Donizetti - Viva la Diva (Buxton, 2022)

Gaetano Donizetti - Viva la Diva

Buxton International Festival, 2022

Iwan Davies, Stephen Medcalf, George Humphreys, Jenny Stafford, Richard Burkhard, Elliot Carlton Hines, Raimundas Juzuitis, Joseph Doody, Olivia Carrell, Quentin Hayes, Lauren Young

Buxton Opera House - 18th July 2022

Buxton is known for reviving rare and little-known operas in their annual festival, but there is also always a tremendous variety to the musical offerings. This year was no exception. There was a rare Rossini, a new contemporary opera by Tom Coult, a Sondheim musical Gypsy, Jonathan Dove's Mansfield Park, a baroque opera in Johann Hasse's Antonio e Cleopatra and a comic opera by Donizetti that, for me at least, is known only by reputation. Another thing Buxton do well is farce, whether it's Mozart (La Finta Giardiniera) or Britten (Albert Herring), they recognise that humour is an essential part of opera, that there are times when it shouldn't be taken so seriously, but at the same time, comedy has a way of revealing truths that may be difficult to broach in any other way. 

How else for example, can you look upon the complicated business writing an opera to satirise the process of putting on an opera? That's what Viva la Diva (alternatively known as Viva la Mamma, based on Donizetti's Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali) is all about, and typically Buxton - recognising that they aren't exactly Glyndebourne, Salzburg or one of the very important opera festivals - do it very much their own inimitable and self-effacing way (while also making fun of Glyndebourne and Salzburg). The temptation of what you can do with an opera about the problems that can arise trying to put on an opera are too much to resist and the BIF go out of their way to make it feel 'at home', recognisable not just to the opera world trapped in its own little hermetic bubble, but as something that exists very much in the world of culture and arts funding, business dealing and political favours.

Not only does director Stephen Medcalf not resist but he takes it much further, and before we even get to the rehearsal room in Act I there are an extra highly entertaining 20 minutes of a prologue added to cover the auditions for a production of the opera seria Romolo ed Ersilia for the 2022 High Peak Opera Festival. Donizetti's original work, adapted from plays by Simeone Antonio Sografi on the theatrical world, are consequently greatly reworked in a new English version by Kit Hesketh-Harvey. This brings it right up to date and introduces several more levels of humour to the proceedings, where even the person doing the surtitles has a few observations of his own to impart about his role in the whole process of putting on an opera. It's a very clever idea that introduces the characters and warms the audience up for what will follow.

It's a wonderfully witty colloquial and contemporary translation/resetting/rewriting of the opera, right down to renaming the characters, including Vanamaka Zonnendanz as a Czech mezzo, a Mr B.S. Merchant as the director, Conn Chetham as the dodgy impresario, and Huw Watt as the conductor. The rehearsal room also has local resonances and references, there are a few in-jokes thrown in and extemporised for the current high temperatures (it was 37°C outside). It's a laugh a minute if you can keep up with the pace as the jokes are flying out. Donizetti's opera evidently provides the basis for this, providing an insight into the whole creative and performance process as well as the personalities involved, and the director Stephen Medcalf swears that nothing in the Buxton production is entirely made up, but has a basis in the reality that he has experienced in his career.

Viva la Diva may not be anything more than an amusing satire that pokes fun at the personalities involved and their mannerisms, but it's just as clever and layered as Ariadne auf Naxos - if clearly not as musically sophisticated as Richard Strauss - predating it by almost a century. If you are going to play a comedy like this as a farce, the success rests just as heavily on the performers being willing to put everything into it, and that was very much the case here. That goes right down to the conductor Iwan Davies taking part, demonstrating a comic temperamental impatience with his singers, and by extension this involvement undoubtedly fed into the bright, lovely music performance by the Northern Chamber Orchestra.

