Robert O'Dwyer - Eithne
Opera Theatre Company, Dublin - 2017
Fergus Sheil, Orla Boylan, Gavan Ring, Robin Tritschler, Brendan Collins, Eamonn Mulhall, Imelda Drumm, John Molloy, Robert McAllister, Rachel Croash, Eoghan Desmond, Fearghal Curtis, Conor Breen
National Concert Hall, Dublin - 14th October 2017
Economies of scale and a troubled political history have prevented the idea of a national opera from ever really being able to establish a foothold in Ireland. It's only recently that steps have been taken to form a national opera company to replace Opera Ireland, one of the arts victims of the economic crisis that struck Ireland almost a decade ago. Irish National Opera doesn't officially come into being until 2018, but in the meantime a few of the component groups that will form the new company have been working hard to keep opera alive in the country. There has been a resurgence in contemporary opera commissions in recent years and now, quite thrillingly, there's been the rediscovery of one of the most important works in the history of Irish opera, Robert O'Dwyer's Eithne.
Eithne has the distinction of being the first full-scale opera composed in the Irish language. It was composed in 1909 by Robert O'Dwyer, who was born in Bristol of Irish parents, and the opera was last performed at the Gaiety theatre in Dublin in 1910. As the fate of Ireland was caught up in the subsequent years with the War of Independence and the Irish Civil War, O'Dwyer's Irish language opera was lost and only rediscovered when the orchestral score came up for auction in 2012. It was an occasion of some national pride then to have the opera - unheard for over 100 years - reconstructed, revived and performed once again in 2017 by the Opera Theatre Company. While Eithne is no lost masterpiece, it is nonetheless an important and even an impressive work, and it certainly impressed the audience who came to see in a one-off concert performance at the National Concert Hall in Dublin.
An unheard work by an unheard of composer, it was difficult to imagine beforehand what to expect from Eithne and just how it was going to sound. The period of composition and the subject based on Celtic mythology however gave a few important clues and indeed the few on-line rehearsal clips posted in advance suggested a lush post-Wagnerian romanticism. In the event, there is little that is Wagnerian or even Straussian in Eithne's scale or ambition, and the music itself isn't particularly Celtic sounding, although there is a fairy-tale element to the harp music and a folk element in some of the solo violin playing. It's the rhythms and sounds of the Irish language however that provides a more recognisable character for the folk legend of Eithne, aligning it more closely to Dvořák and the fairy-tale romantic character of Rusalka.
There is a recognisable connection with Die Zauberflote and Siegfried and a romantic element too in the heroic endeavours of Ceart to become the High King of Ireland. Based on the legend of Éan an cheoil bhinn (The bird of sweet music), the Irish language libretto for Eithne was composed by the noted academic and playwright Tomás Ó Ceallaigh. In the first half of the opera, characterised by rousing choral music, Ceart is unanimously acclaimed by the people to be the successor to the High King, but his half-brothers Neart and Art conspire against him, claiming that he is responsible for the killing of the king's favourite hound. Nuala, who has brought Ceart up since the death of his mother, intervenes on his behalf and, evoking the songs of the birds when she speaks, she convinces the King of the truth and inspires him even to forgive Neart and Art.
The bird's song is heard again in the second half of the opera, and it leads the King away from the hunt. Surrounded by maidens, Eithne appears and tells of her fate, that she and her mother (Nuala) have been held captive in a spell by her father the King of Tír na nÓg (the legendary Land of Youth in Irish folklore). Ceart steps forward to challenge the Guardian Spirit of Tír na nÓg and beating him he acquires a magical ring, sword and cloak that will help him defeat the King. In order to break the spell however, Ceart has other challenges to face and, proving his worth as a warrior, as a worthy husband for Eithne and, as the death of his father is announced, as the High King of Ireland.
