Francesca Caccini - La Liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola di Alcina
Royal Irish Academy of Music, Lir Academy of Dramatic Art, 2019
David Adams, Hélène Montague, Clodagh Kinsella, Dylan Rooney, Aebh Kelly, Breffni Fitzpatrick, Berus Komarschela, Vladimir Sima, Megan O'Neill, Caroline Behan, Seamus Brady, James Danaswarmy, Ava Dodd, Amie Dyer, Hailey-Rose Lynch
The Abbey Theatre, Peacock Stage, Dublin - 29 March 2019
Even if it's for being the first female opera composer, Francesca Caccini is historically an important figure in the world of music, but her opera La Liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola di Alcina suggests that she should also be considered as one of the important early influences on the development of opera. Perhaps that lack of recognition is down to the fact that this 1625 opera is the only one of her works that survives, but that just means it should surely be given more attention and fortunately the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin and the Lir Academy of Dramatic Art are good at bringing such works back to life in their Opera Shorts programme.
Composed almost 400 years ago, already the familiar structure and elements of 'modern' opera are in place in La Liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola di Alcina (The Liberation of Ruggiero from Alcina's Island), and it even shows signs of a style that might even have been more influential in the longer run than either Monteverdi or Cavalli. With a prelude taking place between the gods, with ballet inserts, choruses and merveilleux spectacles, already the basic elements that feature in the French tragédie lyriques of Lully and Rameau and the late baroque operas of Handel are all in place.
The subject of Alcina and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso too is one that is revisited repeatedly in some of the classic works of early and late baroque opera; in Lully's Armide, Handel's Orlando and Alcina, Haydn's Orlando Paladino, and Caccini's arrangements can already be seen to be closer to those works not just in terms of the development of musical theatre and operatic conventions, but in the adherence to mood and variety of situations, blending the worlds of gods and humans, love and sorcery into a richly textured work.
Ideal material then for the students of RIAM and the Lir in Dublin to explore; challenging works too, the Opera Shorts programmes featuring new and contemporary works as well as early music. Directed by Hélène Montague, the production doesn't attempt anything too clever or contemporary with La Liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola di Alcina, but instead they let the purity of the work speak for itself and find other ways to highlight the beauty of the work's composition.
The set design by Molly O'Cathain is itself fresh and bright, an attractive modern vision of an island that has its own seductive quality rather than a witch's island of horrors. It's more like an elegant landscaped garden, with potted plants and modern white climbing poles, but there is evidently a dark side to it, the poles forming a kind of cage (housing the captive musicians!), the greenery we later discover just the tops of heads of all the poor unfortunates that Alcina has lured to their doom after first having her evil way with them.
Alcina's latest victim, under her charm without even realising that he is her love slave, is Ruggiero. Melissa, a more benevolent sorceress, has arrived on the island and disguising herself as a man she sets out to rescue Ruggiero from the clutches of Alcina and reunite him with his fiancée Bradamante. Moved by the pleas of the captives that Alcina has turned into plants, Melissa also attempts to free Alcina's other victims, but she first has to face down Alcina's monsters and the wrath of the queen of the island Alcina herself.
Although the basic storyline is simple, there are a wide variety of dramatic situations that Caccini sets beautifully to music. The RIAM/Lir production excels in brings both together and finding the appropriate tone, which sometimes means blending the seductive with the sinister, the tragic with a comic element. The attractive/sinister contrasts are also highlighted in the black and white designs of the costumes, but most evidently in the music, the slow and hesitant rhythms of the plucked strings gradually becoming more enveloping and enchanting, casting Alcina's spell over the audience.
The same principle is applied to the voices and the casting perfectly reflects Caccini's intentions. Dylan Rooney's Ruggiero is a light lyrical baritone, his character unable to break the spell that has him held in thrall to Clodagh Kinsella's commanding Alcina. Aebh Kelly's bright soaring performance as Melissa is perfect as someone who cuts through the spell, a spell that holds Ruggiero and audience alike in an even tighter grasp following the appearance of Megan O'Neill's spellbinding Siren. There's a melancholic beauty also to Berus Komarschela's Astolfo, one of the chorus of Enchanted Plants, comically/tragically consigned to a wheelbarrow.
