunes that celebrate the ideal of the typical suburban American married couple (of the 1950s) by setting it to sunny music, with a cheesy chorus, radio jingles and musical numbers while at the same time throwing in some dissonance that hints that there is a dark and corrupting side to the American dream that lies beneath the surface. The libretto throws out some cliched lines, undoubtedly sold by idealistic musicals like the film 'Trouble in Tahiti' that Dinah goes to see, but yet they also reveal truths about the circumstances of a married couple at a standstill in their relationship and about to grow more distant.

There is a lot to 'unpack' in the contrasts of the sunny music and the reality of the disintegration of a relationship, so what you probably don't need in a production of Trouble in Tahiti is anything that just makes it even more 'troubling'. Or maybe you do, because while the opera hints at Sam being a bit on the fresh side with his secretary - something he doesn't even consider as cheating, but just a part of conforming to the natural law of being a man - Daisy Evans' production went further to show evidence of Sam's philandering. She does this quite cleverly (and maliciously) by tying Bernstein's work into Poulenc's La voix humaine.

The presence of Allison Cook behind a lace curtain in a warmly lit room off to one side of stage was an early clue to what was to come in the second part of the double bill, the little box room practically an ideal of a typical set for Poulenc's La voix humaine, a room designed to feel perfectly claustrophobic for a woman waiting on a phone call from her lover, feeling trapped and caged with no way out of her predicament. What you might not have expected however was Sam to wander into the room while he is supposed to be out at the gym and start undressing the lady in the room. It's there that Sam goes to deliver his master of the universe soliloquy, boasting of his masculine superiority, winning another kind of 'trophy'. Is the lady of La voix humaine his secretary, Mrs Brown? She's going to be let down by the time we get to the second part of the double bill. Things really aren't going to get any more cheerful.

"That was the most depressing opera I've ever seen", a lady exclaimed at the interval in the bar of the upper circle at the Buxton Opera House. "Wait until you see the next one", I warned. I didn't of course spoil it for the lady by telling her that La voix humaine is about a woman unravelling at the breakup of a relationship who attempts - and maybe even succeeds - in committing suicide while on the phone to her ex-lover. Perhaps I should have said something, as I'm sure she went home traumatised after Allison Cook's performance as the lady left hanging on the telephone.

That indeed is the unfortunate premise and fate of the lady of Poulenc's (what is usually a) monodrama. The perspective of the double bill production changes accordingly however, the little box room off to the side of Trouble in Tahiti opening up to show a woman spilling sleeping tablets over the dresser and floor as she tries to reconnect a faulty telephone connection so that she can pour her heart out to a man who traditionally we don't actually see on the stage. It's usually the case that no other figures are seen and no other voices heard - or needed in this intense piece - but here the phone is picked up in the home of Sam and Dinah.

Given this insight into the other side of the phone line serves to take in the wider context of what we are witnessing. We see Sam making silent gestures, trying to be placatory and being somewhat insensitive to what he probably sees as emotional blackmail, while it's clear that it really amounts to a call for help to simply hear a sympathetic human voice. That isn't found either when Dinah, tired of these mysterious calls to her husband, picks up the phone and is devastated by what she hears. Not for the woman's sake, of course, but for her own marriage and for which she will probably forgive her husband in the end.

La voix humaine doesn't need this. It's debatable whether it helps in any way to visualise the person on the other end of the line, and take such a determined stand on what their nature might be. We already get hints of that from the one-sided conversation, so it doesn't need to be spelled out. There is something to be said for just letting us see the woman, 'Elle', and Allison Cook did not need any additional props or bodies (the chorus from Tahiti also make mournful appearances) to get across the state of mind of her character. But the touches and the connections were subtle and unobtrusive, and it seemed that rather than opening up the claustrophobic drama, it may indeed have made it feel even more traumatic.

There was perhaps a greater challenge for Iwan Davies and the Buxton Festival Orchestra to marry together the two completely different styles of music for the two short operas, but they presented both superbly. As with the outstanding Hamlet the previous evening, the key to really making all these pieces work is in the singing. Perhaps even more so here since there is a lot of intense solo singing, although Hamlet had that too. Charles Rice as Sam and Hanna Hipp as Dinah were both tremendous, engaging you in their own personal worlds and making you feel the depth of their troubles in their clashes. Allison Cook, much like her Gertrude the previous night, also had a rather extended physical meltdown in this production of La voix humaine as 'Elle', and carried you along, all too emotionally involved in the torment she was going through. 

