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Opera (English plural: operas; Italian plural: opere) is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text (called a libretto) and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble. (Wikipedia)

 

For most of my adult life I have been allergic to opera. It must also be said that for nearly half of my adult life (some 20 years) I hardly went near a classical music venue, nor played the piano. A chance conversation with a then colleague – now a very good friend – in the art publishing industry (where I worked before I had my son) revealed a mutual love of classical music and, in particular, live concerts and suddenly I was a regular at the Wigmore Hall, enjoying fine chamber music in one of London’s most perfect venues.

As a child in the late 1970s, I went to many operas with my parents, who were subscribers to the Welsh National Opera (WNO) on tour. We were living near Birmingham at this time, and from a young age (around 5) I was regularly taken to concerts by the CBSO at Birmingham Old Town Hall, where the orchestra was conducted by a vibrant young man with wild curly hair, who has gone on to enjoy a glittering and acclaimed career with some of the finest orchestras in the world. Going to the opera was something else we did, as well as listening to classical music LPs at home, and piano lessons, of course. I was lucky enough to see many fine performances, including the most exquisite production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute with sets designed by David Hockney, and a Madame Butterfly which was all Japanese sliding screens and Zen gardens.

Later, as a teenager at school in Hertfordshire, I went to full dress rehearsals at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, enjoying an afternoon out of school to see some of the ‘greats’ of the operatic world – including Sir Thomas Allen (in Britten’s Peter Grimes) and Dame Janet Baker. These were memorable occasions, not only for the music, drama and spectacle, but also for the plush scarlet and gold opulence of the Royal Opera House.

A rather disastrous trip to Glyndebourne with my fiancé (reader, he married me) to see Britten’s Death in Venice put me (and my husband) off opera. By this time, I had also formed a very deep dislike of anything by Wagner and had decided (perhaps unfairly) that anything by him would be overblown, over-sung and over here.

Musical friends and colleagues have tried to tempt me back to the opera, assuring me that I will love it, pointing out that I absolutely MUST see anything by Wagner, and citing his important influence. (Some people have even tried to suggest that my dislike of Wagner is an obstinate form of philistinism: I just don’t like his music – get over it!)

Across my social networks, in particular on Twitter, I am connected with many people who absolutely adore opera, passionately and fervently, and who go not once but thrice to Covent Garden or the Coliseum (home to the English National Opera) and beyond to see repeat performances of operas featuring the singers, conductors, producers and directors whose work they admire and love. I began to wonder what I might be missing out on: these people were enjoying fine performances and an enviable social life at the opera at the same time.

When I started reviewing for CultureVulture.net at the beginning of the year, my co-reviewer, Nick, suggested we might cast our reviewing net a little wider than piano recitals and art exhibitions, assuring me that we would not be penetrating Wagner’s Ring, but could happily enjoy operas by Mozart, Bizet, Rossini, Puccini and Handel. And so on 3rd May 2014 we found ourselves in the dress circle at the Coliseum for the first night not of Così fan Tutte, but Thebans, a new opera by Julian Anderson based on the Theban trilogy by Sophocles.

Modern opera for the “opera newbies”? We were really jumping into opera at the deep end, but despite the grim narrative (family intrigue, incest, murder), I really enjoyed it – the music was arresting, with some exquisite chorus and wind writing, the brutalist setting was interesting, and the cast were convincing and committed. Within moments, I believed I was there, in Thebes. In addition to this, it proved a thoroughly good night out: the opera crowd are different to the (largely) superannuated Wigmore hall audience and the atmosphere in the foyer and bar was cheerful and noisy.

Opera is of course very different to chamber music or solo piano recitals. There is drama, there are costumes and sets, there are memorable arias and choruses, there is action and emotion, dance, theatre, “speaking to music” (recitative), comedy, tragedy, pathos and poignancy – the full sweep of human experience is here.

Of all the strands of classical music and the performing arts, opera seems to receive the best press – and the worst press. It continues to be regarded as elitist, snobby, inaccessible (eh?), expensive (ahem – opera tickets are often cheaper than West End theatre or pop concerts) and generally the exclusive preserve of toffs and poseurs.

This has not been my experience, so far. Thebans was an esoteric and admittedly quite “difficult” opera to enjoy, per se, but the audience didn’t strike me as especially high-brow. And at Opera Holland Park on Saturday evening (my first visit to this wonderful venture, now in its 25th year, which runs a busy and varied summer season in the grounds of Holland House in London’s Holland Park) the audience was positively garulous, hugely enjoying all the comedy and dramatic irony contained in Rossini’s ever popular Barber of Seville. (And not forgetting noisy interjections from the peacocks who live in Holland Park.)