It would be indelicate to name any of the personalities being satirised - they were broad enough that everyone could make their own mind up about who the acting-up Prima Donna most resembles (and I'm sure insiders will know a few of their own), but Jenny Stafford was marvellous, darling. We got a spot on performance from Lithuanian bass baritone Raimundas Juzuitis as Haakan Czestikov. Although his exaggerated thick Russian accent dialogue wasn't always easy to make out, his threatening presence and singing were excellent. We didn't get enough of Joseph Doody as the temperamental Italian tenor or Lauren Young as the Czech mezzo, but both were excellent. Quentin Hayes as Ray, Olivia Carrell as Alexa and Richard Burkhard as the impresario also lived up to their roles very well, but evidently George Humphreys, done up like a pantomime dame as Agatha, la Mamma, dominated proceedings. As usual the singers and 'singers' here get all the credit, but you have to acknowledge the contributions by the chorus, actors and other creatives so important in a team effort like this, even though as usual they don't even get a name check in a review.

Having said that it would be remiss not to mention the superb set design by Yannis Thavoris which added another element of satire at extravagant Regietheater productions. I actually thought it was a very convincing and workable concept for 'Romolo ed Ersilia'. Maybe not so much the Schmirnoff rocket, but I could see this working for Bregenz. I can't imagine where they got the funding for such an extravagant set at a festival in a little spa town on the edge of the Peak District, or rather I have a better idea now of the kind of business arrangements and deals that are made to get a show like this on the road. I just hope the cast and musicians got paid for this one.

Links: Buxton International Festival

Coult - Violet (Buxton, 2022)

Tom Coult - Violet

Buxton International Festival, 2022

Andrew Gourlay, Jude Christian, Anna Dennis, Richard Burkhard, Frances Gregory, Andrew Mackenzie

Buxton Opera House - 18th July 2022

The idea of the world coming to an end in Tom Coult's new and first opera Violet may have had a little extra edge due to the fact that it took place in Buxton on the hottest day of the year in a summer that was hitting the highest temperatures the UK has ever seen. It was 33°C at 7:15 pm when the opera started (and it reached 37°C the following day), so you felt like you had indeed been out through the wringer by the time you got out. As far as Violet is concerned, I'm undecided whether that's a good thing or not.

Time and awareness of the passing of time is significant as far as Violet goes and playwright Alice Birch has built a relatively simple idea around this for her libretto. A woman in a village, Violet, notices that an hour has disappeared from the day, a swift adjustment from midnight to 1:00am in the blink of an eye that even affects the clocks. Her husband Felix doesn't believe it, but as subsequent days each lose another hour every day, the evidence is clear and the implications worrying as we come to day 23, a day lasts only one hour.

I had been looking forward to hearing this since 2020 when it was originally scheduled and then cancelled because of the Covid pandemic, so I based my annual visit to the Buxton International Festival around its single performance here. The critical acclaim from its likewise readjusted world premiere performance at Aldeburgh to June this year was also promising, but despite its acclaim Violet didn't live up to the billing for me. It may be a simple idea that invites profound thoughts, but you're going to have to bring those yourself, because Violet and the production don't provide them.

What the opera seeks to explore is evidently how people react to what looks like impending doom, and the responses from the characters here varies. Violet, who has been suffering from depression and is the first person to understand what is happening, finds it easiest to embrace the idea, having presumably been expecting or longing for her own personal world to shut down for years. The other people and the inhabitants of the village used to a sense of order in their lives, are less sanguine about the turn of events and unexpectedly this turns to fear, anger and violence.

Not that we really see any of this in the Music Theatre Wales production (or hear it in the music really) other than through reports in the exchanges between the four characters who remain confined to a room around a table, curiously preoccupied with meals. The room is more of an abstraction, with ominous computer visuals projected behind of skies and perhaps time itself being consumed by strange singularities. The table is eventually overturned and Violet for some reason builds a boat, but under the direction of Jude Christian there is very little meaningful activity on the stage. The intent however is to present Violet as an idea or something to provoke ideas, but there is very little in the mundane exchanges of growing concern that really invite any deeper consideration.