The addition of the Siren, the appearance of Alcina's Monsters and a huge set-piece conclusion of liberation of the Freed Knights and Lovers from Alcina and her Attendants, also provides great opportunities for spectacle, with a storm added for additional merveilleux effects. Under the musical direction of David Adams Caccini's La Liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola di Alcina still sounds fresh 400 years after it was first performed and, as staged by Hélène Montague with the performances of the students of RIAM and the Lir, it proves still to be an utterly beguiling work.
Links: RIAM, The Lir, Abbey Theatre
Claudio Monteverdi - Il Ballo delle Ingrate
Judith Weir - Scipio’s Dream
Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin - 2018
David Adams, Caitriona McLaughlin, Leah Redmond, Katie O'Donoghue, Matthew Mannion, Ben Escorcio, Robert McAllister, Ana-Maria Acunune, Katie Richardson McCrea, Hannah Traynor
The Abbey Theatre on the Peacock Stage - 29 March 2018
The pairing of two operas written almost 400 years apart is an intriguing one and neither are by any means an obvious selection for students of the Royal Irish Academy of Music working on a stage production of the programme in collaboration with the Lir Academy of Dramatic Art. You might expect the intention of juxtaposing Monteverdi's Il Ballo delle Ingrate (1608) with Judith Weir's Scipio’s Dream (1991) would be to throw up interesting musical contrasts as well as highlighting how social attitudes have changed over the years, but in reality the subjects of both works display a common social conservatism. In the case of Monteverdi's work, the deeply serious treatment of a tragic subject could be seen to merely reflect the attitudes of the times in which it was written, while Judith Weir's more overt comedy is more obviously critical of similar ideals.
What the two works really have in common however is - somewhat obviously - is that they are being performed to a modern audience, and what they have to communicate to that audience must be the primary consideration of a director. Rather than seek to connect the works thematically, which might only strengthen the less liberal sentiments expressed in them and send out mixed messages, Catriona McLaughlin approaches each of the two short pieces on their own terms. Updating them to a more modern setting, the RIAM/Lir production seeks to remain to the original intentions of both works while at the same time finding a way to explore the relevance they have for a contemporary audience living in Ireland. From that point of view, with that as a starting point but with a little bit of a shift in perspective, the timeless quality of both works and the truths they reveal comes through well.
In the case of Scipio's Dream, the updating of ideas towards a modern perspective has already been made by Judith Weir, since her work is based on Mozart's Il sogno di Scipione, written in 1771 when the composer was 15 years of age. Weir's comic opera was adapted for TV in 1991 and updated into a contemporary office background, where a businessman has to make a decision whether to follow the allegorical paths represented by the goddesses of Fortune versus Constancy. Catriona McLaughlin's production actually returns the work closer to it original story based on Cicero's 'On the Republic' by re-envisioning Scipio as the leader of a Republic state; as Leo Varadkar, the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland, whose dilemma is the choice between following the fortune of the UK's Brexit decision or to remain constant to the security offered by remaining in the EU.
The choice is perhaps not realistically one that the Taoiseach has to consider, so it's not as if there's a political point to be made here, but placing him in this position at least makes the allegorical aspect of the work more relatable. And funny, which is a vital part of the charm of this particular work; at least in Weir's version as I'm not sure Pietro Metastasio had laughs in mind when he wrote the libretto. It might be a little heavy-handed and unnecessary for Fortune to hold up a mask of Theresa May, for Constancy to hold up a mask identifying her as Angela Merkel and for the other players to similarly identify their European leader counterparts, but it certainly gets the laughs and engages the audience with the conceit. And perhaps there are a few little political points to be made along the way, even if the Irish angle doesn't really mirror the reality of the personal or political challenges faced by Leo Varadkar.
What is surprising about the work, I found, is that while it is certainly modernised, Weir retains the musical language of Mozart's time for her contemporary adaptation of Scipio's Dream. The enchantments of the goddesses of Constancy and Fortune are therefore represented by seductive arias and vocal ornamentation, which are handled well by Leah Redmond and Katie O'Donoghue. The role of Scipio also has its own vocal challenges that baritone Matthew Mannion capably managed, at the same time displaying good presence and successfully delivering the comic touches that are very much part of the charm of the work. The ensemble singers also impressed as they brought a hard border solution that may not be Scipio's dream, but perhaps the only realistic consequence of putting one's faith in the goddess of Constancy.
