Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Così Fan Tutte
NI Opera, Belfast - 2017
Nicholas Chalmers, Adele Thomas, Kiandra Howarth, Heather Lowe, Samuel Dale Johnson, Sam Furness, Aoife Miskelly, John Molloy
Grand Opera House, Belfast - 17 November 2017
Opera in Ireland is going through a period of change at the moment with a new national opera company being formed in the south of the country and a new director taking over the running of opera in the north. Considering how successful Northern Ireland Opera has been over the last few years, there would undoubtedly be some interest to see how Walter Sutcliffe would follow, taking over from Oliver Mears. I don't think there would have been any concerns about a high standard being maintained, but it remained to be seen whether there would be any change in repertoire and style. I'd say that things have got off to a very good start with Così Fan Tutte.
It's been a while since I've seen anyone approach Così Fan Tutte as a pure comedy. With Mozart's third collaboration with Lorenzo da Ponte is often regarded as being a lesser work than The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni, perhaps because it is a little more overtly frivolous. In order to give it the true stature that many think it undoubtedly deserves and address the genuine social commentary that is hidden behind the gender comedy, directors like Michael Haneke and Christophe Honoré have tended to work extra hard to try and give the opera a little more of contemporary edginess that is worth exploring, but perhaps doesn't really match the true spirit of the work.
It was refreshing then to see that this first new production with Walter Sutcliffe in charge of NI Opera didn't set out to make a statement, or if there is a statement to this Così Fan Tutte it's that the intention is to be true to the spirit of the works rather than impose any kind of inappropriate modern revisionism upon them. That doesn't mean either that there can't be a refreshing and original approach taken to the work, and one interesting development is that this Così Fan Tutte opera is directed by Adele Thomas, who - judging from her biography in the programme - is a theatre director with no previous experience of opera.
Whatever her background, there's no question that Thomas's setting of Così Fan Tutte in the era of the Hollywood silent movies of the 1920s is completely in the spirit of the work. Or it is for the first half of the opera anyway; the second half perhaps needed a little more. For the first half of this production however there was a permanent grin on my face all the way through to the interval. Conducted by Nicholas Chalmers with attention to mood and played with spirit and a lightness of touch by the Ulster Orchestra, this was joyous, glorious Mozart at his most playful, buoyant and brilliant.
Trying to give some credibility to the rather innocent couples of Così Fan Tutte can be difficult, unless one does indeed set it in a more innocent age. The 1920s is not such an innocent age as an idealised one, where the excess and indulgence of an America that hadn't fully experienced the horrors of the Great War in Europe and had yet to suffer the impact of the Wall Street Crash at the end of the decade. For many, particularly in Hollywood, this life was an endless party and not to be taken too seriously. And it's delightfully depicted that way in this production, with a few bottles of champagne always ready to hand and a conga line of revellers with balloons and streamers weaving through the proceedings at regular intervals.
For the first half of the opera at least, this captures the spirit that Mozart weaves through Così Fan Tutte perfectly, and you could even say that it anticipates the darker side of the opera in the second half when the party inevitably comes to an end and the characters have to pick up the pieces. Heedless of the consequences, they belatedly discover that there is a price to be paid when the fun comes to an end, and that life can also involve deception, betrayal and disappointment. In Hollywood, the reality would also hit home with scandals, affairs and alcoholism destroying the promising careers of many of the silent film actors - the lifestyle ending more careers than the advent of talkies.
Adele Thomas tries to bring out this aspect in the direction of the characters and Nicholas Chalmers certainly finds the rich sophistication of how Mozart depicts those contradictory sentiments, but the necessary tone isn't quite as well established in the second half of the production. I think the limitations of Hannah Clark's set designs don't extend as well into the second half. Wonderfully colourful and vibrant, with curtains revealing stages within stages to match the play acting of the comic drama, a little more could have been done perhaps with flickering projections or silent-movie imagery to differentiate or vary the tone in the latter part of the show.
Thomas however clearly worked hard with the singers to bring real personality to each of the characters, and it's a measure of the individual performances that each one of them made a good impression. The most confident performances were from the most experienced members of the cast; John Molloy and Aoife Miskelly. Molloy was an outstanding Don Alfonso, neither calculating nor manipulative, but one rather who wanted to enlighten the younger innocents with his experience of life. The role was comfortably within Molloy's range and he sang it unimposingly but with characteristic aplomb and with deference to character and situation. His double-act with Aoife Miskelly's similarly unshowy, comically nuanced and delicately expressive Despina was a joy to watch.
As you would expect, there was a playful innocence to Flordiligi, Dorabella, Guglielmo and Ferrando that was well brought out in the production, and the casting of young lyrical singers is key to making that convincing. There was nothing sinister suggested in the male roles, which are played with the same kind of youthful fervour as the female roles. If there was perhaps a tendency to overact by Samuel Dale Johnson and (more so) by Sam Furness in the male roles, that could however be seen in keeping with the silent movie acting style. The girls were really deserving of the production's focus however, Kiandra Howarth impressing as Fiordiligi and Heather Lowe bringing that extra little characterisation to Dorabella with little interpolations, gasps and sighs fitted into the singing expression.
And it was in Italian! That might not be the most significant change of direction in the new NI Opera, and I'm sure other works (such as the forthcoming Threepenny Opera) will suit the previous English language singing only policy, but it's a good to have a more flexible approach and Mozart's well-known operas always work better in the original language. It also meant that the occasional 20s-era touches to the surtitles, which might have been inaudible in singing performance, took some of the sting out of Da Ponte's libretto and got plenty of laughs. The lyrical Italian singing and rapid-fire recitative (to a suitably silent-movie like fortepiano) certainly posed no problems for the cast. Or the chorus, who were in wonderful voice and an energetic presence. Hugely entertaining, this was a very promising start to a new NI Opera season.
Links: NI Opera
Thomas Adès - Powder Her Face
Northern Ireland Opera, Wide Open Opera, Belfast - 2017
Nicholas Chalmers, Antony McDonald, Mary Plazas, Adrian Dwyer, Stephen Richardson, Daire Halpin
Lyric Theatre, Belfast - 27th January 2017
Musical boundaries have certainly been pushed over the last seven years that Oliver Mears has presided as artistic director of the newly formed Northern Ireland Opera, and they don't come much more daring and frighteningly modern than Thomas Adès's 1995 opera Powder Her Face. Like all works involved in scandal however there's an indistinct boundary between whether the scandal lies in the source material - here, the notorious 1950s' divorce trial of the Duchess of Argyll and the detail revealed about her promiscuous lifestyle - or with the opera itself, infamously well-known for its rather graphic musical depiction of one of the sexual scenes in the opera. As is often the case with such material, the notoriety rarely lives up to the reality, but NI Opera's collaboration with Wide Open Opera on Adès's Powder Her Face makes a convincing case for its music-theatre qualities.