Evidently, there's enough magic and drama in Eithne for it to be a fine stage spectacle, and perhaps one day we might get the opportunity to see it that way, but this first and only presentation of Robert O'Dwyer's rediscovered work was presented to the Dublin audience in concert performance, where it was recorded for a future CD release. Even in concert performance, this was an impressive way to experience the opera, as it gave great opportunity not only to hear the individual singers but the work of the large chorus - so prominent through - and the terrific playing of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fergus Sheil, giving the lush melodic musical qualities of the work central stage.
Despite the title of the opera being granted to Eithne, who only makes an appearance late in the opera, it was Robin Tritschler's Ceart who was unquestionably the star performance of the night. The tenor has a beautifully light lyrical tone that is reminiscent of Klaus Florian Vogt in one or two places but with a little more 'body'. A virtuous, heroic tone is required for Ceart - if not quite of the Heldentenor variety - and Tritschler delivered that in abundance. The role of Eithne has challenges, but not perhaps of the Wagnerian level either, and I thought Orla Boylan (who I last saw singing the big role of Turandot) was a little too large a voice for the role in that respect, and there was some wavering as she tried to fit to the lyrical flow. Boylan however certainly carried the romantic heroism of the role with all the essential Irish qualities that are necessary there in her voice.
There were other impressive performances in Irish-singing cast. John Molloy's smooth baritone boomed imperiously as the rumbling Giant, the Guardian Spirit of Tír na nÓg. Nuala too has a substantial presence in the first act, and singing along to the flute birdsong accompaniment, Imelda Drumm was absolutely captivating. Gavan Ring, who was instrumental in bringing Eithne back to the stage, sang the role of the High King of Ireland wonderfully and in full possession of the elevated status of the role. The heightened Irish legend qualities were boosted considerably by the chorus of the Opera Theatre Company, bringing the audience to its feet at the opera's epic conclusion. It now seems that Irish national opera not only as a future, but it now has a glorious past history to look back on as well.
Links: Opera Theatre Company, Irish National Opera, RTE webcast
Giacomo Puccini - Turandot
NI Opera, 2015
David Brophy, Calixto Bieito, Orla Boylan, Marc Heller, Anna Patalong, Stephen Richardson, Christopher Gillett, Paul Carey Jones, Andrew Rees, Eamonn Mulhall, Padraic Rowan, Gemma Prince, Heather Fogarty, David Lynn
Grand Opera House, Belfast - 31 October 2015
I have to admit that although I am by no means fond of Pasolini's 1975 brutal and near-unwatchable final film 'Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom', it has to be said that it remains an important and influential work that still has the power to shock and horrify. Like it or not, references to the work in an opera production are still guaranteed to cause controversy and raise an outcry, but you'd have to ask serious questions why such an extreme outlook needs to be brought onto the opera stage in the first place, as for example in Andrea Breth's production of Verdi's La Traviata at La Monnaie. The director made a strong case for it there, but references to 'Salò' accompanied by equally disturbing imagery in Calixto Bieito's production of Turandot for the NI Opera is surely taking things too far?
It is hard to imagine quite how such an extreme treatment could be applied with any validity to Puccini's colourful fairy tale opera, nor is it immediately obvious as you are watching the production, since the scenes enacted here scarcely bear out what is detailed in the libretto. But then of course nothing about Calixto Bieito's productions are ever obvious. It is interesting and fortuitous (but maybe not all that surprising) that elements of this production just happen to echo current events relating to the increased prominence of China on the world's political and economic stage. There was the state visit of the President of The People's Republic, Xi Jinping, signalling closer economic union between Britain and China last week, and the newprint ink was still damp on reporting of the relaxation of China's one-child rule when this production opened at the Grand Opera House in Belfast. Still, what's that got to do with Turandot and why bring 'Salò' into it?
