Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin
Scottish Opera, 2018
Stuart
Stratford, Oliver Mears, Samuel Dale Johnson, Natalya Romaniw, Peter
Auty, Sioned Gwen Davies, Alison Kettlewell, Anne-Marie Owens, Graeme
Broadbent, Christopher Gillett, Alexey Gusev, James Platt, Matthew
Kimble
Grand Opera House, Belfast - 28 June 2018
Pushkin's
Eugene Onegin has been praised as "an encyclopaedia of Russian life" but
it's one of those works that manages to encapsulate the characteristics and behaviours of a nation within a story of the intimate sadness and tragic fate
that life holds in store for many of us. Pushkin wrote his own tragic
Russian story, killed in a duel over a romantic dispute like Lensky
in his great masterpiece, and Tchaikovsky poured his own personal, marital and
emotional struggles into his work here, and the personal input of both creators can be deeply felt in Eugene Onegin.
It's not much
to ask to have that reflected and expect to feel deeply moved by
a performance of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, and while it rarely fails to hit the mark,
there are many ways of approaching the subject. At one extreme you can
have Stefan Herheim turning the work indeed into "an encyclopaedia of
Russian life" complete with cosmonauts, Red Army troops and a dancing bear taking it right up to the
present day, making the point that the Russian character - as well as
the essential human character - remains largely unchanged. At the other
minimalist extreme, Robert Carsen ties the emotional impact of the work
and the course of a life to the colours of the seasons. Others, such as Krzysztof Warlikowski, have focussed
on how much of Tchaikovsky's life and troubled sexual identity can be
clearly mapped onto the characters in the story.
Oliver Mears, the current artistic director of the Royal Opera House in Covent
Garden and former director of NI Opera, makes a return visit with his
Scottish Opera production of Eugene Onegin and doesn't attempt anything
quite as radical as the above examples, but in another way it taps into
the idea of simple lives caught up in something greater. What it does manage to do
is grasp that sense of the scope of life and love, of the personal and
intimate placed within the greater context of life, memory and the
passing of time; the madness and insensitivity of youth that can have an
impact that resonates through a whole life and that we can only grasp
the enormity of it when it's far too late to change anything.
Mears
employs a simple enough device to get this across, having the silent
figure of an elderly Tatyana recall and rewatch a significant event in
her youth that would forever determine its future direction, all of it taking place in a single room of fading memory. I was immediately
resistant to the idea, since the ending in Tchaikovsky's opera - and the melancholic tone of the work throughout - already
places the work into the context of memory and the passing of time.
Tatyana's rejection of the repentant Onegin at the end of the opera,
even though she is clearly in love with him, is an immensely powerful
conclusion that could hardly be delivered in a more effective manner
with the addition of another rejection of Tatyana finally tearing up the
letter and forever setting the matter to rest.
On the
other hand it's quite plausible that the matter between Tatyana and
Onegin might certainly be over, but both will still carry the regret for
the rest of their lives. If it doesn't make the conclusion any more
devastating, it succeeds in driving the point home,
particularly as Stuart Stratford and the Scottish Opera Orchestra
deliver the final blows mercilessly after succeeding in holding the
audience in a state of romantic melancholy for the larger part of the
performance, conserving those energies for the other real moments of emotional
impact; in Onegin's rejection of Tatyana's love letter and in the
tragic and foolhardy death of Lensky in the duel.
There
are other ways of showing how we can end up paying for the folly of
youth later in life, but most obviously it's Onegin who carries this
burden. One of the best ways I've seen this done is in the 2013 Royal Opera House production, where Onegin is led during the Polonaise on a dance
through a constant progression of women that gradually wears him down
with the passing of the years. It leaves him in the perfect state to
have his eyes opened to the opportunities of real love and stability in
his life that have been lost. Interestingly, with an elderly Tatyana
coming back to a dusty, decaying Larin mansion, once filled with life,
Mears's direction makes you consider everything else that has been lost
over time. For the first time really the Lensky's tragedy carried through for
me, and I wondered what had become of Olga and the direction her life
subsequently must have taken. Would Lensky's death have stayed with her
or would the memory have faded with time and the other needs of life?