The nature of the material and how it is approached in Powder Her Face presents such challenges and if it's not pitched right it's more likely to provoke giggles than shock, but in reality neither response is particularly helpful in getting to the point of the opera. The point of Powder Her Face however, it must be said, has always been difficult to judge. Director Antony McDonald recognises that there's no way to avoid the elements of shock and giggles, but the trick really is to effectively control where the shocks and giggles should be, and to try to put them in service of the human story that is too often overlooked in the case of the Duchess of Argyll.
It's the human story that seems to be lacking in Philip Hensher's libretto. The opera is divided into eight scenes that cover the years from 1934 through to 1990. The scenes and the limited number of characters involved don't seem to be particularly well chosen and scarcely seem adequate to shed any real psychological light on the Duchess or even the extent of her scandalous extra-marital activities. The main content of the opera is framed by the two scenes in 1990, which seems to provide a distancing social context for the work, viewing the past through modern eyes. There seems to be as much emphasis placed on the peripheral characters of the servants and the hotel staff as there does on the Duchess, and their response to her, to her position and to her notoriety is emphasised in the libretto.
In the 1990 scenes, the hotel staff are deeply disrespectful, putting on her coats and jewellery and acting out the contrast between her airs and graces and the reality of her disgraced reputation. Their behaviour is in marked contrast to the how the servants and the 'lower classes' behave in the 1930s, the 1950s and the 1970s. Subservience and simmering resentment at their treatment, not to mention being used for sexual gratification, seems to deteriorate in equal measure with the decline of the reputation of the Duchess of Argyll. If the libretto suggests that Powder Her Face is a play about changing attitudes towards class and social orders, it doesn't seem to reveal anything profound or revelatory. It's the music of Thomas Adès however that gives the work another dimension.
And it's the music that suggests the tone to adopt that best suits the presentation of the opera. Antony McDonald previously directed the NI Opera/Wide Open Opera production of Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest, an equally challenging work where tone and presentation is of vital importance, and helped turn it into one of the most astonishing and entertaining productions I've ever seen. (Can we see it again please?). He seems to get the tone absolutely right yet again in this elegant and stylish Powder Her Face, not relying solely on the literal content of the libretto, but finding rather ways of presenting it that respond to the playful period musical touches with an underlying discord that contrasts with the rather more tragic personal fate of the Duchess. The Belfast audience dutifully gasped when provoked, giggled at all the right moments and responded with enthusiasm at the conclusion.
That kind of response is never solely related to just one successful aspect of a production; it all has to work together. Sensitivity to the content of the libretto and the tone of the music is one thing, but the underlying humanity of the characterisation is best served by the singing and the acting performances. That's particularly the case with the depiction of the Duchess of Argyll. Judging by the 1990 framing scenes, the audience are being asked to sympathise with this woman without there seeming to be any real humanising content provided in either the scenes or the music, but Mary Plazas - who clearly has great experience with this role - showed how much dignity there was in a woman subject to pressures of her libido and her position. It's a terrific performance that completely humanises the role.
It's this aspect that is vital not only in the understanding of Powder Her Face, it's what also ensures that the opera has a greater universality and life-span beyond the social context or the period class issues it raises. It's the degree of truth in the human story that lies underneath such issues that will determine whether the opera can sit alongside the depictions of women at odds with their times and society in La Traviata, Madama Butterfly or Lulu. As it stands, it's impossible to judge whether Powder Her Face will have a place alongside such works, but the Northern Ireland Opera/Wide Open Opera production and Mary Plazas's performance certainly got beneath the surface of a woman who is struggling to control and balance her own desires against the expectations and judgements of society, even as that society gradually changes.
The whole vitality of work, its relevance across the different periods that present differing responses of an unforgiving society, are very much contained within the performances of the other three singing roles in the opera. It's amazing in fact just how much can be conveyed by the brief scenes of no great expositional nature when you have a small cast that are capable of imbuing them with verve, personality and an essential degree of unselfconsciousness. Adrian Dwyer, Stephen Richardson and Daire Halpin throw themselves into the roles, always judging the tone perfectly. Richardson is permitted some of the more slapstick moments (and slapping with a stick moments) as Hotel Manager, Husband and Judge, which he delivers with gusto. Daire Halpin makes deceptively light work of the challenging range and variety of Maid characters, forming a terrific double act with Adrian Dwyer who is equally as impressive as the Waiter in a number of guises.
Without subtitles, the English text doesn't always carry over when it has other voices singing over one another and a complex musical arrangement to follow, but Nicholas Chalmers measured the chamber orchestration exceptionally well, with a sense of fluidity that gave greater continuity to those separate scenes with their variations in musical and dramatic tone. Credit where credit is due, Nicholas Chalmers' contribution is often overlooked alongside the more visual artistic direction of the Oliver Mears' stage productions, but he has also been an important factor in the Northern Ireland Opera success story. Certainly, the response to the opening night of this new production of Powder Her Face would seem to vindicate the approach that has been adopted by Mears and Chalmers with their NI Opera venture, and I'm sure that it will be maintained with the promising appointment of Walter Sutcliffe as the new incoming artistic director.
Links: Northern Ireland Opera
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Don Giovanni
NI Opera, 2016
Nicholas Chalmers, Oliver Mears, Henk Neven, John Molloy, Clive Bayley, Hye-Youn Lee, Rachel Kelly, Sam Furness, Aoife Miskelly, Christopher Cull
Grand Opera House, Belfast - 19th November 2016
So, it would appear that we are coming to the end of Oliver Mears' term as Artistic Director of NI Opera. It seemed obvious that Mears would go on to bigger and better things sooner or later and I suppose you could consider an appointment replacing Kasper Holten as Director of Opera at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden as a step in the right direction. Both Mears and conductor Nicholas Chalmers have achieved much in their time at NI Opera, raising the profile of the work done in the province in a way that has evidently made a favourable impression in the UK opera world. We've been lucky to see some great work from them over the last six of years. In the meantime, as for Don Giovanni at the Grand Opera House in Belfast - well, it's business as usual.
Business as usual however doesn't mean that there is anything at all predictable about the NI Opera production, but without having to involve any fancy concept or new interpretation, they manage to find a way to keep it fresh and modern and still get to the heart of the work. But Mears can also surprise in his choice of location settings. I've seen many productions of Don Giovanni in any number of inventive productions, but I would never have imagined it being suitable to stage on a mid-twentieth century cruise ship. On the other hand, it seems like a perfectly natural place for a romantic adventure and misadventure, to show class differences where there are servants below the decks, and where there is also a recognisable air of period decadence about it all, and isn't class and decadence what Don Giovanni is all about?
Well no, evidently it's about a lot more than that, but too often that is the aspect that is given the greatest emphasis. And it's given that emphasis because Don Giovanni is set in a world where such class distinctions are obvious and because Don Giovanni himself is such a fascinating character to explore. We know he's an inveterate womaniser, we know there's a cruel streak to his use and abuse of women (and his manservant), and we know he does indeed use his position to charm and seduce them. Any deeper exploration of his motivations however usually tends towards a darker, more callous nature, as a murderer and a rapist, and there is a good case for examining Don Giovanni by today's standards in those terms (and the opera is so great that it can bear such an approach), but you have to question whether that was really the tone that Mozart and Da Ponte were aiming for in an opera buffa.