Despite the underlying sentiments of Il Ballo delle Ingrate, the dance of the ungrateful women condemned to Hell for refusing to submit to the love of a man, there is also a message in Monteverdi's 400 year old work that is relevant to the times. Rather than place it in an equivalent contemporary setting that would undoubtedly distract from the beauty of the piece and probably be an inadequate response to the complexities of the reality faced by women in the world today, the director allows a little modernised tweaking of the translation of the words of the Madrigal make the relevance a little more 'present', but it's the tragic melancholy tone of the extraordinary music of the work itself that aligns it more closely to the fate of abused women, giving it a haunting quality that clearly resonates with a modern audience.
In common with Scipio's Dream the story relies on allegorical figures of gods and goddesses to raise the subject above the level of personal drama to a mythological and moral dilemma. Poor Venus and Eros (Venere and Amore) are distraught that Cupid's darts are no longer as effective as they once were when women used to accept their fate and obeyed the fortune bestowed upon them by the love and attentions of a man. They bring their complaint to Pluto (Plutone), God of the Underworld, who determines that the women are indeed ungrateful and, although it appears harsh to bring them to a place where there can be no return, they must pay the price for contravening the vital rules of nature.
Pluto, as sung by bass-baritone Robert McAllister is indeed a formidable figure, and in McLaughlin's production the torments that the ungrateful women are subjected to by his demons is indeed degrading and horrific. There's no need for elaborate visions of hell, the demons all wear jackets and ties, sitting around the same Prime Minister's office desk that was used in Scipio's Dream. The women are paraded, mocked, stripped of protective clothing and pawed by Pluto's 'Ombre d'Inferno' minions. Enduring their fate, their closing lamentation becomes less of a warning to other ungrateful women than an anthem for all the women who have suffered at the hands of monsters.
That could be a hard angle to sell in such a short piece were it not for the fact that the work is by Monteverdi and a masterpiece that is more than capable of expressing such sentiments. The RIAM Baroque Orchestra performance of Il Ballo delle Ingrate under the direction of David Adams was simply mesmerising, holding the flow and line of the work beautifully, but more importantly finding the dark melancholic poignancy at the heart of the work. The singing also lifted the work to this level, contrasting the exceptional singing of Robert McAllister's marvellously controlled and resonant Pluto with the almost heavenly chorus of the 'ingrate' at the conclusion, weeping not so much for their own miserable fate as much as in solidarity for the fate of all those other women throughout the ages who have lived in hell of one kind or another.
Links: RIAM, The Lir, Abbey Theatre
Siobhán Cleary - Vampirella
Royal Irish Academy of Music, Lir Academy of Dramatic Art, 2017
Andrew Synnott, Tom Creed, Sarah Brady, Philip Keegan, Tim Shaffrey, Eimear McCarthy Luddy
Smock Alley Theatre 1662 - 23rd March 2017
Aside from Marschner's Der Vampyr and one or two other obscure early 19th century works based on John Polidori's creation, the vampire story is one aspect of mythology that hasn't really been explored in opera. Bram Stoker's Dracula however has tended to present the myth in a relatively more modern context with Gothic overtones that tap into deeper psychological drives and impulses arisng out of a specific period in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century when psychoanalysis was starting to probe the dark horrors of the repressed Victorian-era mindset. Rational thought was starting to replace barbarism and superstition, but in spite of this the modern twentieth century would unleash two greater monsters in the form of two world wars.
If opera hasn't yet seen fit to explore these areas and open up the themes of vampire mythology, film and literature has; particularly in the writings of Angela Carter. It's somewhat appropriate then that it's a female composer who writes a contemporary opera based on an Angela Carter story and radio play and that Siobhán Cleary's second opera should also have its world premiere in Dublin, the home town of Bram Stoker. Vampirella manages to draw from that sense of shared history and the collective fear that Stoker tapped into, but applies it to the modern imagery of the Goth and Carter's modern feminist interpretation - some might say subversion - of myth and fairy-tale. There's something of an overturning of the roles here from the traditional fairy-tale, with the Prince of modernity not so much coming to wake the Sleeping Beauty of the past as unwittingly kill her and all that she stands for.