As I suggested at the start, you could take what happens as a metaphor for global warming, with its small incremental and irreversible changes that creep up with the potential to have serious consequences down the line. You can also take it on an individual level of someone feeling their world closing in on them and accepting that there is no way out. The breakdown of the old social order presents Violet with a freedom, an inner freeing that she was unable to attain under the established patriarchal system. There are lots of other ways you can read this, even the idea of accepting the inevitably of time and change, but there is nothing too deep provided here.

Musically with its metronomes and bells, the score is quite effective at sustaining the mood of impending doom. Coult cites Ravel as a model (and evidently L'Heure espagnole with its clockmaker comes to mind), as well as several movie influences, mainly Lars Von Trier and there is certainly an element of Melancholia here (but nothing Wagnerian in Coult's score as with that film's apocalyptic use of Tristan und Isolde). Musically I can think of several antecedents that have worked to abstract ideas of time more successfully. I was reminded of Georg Friedrich Haas's microtonal shifts in Morgen und Abend and evidently of the musical techniques employed by Britten for The Turn of the Screw. I expected at least that each scene or segment of Violet would shorten in length as the opera progressed, but they all seemed more or less equal.

Nevertheless, conducted by Andrew Gourlay the chamber orchestration and the fascinating use of instruments managed to keep the opera engaging on a musical level, becoming sparser and more abstract as time progressed and disappeared. The countdown of hours left each day also provided structure and inevitably apprehension and Anna Dennis gave a terrific performance as Violet. The closing section of the final moments of existence using computer graphics of family in a room with a macabre game show in the background was perhaps intended to be satirical, but felt misjudged and really failed to make the impact. Not with a bang but a whimper indeed. Sadly, I felt much the same about Violet.

Links: Buxton International Festival

Handel - Radamisto (Belfast, 2017)

George Frideric Handel - Radamisto (Belfast)

NI Opera, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Belfast - 2017

David Brophy, Wayne Jordan, Doreen Curran, Aoife Miskelly, Kate Allen, Sinéad Campbell-Wallace, Richard Burkhard, Adrian Powter, Michael Patrick

Grand Opera House, Belfast - 14th May 2017

Although Northern Ireland Opera and Irish Youth Opera collaborated on an Irish tour with Agrippina in 2015, I can't recall that there has ever been a fully-staged Handel opera performed in Belfast. As a possible first then, the opera seria Radamisto is by no means the obvious choice to introduce Handel's operas to a Belfast audience. It's not filled with memorable arias, the music doesn't have the melody and harmony of the composer's best works, and the plot isn't the most dramatic. Without some invention and unless you have some very good singers capable of bringing the roles to life, Radamisto can be a very dry affair indeed. Fortunately the NI Opera production was outstanding not only in its playful direction and superb singing, but David Brophy and the musicians of the Irish Chamber Orchestra also found the beating heart of the work beneath its pounding rhythms.

It's the simplicity of Radamisto's relatively straightforward plot and its refinement down to six principal characters that actually works to its advantage. Although all the figures are all drawn from real-life, there is little of historical accuracy in the Nicola Haym's libretto for the opera. Based on a text, L'amor tyrannico, originally written for the composer Francscso Gasparini by Domenico Lalli, Radamisto is happy to play fast and loose with history in order to put across a direct moral message about resistance to tyranny. That's a message that may have spoken to the audiences of 1720 and perhaps it can still have a message to an audience who has been carefully following the development of world events in the news 300 years later.

In 53 AD however, the tyrant is Tiridate, the ruler of Armenia, who has invaded Thrace and enslaved its king Farasmane, despite being married to the king's daughter Polissena. The reason for this act of aggression however soon becomes clear; Tiridate is in love with Zenobia, the wife of Radamisto, the son of Farasmane and brother of Polissena. Despite the pleas of Tigrane, the Prince of Pontus who is an ally of Tiridate and in love with her, Polissena refuses to renounce her husband. Tigrane nevertheless assists in saving her brother Radamisto from the siege that Tiridate is waging on the city, disguising him and introducing him into the court of the tyrant in the hope of assisting his wife Zenobia, who believes he is dead, and rescue her from the clutches of Tiridate.