Even though he is amusingly bunked up in cabin 666 of the cruise ship Sevilla, there's nothing really sinister or radical about Oliver Mears' interpretation of Don Giovanni for NI Opera, and it does consequently lack a bit of an edge that you might find in other interpretations. What is significant about the weight and emphasis in this production however was that it is not wholly focussed on an interpretation or exploration of the psychological mindset of Don Giovanni as much as there is a recognition that the work is essentially an ensemble piece with many other areas of interest to explore. And yes, it is essentially a comedy too, but - much like Così Fan Tutte and Le Nozze di Figaro - comedy in the hands of Mozart and Da Ponte can still have a lot of a bite to it. And, when you get right down to it, and no matter from what angle you approach the work, the message here is not one that needs to be overly laboured or complicated: in the end Don Giovanni pays for his sins and goes to hell.
It's tempting to look at some of the references in the production and consider why Don Giovanni has a blonde bouffant hair-do, but this production was developed long before there was any suggestion that Donald Trump would be a figure of such importance. Although, considering the US President-Elect's views of women and his treatment of them, if you want to apply that image to Don Giovanni, you might find it adds another level to a work that is more than capable of sustaining such ideas. It's tempting also to read something into the colonial references of Don Giovanni's fancy-dress party, where he comes dressed as a white hunter taming the savages - but again, there is no overt reference here nor expansion of the theme. It is very amusing though, and creates a colourful scene in one of Annemarie Woods' beautifully designed and eye-catching sets for the production.
What matters perhaps just as much as any psychological exploration of Don Giovanni, or attempt to apply his behaviour to a deeper evil that we recognise in our own times, is how his behaviour affects others. In that respect, the murder of Donna Anna's father the Commendatore and Don Giovanni's attempted rape or seduction of Donna Anna is clearly an important factor in bringing the Don to justice. Don Ottavio's role in the work can tend to be overlooked, but he too suffers from the consequences of what has happened between Don Giovanni and Donna Anna. Some productions have daringly suggested that Donna Anna is complicit or at least a willing and participant in Don Giovanni's seductions, before it perhaps goes too far.
Oliver Mears doesn't seem to be too concerned with such nuances or interpretations. To do so would be to again place too much attention into one area when you could as easily make the case that Donna Elvira's betrayal and her self-delusions are just as important to shining a light on the activities and nature of Don Giovanni (it is to Donna Elvira of course that Leporello reveals the list of his masters conquests across Europe). As indeed is the manner in which the servants Zerlina and Masetto, and perhaps by extension the sanctity of the institution of marriage, are treated with callous disregard by Don Giovanni. All have equal weight in Mozart and Da Ponte's great work and Oliver Mears and Nicholas Chalmers allow the music Mozart writes for each of the characters to speak for them.
They also bear in mind that the comedy is important and that Leporello is a perfect conduit between the comedy and the tragedy of Don Giovanni, that Don Giovanni gets his comeuppance in the end (an unusually wet one here rather than the usual fiery one, but no less effective or spectacular for it), and that it's by a joining of forces of his victims that this result is brought about. As such, if you are going to place the emphasis on the ensemble nature of Don Giovanni as an opera, there's only one thing that is important, and that's the singing. Which means there are eight things to get right, and - as is evident from looking at the cast list alone - it's clear that NI Opera have assembled the strongest possible team with a good mix of local, UK and international talent.
There's room to identify with the predicament of any of the characters, but for me it was Hye-Youn Lee who made the strongest case for Donna Anna's suffering. It's a technically demanding role, but Lee (who I've also seen sing Scottish Opera's Madama Butterfly) has the capability and the lyricism required for expression of these deep emotions. It helped also that there was a Don Ottavio of equal lyricism in Sam Furness, who made an often overlooked role come to life in a warm and sympathetic way. It's not quite clear how the vengeful Commendatore makes his comeback here, as his statue is packed on-board even before he is killed, but Clive Bayley's voice was enough to put the fear of god into anyone. Rachel Kelly's Donna Elvira really was also a woman on a mission (her fancy-dress costume even had something of Joan of Arc appearance to it), the singing full of character, her appearances hitting that difficult spot between the comedy of her interventions and the tragic nature of her circumstances.
The last time I saw John Molloy I thought he struggled with the demands of the Verdi bass role as Banquo in Macbeth, but he's perfectly at home in the lighter comedy bass roles. Leporello is still a challenge well above something like Doctor Dulcamara, but Molloy was superb, making it look easy, giving the role energy and fire. If the lyricism wasn't always there in the catalogue aria ('Madamina, il catalogo è questo'), it was probably more to do with it being sung in English. That was something that also hindered the more nuanced expressions of Henk Neven's Don Giovanni, but his performance nonetheless captured that tricky combination of charisma, sleaze, arrogance and authority that is needed. Last and far from least Aoife Miskelly played a light, playful and skittish Zerlina alongside Christopher Cull's insecure but devoted Masetto, both raising the level of the two servants and their humble love to a level of equal importance that is vital to the purpose of the work and this production as a whole.
If some of the singing was on the light side, Nicholas Chalmers did his best to balance the weight and measure of the orchestral playing to keep the translation audible. Lightness of touch is often better with Mozart, as much for the treatment of the drama as for the openness it gives to instrumental colour and for the lyrical character it's necessary to have in the voices. Without losing any of that character, the drama and the coming together of the piece as an ensemble takes on a momentum of its own towards that darker conclusion. Even there, the lightness of touch is consistent and telling, Don Giovanni appropriately meeting his end via an object - a hairdryer dropped by the Commendatore in his private pool - that highlights another fatal flaw in his character; his vanity. Shocking stuff!
Links: NI Opera
Benjamin Britten - The Turn of the Screw
NI Opera, 2016
Nicholas Chalmers, Oliver Mears, Katie Bird, Garbhan McEnoy, Sam Furness, Giselle Allen, Yvonne Howard, Lucia Vernon-Long
Lyric Theatre, Belfast - 11 March 2016
There are many ways to explore and interpret the themes and the suggestion laid down by Benjamin Britten in his adaptation of Henry James' sinister little tale. Even in a revival of its 2012 production, NI Opera's The Turn of the Screw can reveal other facets of this endlessly fascinating little piece with a few changes of casting and a little tweak of directorial emphasis here and there. Essentially, the tone and the ambiguity of the production remain largely the same, but the whole idea of fear dominating the direction of the drama seemed to be more pronounced in a way that opened up other possibilities.