Puccini never intended Turandot to make any kind of political statement, but there certainly is room to find a darker subtext in the bold new musical direction that the composer had embarked upon in his final few works. Turandot is, despite its fairy tale trappings, unquestionably a dark, sombre and even violent work, even more so than the traditional underlying subtext of most fairy tales. It's about a cruel princess who executes anyone who fails to answer her riddles. Many have come to her kingdom hoping to melt her frozen heart, but all of them end up beheaded, her regime also carrying out torture and executions. It's all there in the plot of Turandot and it's all there in the music too. The Chinese musical quotations are not there for exoticism this time with Puccini, but rather they are intentionally dissonant and jarring, accompanied by huge, heavy orchestration and powerful choral arrangements. Turandot herself is one of the most challenging soprano roles for any singer, demanding Wagnerian stamina with firm high coloratura.
Bieito evidently brings this dark undercurrent to the foreground by setting it in Communist China, although there is little to differentiate between China of the recent past and the more capitalist-friendly China of today. The workers, all in blue uniformed dungarees, work in a sweatshop that seems to trade in medical body parts ('Medorgan'), most of which seem to come from excess babies. Or dolls maybe, but they tend to bleed when bashed head-first onto the floor. It's a totalitarian regime with Ping, Pong and Pang less comedy figures and rather more authoritarian mandarins. Dressed in Communist military uniforms, they are shown brutally beating, stripping and raping the workers, mercilessly clamping down on them when they fall behind Calaf and his attempts to win the hand of the ice princess. They do a lot worse in their torture of Calaf, Liù and Timur in their attempts to uncover Calaf's identity. It's the use and abuse of the bodies of the people as the ultimate commodity in a consumerist society, and seen in that context, Pasolini's stark and bleak vision of 'Salò' is not only appropriate, but even more prophetic and relevant today.
Viewed realistically, Turandot is not a distant fairy tale unrelated to the real world either, but one which can be seen to say a lot about China, or indeed about pretty much any modern so-called democracy in our globalised times. You have authorities who keep their actions and activities hidden and unaccountable (presented as riddles) contrasting that with their desire to control the population through fear, seeking to gain access to the private information that they can use to undermine any individual or body (Calaf/Ai Weiwei/the Arts in general) who opposes, challenges or is a threat to their objectives. It's not just China either, but you can apply much of this kind of activity to what is going on all over the world today. The signs of 'Traitor' hung around the necks of artists and intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution are the character assassinations of the right-wing press of today. Chilcot, Guantanamo, Wikileaks, Snowdon, the government seeking powers to monitor the control the freedom of the internet, an unaccountable wealthy 1% elite exploiting and scapegoating the poor; all these apply. If Calixto Bieito had managed to get a pig's head somewhere up there on the stage, it could hardly have been more topical...
Beito's production was of course developed long before last week's news, previously showing in Nuremburg and Toulouse and obviously it makes no such direct reference to any of these issues. Like 'Salò' however, it taps into the undercurrents and it's a measure of how the the subject is presented that it is relevant and can be applied meaningfully to what is going on in the world today. Seen in that light, Puccini's Turandot is a good vehicle for the ideas that Bieito draws out of it, the composer's through composition and the underlying dissonance suggesting something far more sinister lying behind the fairy tale imagery. It's using art to touch on a deeper reality, something that totalitarian states also fear and suppress. It's interesting (and not entirely coincidental I'm sure) that in a time that sees even greater government cuts to the arts (something that affects NI Opera), Calaf sings "Nessun Dorma", the most lyrical moment of the opera while turning around the 'Traitor' sign hung around his neck and writing 'Poetry' on it. And he is roundly kicked and beaten by the authorities, Pang, Pong and Ping for his troubles.