The emotional content of most opera seria can be rather generic, with arias often treated as interchangeable by composers (Handel included) who would rework and reuse them in other operas. Radamisto however doesn't seem to manufacture situations to suit the guidelines of emotional trajectory and aria distribution or to meet the demands of the original singers. The familiar complications and conventions of the opera seria are certainly there, with sons seeming to betray their fathers, young love being thwarted by the demands of a cruel and selfish ruler, and a prince believed dead returning in disguise, but they don't seem to be there to provide a series of anguished arias on the cruel twists of fate, love and power. Rather, everything in the opera essentially revolves around the insanity of Tiridate's obsession with Zenobia and Handel uses this one very strong central situation to explore the more uplifting sentiments and human values that it provokes.

I could be mistaken, but I get the impression that this what is alluded to in Wayne Jordan's introduction of a silent actor into the proceedings. Whether it's the intention or not, Michael Patrick's presence, intervention and cavorting fitted in perfectly and served to enliven what might otherwise be a quite static delivery of one recitative and aria after another. Dressed in a modern formal dress suit, quite at odds with the gothic-oriental meets east European puppet-show look of Annemarie Woods' attractive and suitably otherworldly costume designs, it was tempting to see the actor as the director of the proceedings (or indeed the composer himself), intervening and manipulating, placing characters into suitable positions that matched the definable little variations in the detail of Handel's music.

Despite all his efforts to bend the characters to his will, the actor like Tiridate finds that human emotions are not so easily defined or manipulated and seems surprised at how, when placed under such controlling and tyrannical restrictions, they nonetheless manage to resist. And not only resist, but quite inexplicably, despite all that they have been through, they become stronger and still manage to show mercy, understanding and forgiveness. It's a credit to Handel and his ability to overcome the normal restrictions of the opera seria format that the belief in these sentiments doesn't feel forced to suit a moral, but seems to come naturally from the inherent humanity within the characters.

It's there in the music and superbly brought out by the Irish Chamber Orchestra under David Brophy. Using bassoon, oboes, flutes and horns, Handel makes use of a variety of instruments to bring colour to each of the situations that brings a deeper and more nuanced character far beyond the words on the page. Sung in English here, it wasn't always easy to hear the words being sung, but every detail of the situation could be heard if you paid attention to the music. More than just the use of obbligato, it's astonishing how much warmth and emotion can be found in the writing for the instruments that carry the rhythm and recitative. It's rare that individual musicians get a mention in opera reviews, but the contributions of Christian Elliott on principal cello and Julian Perkins on harpsichord were outstanding, playing with genuine feeling that brought out the underlying humanity in the score, not to mention the evident genius of Handel's writing.

The singing carries much the same effect, with a beautiful balance that puts the strengths and predicaments of each of the characters onto an equal footing of conflict. Whether she's singing Bach or Barry, Schoenberg or Mozart, Glanert or Rimsky-Korsakov, Aoife Miskelly never fails to impress, so it was no surprise that her expressive coloratura as Polissena was just dazzling. Originally composed for a soprano, then rewritten for the castrato Senesino, mezzo-soprano Doreen Curran consequently had a very difficult role to fill as Radamisto but managed to bring the full dramatic potential out of the character, working particularly well alongside Sinéad Campbell-Wallace's Zenobia. It's Zenobia who faces the greatest challenges in the drama and it's important that the strength of her resolve remains consistent with her inner humanity in order for the conclusion to be credible, and that was all there in Campbell-Wallace's singing.

The same ability to give an indication of the inner workings of the character and how it is reflected or distorted by their actions is important for all the characters. While the Irish Chamber Orchestra and Michael Patrick helped make this a little more evident, it was also there in Kate Allen's bright Tigrane, in Richard Burkhard's wonderfully sonorous Tiridate and even in Adrian Powter's Farasmane. It's hard to say that the production spoke directly to us about tyranny in the world today, but there was no question that the strengths of this performance proved that Handel's Radamisto still has something meaningful to communicate that resonates 300 years later.