Fear, of course, is an integral part of what The Turn of the Screw is all about; it is a ghost story after all. It's perhaps not necessary though for the audience to feel fear in the way that a traditional ghost story sets out to do. That would actually be harder to achieve, since everyone has different things that scare them and evidently not everyone believes in ghosts. One of the other problems of this approach is that ghost stories aren't quite as scary when you know what is coming, and I have to admit that I didn't find this production quite as chilling as I remember it being four years ago. Despite this, the sense of fear in the 2016 revival of the production was palpable and effective in other ways.
The Turn of the Screw is more a study of fear than it is a traditional tale to scare the reader or the listener. Fear is contagious in the way that it spreads through Bly household here, and it isn't too much of stretch to consider it a model for how fear spreads in a wider community. Henry James didn't need to overstate the psychological implications of repressed impulses of the Governess in relation to the Victorian society of his time, and the wider implications don't need to be be spelled out for a modern audience either if the telling of the tale is true. When you have ghosts in a story this could present a problem, but the key to the story lies in how convincing we find the perspective and the actions of the Governess.
In as far as it was sung and played by Katie Bird, the importance of the role of the Governess as the propagator of fear in The Turn of the Screw is wonderfully effective. Fear, or at least anxiety that will later develop into fear, is evident from her first appearance on the stage just after the narrator's prologue. Will she like her new post? Will the children be nice? Will her employer be pleased with her? These concerns develop into a kind of over-protectiveness that infects Mrs Grose and leads, arguably, to a kind of mass hallucination that manifests the fear in the form of ghosts. Or it could be that the constant watching over Flora and Miles and pushing adult concerns down on them doesn't allow the children to be children.
What could be considered to be normal healthy behaviour for children, even if they are just a little bit naughty, is viewed with suspicion by the anxious Governess. It could be that the Governess, prompted by Mrs Grose's distaste for former employees, dredges up issues related to Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, conflates them with her own complexes and twists them in the minds of the children and the Governess into something more sinister. A lot of this is just speculation, and it's very much dependent upon what one wants to read into the work, but the greatness of The Turn of the Screw is that the ambiguity it creates around such situations allows events to be interpreted in a variety of ways.
It's harder to retain that sense of ambiguity on the stage, where concrete decisions and interpretations of one sort or another have to be made, but I think Oliver Mears' production manages to do this very well. I've already covered how the direct and simple stage designs work effectively to open up and close down the drama in my review of the original 2012 production at the Theatre at the Mill in Newtownabbey, and it still works here. What was great about the revival of the production, seen this time at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, was experiencing how well the singing and the musical performances were also attuned to project this sense of 'fear' consuming everyone who comes into contact with the Governess.
Principally, a lot of that was to do with Katie Bird's interpretation of the role. This was an outstanding singing performance that projected the fears of the Governess outward. There's a balance to be found between appearing to be neurotic or all out crazy and just letting anxiety break down the Governess's grip on reality, and Katie Bird covered that gradual disintegration almost imperceptibly. The Governess isn't aware of the fear she is sowing, believing her behaviour to be reasonable, proportionate, and indeed proper, but there's an edge of hysteria that becomes more and more apparent as events spiral and ghosts appear, and that was well integrated into the performance.
What is marvellous is not only could you detect this in how Bird sang and played the role, but the acoustics of the Lyric and Nicholas Chalmers' conducting allowed you hear how well Britten also scores and ramps up the tension, tightening the screw with little musical runs on the piano and the double bass. It's far from just eerie atmospherics and is suggestive of something much more complex in its psychology. Having just won an award for his ETO Hoffmann, Sam Furness was a good fit for this production's Peter Quint, while Giselle Allen reprised her chilling Miss Jessel. It's telling however that this production and the careful direction didn't allow either of the ghostly apparitions to overshadow Bird's Governess. Garbhan McEnoy brought a brittle vulnerability to Miles, working wonderfully alongside Lucia Vernon-Long's innocently teasing Flora to keep that delicious sense of ambiguity that is exploited so well on every level by NI Opera's still effective production of this ever intriguing work.
Links: NI Opera
Richard Strauss - Salome
NI Opera, 2015
Nicholas Chalmers, Oliver Mears, Giselle Allen, Michael Colvin, Robert Hayward, Heather Shipp, Adrian Dwyer, Carolyn Dobbin, Paul Curievici, Nick Sales, David Lynn, Conor Breen, Cormac Lawlor, Brendan Collins, Padraic Rowan, Rory Musgrave, Hayley Chilvers
Grand Opera House, Belfast - 6 & 8 February 2015
The Grand Opera House in Belfast has never seen anything like it. Oh, I'm sure it has seen its fair share of Oscar Wilde plays, theatrical violence and gore, and even a little bit of nudity on occasion, but almost certainly never together. It's in opera terms however that Salome is a new experience for audiences at the Grand Opera House. The Belfast opera-goer has - in my experience at least over the last 25 years - never been subjected to an opera as intense, shocking and set to a production challenging to both delicate and not-so-delicate sensibilities as last weekend's Salome. That's testament to the ability of Strauss's opera to still have such an impact over 100 years after it was written, but it's also an indication of how NI Opera has been steadily upping the dose of less common but vital works to wean the audience away from the relatively safe fare of Mozart and the Italian bel canto repertoire.
It's ironic in this respect that the two most challenging opera works to appear on the stage of the Grand Opera House under NI Opera's brief term of office, have been adaptations of Oscar Wilde plays - Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest and Strauss's Salome. Who would have thought that Oscar Wilde's gently amusing late-Victorian domestic dramas could still be the source of so much shock and subversion? What both operas have in common is the ability to translate the genuine transgressive and subversive challenges to conventional social, family and sexual mores of Wilde's period into a more modern context where they still have impact and relevance. The relative rarity of performances of Wilde's dramas perhaps indicates that the nature of opera, with its timeless musical language, seems to be better placed to present Wilde on the stage nowadays than traditional theatre.
Particularly when you see it done in a performance like this. The key towards representing Richard Strauss's Salome on the stage has always been that of preserving the essential mood. Strauss's score (a challenge in itself) represents the florid decadence and dark sensual undercurrents of Wilde's play to perfection - and takes it further - but there's a risk of losing some of the seething Oriental lusts and the subversive religious flavour of the work if it is taken out of its Biblical context. I personally haven't seen any production of Salome that has risked straying too far from its original setting, so it's surprising and very daring of Oliver Mears to do so for a Belfast audience by setting it in what looks like the protected and security monitored estate of a drug baron or corrupt wealthy businessman in the deep American south.
What is more surprising is not only does the work lose not a fraction of its dark intensity, but by divorcing the work from its Biblical setting it actually reveals much more of the intent and hidden meaning of Oscar Wilde's original play. Which, it seems, when performed as well as it is here, can only enhance what Strauss brings to the work musically. A lot of the reason for it being quite so powerful, it has to be said, has to do with the performance of the Ulster Orchestra, its numbers boosted here to take on Strauss's huge orchestral arrangements, as well as the impressive direction of Nicholas Chalmers to channel and deliver those forces at the appropriate points with subtle but devastating impact. Even though Belfast received its first ever staging of a Wagner opera last year (The Flying Dutchman), it has rarely witnessed musical forces wielded so powerfully in a fully staged opera as in these two NI Opera performances of Salome.