Whoever was responsible for pairing these two operas together - I imagine it was the Festival Opera director Adrian Kelly - really challenged the audience and put you through the wringer. You weren't going to see many smiling faces when you left the opera house, but it would be hard not to be impressed with the unique qualities of these works, the performances and the creative artistry in making two short operas that never sound all that appealing in synopsis come fully alive and show deep insights into their human characters.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Alfano - Risurrezione (Wexford, 2017)

Franco Alfano - Risurrezione

Wexford Festival Opera, 2017

Francesco Cilluffo, Rosetta Cucchi, Gerard Schneider, Anne Sophie Duprels, Charles Rice, Romina Tomasoni, Louise Innes

National Opera House, Wexford - 2 November 2017

Late in his life, Leo Tolstoy embraced a radical form of Christianity and would look back with disgust at the indulgence and sin of his former aristocratic upbringing. Adopting a more ascetic lifestyle he would also come to repudiate his greatest works, including War and Peace and Anna Karenina, believing that art and literature had no purpose unless it was instructive. Some of his descriptions of his former life of dissolution can be found in the early semi-autobiographical work Childhood, Boyhood and Youth, and a more reflective and penitent side of his rebirth can be found in later works like The Kingdom of God is Within You, The Forged Coupon and Resurrection.

The idea of penitence and rebirth is evidently very much to the fore in Resurrection. It might seem primarily like an exercise in guilt, but Resurrection is not so much about wallowing in self-pity and self-abasement as much as reflecting on how one's actions affect others, and whether any real good can be brought about by repentance and a change of heart. Tolstoy reportedly wasn't impressed by the indulgence of Resurrection being adapted into an opera that caters to a well-off audience, but you can also see why Franco Alfano's Risurrezione didn't set the world alight and even now remains a neglected piece. It is a gloomy affair for the most part and Alfano's treatment of the work is as serious as it gets, but it is also beautiful and ultimately uplifting.

The opera is structured neatly into four parts that, since the story is instructive and not bogged down with distracting sidelines, are easily summarised. Prince Dmitri reflects Count Tolstoy's early life of indulgence of the aristocratic lifestyle, without a thought or care for the needs and feelings of others. In Act I he seduces the maid Katiusha on a fleeting visit to the family mansion and then disappears again, forgetting about her.  In Act II we discover that Katiusha is pregnant from this encounter and as a consequence she has been thrown out of the house and her life has fallen into ruin. She abandons an attempt to tell Dmitri about the situation when she discovers him with a prostitute.

Dmitri belatedly discovers Katiusha's fate, which has ended up with her becoming a prostitute and falsely imprisoned, and he tries to make up for what has happened in Act III, visiting the fallen woman in prison. He pleads that he knew nothing of what had happened, that he is still in love with her and that he can help get her released from the harsh prison environment so that they can marry, but Katiusha remains impervious to his entreaties and doesn't believe that he can really change his ways.

Alfano sets Risurrezione very much in the Italian verismo style of the day, which proves to be quite appropriate, at least for these first three acts. It's actually not unlike La Bohème, the meeting of Dmitri and Katiusha in Act I similar to that of Rodolfo and Mimi; on shaky ground from the start, the brief spark between them soon extinguished by the cruel reality of their circumstances. In Risurrezione, Act II and III also relate closely to the situation in Act III of La Bohème, where attempts to rekindle the spark seem even more unlikely; the couple despairing of the impossibility of their union. Surely death is also on the horizon in Risurrezione?

Well yes and no, and that's the point of Tolstoy's work. Hard lessons have to be learned, there needs to be an acceptance of one's true self and true repentance and reparation. Dmitri tries to show this, but it is worthless without Katiusha's acceptance and forgiveness, which can also only come with an acceptance of her own true self. This is visually represented in Rosetta Cucchi's impressive Wexford production by a young girl seen briefly throughout, but to be fair it's hinted at in Alfano's score, which is not as relentlessly downbeat as it sounds, but alive to dynamic and emotional tone.

The focus is very much on Dmitri and Katiusha for most of Act I, much of Act II, the latter part of Act III and all of Act IV.  Considering the challenging nature of their characters' predicaments, that places a lot of pressure on Gerard Schneider and Anne Sophie Duprels, but both take their parts exceptionally well, remaining strong and consistently lyrical throughout. Alfano does however break the story down into memorable scenes with a greater variety of dramatic situation than might be expected, even if variation of the overall despairing tenor of the work up to the final scene is negligible.

That makes Risurrezione quite a challenging work also for a conductor trying to harness Alfano's verismo score towards the true character of Tolstoy's original work. Francesco Cilluffo however drew a magnificent performance out of the Wexford Festival orchestra that was entirely sympathetic to the sensibility of the work and the composer's treatment, holding to a consistent through-line while finding the right adjustments of volume and tempo to allow the score to hit all of its dramatic points. The Italianate orchestration might seem at odds with the spiritual Russian side of the work, but Cilluffo uses the verismo aspects of the score as another way of trying to find "truth", albeit in a very different way from Tolstoy.

