Johann Strauss - Die Fledermaus
Northern Ireland Opera, 2019
Walter Sutcliffe, Gareth Hancock, Stephan Loges, Ben McAteer, Maria McGrann, May McFettridge, Denis Lakey, John Porter, Alexandra Lubchansky, Dawn Burns, Conor Breen, Mark Pancek,
Grand Opera House, Belfast - 17th September 2019
It was a bit concerning for any opera fan that the last Northern Ireland Opera production was a Stephen Sondheim musical, Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and with advance notice that Belfast's local pantomime dame May McFettridge has been signed up for a role in the Johann Strauss operetta Die Fledermaus, it looked like we'd skipped the opera season and Christmas had come early to the Belfast Grand Opera House this year. Still, the best way to take this this is perhaps not to look at this from a serious operatic viewpoint or as a pantomime either but just as an enjoyable piece of light entertainment, and Walter Sutcliffe's production managed to achieve that. Eventually.
It's easy to be dismissive of musicals and light operetta, but such works bring their own challenges in finding a successful blend of acting and singing, in establishing a comic situation and getting the timing and delivery right. In the hands of specialised practitioners of the opéra-comique, comedy and farce can be hugely entertaining when it is done right on the opera stage. In terms of visual presentation, NI Opera's Die Fledermaus looked the part with Andrea Kaempf's spectacular set designs and superb colourful costumes, but there was a bit of a disconnect between the visuals and the performances that - in the first half at least - failed to engage the audience.
Surprisingly even Strauss's famous overture - jam-packed with the composer's brilliant waltz melodies - failed to raise any applause from the audience, as they looked on baffled wondering what a man in a Batman suit was doing running through a kaleidoscopic visual of art deco city skyscrapers. The man is of course Falke, who has been made the butt of a practical joke, left wandering through the city in a fancy-dress costume, something he isn't ever going to live down until he gets revenge on his friend Eisenstein, but unless you had a programme to read the synopsis, the visuals alone weren't sufficient to let you know the backstory.
The use of a 60s era Adam West Batman costume was a good updating of the Bat costume that gives the opera its title, but it still the overture didn't have the necessary 'Ka-pow!' factor. The English translation maybe could have been looser and wittier, the delivery could have been sharper and it could have had more of a local connection. One reference to the maid Adele's aunt, supposedly at death's door, being seen cycling up the Cave Hill fell a little flat, as it seemed entirely at odds with the high society life of the Eisensteins with their servants and their lavish art deco mansion. I mean, I know the Antrim Road is posh but it's not exactly 19th century Viennese high society.
You can get away with a lot however if you play the comedy to the hilt, particularly when you've got Johann Strauss's melodies behind you and musically Die Fledermaus is a feast that was at least relished by the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Gareth Hancock in the pit. Unfortunately, the Belfast production seemed to lack the confidence and edge to push the boat out and really let it swing, some of the voices weren't always strong enough or had too strong an accent to lift it over the orchestra, and Act I's intermission came around quickly with an indifferent smattering of applause. Still, if we wanted to see things liven up a little more, there was always the promise of May McFettridge in the second half.
As it turned out, May McFettridge's role as the jailer Frosch wasn't really exploited either, but Walter Sutcliffe had a few other surprises that enlivened the second half considerably. We got a drag-queen Prince and his very gender-fluid entourage and servants, the racy exploits of Eisenstein trying to seduce the Hungarian Countess who was actually his wife Rosalinde carried over well, but essentially it was the party scenes - the colour, the costumes, the lighting and the choreography - that established a more unified connection with Strauss's music and its sensibility. It was suddenly much more fun.