Turandot becomes darker still if it is only taken as far as Puccini composed it before his death, ending at the point where Liù takes her own life. Franco Alfano's completion of the work is abandoned here, ending on this bleak note, the full two-hour performance played without intermission and with no respite from the horror on the stage. There's no redemption for her sacrifice, no winning over of the cruelty of the heartless ruler. If there was anything that weakened the tone established here in NI Opera's production, it wasn't in the singing or the impressive performance of the Ulster Orchestra who were really on fire here, hitting home resoundingly under the baton of David Brophy. Orla Boylan was a formidable Princess Turandot, her mastery of the role impressive; Marc Heller was a lyrical Calaf; Anna Patalong an impassioned Liù; Stephen Richardson a grave, agonised Timur, and Paul Carey Jones' resonant baritone give us an implacably evil Pang. No, if there was any weakness - aside from the continued absurd policy of singing in English (even "Nessun Dorma"!) in a work pitched so high and to a thunderous score that renders the words utterly unintelligible without surtitles - it was that paradoxically the live stage may not really be the best place to highlight such horrors of the world today.
It is an extreme vision and no doubt some reviewers and audience members will be up in arms about the treatment of Turandot here, but despite the best efforts of the director, it can't help but feel 'staged' and tame in comparison to the reality. But it's all we've got, and it's an impressive effort that must be attempted. NI Opera have never shied away from challenges, not least the very threat to their continued existence that the NI Assembly present with their appallingly short-sighted and vicious cuts in funding for the arts. For that and for even daring to put this kind of production on the stage in Belfast, the overwhelmingly positive response from the audience was fully merited. "Not extreme enough" and "met with unanimous acclaim" are not phrases you often see applied to a Calixto Bieito production, but it says a lot for the confidence that NI Opera have in Belfast audiences (evidently a more sophisticated audience than the booing contingent that blights La Scala, Covent Garden and the Paris Opera) to support and recognise the importance of artistic freedom. This is what art can do and this is why we need the arts.
Benjamin Britten - The Rape of Lucretia
English National Opera, Aldeburgh Festival 2001
Paul Daniels, David McVicar, John Mark Ainsley, Orla Boylan, Clive Bayley, Leigh Melrose, Christopher Maltman, Sarah Connolly, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Mary Nelson
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
Although it's come late in the year that also celebrated the work of Verdi and Wagner, the centenary of the birth of Benjamin Britten has done much to consolidate and even raise the reputation of Britain's greatest composer, and in the process highlight some unjustly neglected works. If Richard Jones was unable to salvage the reputation of Gloriana however, it must be hoped that this belated release of David McVicar's 2001 production of The Rape of Lucretia for the English National Opera, recorded by the BBC at the Aldeburgh Festival, will bring this more deserving work to the attention of a wider audience. The Rape of Lucretia is a work of extraordinary intensity and depth that sees Britten at his most distinctive and inspired.
Following the full orchestration of Britten's first opera Peter Grimes, The Rape of Lucretia marks something of a rethinking of approach to opera that would have a significant impact on the style of much of the composer's later dramatic works. There appears to be a more overt religious Christian element here that one sees echoes of in the Canticles and in the Church Parables, but Britten's interest in the subjects of these works would appear to go beyond Christian parable towards less clearly defined and somewhat more ambiguous moral issues. What is most interesting in The Rape of Lucretia however is Britten's approach to the scoring of the work, not only reducing the orchestration to allow the instruments greater individual voices, but also striving to find a unique expression in them that doesn't always adhere to expected conventional dramatic writing.
The subject of The Rape of Lucretia then is a powerful one which, when combined with Britten's musical scoring of it, is almost harrowing in its intensity. All the more so when it's given a strong interpretation and that is certainly the case in this production. On the surface, the plot and the sequence of events that lead up to the event seem to be as direct and straightforward as the title of the work itself. A group of Roman generals have made a drunken bet over the fidelity of their wives and unadvisedly tested it as far as to confirm their own unenlightened views. Junius in particular is bitter about the outcome, remarking to Tarquinius that "Women are all whores by nature" that "Virtue in women is a lack of opportunity" and that they are only chaste when they aren't tempted. He's not beyond recognising the hypocrisy of his position either, noting that "men defend a woman's honour when they would lay siege to it themselves".