It's
essential that, like Pushkin and Tchaikovsky, the reader or listener
identify with the characters in the story and see their lives in that
kind of context; Onegin as tragedy plus time. By casting the net of
time further - Herheim's production certainly does this, and so too does
Kasper Holten's doubling of the older Tatyana and Onegin looking back
on their younger counterparts - Oliver Mears captures that sense of the
work not so much as an encyclopaedia of Russian life, but just an
encyclopaedia of life. There are many perspectives you can place on
Eugene Onegin, but the most important one is what the individual
listener and spectator brings to it; and the passing of time, the
changes it brings and the regrets that still sting are something that
everyone can relate to.
That's not to say that the viewer
has to do all the work. Far from it. While the perspective Oliver Mears introduces sets the work in a wider context, Stuart Stratford and the Scottish Opera
Orchestra permit the listener to feel the heat of life and the
complexity of sentiments associated with it in every note of
Tchaikovsky's beautiful melodies and dances. The singing and
characterisation are critical however, particularly for Tatyana and
Onegin, and the casting was nigh on perfect here. Natalya Romaniw was
simply stunning. If she was a little blank and cool in her acting,
frozen mortification works well for Tatyana, and all the yearning was there
in a superbly sung performance. She had a perfect counterfoil in
Samuel Dale Johnson's Onegin, initially aloof (making an entrance on a
live horse!) and little by little falling prey to his own personality
flaws. There were certainly no flaws in his singing. The quality of
singing and characterisation of Olga and Lensky by Sioned Gwen Davies
and Peter Auty was evident in how much you cared about their fates.
Eugene
Onegin can sometimes risk being a little aloof and cool in its
mannerisms of detachment if the music and singing aren't all perfectly
aligned to bring out the true sentiments. That necessarily goes beyond
the principals, the larger picture of life and the impact of time
extending to the supporting characters, from Madame Larina and the nurse
Filippyevna's views and life experiences, to Prince Gremin's reflections on
married life and love later in life. The chorus, the dancers, also all
contribute to the sense of life viewed comprehensively in all its
richness, but with an underlying melancholy for the impact of that time exerts on it.
Everything that is great about Eugene Onegin comes together perfectly
in this Scottish Opera production.
Links: Scottish 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.
Gaetano Donizetti - L'Elisir d'Amore
NI Opera, 2013
David Brophy, Oliver Mears, Anna Patalong, John Molloy, Anthony Flaum, James McOran-Campbell, Sarah Reddin
Theatre at the Mill, Newtownabbey - 27 September 2013
If there were some concerns that NI Opera's 2013-14 season looked a little thin and reliant on co-productions that would be less specific to the province (we've been spoilt, I know), there was at least a sense that there was something in the programme for everyone. The forthcoming production of Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest notwithstanding, it could however also be said to lack the ambition of the first two inaugural seasons of the newly formed opera company. Certainly Donizetti's comedy L'Elisir d'Amore, sung in English, would hardly appear to be the most challenging choice for a season opener, but it did prove to be a popular and accessible one and perhaps that's just as important a factor in this era of continued budget cuts to the arts.
Popularity however need not necessarily mean any compromise in the high standards that we have come to expect from NI Opera. L'Elisir d'Amore might not break any new ground for the company, but with a cast as adept in comedy acting as they were agile in their singing, this was as delightful an entertainment as it ought to be. It isn't really necessary to have a concept with an opera like Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, but it helps if the approach is consistent, relatable and, most importantly, it's at least funny. Oliver Mears' clever and considered production not only met those requirements, it may even have offered something a little extra to think about in these times when money concerns are indeed foremost in most people's minds.