The conclusion then in Act IV is worth waiting for, even though the treatment up to that point never drags or begs indulgence but is rather just earnest and purposeful. For the climactic moment of enlightenment Alfano has to abandon his verismo principles for a heavenly choir as an inner revelation dawns (literally) on both Dmitri and Katiusha and takes them to a spiritual awakening. It really does strike the perfect note of transcendental attainment that the work should be aiming to reach. The traditional operatic death that might be expected at the conclusion then is replaced by a metaphorical death, a letting go of the past and to ways that have held both Dmitri and Katiusha back from being open to their better nature, allowing them to be reborn, resurrected.

Links: Wexford Festival Opera

Gruber - Gloria, A Pigtale (Buxton Festival 2014 - Buxton)

H.K. Gruber - Gloria, A Pigtale

Buxton Festival, 2014

Geoffrey Patterson, Frederic Wake-Walker, Gillian Keith, Jessica Walker, Andrew Dickinson, Charles Rice, Sion Goronwy

Buxton Opera House - 26 July 2014

At the Buxton Festival, you don't just get the uncommon, you occasionally get the very unusual. HK Gruber's Gloria, A Pigtale is however not just an indication of the kind of adventurous programming you find at Buxton, it's also an example of how expansive an artform opera can be in the range of musical, theatrical and narrative ideas it can encompass.

Defining Gloria, A Pigtale then, much less evaluating its qualities, is difficult. Very difficult. Abandoning any attempt to figure out what it was all about, whether the bizarre story was supposed to be allegorical on some level and just what part the music played in the character of the piece, I found it was better to just let my preconceptions go, enjoy its idiosyncrasies and just consider it a bit of fun. The loving attention that had gone into the staging and the performances of the cast and the musicians showed that they were clearly enjoying the opportunities the work presented and were going along with the flow, so perhaps that's also the best way for the audience to approach it.

The plot, if you want to call it that, concerns Gloria, a pig with golden curls who is more than a little bit deluded. Her fanciful ideas about her station make her the laughing stock of the other farmyard animals, but she's determined that she will find and marry her Prince Charming. Somewhere along the way she dreams of Hollywood hotdogs, and seems to get involved with a frog (I think), but when this doesn't work out Gloria looks elsewhere. Her strange fancies lead her to mistakenly believe that the butcher's interest in her is romantic, when all he sees is prime pork sausages. Eventually Rodney, a wild boar looking like a Wookie, falls in love with her and saves her from the butcher's knife. They marry, have piglets and don't live happily ever after, the boar realising too late his mistake in marrying such a mad creature.

Like the plot, the music is something of a mix of styles, but it nonetheless has a consistent style and tone of its own. It inevitably has something of a Kurt Weill feel to it, a bit of German jazz cabaret, some Bavarian oompah brass and a lot of beautiful melodic harp playing. There's a wide range of singing and narrative voices with little actual songs but there's good interaction between chanted verse, narration and arioso soprano singing. It's a style that suits the somewhat off-the-wall fairytale subject approach here, and it's one that works equally as well for Gruber's latest opera (albeit on a grander scale), Tales from the Vienna Woods, which just premiered this summer at the Bregenz Festival (where this Mahogany Opera Group production of Gloria subsequently travels on tour).

Mamoru Iriguchi's cabaret stage set designs for Frederic Wake-Walker's production plays well on the delightful absurdity of the situation. The band play from a raised platform to the back of a stage that has a curtain backdrop of rows of sausages. It's as sausages that each of the performers is ejected onto the stage, colourfully dressed in a pink theme. Wearing a wig of golden curls a body suit and a pink tutu, batting her eyelashes and striking poses, Gillian Keith's Gloria is not dressed to look like a pig in any conventional way, the colour pink being perhaps the only concession. The bizarre situations are likewise colourfully and inventively depicted, the stage kept busy with inflatable pigs, costume changes and role-switching.

A satire, a burlesque revue, an opera, Gloria, a Pigtale is probably also an allegory of some sorts, but precisely what isn't entirely clear. For life I suppose, at a basic level, the sausage as a metaphor for the fact that "we're all meat wrapped in skin". Really, it's just an excuse to push around some ideas, wrap then in a skin of music and singing and see what comes out of the sausage-opera machine at the end. Like life also, there's not much point in over-analysing it - it will never make sense or come to a happy end. Might as well just enjoy the experience.