There is however one exception to the rule it seems - Lucretia, the virtuous wife of Collatinus. Tarquinius, the "Prince of Rome" however refuses to accept that she is any different from the rest and goes out of his way to prove it. He invites himself into her home, visits her bedroom at night and forces himself upon her. As harrowing an ordeal as this is for Lucretia, what proves to be more despairing and leads to her taking her own life is the reaction of her husband when he learns of what has occurred and the shame of what other people will say about her. On the surface then, the story seems a familiar operatic one - the defilement of the chastity of an innocent woman that one finds throughout bel canto and opera semiseria works (Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix or Rossini's Sigismondo) with the added piety of Schumann's only opera work, the magnificent Genoveva.
Having already written Peter Grimes however, it's not difficult to see in The Rape of Lucretia themes that preoccupy Britten throughout his musical career and even in his personal life relating to the corruption of innocence. Lucretia, for Britten however is about much more than just the defilement of a woman's saintly virtue, but touches on the nature of society and the values that it assigns to men and women. And at the heart of it, there's the question of violence, how it can be seen as acceptable in certain circumstances - the Roman-Etruscan war forms more than a backdrop for the work - or at least excused in the case of it being part of the nature of man. War is a subject of great importance to Britten and The Rape of Lucretia would seem to question whether this is necessarily the case, or whether pacifism isn't truer to the better nature of mankind.
It's commented on specifically by the 'Male Chorus', a single singer who represents one of the more interesting means of expression that Britten makes use of in this opera. The Male Chorus and the Female Chorus are omniscient overseers who are witness to the events, but who exist outside of time and the period in a way that allows them to consider the events from a later 'Christian' perspective. The Male Chorus observes that "For violence is the fear within us all / And tragedy the measurement of man / And hope his brief view of God". It's an important device that allows the composer a wider perspective and a contemporary relevance, and not insignificantly, it's a device that has been used recently in a very similar way by Martin Crimp and George Benjamin in their very contemporary view of the medieval storyline of Written on Skin.
It's Britten's musical arrangements however that are just as innovative, distinctive, modern and relevant. The reduced orchestration highlights the expression of individual instruments and heightens the dramatic tone and tension of the subject. Rarely does the music rely on any conventional signposting that tells you how to react to the drama, but instead it fulfils the primary function of music in opera by exploring below the surface and revealing other depths. It's beautiful and haunting, underpinning the drama in Britten's own developing idiomatic language, but it also expresses convictions that are important to the composer in relation to his own life, views that were out of place with the accepted conventions of prevailing social attitudes of the time.
How much David McVicar's direction contributes to the sheer power and intensity that comes across in this production is hard to judge. The set itself is relatively straightforward, unadorned and more or less period. One directorial choice that goes against the original specifications is in how McVicar involves the Male and Female Chorus more in the action. Not quite interacting with it, but certainly having more of a presence, and this works well, as it is an important feature of the opera. If it's difficult to point to any specific directorial choice that evidently has an impact on the performance, what is clear nonetheless is the McVicar gets the mood exactly right and his direction of the singers and the acting is what ultimately makes this a truly great production.
Which of course means that you need fine singers who can also act in order to do it justice. The cast here is great, although not all of them are in their prime. Sarah Connolly is still terrifically good, it's just that she's an even better singer now. Christopher Maltman too has also matured into a better singer, but he has always been a good actor is performance here is, if anything, just a little too creepy and disturbing. In this work however, that isn't a bad thing at all. John Mark Ainsley is at his best here as the Male Chorus and with Orla Boylan good as his counterpart, the Female Chorus. All the roles really are just terrific and the measure of the success of the production is that it's about as intense, well-sung, painfully well-acted performance of The Rape of Lucretia as you could wish for, a perfect match for Britten's remarkable score, which is revealed in all its brilliance here by Paul Daniels.