Oliver Mears' setting the opera in an 1970's college classroom might be nothing more than an indulgence of nostalgia, so it might be reading a bit too much into it to connect Donizetti's lighthearted play on the Tristan and Isolde legend with the earlier production of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman set in the same era. There is a consistency in the approach however and it does at least manage to bring the subject back down to something that everyone in the audience can relate to. Reading anything more than that into the settings of these productions is perhaps fanciful, but if so inclined, you could make a connection between The Flying Dutchman and the decline in traditional industries like shipbuilding during the Thatcher era, but can make L'Elisir d'Amore as a critique on Thatcherism in the same way?
Thankfully, Oliver Mears doesn't over-stretch the material and its comedy to fit any such dubious concept, but that doesn't mean that I can't. Just for fun. There's no doubt that the working class Nemorino becomes much more empowered when he partakes of the elixir, which in a way is investing in the enterprise of Doctor Dulcamara. He certainly receives a handsome return on his investment with regards to his middle-class aspiration to marry above his class, but it's still something of a high risk investment. The elixir on the other hand may in this case be nothing more than a splash of Brut or Old Spice for all the lasting impact it has on Adina's feelings for him, but the attraction of money in this Thatcherist era shouldn't be underestimated, particularly when Nemorino inherits great wealth from his recently deceased uncle.
With the dodgy Dulcamara slipping into a very broad Irish brogue on occasion, you could look further and see an early indication of the Celtic Tiger in this, which does suggest that the elixir business is built on some very shaky foundations indeed. It sounds plausible enough then, or at least the excellent comic acting of John Molloy in the role makes the proposition seem most persuasive. Or if not made plausible, at least made very funny and relatable to the audience. Throw in a few comments in the adapted translation that have Adina calling Nemorino an "eejit", and you're very much speaking about to the audience in their own language about a universal subject.
Putting such fanciful interpretations aside, the key to the work lies in giving due attention to that universal question of love. Those romantic sentiments also work very much more for a modern audience here by portraying the impossibility of a relationship between a peasant and a wealthy land-owner as the classroom crush of a college pupil for a sexy teacher well out of his league. With her hair in bun and wearing glasses only to be "revealed" in a much more glamorous light, Anna Patalong fits the bill rather well (and, having previously seen Ms Patalong in a maid outfit as Serpetta in this summer's Buxton production of Mozart's La Finta Giardiniera, I think I might be developing a bit of a crush there myself).
The clever set design then works well on a practical level, creating a classroom out of the chorus, setting figures and characters out in their marvellously recreated seventies fashions (by costume designer Ilona Karas). On an operational level too there were plenty of little comic touches such as the CND poster on the wall being ripped down by Sgt. Belcore when the soldiers arrive, in Dr. Dulcamara's mobile science laboratory, and generally in the comic interplay between the characters. The gym setting for Act II with the chorus as netball players is also brilliantly put together and hugely entertaining.
That all makes NI Opera's L'Elisir d'Amore sound like a nice light piece of fluff, but there are of course considerable musical and singing challenges in the work. The musical side of things was well catered for by the Ulster Orchestra led by conductor David Brophy. There wasn't always a great feel for Donizetti's sometimes rather conventional arrangements and the reduced orchestra couldn't consequently carry them off with sweeping flourishes, but between them they found the appropriate the lightness of touch required for the work, the size of the venue and worked well with the singing and timing of the performers.
The real challenges and character of the work however are to be found in the singing and here the casting and performances were outstanding. Anna Patalong's darkly rich soprano (and appearance) put one in mind of Anna Netrebko on occasion, but she tackled the role of Adina and all its high notes with great ability, relish and considerable character. The ever-reliable John Molloy, as noted earlier also made his role very much his own, while Anthony Flaum's Nemorino brought a new meaning to the term "vocal gymnastics" by singing some pieces while skipping and doing push-ups in Act II. Top of the class!
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.