There is a similar blend of historical and modern revisionism in the Dublin world premiere of Vampirella. The set designs adhere closely to the familiar imagery of the dark and Gothic almost to the point of caricature, with dry-ice aplenty and dark figures in black cloaks bearing candles populating the stage. The venue of the Smock Alley Theatre, originally built in 1662, added an historic quality that if it didn't exactly give it a sense of authenticity at least provided the same kind of contrast between the historic and a modern outlook on mythology that seeks to reinterpret it for a new age. If nothing else, it provided acres of atmosphere.
Even though the story remains set in the year 1914, the plot itself is very much concerned with bringing the vampire myth into the modern age. Count Dracula is dead, killed by a virgin on a virgin horse, but his spirit and practices live on in his daughter, the Countess. It's another innocent who will be the death of the last of this line, a young English soldier called Hero travelling on bicycle through the Carpathian mountains while on furlough. The storyline follows along much the same path as the original Dracula story; Hero encountering strange locals from a village near the castle, becoming somewhat bewitched by the presence of the Countess despite her unusually pointed teeth, accidentally cutting himself and witnessing the troubling response that she has towards the spilling of his blood.
Despite the Gothic trappings and imagery of the traditional vampire story, the more modern outlook upon it is brought out in librettist Katy Hayes' adaptation of Angela Carter's story. Hero is versed in the psychoanalytical investigations that have recently been documented in Vienna, particularly in relation to female behaviour, and he can't help but apply them to what he knows of the Countess. At the same time he is aware of natural drives and impulses and cannot deny an erotic attraction in the deadly situation that can't be entirely rationalised. For a young reserved and somewhat innocent Englishman, this presents quite a complicated set of feelings.
Nature is evoked in a number of ways, again much in the same allegorical 'children of the night' way that Stoker may have applied it in his story. It's a cat who scratches the young Englishman, unable to resist its nature and the implication of course is that the Countess and her line - as a representation of the barbaric ways of the past - are no more capable of resisting those same natural urges and inclinations. In 1914 however, we are now on the cusp of the modern age, capable of analysing and understanding behaviour, but despite the apparent victory of rationalism over barbarism, Hero will end up dying in a war that takes blood-letting to an even greater and more impersonally mechanised scale.
There's a collision of ancient and modern in the storyline and the challenge for composer Siobhán Cleary is to find a match for that in the music. What kind of influence can you draw upon to create a contemporary Gothic score? Some of the influences might be evident and others surprising, but Cleary comes up with an unusual blend drawn from a number of sources that successfully finds its own voice specific to the drama. There's frequent use of a chanted chorus with tight harmonies, some traditional European folk influences, some string quartet arrangements that suggest the romanticism of Schubert (Death and the Maiden?) or something more like Brahms in order to evoke a sensibility closer to the turn of the twentieth century setting.
The hints of older forms of music are blended with a more modern use of sounds, electronics and atmospherics that have more to do with the Spectralism of Grisey and Murail, but greater use of the harp gives a softer and more romantic edge that is more akin to the music of Kaija Saariaho. Individual instruments are also assigned to individuals, but even the singing of each of the characters has its own style. Sarah Brady produces a beautiful and assured lyrical soprano for the Countess; Tim Shaffrey's narrative baritone is electronically enhanced and supplemented for the observing spirit of Count Dracula; Philip Keegan's no-nonsense Hero is given more spoken dialogue than singing; as is Eimear McCarthy Luddy as Mrs Beane, although with her character's sing-song Scottish accent, she is more prone to breaking out into lyrical phrasing in a lovely singing voice that isn't used enough.
The latter character also introduces an element of humour into the otherwise moody proceedings, a tone that is undoubtedly in the spirit of the original to prevent it from being taken too seriously or gothically, but it doesn't always seem to sit well. The varied patterns, textures and styles of the music however do manage to acquire an unexpected coherence through Andrew Synnott's conducting of the RIAM chamber orchestra. Lyrically and dramatically Vampirella might not make any great statement, but it shows Siobhán Cleary as a composer willing to try to find an appropriate lyrical style for the needs of a dramatic situation that incorporates many of the characteristics of the Gothic-Romantic; not so much viewing the horrors of the past through the eyes of today, but reflecting on today with a foot in the past.
Links: RIAM, Smock Alley Theatre, CMC Ireland