And when I say fully-staged, that is vital to the impact of any opera, particularly when the music, the staging and the performance work hand-in-hand. If the revealing of a dark underbelly of American society with suggestions of abuse and incestuous relationships within the family unit inevitably brings to mind the films of David Lynch, director Oliver Mears nonetheless carefully avoids the Krzysztof Warlikowski route of direct movie cross-over references. Likewise, Mears wisely sidesteps any local religious context, even if NI Opera are not afraid to risk the wrath of religious fundamentalists in the province with their last-minute announcement of a "content change" to introduce a dancer appearing nude for ten seconds into the production. While that didn't produce any serious controversy this time, it did result in predictable outrage from a few rent-a-quote extremists, clearly unfamiliar with the work, unable to recognise the irony of accusations of introducing 'sensuality' into a Biblical story that centres on the Dance of the Seven Veils. In any event it would turn out that there was nothing in any dance that could be as controversial as a fully-clothed blood-soaked Salome writhing on top of the decapitated head of John the Baptist at the finale.
There were nonetheless a few murmurs of surprise from the outset when the curtain rose on Friday night to reveal a near full-sized house with a roof, on the heavily guarded and high-fenced compound. In the house, a rather sleazy-looking bulging-waisted, balding Herod with his wife Herodias, dressed in a jump suit and heels like a character out of Dallas or Dynasty, preside over a rowdy dinner party. Guarding a yellow cistern, from which the booming voice of the prophet emanates, stand a nervous group of guards wearing cowboy hats, some stripped to the waist, carrying rifles. Seen through a large window, the seediness of the dining room setting, where a pawed-over and harassed Salome looks wistfully out at the moon, is characterised brilliantly by the boorish behaviour of Herod's Jewish guests. As they settle down to watch a projected porno movie after the meal, outside the house Salome pours her lustful thoughts out to the frightful masculinity and shocking pronouncements of the imprisoned prophet Jokanaan.
What this brings out is not so much any imposition of modern sensibilities onto old Biblical material - although that is a valid aim, and one that does update the relevance of the play - as much as bring you right back to the source material and consider what Wilde was saying about the hypocrisy of society and religion, repression of illicit sexual desires, and the corrupting influence of dysfunctional family life. By making you think about how that relates to Wilde's own secret life and how that comes out in his works ("Each man kills the thing he loves..."), it's not so much taking the work back to Victorian times, as much as doing exactly what Strauss does with his musical interpretation of the work. It's delving far beneath the surface drama - as torrid, violent and twisted as it is - to the darker places that those repressed human impulses arise from. Salome oversteps the boundaries of what is deemed acceptable (by anyone's standards - but all the more so here for effect), and as such, she must die, condemned by the hypocritical authorities.
It was amazingly premonitory and daring of Wilde to write like this - right before his conviction for 'unconventional' sexual practices and his death soon after. NI Opera's setting of the work, Mears direction, and particularly the performances, explore all the facets and the resonances of the source, and bring it out meaningfully and magnificently without having to make any direct references. Salome ought to be shocking, still ought to take your breath away in its approach to its subject matter, and musically it should pretty much hammer you into submission, and that is entirely the impact achieved in the NI Opera production. To do that, it also needs singers of ability and sheer nerve to not only take on the challenges represented by the characters, but even to surpass the content and rise over the vast orchestral surges and cacophonic flourishes that make these characters and their dark desires convincing and horribly compelling.
As Salome, Belfast soprano Giselle Allen demonstrated why she is also a big name on the international opera circuit, her voice powerful enough to carry over that huge orchestral sound arising from the pit. It was a performance however that was, as it needs to be, sensitive to the changing moods, dipping softly but still able to be heard, rising to anger and violent expression and sustaining that for a large part of the unbroken one hour and forty-five minutes of the one-act performance. As well as managing this with barely a waver of pitch, strong at every register (in a role that is testing at every register), Allen also brought a degree of subtlety and conviction to the characterisation in her revulsion towards Herod and in her wild desires for Jokanaan, with recognition that there is a connection between those two states. Everything about this performance was mesmerising - you couldn't take your eyes off her for a second. If you haven't got a Salome like that, you haven't got a Salome.
Fortunately, the NI Opera production also had a prophet of immense charisma in Robert Hayward's Jokanaan. A terrifying presence, booming even from within the cistern tank, his appearance on the stage, dripping grime, gravely intoning dire warnings of the the coming of the Son of God and apocalyptic damnation for all the sinners present created a tremendous impression, Hayward's huge voice carrying utter conviction as well as fanaticism. Heather Shipp's Herodias and Michael Colvin's Herod had a little more of a challenge at times rising above the orchestra - and the translated English text didn't always make their parts scan quite as well (or match Wilde's poetry) - but the performances were well-sung and delightfully characterised. Paul Curievici's First Jew and Adrian Dwyer's Narraboth stood out from an overall very strong supporting cast. If there were many things that the Grand Opera House has never seen the like of before in NI Opera's scandalous production of Salome, perhaps the most satisfying is that of largely home-grown talent like this being given the opportunity to really show what they can do.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - The Magic Flute
NI Opera, 2014
Nicholas Chalmers, Oliver Mears, Aoife Miskelly, Anthony Gregory, Ben McAteer, Stephen Richardson, Ruth Jenkins-Róbertson, John Graham-Hall, Brendan Collins, Sinéad O'Kelly, Sarah Richmond, Laura Murphy, Richard Shaffrey, Lynsey Curtin, James Osborne, Dylan Scullion, George Rohan
Lyric Theatre, Belfast - 11th September 2014
There are many ways to approach the richness of ideas and meanings in The Magic Flute, but first and foremost the performance must be lively and entertaining. Oscar Wilde said that life is far too important a thing to take seriously, and you could say the same thing about The Magic Flute. Through the entertainment and the wonderful music, all the beauty of the work, its characterisation, its sensibility, its enlightened views on life, love and liberty all come tumbling out, almost effortlessly.
That's the secret to the success of NI Opera's latest production, making the effort seem minimal, letting the spirit of the Magic Flute float out there as if it is indeed a pure and simple expression of the truth that doesn't require any heavy-handed symbolism or mystical obfuscation. Considerable effort has undoubtedly gone into making it seem effortless, and that's part of the trick. Commencing what is now the fourth full season in their short history, the Northern Ireland company get off to a flying start here in an impressive production that shows that they have their finger on the pulse of opera as well as on the mood of the province.
Touring through Armagh, Omagh, Belfast and Derry, this production is aimed at reaching a wider and a younger audience, and there aren't many works that are as widely appealing and at the same time as expressive of the nature and the brilliance of opera as The Magic Flute. If you can make it entertaining, you have the audience eating out of your hand with characters and tunes like this winning hearts and minds. Seeing Die Zauberflöte as a celebration of Masonic rituals and ideals is missing the point. Seeing it as wholly Mozart is what makes the work great. NI Opera clearly recognised the advantages of that perspective and the standing ovation at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast was well deserved.