And if an entertaining evening was all you were expecting from Die Fledermaus, NI Opera got there in the end. I heard many comments of approval from the audience as I left the theatre, so along with their music-theatre productions at the Lyric, the company are reaching an audience. The failure to produce a single genuine opera this year however is more of a concern for opera goers, and NI Opera could lose out big time to Opera Ireland's much more ambitious progamme south of the border and to the Wexford Festival Opera. Unfortunately, the temporary closure of the Grand Opera House for refurbishment doesn't bode well for next year's programme, but I'm still hoping they might surprise us yet.*
* (Edit: No, looks like I was wrong about that - Kiss Me Kate)
Links: Northern Ireland Opera
Stephen Sondheim - Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Northern Ireland Opera & Lyric Theatre, 2019
Walter
Sutcliffe, Sinead Hayes, Steven Page, Julie Mullins, John Porter,
Anthony Hope, Jessica Hackett, Jack Wolfe, Mark O'Regan, Richard
Croxford, Elaine Hearty, Matthew Cavan, Dawn Burns, Christopher Cull,
Enda Kilroy, Jolene O'Hara, Tommy Wallace
The Lyric Theatre, Belfast - 3rd February 2019
I'm
facing a bit of a dilemma here, since Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd
doesn't really belong in an opera blog, or at least not in my personal
definition of an opera blog (which is a blogger's prerogative of course),
but this is a co-production of Northern Ireland Opera with the Lyric
Theatre in Belfast and I've been closely following pretty much every NI Opera production since its inauguration in 2011. Which makes the
dilemma two-fold; it's not just a question of what should be covered in
this blog, but also how to give credit where credit is due. If I were
to review this for another outlet this would undoubtedly be a more
positive review of a very competent, well-performed and
entertaining music theatre production. As an NI Opera production however, this is fairly vapid material that falls far below what we have come to expect.
I've no doubt that there
are practical and financial considerations that have to be taken into
account, and I'm sure I couldn't underestimate to the kind of
compromises have to be made and the practical decisions that have to be
faced by any arts funded company. I can imagine however that serious
consideration needs to be made between the viability of putting on what
might appear to be an elitist obscure opera for a couple of nights to a
half-filled Grand Opera House and running a three-week sold out popular
show at the Lyric Theatre that will reach out to a younger if not
necessarily any more socially diverse audience. I realise that these
decisions have to be made, but it doesn't mean I have to like them.
Compromises
have to be made in Belfast as much as with the English National Opera
at the Coliseum in London; that's the economic reality in a time of
reduced funding for the arts. Walter Sutcliffe's first season as
director of NI Opera balanced that well however with a reduced season of
works that can have popular appeal to bring in new audiences but still
have artistic merit. On the one hand we had a fine production of Così Fan Tutte (not seen as often in Belfast as other Mozart operas) and a
Rigoletto of impressive singing, but also a successful co-production
between NI Opera and the Lyric Theatre of Brecht and Weill's The Threepenny Opera. It's rather dispiriting however this has been
downgraded this year to a line-up that consists only of a popular Sondheim musical, three performances with high ticket prices for an operetta (Die Fledermaus) and a formal dress gala concert for local big-wigs. Shockingly, Northern
Ireland Opera are not producing a single opera this year.
Perhaps
there are additional financial and boardroom pressures on Northern
Ireland Opera, but it's a bit of a come-down from Oliver Mears' more
open, diverse and adventurous tenure where we had the first ever fully staged Wagner in Belfast
(The Flying Dutchman), where Richard Strauss (Salome) was programmed
rather than Johann Strauss, where there were newly commissioned work
from local composers (NI Opera Shorts), where you could see a work as
boldly innovative and uproariously entertaining as Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest and where the cross-over works with local
theatre were by Benjamin Britten (The Turn of the Screw) and Thomas Adès
(Powder her Face). Bolder choices are also being made south of the
border by the newly formed Irish National Opera, most recently with Duke Bluebeard's Castle and an ambitious Aida. Thank heavens too for
Opera North's visits to Belfast.
A review of Sweeney Todd
therefore has no meaningful place here; the work itself has little
of substance or subtext, certainly not in the context of the above.
Full credit however to the team for making an effort to sell this as
something more interesting that it really is in the theatre programme.
In the programme a Queen's University lecturer considers the rights and
wrongs of a fictional character who takes revenge on society by
homicidal barbering and cannibalistic culinary, while an interview with
conductor Sinead Hayes points to certain operatic qualities,
complexities of leitmotif and dissonance in the musical composition.
The musical performance was certainly of the usual high standard from
the assembled musicians, and it was superbly paced and conducted
to bring all the colour and vigour out of the songs with wonderful
clarity and precision.
As a theatrical performance it also more than delivered. Regardless of musical tastes and definitions of what constitutes 'quality' or 'worthy' music, Sondheim comes alive
on the stage in live performance and it can even have a bit of an edge
(as with the recent Assassins at the Gate Theatre in Dublin - again,
more adventurous programming than Sweeney Todd). The combination of
music, lighting, colour, costume and (amplified) voices creates its own
magic just as effectively as any live opera production, and even at this
early preview stage in the run, the production was clearly
well-rehearsed and ran relatively smoothly, even with all the little
compartments and doors to be managed. Particular credit should be given
to Dorota Karolczak of the make-up and costume department for making
this look absolutely terrific.