Links: Northern Ireland Opera

Mozart - The Marriage of Figaro (Opera North, 2015 - Belfast)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - The Marriage of Figaro

Opera North, 2015

Alexander Shelley, Jo Davies, Richard Burkhard, Silvia Moi, Quirijn de Lang, Ana Maria Labin, Helen Sherman, Henry Waddington, Joseph Shovelton, Gaynor Keeble, Jeremy Peaker, Ellie Laugharne, Nicholas Watts

Grand Opera House, Belfast - 19 March 2015
 
Opera North's acclaimed production of The Marriage of Figaro arrived in Belfast with a string of plaudits from the earlier stages of its tour. While the praise is deserved, most of it must be attributed to the work itself, which shows Mozart at his most brilliant and still pretty much untouchable in the comic opera genre. Coming after some rather more impactful productions by NI Opera however, Opera North's Le Nozze di Figaro couldn't help but feel a little tame and unadventurous in comparison.

Whether it was a conscious decision or not, this production felt very 'English'. It was sung in English, which is never the best way to hear a work filled with arias that everyone knows in the original Italian. You feel a little cheated when you don't get to hear a 'Porgi, amor', 'Voi che sapete' or 'Sull'aria'. More than that, the characters attitudes, manners and behaviour all came over as rather more cool and restrained than their usual hot-blooded continental Spanish counterparts singing in Italian. As with the decision to sing it in English, this may well have been the intent, showing universal class issues and character traits in a manner that the audience would more readily recognise.

That is appropriate because Le Nozze di Figaro is indeed all about class, social and gender divisions. Or not so much about their divisions as, in Mozart's enlightened view, their commonalities. It's the divisions that are first marked out, right from Figaro's measurements of the small understairs room that the Count Almaviva has 'generously' given to Figaro and Susanna on the day of their marriage. The servants' place in this world doesn't extend beyond the length of a tape-measure, and Leslie Travers' set designs for Jo Davies production block out that small space on the stage through a clever device of wall panels that close down and open up the stage, depending on the location and the position of the characters.

The location however certainly doesn't feel like a country house outside Seville, and there's not too much fluster or fury in this 'day of madness'. The Count here is, happily, neither a complete buffoon nor a dangerous predator, but characterised much more as Mozart and Da Ponte perhaps intended. Aware of his power and intent on lording it, particularly over women given half a chance, he is on the other hand too proud to be seen to be begging for their favour or forgiveness. He tries to avoid the latter behaviour wherever possible, but the former attitude tends to make this more difficult. It's very much a class and changing times thing, rather like the Strauss's Baron Ochs in the Mozart-influenced plot of Der Rosenkavalier. Almaviva is not the main character, but he is central to the plot and the reaction of all the others towards him, so it's important to establish the precise tone, and between them, Jo Davies and Quirjin de Lang get it absolutely right.

None of the other characters however really seem to feel threatened by Almaviva. True, Figaro takes the fight to him ('Se vuol ballare, signor Contino' or 'I'll lead the dance' as it is here), when he hears that he has intentions on Susanna, but Susanna seems to be more than capable of batting away his wandering hands, and has some female solidarity in this from the Countess, Rosina. Even in the trickiest of situations, doing their best to bluff the Count, you never get the impression however that any of them take him at all seriously or feel that he is any real threat. You get the impression that they're secure enough to know that they can get Equal Opportunities Commission or Dignity in the Workplace onto him if he keeps this nonsense up, when the intention of Mozart was that this is precisely why we need Equal Opportunites!

Opera North's The Marriage of Figaro doesn't really have the edginess of Mozart and Da Ponte's intent, and without that edge and threat the comedy isn't quite as sharp and outrageous as it could be and ought to be. It all moves along smoothly however - a little too smoothly - everything falls into place, and you can't help but admire how well-constructed a work this opera is as a drama and a comedy, and how well characterised it is in the complementary contrasts of its characters. There's nothing out-of-place or strange in the playing out of the set-pieces, but consequently there's nothing here either that will shock or surprise an audience at just how progressive a work Le Nozze di Figaro was and remains, both as a humanist drama and in its musical advancement.

