The Minotaur, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, January 2013

The opening night of this revival ended with a tribute to John Tomlinson for 35 years of wonderful service to the ROH — highly appropriate since composer Harrison Birtwistle has said Tomlinson was the key to writing this opera, which had been brewing in his mind for many years.

The Innocents arrive, all images ROH/ Bill Cooper

The first scene shows Christine Rice as Ariadne on the beach with a heaving sea projected on the backdrop, and the opera ends with Elisabeth Meister’s bloodcurdling scream as the Ker, seeing the Minotaur dead and her share of future victims vanish. In the meantime Ariadne has revealed that as the daughter of Minos and his wife Pasiphae, whom Theseus calls “whore to the bull of the sea”, she is half-sister to the Minotaur, whom Theseus has come to kill him so as to save future Athenian innocents from further death. She tricks him into letting the present twelve go first, and Act I ends with their massacre. Susana Gaspar as the first innocent was particularly good here, lying in wounded agony before the winged Keres come to pluck out her heart.

In the second act Johan Reuter as Theseus reveals that he may be the son of Poseidon, and if Poseidon was indeed the bull of the sea then he is half-brother to the Minotaur. The important dichotomy between Theseus and Ariadne however, is that while he wants to get into the labyrinth, she wants to get out of Crete. Needing to bring him back from the centre she consults the oracle at Psychro, who gives her the ball of twine despite her lying about her true intentions, and after making Theseus promise to accompany her away from the island the stage is now set for the final denouément.

The Minotaur

Birtwistle’s opera, with this clever production by Stephen Langridge, designs by Alison Chitty and lighting by Paul Pyant, works wonders with the story and with the Minotaur himself, shown to be both man and beast. Presaging his first appearance a wall of sound is followed by two tubas in unison, along with contrabass clarinet and contrabass bassoon. The music is fascinating, its permanent state of melody a metaphor for the labyrinth. And David Harsent’s libretto is a masterpiece of concision and clarity drawing us through the story.

The duality between man and beast is cleverly expressed through lines such as, “When I go to sleep does the man sleep first, when I awake does the beast wake first?” The Minotaur speaks only in his dreams, and when he dreams he sees himself, he sees Ariadne, he even sees Theseus, appearing through a mirror with him. He thinks of his life, his failings, his sorrows, in each case calling them “all too human”. When Theseus arrives he recognises him from the dream, and reflects on his predicament of being both man and beast. “The beast is vile, so the man must go unloved. The beast can’t weep, so the man must go dry-eyed. The beast is wounded, so the man must die”. We begin to understand the man-beast, hidden away in the labyrinth as a child. It’s a great opera, the only surprise being that it has yet to be produced anywhere else since first appearing at the ROH in April 2008.

Tomlinson, Johan Reuter, and Christine Rice repeated their wonderful performances from five years ago, and Elisabeth Meister sang an excellent Ker, with Andrew Watts and Alan Oke taking over the roles of snake priestess and her medium Hiereus. The priestess herself rises to a great height, looking like those famous chthonic deities from Knossos, a nice touch.

The lyrical wonder of Birtwistle’s music, combined with lines of sheer terror, was brilliantly conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth on this occasion, and if you went in 2008, go again, particularly with tickets at such low prices for this thrillingly deep opera.

Performances continue until January 28 — for details click here.

Miss Fortune, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, March 2012

The title of this opera is a play on words, the eponymous character being the daughter of Lord and Lady Fortune, whose riches have melted away, and after the chorus sings, “We think you should go to gaol”, they take off.

All images by Bill Cooper

Miss Fortune stays behind singing that, “I won’t scuttle away … I’m going to live in the real world”. And so she does, but the forces of chaos, represented by break-dancers, lead her through a course of ill-luck before she wins the lottery. Judith Weir wrote both music and libretto, reflecting the banalities of a dull life in expressions such as, “I can’t go on like this. In the end we’ll all be dead”.

In the end the opera finished rather suddenly, and the Soul Mavericks break-dancers came on to thunderous applause. They were super. The whole production by Chinese opera expert Chen Shi-Zheng was delightfully colourful with bold set designs by Tom Pye, costumes by Han Feng, and excellent lighting by Scott Zielinski. As a co-production with the Bregenz festival it was first shown in July 2011, and the cast remained the same for this UK premiere.

Break-dancers

Emma Bell sang beautifully in the title role, and Jacques Imbrailo was wonderful in the relatively small role of Simon, the attractive man she leaves with at the end. Noah Stewart was very fine in the role of Hassan, the owner of a Kebab shop whose business is destroyed by the break-dancers, Andrew Watts sang the counter-tenor role in the rather shadowy character of fate, and Anne-Marie Owens sang well as Donna the owner of a Laundromat.