The singing was of the
highest quality; Steven Page as Sweeney Todd, Julie Mullins as Mrs Lovett
and John Porter as Anthony Hope all superb singers who are equally as
good at characterisation. They were well-balanced alongside Jack Wolfe and
Jessica Hackett who give the kind of fresh-voiced delivery you want
from Tobias Ragg and Joanna, but there was little that about the
direction to bring anything original or exciting to give this a bit more
of an edge. Ultimately Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
remains a Victorian Penny Dreadful horror tale that has nothing
realistic or relevant to say about life, justice or morality; it's just a
colourful treatment of a bland entertainment.
Only
Matthew Cavan managed to really bring some spirited individuality and
unpredictability to the production (as he did also in The Threepenny Opera) as the outrageous Signor Pirelli. If Belfast's great pantomime
dame May McFettridge ever calls it a day (heaven forbid!), we have a potential
replacement here. I mean that as the highest compliment to the Belfast
stage, but unfortunately it's not much of a compliment for Northern
Ireland Opera.
Links: Northern Ireland Opera, Lyric Theatre Belfast
Giuseppe Verdi - Rigoletto
Northern Ireland Opera, Belfast - 2018
Gareth Hancock, Walter Sutcliffe, Sebastian Catana, Nadine Koutcher, Davide Giusti, Fleur Barron,
Taras Berezhansky, Simon Thorpe, Ben McAteer, John Porter, David
Robertson, Maria McGrann, Ann Jennings, Rebekah Coffey, Malachy Frame
Grand Opera House - 2 October 2018
How
much a production design or conceptual approach adds to a work like
Verdi's Rigoletto is questionable. Whether it's set as a Las Vegas crime caper, in a circus or in a cardboard box, Verdi is still Verdi,
and the themes of Rigoletto are writ large. In fact, large works well
in all the above cases, playing up to Verdi's thunderous tale of love
and hate, virtue and vice, sacrifice and revenge. There's not a great
deal of room for nuance or subtlety in either the music or the themes,
but it does hit on those extremes of human nature in a way that is
powerful and ever more recognisable in the nature of the world today.
Big
is what we were promised by Walter Sutcliffe in his first full-scale
opera production as the director of Northern Ireland Opera at the Grand
Opera House in Belfast, and big is what we got. The production and
Kaspar Glarner's sets were imported from the National Opera of Chile and
the commencement of their assembly at the docks over a month ago even
made the local press. It certainly proved to be a flexible if somewhat
bulky piece of stage craft, flowing from one scene to the next, rooms
and alcoves appearing and spinning off with members of the cast still on
them as they hit the final notes of their arias. Rigoletto is an opera
of momentum and you want to keep it flowing, and this impressive design
permitted that.
It was however probably a bit surplus to
requirements. I think there were three scene changes in the short
overture alone, and I mean major reconfigurations of high walls,
shifting and interlocking to establish mood and location, from a dark
moonlit alley to the palace of the Duke of Mantua. Act I of Rigoletto
is rarely satisfactory in terms of narrative presentation, it can feel
heavy handed with the rakish Duke and his wild party, threatening any
Counts who oppose his making off with their wives and daughters; the
contrast too pronounced between the court jester's cruel evisceration of
the nobility and the innocent home life he enjoys keeping his own
daughter locked away. His convenient meeting with an assassin in an
alley and his observation about Sparafucile killing with a sword while
he does it with a word also feels contrived.
Contrived is
also an apt description for what follows - all still in Act I - when we
find that Gilda is being pursued by the Duke pretending to be a poor
student, and that Rigoletto's friends/enemies at the court are planning
to abduct the 'woman' the hunchback has hidden away from them. And yet,
already Verdi is establishing connections and contrasts to set up in
opposition and clash in a hugely melodramatic fashion. He's also
capable of putting those sentiments across in an effective way, with
hooks of melody, with opportunities in the vocal writing not just for
the performers to show off, but to express the depth of those feelings,
placing human emotions up against the cruel realities of the world. Act
II and Act III confront that brilliantly.
I say that
Verdi's music lacks nuance and subtlety and that may be true, but
Rigoletto was innovative in many ways in the mid-19th century. It does
dare to go to the darker side of human nature, Verdi does tie the music
more meaningfully to actions and emotions, but he also conjures up
atmospheric effects like the approaching thunderstorm in Act III.
Despite the work also containing some of his most popular and well-known
arias and melodies ('Questa o quella', 'Caro nome', 'Cortigiani'), Verdi also
breaks away from standard number format and presents those opposing
sentiments in a series of duets that propel and drive the work forward,
culminating in Act III's famous quartet.