In musical terms it was very well played, conductor Alexander Shelley permitting little variations in pace and emphasis without overemphasis. A little more emphasis might actually have worked to invigorate the production in one or two places, but here the character was on the loving and benevolent nature of the work rather than its revolutionary edge. That matched the singing delivery of the cast, Richard Burkhard an unflappable Figaro, Silvia Moi an assured Susanna. There was a little more fun with the secondary characters (if you can call any of these wonderful creations 'secondary'), with Helen Sherman a vigorous Cherubino, Ana Maria Labin a touching, soulful Countess, and Henry Waddington and Dean Robinson providing great entertainment as Bartolo and Marcellina.

Mozart - The Magic Flute

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - The Magic Flute

Scottish Opera, 2012

Ekhart Wycik, Sir Thomas Allen, Nicky Spence, Claire Watkins, Rachel Hynes, Louise Collett, Richard Burkhard, Mari Moriya, Laura Mitchell, Jonathan Best, Peter Van Hulle

Grand Opera House, Belfast - 1 December 2012

If you want to, you can consider The Magic Flute to be a complex work, and with all the qualities that make up the complex personality and musicianship of Mozart placed within it, it most certainly is a work of incredible richness and variety.  Written however with Emanuel Schikaneder as a popular Singspiel, what Die Zauberflöte should be above all else however is witty, charming, funny and entertaining.  It has a serious side of course, and a meaningful message to put across - and it does get a little bogged down in solemnity on occasion - but it's the means by which those ideas are put across that is essential to the brilliance of the work.  Comedy, in The Magic Flute, proves to be a much more effective means of getting that across.  And music - but I'll come to that as well.

The light-hearted side of Mozart in Die Zauberflöte can often be undervalued and underrepresented, but the Scottish Opera's production - seen here in Belfast at the end of the tour on 1st December - gets the balance just about right.  That's a tricky balance to maintain in this work.  How, for example, do you account for all the mysticism, the Masonic initiation rituals and grand solemn ceremonies that undoubtedly underpin most of the enlightened ideals that make up the fabric of The Magic Flute, while at the same time making it accessible and entertaining to a modern audience?  How do you reconcile the Tamino and the Papageno?  Mozart does the hard bit through his remarkable music, showing love to be the most ennobling and life-affirming act that any human being is capable of, but finding a way to make that work in a setting that accounts for all the trappings of the Masonic rituals is a more difficult prospect for a modern production.

Directing for the Scottish Opera, Sir Thomas Allen's idea isn't a bad one, setting the story up as a kind of fairground show in a Victorian "Steampunk" setting with gentlemen in stovepipe hats, operating pulleys and clockwork mechanical constructions.  Visually it's a delight, creating the right kind of 'magical' background that accounts for freaks and animals, smoke and mirrors, but the steam engineering also feels utterly appropriate to the idea of human ingenuity, progress and man's ceaseless endeavours to better himself.  It doesn't go all the way to differentiate and clarify the natures of the opposing forces of the Queen of the Night and Sarastro, or establish where dragon slaying fits into the picture, but it's more important to provide a suitably "fun" setting that better engages the audience and allows the story to flow in a relatively consistent manner.

And who better to engage with the audience than Papageno?  Well, the Scottish Opera played an interesting trick in making Tamino a regular member of the audience also, picked out sitting in the Circle by a spotlight during the overture and invited to join in the fun on the stage.  Tamino can be a little too earnest a figure to entirely identify with, so some pantomime-style banter with the audience on the part of both Tamino and Papageno - and engaging performances from Nicky Spence and Richard Burkhard - helped break down those barriers between the characters and the audience, which is really what The Magic Flute is all about.  It's about showing what noble sentiments and actions any man is capable of, whether Prince or fool.  Or indeed woman.