Taking the spirit of Mozart as a starting point, approaching The Magic Flute as a wonderful entertaining puzzle, set designer Simon Holdsworth creates a set design that is elegant, eye-catching, functional, impressive, clever and often surprising. It's everything that Mozart and The Magic Flute should be. The 'theme' is a black and white marble chequerboard design, which sets the idea for a game of chess strategy between Sarastro and the Queen of the Night, but also is easily adaptable to the snakes and ladders of Tamino's opening struggle - funny and frightening - with the giant serpent.
The black-and-white theme is predominant throughout, partly as a means of distinguishing between those opposing forces of good and evil, but it blends in (without forcing the issue) with the idea of elegance and order that is also an important part of Mozart's creation. Without making an issue of the period either, the setting is vaguely 1940s, reflecting perhaps a more recent familiar view of dominant masculinity as well as one where the value of a woman's contribution is recognised, if for nothing else than for it being a necessary complementary flipside of masculinity. This follows through to the black-and-white tradition of dress in the brilliantly staged wedding that wraps up the conclusion here so well.
There appears to be little validation for the three boys being pilots in a little red plane (wonderfully sung and played out by the young boys) or for Sarastro being depicted as a lord of the manor, first seen dressed for a fox hunt with his disciples, with other members being gardeners on his estate and Monostatos his footman, but at the same time, the characterisation fits the work perfectly. Place Sarastro on a leather chair in a library of what looks like a gentleman's club, and you get the same sense of a society that values its own view of tradition, learning and progressiveness without the associated connotations of cults and Freemasonry.
The production is totally in the spirit of Mozart then and so is Oliver Mears' direction. The clever little twists and devices are inspired, not just being added for the sake of amusement, but they find - through entertaining means - a way to explore and reveal other aspects of what can be fairly strange characters. The reason we know that there is more to these characters than is visible on the surface is that Mozart's warm, sensitive and ennobling music tells us so. That's brought out well by conductor Nicholas Chalmers despite the relatively small size of the orchestra. With only one first violin and one second violin, it doesn't manage to be quite as lyrical as the music ought to be, but it captures perfectly the beauty of the melodies, as well as the spirit and the pace of the work in all its variety of tones and situations.
It was a full account of Die Zauberflöte too, with the only significant cuts I noticed being in the reduction of the recitative and spoken dialogue. I'm not always a fan of unsubtitled English-language versions of opera, but it has to be said that in a theatre of this size, it worked well. The translation of the libretto for this production was also extremely clever and very witty. It particularly came to life since it was sung and performed so well - a testament to the direction and the quality of the singing. When you're talking about an entertaining Magic Flute, you're talking about one where Papageno makes a strong impact and Ben McAteer's performance, in dungarees covered with bird-crap, was indeed the stand-out routine of the night, his voice agile, his enunciation clear and his personality engaging.
There was a great mix of young new talent and solid experience in the rest of the cast that blended well. Aiofe Miskelly is Belfast's rising star on the international stage, and is clearly as capable in challenging repertoire roles like Pamina as she is in more experimental modern works. She was very well matched by Anthony Gregory's commanding Tamino. Everything about his performance as a fine, upstanding young Prince made it clear why Tamino inspires the kind of confidence that others place in him. Stephen Richardson was a deep and resonant Sarastro, getting right down to those near-impossible low notes and making them ring. At the other end of the scale Ruth Jenkins-Róbertson's entrance as the Queen of the Night was spectacularly staged and vocally impressive, as were her formidable Three Ladies. John Graham-Hall's cockney-inflected Monostatos might have been a little over-exaggerated, but it fully participated in the entertaining richness of the characterisation and the performance.
Giuseppe Verdi - Macbeth
NI Opera, Belfast - 2014
Nicholas Chalmers, Oliver Mears, Bruno Caproni, Rachel Nicholls, Paul Carey Jones, Miriam Murphy, Andrew Rees, John Molloy, Aaron Cawley, Doreen Curran, Nathan Morrison, Christopher Cull, Roy Heaybeard, Tom Deazley, Patrick Donnelly
Grand Opera House, Belfast - 21st/22nd February 2014
Although it's commonly known in theatrical circles as "the Scottish play", it's rare that there's much made of the actual setting of Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' in dramatic productions or in Verdi's opera version of the work. The themes of Macbeth go far beyond mere location or historical context to consider the nature of war (usually with troops in modern combat gear), of ambition and social aspirations, and - evidently - the darker side of human nature that is brought out by such matters. You very rarely see or need to consider the question of Scotland itself in either traditional or modern updatings of the work. NI Opera's production of Verdi's early masterwork (a co-production with the Welsh National Opera) however goes right back to core issues at the heart of the work in more ways than one.
Maybe it's because there's considerable attention drawn to all matters Scottish with the country's forthcoming vote on independence, but nationalistic matters and flag-waving were very much in evidence in NI Opera's production of Verdi's Macbeth. The displaying of flags is of course a controversial and unresolved issue in the current Northern Irish political climate and such displays would undoubtedly have a resonance with the local audience, but Oliver Mears, the Artistic Director of NI Opera, manages nonetheless to avoid any overt contemporary references or political commentary on whether Scotland and the UK (or indeed Northern Ireland) are "better together" or not.
That's not to say that NI Opera's director doesn't cleverly exploit the power of such imagery and recognise its significance when one is dealing with questions of power and ambition. When the arrival of Duncan is announced to much pomp, ceremony and nationalistic flag-waving here, you almost expect to see Alex Salmond appear on the stage. It would be tempting also to imagine a version of Nicola Sturgeon as ambitious first-lady in waiting, but Lady Macbeth here has more of an appearance of an Imelda Marcos, wasting little time on her ascension as wife of the newly crowned king to accumulate a couple of large wardrobes for fur coats and shoes. There's nothing too obvious here, but enough references for an audience to recognise familiar trappings of power, ambition and success.
Beyond all the kilts, sporrans and saltires however, Mears also managed to dredge up other deeper aspects of the work that are perhaps not so commonly explored in either theatrical or opera presentations of Macbeth. In addition to those main themes, which were covered only as well as Verdi and his librettist Frencesco Maira Piave's imperfect interpretation of Shakespeare allow (ie. not terribly effectively), there are however other rich themes to be explored and for Mears, one of those relates to several references to innocence, children and death. Fearing the prediction of the witches, Macbeth's Herod-like fear of Banquo and his son becomes pathological in relation to the future generations that will eventually supplant him from a position that he has taken it into his own (bloody) hands to obtain for himself.