Somehow however,
while the energy and drive were there, the spark or frisson of danger
that should arise out of it never materialised in the Northern Ireland
Opera/Ópera Nacional de Chile production. It was through no fault of
the Gareth Hancock conducting the Ulster Orchestra, although it did
often seem to have more drive than heart. It certainly was through no
fault of the singing; Sutcliffe promised world-class singers for this
production and, my goodness, he delivered on that. I don't think I've
ever heard a live performance sung as well as this.
Making
his first UK appearance, Sebastian Catana is a true Verdi baritone,
something that is an increasingly rare commodity. The contrast between
his delivery of Rigoletto and Plácido Domingo more recently playing a
baritone in the same role is enormous. Catana's singing had power,
resonance and control, his diction clear, his presence and performance
convincing. We also has a Cardiff Singer of the World in Nadine Koutcher who could stop you in your tracks as Gilda, navigating not just
the difficult and expressive coloratura, but also finding a place where
the innocence of her character could co-exist with her developing sense
of personality and self-realisation. Davide Giusti didn't have quite
the same power of expression behind his voice, but never faltered and
has his own distinctive Italianate style.
As good as all
these performances were, there was still an emotional hollowness to the
characterisation that suggests a lack of any real direction or
interaction. That could be partly due to the set designs not really
allowing the characters to engage with each other. Sparafucile for
example smacks his hand when slapping Maddalena when she pleas for the
life of the handsome Duke, and she flinches from the other side of the
stage. Stylistically there's nothing wrong with touches like that - you
get the idea well enough - but here and elsewhere it just doesn't make
the same visceral connection with the music. Verdi's Rigoletto doesn't
need modernisation or the conceptual approaches of those above mentioned
productions and it doesn't need huge elaborate sets, but it can
sustain them if there's heart and belief in the work. Despite
production values and singing of the highest standards that just didn't
come across in this Northern Ireland Opera production.
Links: Northern Ireland Opera
Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill - The Threepenny Opera
Northern Ireland Opera, Lyric Theatre - 2018
Sinead Hayes, Walter Sutcliffe, Kerri Quinn, Matthew Cavan, Orla Mullan, Tommy Wallace, Jolene O'Hara, Paul Garrett, Richard Croxford, Jayne Wisener, Brigid Shine, Maeve Smyth, Mark Dugdale, Steven Page, Gerard McCabe
Lyric Theatre, Belfast - 30 January 2018
An opera that isn't really an opera is an interesting choice for the directorial debut of Northern Ireland Opera's new Artistic Director, Walter Sutcliffe. His predecessor, Oliver Mears however opened his tenure in a similarly non-traditional and low-key fashion with Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium - also in a theatre rather than the opera house - the indication being possibly that opera has much more to offer than La Traviata and Madama Butterfly, and that it can and should be accessible to everyone. Indeed Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's street-theatre piece The Threepenny Opera has precisely the same ideal of breaking down traditional barriers, and if anything that's the real beauty of the work, and not a bad statement of intent either if you want to see it that way.
Brecht and Weill's The Threepenny Opera is just one in a long tradition of works that have brought a taboo-breaking common touch to opera. The Threepenny Opera was modelled on John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728), putting a glamorous criminal 'Mack the Knife' and the low-life of society at the heart of an opera, filling it with popular accessible music and bawdy scenes. If you want, you can go right back to Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea for similar daring shifts in the subject of opera to appeal to a wider audience, and you could take it right up to Thomas Adès's scandalous Powder her Face, a work which indeed has also recently made its mark in Belfast at the Lyric Theatre in an NI Opera production. In that respect, Walter Sutcliffe's production of The Threepenny Opera continues a tradition of exposing audiences to opera that challenges and entertains.
It's difficult then to judge a production of The Threepenny Opera by traditional standards. It has to be judged on its own terms, and perhaps its aims - to challenge and entertain - aren't so different from those presented to its original audience in Berlin in 1928. Leaving aside whether it really meets the criteria of opera - where boundaries are flexible and are still being pushed forward in works like Evan Gardner's Gunfighter Nation, where the musicians are also the dramatic and singing performers - the basic principle of putting on a show with musical numbers that tells a story is there in place in The Threepenny Opera, and it can be used as a means of expressing or exposing social attitudes or issues in the world today. Some things - money, greed, criminality, corruption - never change or go out of fashion, it seems.