Much scorn is poured upon womankind in The Magic Flute, no doubt in line with Masonic tradition - but Mozart's truly enlightened attitude (and I'm sure his love for women) shows that they also have an important part in directing the progress of all mankind on to better things.  If there's any doubt about the work's intentions towards women, one need only listen to the remarkable music that Mozart scores for the female figures.  The masculine characteristics are straight, direct and measured in both their nobility and, in the case of Papageno, playfulness, but the women bring a wildness, an unpredictability and a sense of abandon - most notably in the case of the Queen of the Night's coloratura and range, but also in the sentiments that plunge Pamina from the heights of love to the depths of despair within the span of minutes, a descent that was handled well in this performance by Laura Mitchell.

All of this is part of what The Magic Flute is about, so in addition to making it look engaging and entertaining, it needs to musically take you on this journey, and on all accounts the Scottish Opera's production was sympathetic to the rhythms and moods of the piece.  There were a few curious lapses in tempo that, for example, drained the intensity both from the Queen of the Night's entrance and from Sarastro's grave pronouncements.  If they were to give the performer's room to approach the demands of their ranges, it may have been necessary, but Mari Moriya and Jonathan Best didn't seem to have too many problems in these tricky roles.  All of the main performers then managed to strike that balance exceptionally well, matching the tone and sentiments of Mozart's writing, and they were well supported by the rest of the cast, with a strong trio in the three Ladies, but also the exceptionally beautiful harmonies produced by the three Boys for this performance.

If there were any minor concerns about the limitations of the fairground setting or in the singers meeting the exceptionally high standards of the work's vocal demands, it's more the spirit and the heart of Mozart's music that is essential to getting the wonder of The Magic Flute across, and the Scottish Opera's heart was in the right place here.

Adams - The Death of Klinghoffer

John Adams - The Death of Klinghoffer

English National Opera, London, 2012

Baldur Brönnimann, Tom Morris, Alan Opie, Christopher Magiera, Michaela Martens, Edwin Vega, Sidney Outlaw, Richard Burkhard, Kathryn Harries, James Cleverton, Lucy Schaufer, Kate Miller-Heidke

The Coliseum, 25 February 2012

There wasn’t much evidence of anything too controversial in the English National Opera’s premiere of John Adams’s 1991 opera, The Death of Klinghoffer, nor any sign of anyone in the audience taking offense at its treatment of politically sensitive material relating to the situation in the Middle East, yet it’s an opera that no American company has risked producing since the furore it caused on its initial run there twenty years ago. But then there are influential groups with vested interests in that part of the world and there’s perhaps not much of an appetite in the post 9/11 America for anything that treats terrorists as real people and could be seen as giving a voice to their anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish sentiments.

Relating to the hijacking of the cruise liner the Achille Lauro by Palestinian terrorists in 1985 and the murder of an elderly disabled Jewish American passenger, Leon Klinghoffer, who was shot and thrown off the ship in his wheelchair by the terrorists, what should be evident to anyone who actually listens to the work - and it seemed to find an interested, considerate and attentive audience at its opening night at the Coliseum - is that the opera’s treatment of the subject is actually a sensitive and moving account of the meaningless of the killing of an elderly gentleman that ultimately furthered the agenda of no-one. That is certainly the overwhelming impression that is gained by a viewing of the opera, but inevitably with this particular subject, things are a little more complicated and the event cannot be considered in isolation.

Where however do you start trying to set the background of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict into context? How can you do it in a fair and impartial way, and particularly how can you represent it accurately in the difficult medium of music and theatre? The approach taken by John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman is naturally very different from the rather more satirical view they took with their previous work Nixon in China, but essentially, using choruses and individual testimonies from various passengers, they employ similar methods of poetic reflection mixed with everyday mundanity to allude to the difficult-to-define larger picture while reminding us that these are essentially ordinary people - yes, even terrorists are people - with their own backgrounds, personalities and human flaws.