In what is becoming something of a running theme with Mears (the darker side of the children/adult relationship and Death are also evident in Britten's Turn of the Screw, and it's there also in the more disturbing fairytale undercurrents of Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, not to mention that another notorious child-murderer, Herod, features in the forthcoming 2014-15 NI Opera production of Strauss' Salome), the director makes much of this theme and references to it in the work. Most evidently here, it's in the novel witches' dismemberment of babies as ingredients for their cauldron (where apparitions in the form of children again make fearful predictions to Macbeth), and it's there also in the procession of baby-faced apparitions of Banquo's line that haunt Macbeth's dreams.
This undoubtedly helped to bring about Macbeth's descent into a murderous and paranoid tyrant in the later acts much more successfully than Verdi and Piave manage, but there's little the production can do about the dramatic failings of the opera in making real the motivations of the greed and dangerous ambition of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. The weakness of the libretto in this respect is compounded by it being performed in English here. Not only does it expose the poor translation of the Shakespearean text when translated back into English, but it also loses what little lyricism the Italian singing brings in its stead. The use of English translations supposedly for accessibility perhaps needs a rethink, since without surtitles it means that you can only actually hear about 50% of what is sung.
None of that however is through any fault of the singing here on the first of only three performances of the production at the Grand Opera House in Belfast. From the moment that she read Macbeth's letter with clear, resonant diction, there was little doubt that Rachel Nicholls had the measure of Lady Macbeth, and it didn't take long for the sheer force and control of her voice to become fully apparent, sailing over over the robust performance of Verdi's dramatic score conducted by Nicholas Chambers. The English language performance however did no-one any favours, 'Daylight is fading', for example, passing by without any of the show-stopping qualities that usually accompany 'La luce langue'.
Bruno Caproni's Macbeth suffered from the same problem of the weakness of the libretto being exposed by the English back-translation, his 'Mal per me' finale never quite hitting the emotional heights that it achieves in Verdi's original scoring of the work. (The version used here a well-judged blend of the best of the 1847 and 1865 versions). Caproni wasn't able to make much of the dramatic content either, his acting being mostly confined to being in a perpetual state of stupefaction at the eerie apparitions leading to events spinning out of his control. In terms of singing however, he was everything that the role required, commanding and in perfect control. Alongside Rachel Nicholl's impressive Lady Macbeth, this was casting as good as you could hope for in these great Verdi roles. The alternate cast of Paul Carey Jones and Miriam Murphy also performed capably, but without managing to bring any greater edge of wild danger to the Macbeth/Lady Macbeth partnership.
The specific challenges of singing Verdi were revealed in the difficulty that John Molloy had with the delivery of Banquo. Molloy, so fleet and flitting as Dulcamara in L'Elisir d'Amore earlier this season, couldn't quite sustain the rather more difficult dramatic Verdi line. Andrew Rees, on the other hand, really entered into the spirit of the Verdian melodrama as Macduff. It was this kind of melodrama that you realised was missing from the Nicholas Chalmers' conducting of the Ulster Orchestra. The beauty of Verdi's wonderful melodies was all there, but it lacked the unrestrained drive and force that the work really needs to make its full impact. Early Verdi doesn't require this much subtlety.
The chorus of NI Opera were on form throughout. As elsewhere, 'Patria Oppressa' might have lost something in translation, but it was superbly staged and sung. One of Mears' more clever touches was to cast the witches into three groups of composite forms, a trick that worked marvellously, the witches creating the kind of eeriness and menace when they were onstage that should also have been there but wasn't in the dagger apparition and the sleepwalking scenes. Even in woollen bobble hats and bomber jackets, the male chorus also exuded menace where required, particularly in the killing of Banquo scene. Whether it's true or not in terms of the Scottish question, "Better Together" can certainly at least be applied to the joint effort of this NI Opera and the Welsh National Opera production of Macbeth.
William Walton - The Bear
NI Opera, 2013
Nicholas Chalmers, Oliver Mears, Anna Burford, Andrew Rupp, John Molloy
The MAC, Belfast - 26 March 2013
There was quite a change of content, style and scale between NI Opera's last production of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman for the Grand Opera last month and their production of William Walton's short one-act chamber opera The Bear, performed at the smaller arts theatre of the MAC in Belfast. Directed again by Oliver Mears with Nicholas Chalmers conducting, The Bear at least conformed to Wagner's preference to have the orchestra and conductor remaining invisible to the audience, but that's about the only level on which The Bear can be compared to Wagner. Walton's work was far from the most challenging NI Opera production then and the merits of the work itself are questionable, but in terms of the approach adopted for this lightly humorous work, it was everything it should be.
Based on a comic short play by Chekhov, 'The Bear' is not one of the Russian master's more notable works that stand as masterpieces of the dramatic repertoire like 'The Cherry Orchard', 'The Seagull' or 'Three Sisters'. It's one of Chekhov's earlier comedies that has its own peculiarly Russian sense of humour and it is also rather dated by today's standards. Walton's opera version of the work, written in 1967, is an almost identical word-for-word adaptation that retains the pace, the dynamic and the tone of the original work, with its comic interplay operating effectively between just three characters.
The comedy revolves around the widow Yeliena Ivanovna Popova who has been in mourning for her dead husband Nicolai Mihailovich for almost a year now. That's a period of grieving that is regarded as most unseemly by her footman Luka, who wept over the death of his old lady for a month - but seven? Well, the old woman wasn't worth that and surely no-one is, not even Nicolai Mihailovich. Yeliena Popova moreover is still young and there's a whole regiment of troops billeted in a nearby district, so Luka don't know what all the fuss is about. It's a middle-aged landowner Grigory Stepanovitch Smirnov however who makes an impression when he appears at the household trying to recover one of her husband's debts, but the road to courtship is not without some trouble along the way.
The Bear, as the title might suggest, is very much as a parody on distinctly extreme Russian qualities and characteristics involving drinking vodka (the name Smirnov obviously gets an extra laugh here), running up debts, extravagant mourning, headlong plunges into deep emotions and fiery outbursts of temper that lead to duels. It may not be one of Chekhov's most insightful serious works, and the farcical humour might appear to be slightly dated, but the manner and the truth of the characteristics he exposes through this short comic situation are no less precise and revealing. It's hard to fault Walton's take on the work either other than on similar questions of musical fashion and personal taste. It's a genuinely comic score of a kind that is all too rarely heard, perfectly matching the tone of the drama, with jaunty rhythms and tooting instruments, extending 'ooohh!'s and expressions of despair to the point where they do indeed become funny - but it's all very much in a music-hall kind of idiom. It's pleasant and entertaining but by no means a great work.
Obviously however with a small cast, a chamber score and a situation with plenty of dramatic incident, there is ample compensation in the opportunities The Bear provides in the performance of the musicians and the singers. That depends very much of course upon the director and the conductor working together to the rhythms and the pace of the work and with the solid team of Oliver Mears and Nicholas Chalmers there are no problems there. All of the singers moreover are simply marvellous. John Molloy, a Wexford regular, is something of an expert on rare material, particularly those with comic interplay, and he's excellent here as Smirnov. The other young members of the cast are just as impressive, Andrew Rupp's Luka getting the best laughs, but it's Anna Burford 's Yeliena Popova who has to carry much of the work's comedy and singing challenges and she does so exceptionally well, never faltering in even some of the more testing situations.