Walter Sutcliffe makes perhaps only a token effort at any contemporary political or local social reference, but the nature and structure of the work itself with its Brechtian theatre innovations can be the best vehicle for making us think about what The Threepenny Opera tells us about the world today; ie. there's a lot of theatre involved. The focus then is rightly about making this an engaging piece of musical theatre with grotesque exaggerated characters, bold sets, colourful costumes, colourful language too and swinging musical numbers that, thanks to it becoming a swing standard over the years, even has an instantly recognisable bona-fide classic hit in its repertoire, the wonderful 'Mack the Knife'. If that doesn't draw you straight into The Threepenny Opera, nothing will.
There were perhaps just a little bit of self-consciousness and nerves early in the preview shows of the NI Opera production at the Lyric Theatre, but then director Walter Sutcliffe doesn't make it easy for the cast by making practically the entire stage a steep cabaret staircase with narrow steps for them to teeter down on heels while singing the famous opening number. Dorota Karolczak's sets and costumes however are entirely appropriate, telling us - as if it isn't already apparent from the garish costumes, heavy make-up and colourful wigs - that this is purely a theatrical confection; don't be expecting any hard-hitting social realism here. This is a show, and we're here to entertain you.
And although it might take a little while to warm to the exaggerated and unfamiliar form of 1920s German jazz-cabaret theatre, entertain it does. By the time we get to the conclusion, we've been caught up in the sordid little dealings and womanising polygamy of 'Mack the Knife' Macheath, the money-making exploitation of the poor beggars by Jonathan Peachum, the mistreatment of the Wapping prostitute Jenny Diver and her girls, the bribery and corruption of police superintendent Jackie 'Tiger' Brown and his officers, and even the compicity of the church is called out in Reverend Kimball's blessing of the union of Mack and Polly Peachum. There's plenty there played out in broad strokes to entertain, and if it no longer shocks in the same way, it's at least a shock that such goings-on are now nothing more than we've come to expect from celebrities, politicians and the establishment.
Other than the inclusion of the local vernacular, Sutcliffe is probably wise not to draw any obvious comparisons to current affairs and political events in the world today, in this particular work anyway. There's only one overt contemporary reference where the famous image of Syrian refugees marching into Europe is displayed. It's a reminder, in the spirit of the original, that even behind the fiction and glamour the dealings of this little group of individuals relies on the exploitation of the less fortunate masses whose fate is casually ignored. Mack being saved from the gallows at the final moment may be a moment of Brechtian theatre drawing attention to the artificiality of dramatic narrative, but in its own way it also points to the truth that those with power, money and influence write their own story and, unlike the people whose lives they destroy, they tend to come out of such scandals relatively unscathed.
Judging it by the casting alone, which is made up more of actors more familiarly seen on the Lyric stage than the Grand Opera House, The Threepenny Opera is more musical-theatre than opera in the traditional sense. That doesn't mean however that the standards that need to be met aren't just as high, nor that they weren't indeed met. Even if there's a measure of musical-theatre belting it out, there were some very impressive singing performances. Jayne Wisener's Polly Peachum has a light voice, but it's sung in a way that was a perfect match for her character's delightfully ambiguous moral outlook, her calculated ruthlessness and casual indifference to all manner of criminal activity and moral depravity masked by a disarming sweetness. Brigid Shine's Lucy Brown showed an impressive range and control in her singing, again matching the feistiness of her character. Mark Dugdale has plenty of experience in music theatre and carried the role of Mack with a confident swagger and charm. Where caricature and exaggerated counted more than singing ability, Matthew 'Cherrie Ontop' Cavan's Mrs Peachum and Richard Croxford's scouse Jackie Brown all delivered wonderfully entertaining performances, and in baritone Steven Page's Jonathan Peachum you had the best of both disciplines.
Behind all the exaggeration and caricature, fleeting moments of human sentiment and character emerged, principally in the character of Jenny Diver, sensitively performed and well sung by Kerri Quinn. If The Threepenny Opera is to deliver that kind of range between crowd-pleasing belters and moments of quieter reflection it needs to be well managed from the point of view of the music. The musical rhythms are vital, charming and engaging, with unusual instrumentation and harmonies to throw us off and hint at an underlying unease and sleaze. Sinead Hayes brought that out with a somewhat more refined arrangement, the restraint allowing for greater emotional expression and sensitivity than you might expect from the smoky swagger of Kurt Weill's score. The placement of the orchestra to the wings of the staircase - all dressed in character - also provided a perfect balance and stereo separation between the music and the singing. Look out, old Macky is back.