The problem with this however, and where the controversy arises, is that not everyone believes that terrorists should be given a platform to express their views or that they should even be treated as human beings. It’s abhorrent - understandably for anyone involved since this is about a real-life incident - that the four Palestinian hijackers should be able to talk about being historically downtrodden, of having suffered hardship and deprivation in refugee camps, should be shown as having caring mothers, and of being capable of expressing future hopes and dreams. Yet, if one doesn’t take the time to consider where their grievances arise from, how can it ever be possible to do treat the subject truthfully? Haven’t recent events - and it’s here that the subject of the opera is shown to be even more relevant today - shown that demonisation simply breeds more terrorists?

Showing the Palestinian hijackers as humans, seeking to provide a balanced view of terrorists on one side and innocent captives on the other, and to do so on equal terms, is a difficult enough undertaking and a risky one for such a sensitive topic, but what makes The Death of Klinghoffer an even more complicated prospect is the medium of opera itself. Music is apolitical and one of the most human of arts - it doesn’t take sides. As if it’s not controversial enough to allow the terrorists to state their case, John Adams scores their situation here with some of the most beautiful music he has ever composed. The subject is an uncommon one for opera and Adams rises to the challenge of finding a inventive means of expression, far beyond the relatively more simple rhythms of his earlier minimalist works.

Music may be apolitical, but words are another matter. Alice Goodman’s libretto for The Death of Klinghoffer however seeks to find balance in allowing both sides to express their views. That’s not as simple as it sounds and the method is accordingly difficult to define, switching between rousing expressions of cultural and national identity in choruses of historical reflection, to dealing with the practicalities and horrible banality of being in the present-time of the hijacking, with reflective outlooks on the future that both the terrorists and the passengers hope to see beyond their current situation. As much as the individual viewpoints of the events are important, it’s the soaring choral arrangements that underpin the work however, taking the divisions beyond the merely political, the Chorus of the Exiled Palestinians and the Chorus of Exiled Jews that open the opera superseded by Chouses of Day and Night and the Ocean and the Desert - a larger perspective that takes the work to different levels.

Tom Morris’s set design has quite a challenge in reflecting all these varied viewpoints and grander concepts, but it manages relatively well. The importance of the imagery of land and sea means mixing the sand of the desert onto the desk of a ship, but as well as allowing for those theatrical shifts in location and between memory and present, it also succeeds in bringing them together. Extensive use is made of projections, just as successfully, allowing the complex musical and lyrical imagery and the concepts to be expressed in visual theatrical terms that are not strictly literal. The simple proof of the effectiveness of the production design is in how it supports the delicate equilibrium of the work itself. The human predicament of the Captain of the Achille Lauro, the shocking fate of Leon Klinghoffer, the nightmare endured by his wife and their fellow passangers all come across with immediacy, while around them, in the dancing, in the projections, and in the choruses, the wider significance of it all is brilliantly expressed.

Just as with the score itself, the outstanding contribution to the success of The Death of Klinghoffer and the solid foundation that it is built upon, comes though the chorus work, and the Chorus of the English National Opera were in magnificent voice on this first performance of the work at the Coliseum. The orchestra under Baldur Brönnimann captured the vast, complex lyrical sweep of Adams’ score just as effectively as some of the more discordant arrangements (I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard electric drums in an opera score and the effect is strangely and no doubt intentionally unsettling). With strong choreography for the dance, as well as stage arrangements for the scenes of on-board terrorism, the sensitive but impactful treatment over the actual on-stage killing of Leon Klinghoffer was only emphasised by the fine performances of the main cast, notably from Michaela Martens as Marilyn Klinghoffer and Alan Opie as Leon.

If anyone goes into The Death of Klinghoffer with any doubts or suspicions about where the sympathies of the work and the creators might lie, those apprehensions are quickly dispelled by the sensitive and moving portrayal that the work and these performances give to the figures of Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer. No-one viewing this production at the English National Opera will leave it unmoved at the beautiful manner in which The Death of Klinghoffer deals with such a terrible affair.