One of only two operatic works written by William Walton (the other being Troilus and Cressida, written in 1954), The Bear might not be one of the greatest or most challenging opera works, but it is designed to be lightly entertaining and funny and NI Opera's production certainly brought out those qualities. You can't ask for more than that. NI Opera's production of The Bear at the MAC in Belfast was programmed with five Songs and Sonnets from Shakespeare in beautiful jazz-influenced musical and choral arrangements by George Shearing (1919-2011).
Richard Wagner - The Flying Dutchman
NI Opera, 2013
Nicholas Chalmers, Oliver Mears, Bruno Caproni, Giselle Allen, Stephen Richardson, Paul McNamara, Adrian Dwyer, Doreen Curran
Grand Opera House, Belfast, 15th & 17th February 2013
The outcome was never really in doubt. NI Opera's award-winning track record has been impressive since their inception two years ago, the scale and calibre of the works presented increasingly ambitious, from Menotti's The Medium and Puccini's site-specific Tosca in Derry through to newly commissioned work for NI Opera Shorts and a production of Noye's Fludde that travelled to Beijing. Putting on a Wagner opera however is a challenge on another scale entirely. Even if Der Fliegende Holländer is one of the composer's shorter works, it is scarcely any less demanding in the very specific orchestral and singing requirements that are quite different from the popular aria-driven Italian opera.
Admittedly however, while the First Act of the English language version of The Flying Dutchman was capably performed here at the Grand Opera House in Belfast - the first ever fully-staged performance of the work in Northern Ireland - it did feel a little flat. Something was missing. Still, no cause for immediate concern. The First Act of The Flying Dutchman is quite difficult, the stormy overture a prelude to a gloom-laden hour of long passages of deep, grave male singing - mostly basses and baritones - as the dark figure of the Dutchman recounts the horror of his curse, doomed to sail the seas for eternity, finding land again after seven years in the vain hope that the love of a good and faithful woman will set him free. There's not a whole lot of light and shade here, much less dramatic action and, even with the familiarity now of Wagner's brilliant leitmotifs and their hints of what is to come, it's always been a fairly demanding opening sequence.
Like much of Wagner though you just have to bear with it, as the forthcoming rewards more often than not merit the long drawn-out pacing and slow development of situations. (And yes, I realise that this review seems to be adopting the same principle - long-windedly positing doom and gloom with the promise of redemption to come). That's because Wagner has a secret weapon in reserve for the Second Act, which is the arrival of Senta. It's a device that Wagner would unleash in a more fluid manner in the revised version of the opera - played straight through with linking sections and no breaks between acts - but if you listen carefully she's there in a leitmotif during the Vorspiel to Act One. Recognising this, NI Opera's production did indeed effectively and with musical validity try to lift the First Act by bringing forward Senta's first appearance to the dreamily melancholic Senta leitmotif in the overture, the young woman walking across a stormy shoreline as the snow starts to fall. And it even sounded to me like conductor Nicholas Chalmers wrung an extra ounce of romantic sensitivity out of the Ulster Orchestra during this sequence. Despite the dramatic shortcomings then and musical unevenness of the weighty first Act (Daland and the Dutchman's duet sounding like something that has wandered in from an Italian opera) with a staging was unable to give it any kind of boost, this nonetheless boded promisingly for what was to come.
We had to wait until after the interval then for the deployment of Wagner's incendiary device, but NI Opera clearly also had one or two secret weapons of their own in their armoury to ensure that this Dutchman took flight. One was the remarkable performance of Giselle Allen as Senta, the other was the energetic drive and virtuosity of the Ulster Orchestra. OK, nothing there that will really come as any great surprise to those of us familiar with the qualities Northern Ireland's finest, but the way they were brought into play was impressive nonetheless. You could virtually hear a sigh of relief from the audience as the curtain lifted on what looked like a church assembly hall in the 1970s - a bright, colourful scene-shift from the gloom of Act One - where the ladies sat spinning at their Singer sewing machines, the beauty of the assembled female voices soaring with optimism and hope that the sea would deliver the safe return of their men.
Doreen Curran's glowering Mary wonderfully kept the proceedings from getting too cheery, but it was of course the ringing tones of Giselle Allen's Senta whose romantic spinning of the tale of the cursed captain and his crew dominated and directed the whole tone of the Second Act. Responding to the urgings of her fellow seamstresses, this Senta did indeed seem to be possessed by a demon, sitting down and seeming to slip into a trance as she recounted the myth of the Flying Dutchman. Much as Chalmers managed to place some emphasis on the Vorspiel's dreamy Senta leitmotif, stage director Oliver Mears similarly allowed Senta's romanticism to invade the whole work whenever she was present, allowing the necessary spell to be woven that would make the Dutchman's arrival - and the long silent gaze that lies between them - all the more dramatic. Retaking the same positions into this locked gaze after their duet, it was as if the romanticism of the encounter takes place in more in Senta's head than in reality.
Dramatically then, as well as in the all-important delivery of the exceptional singing demands that are necessary to make this work convincingly, NI Opera's The Flying Dutchman succeeded at least in finding the right tone. It even allowed for one or two moments of humour to sit well alongside all the weighty recounting of ancient legends, such as Senta's father Daland approving of the couple making each other's acquaintance while they are in the middle of a hot-and-heavy, passionate, sweeping-everything-off-the-table kind of entanglement on the nearest available substitute for a bed. Quite why the setting of the seventies was chosen however wasn't entirely clear. There didn't appear to be any real attempt to connect the legend of the Dutchman to the Troubles, even if there is a certain amount of recognition of Belfast's history as a port and ship-building city. There's no obligation of course for NI Opera to make every local production site-specific, and attempting to do so with Wagner could lead to some ill-advised and ill-fitting parallels that would never work convincingly (Senta a militant activist waiting for the delivery of an arms shipment? The homeless "Dutchman" seeking to rid himself of the curse of his nation's occupation?), so perhaps allowing the work to speak for itself in the 70s is enough. It certainly worked on those terms alone.
Well, not quite alone. Both the male and the female choruses were in wonderful voice and with the driving accompaniment of the orchestra, their powerful contribution to the impact of the overall work was well directed and delivered. Crucially however there were also solid performances from the main roles in Bruno Caproni's brooding Dutchman and Giselle Allen's obsessive Senta. The Belfast soprano sustained a magnificent tension right the second act and the close of the third, a veritable Senta-bomb that exploded on the stage of the Grand Opera House in a blood-drenched death scene climax of nerve-shattering high notes. If my own reaction is anything to go by, the audience were surely gasping for breath by that point. If you can't achieve that kind of impact doing Wagner though, there's really no point even attempting it, but when you have Giselle Allen and the Ulster Orchestra at your disposal and operating on the kind of form shown here, there was never likely to be any serious concern about the outcome.