If anything, opera seems to me to be rather more relaxed than the “sitting in the dark in hushed reverence” atmosphere of the Wigmore Hall, and based on my, albeit limited, recent experiences, the etiquette of opera going is much looser. For example, you can clap after a particularly fine aria or chorus set-piece and no one glares at you as if you have committed some major musical faux pas, and there is a very tangible sense of shared experience.

On another level there is of course the music. Far from being inaccessible, opera is full of memorable, hummable tunes (something my co-reviewer is very keen on!). I bet most people could hum Bizet’s Toreador’s Song (from Carmen) or Nessun Dorma (from Turandot), which has been elevated to the rank of a sporting anthem, or the magical duet from The Pearl Fishers. We hear excerpts from opera in film and tv soundtracks, and in adverts, so embedded is this art form in our Western cultural landscape.

This week my Twitter feed has been full of tweets about the new production of Dialogues des Carmelites at the Royal Opera House (conducted by Sir Simon Rattle), Poulenc’s sublime opera set during the violent upheaval of the French Revolution (the set includes a working guillotine). It sounds fabulous – musically, dramatically, emotionally – and I really hope it may be available online or DVD, or in repertory at ROH at a future date, as I’d really like to see it.

Meanwhile, I am back at the “Coli” (as we opera buffs say!) for the first night of a new production of The Pearl Fishers by Bizet on 16th June. And in the autumn, new productions of Xerxes, The Marriage of Figaro and La Boheme beckon….

And what of Wagner? Well, I’m not sure I’m quite ready for the ladies with horns on their heads just yet…..

Opera Holland Park

Royal Opera House

English National Opera

 

 

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‘Thebans’ by Julian Anderson. World Premiere, 3rd May 2014, English National Opera at the Coliseum

Disputed parentage, familial in-fighting, incest, the wisdom of elders ignored, political machinations, and a crowd baying for action..….. Not an episode of The Jerry Springer Show, but Ancient Greece: Sophocles’ three Theban plays translated into opera by British composer Julian Anderson and Irish playwright Frank McGuinness. Those familiar with the story of Oedipus Rex know that it can only end badly for ill deeds must be atoned and the gods will have their retribution.

Three full-length plays by Sophocles are telescoped into three acts to create an opera lasting around 100 minutes. The narrative is not chronological, with the middle act moving us forward to ‘Future’ and the death of Antigone. The final act, set in a shattered landscape of bare, blasted trees, pierced by thunder and lightning, plays out the Death of Oedipus, who, blind and frail,  finds peace in death. This last play, ‘Colonus’, was written shortly before Sophocles’ death in 406 BC.

A chronological telling of the story may have made the action more comprehensible, but composer and librettist wanted to create a drama which comments on the main themes of the narrative – human frailty and desperate acts – rather than simply “telling it as it is”. Thus the final act, in which Oedipus appeals to the good nature of the curiously homo-erotic Theseus, a bare-chested golden young King, beautifully, eerily portrayed by counter-tenor Christopher Ainslie, has an air of meditation, resignation and completion. It is Oedipus’ daughter, Antigone, who has the final word. Heart-wrenchingly sung by Julia Sporsen, the action closes on her crying out in the wilderness, with no hope of consolation. It is a bleak end to a savage tale.

All is not well in Thebes as the curtain rises on a brutalist scene of Act 1, created by towers of gabions (wire crates filled with rocks) and shadowy lighting. The crowd lie around the stage, cowed by the terrible plague that has infected the city, imploring Oedipus to save Thebes. An air of foreboding pervades the whole scene, enhanced by the chorus’s hissing sibilants and low murmurations. Indeed, throughout the opera, Julian Anderson’s chorus writing is excellent: menacing and accusatory in Act 1, bossy and fascist in Act II, and haunting and disembodied (sung offstage) in the final act.

Susan Bickley as Jocasta, Roland Wood as Oedipus (Photo: Alastair Muir)

The sparse, largely monochrome setting suits Anderson’s music. Sparely scored, it is the haunting, airy winds and crackling percussion which offer most musical impact, together with Frank McGuinness’ earthily poetic libretto. Oedipus, sung with warmth by Roland Wood (apparently suffering from a throat infection, but with no discernible difficulty in his delivery), is flawed and doubting, beset by anger. Creon (Peter Hoare) is mercurial, self-serving, always the politician, his smooth tenor voice perfectly matching his protean personality. Susan Bickley, the one element of colour as Jocasta in turquoise draperies, is at first hectoring, refuting the claims of the strangely androgynous Tiresias, and later panic-stricken and despairing. Much of the solo writing seems closer to recitative rather than aria, and this lends a greater sense of the key players commenting on their, and others’, actions, motives and emotions. Overall, the opera has an air of meditation, encouraging the observer to cogitate on the themes and symbols presented within the drama, rather than actively embrace them. The quality of singing, production, lighting and direction combine to create an opera which is engaging and convincing, yet strangely distant. Worthy, and worth seeing.