A mixture of soap opera and fairy tale, the story lacks narrative drive, and the clouds of mellifluous music lack a cutting edge. The saving grace is the very effective staging, with Paul Daniel in the orchestra pit doing his best to inject life into an otherwise unimpassioned score.

Performances continue until March 28 — for details click here.

A Dog’s Heart, English National Opera, ENO at the London Coliseum, November 2010

It’s 113 pages in my translation — Bulgakov’s novel I mean — and I wondered how it would convert to an opera. But it did, and it works, brilliantly.

The Dog in the Apartment, all photos by Stephen Cummiskey

A Dog’s Heart is a striking exposé of the massive Soviet experiment instigated by Lenin and Trotsky. Bulgakov tells of a senior physician, eminent for rejuvenating the bodily functions of his patients, who picks up a stray dog. The animal, woefully undernourished and mistreated, is ready to die of hunger in the winter snow, but the medical professor takes him back to his apartment and treats him well. When a young man dies in an accident, they harvest his pituitary gland and testicles, and implant them in the dog. The result is a new man, a rude, aggressive, dishonest man who creates havoc. The good and peaceful dog has become a menace to a society that welcomed him but unwisely tried to turn him into something else. It was an experiment with results that its creator had not been prepared for. His life has been turned upside down, and there appears to be no solution.

Professor and Dog

It may sound an unpromising subject for an opera, and I wondered whether the result would convey all the bizarre aspects of the story. But it did! The composer, Alexander Raskatov has created a multi-faceted ‘polystylistic’ score that does justice to the serious nature of the professor, the wild nature of the dog/man, and the insidiously destructive nature of the new regime. Raskatov has not previously been a well-known composer, having spent several years reconstructing Schnittke’s ninth symphony after that composer’s death in 1998, but this opera — his first — will surely put him on the map. It was first produced earlier this year at the Dutch National Opera, and will apparently move to the Mariinsky in St. Petersburg next year. The libretto in Russian by Cesare Mazzonis hews closely to Bulgakov’s original story, and is heard here in translation by Martin Pickard.

The production by Simon McBurney — a collaboration between Complicite, Dutch National, and the ENO — is riveting. There is perpetual action and movement without in any way detracting or distracting from the music, and the puppetry by the Blind Summit Theatre is excellent. The dog comes to life and elicits our sympathy, and the set designs by Michael Levine give just the right atmosphere, helped by Paul Anderson’s lighting and the costumes by Christina Cunningham. I loved the operation on the dog being done by silhouettes, the wacky dance movements by Zina the maid, and the projection designs by Finn Ross. This is McBurney’s first opera direction and I hope he does more.

The new man (left) creates havoc

For those who want to read something other than a mere synopsis of Bulgakov’s magical satire — which was written in 1925 but banned by the Soviet authorities until 1987 — the programme contains an excellent essay by James Meek. He refers to Bulgakov’s ability to shift the narrative perspective, which I think is well reflected in Raskatov’s polystylism, and he gives an excellent summing up of the hubris in the great Soviet experiment, and its comparison to the medical experiment carried out by the professor and his assistant Dr. Bormanthal. As the professor says, “These hands have turned a harmless friendly dog into a monster”. A monster who shouts about his ‘rights’, like a yobbo taunting a respected teacher, and comes out with Soviet expressions such as ‘bourgeois filth’ when referring to cats. What can the professor do about it all? If you haven’t read the book I won’t spoil it, but as the professor says, almost at the end, “Animals revert to their own nature”.

Man becomes Dog again

The music was beautifully conducted by Garry Walker, and the singing was excellent from the whole cast. It was a team effort, and I find it difficult to single out individuals, but Steven Page as the professor carried the role off to perfection. Dr. Bormenthal was well portrayed by Leigh Melrose, Zina the maid by Nancy Allen Lundy, Sharikov the awful man/dog brilliantly played by Peter Hoare, and the dog’s voice was shared by counter-tenor Andrew Watts and soprano Elena Vassilieva, who also sang the cook.

If you want something a little spicier than Covent Garden’s new production of an opera they have not produced for over a hundred years — I refer to Adriana Lecouvreur — then go to this new ENO production. Instead of the violets in Cilea’s plot for Adriana — a late romantic device that doesn’t convince — we have a scientific experiment that serves as a great metaphor for all pseudo-scientific attempts to create a brave new society, and in that sense carries a timeless message. This is the type of production that the English National Opera does very well indeed, and they have excelled themselves. Congratulations.

Further performances are scheduled for Nov. 24, 26, 30 and Dec. 2, 4 — for details click here.

Le Grand Macabre, ENO, English National Opera, September 2009

This musical work by Ligeti (1923–2006) is related to opera in the way a painting by Hieronymus Bosch is related to a landscape. It seems to be about death, of both body and soul, but is a surreal work based on a 1934 drama La balade du Grand Macabre by Belgian author Michel de Ghelderode. The action takes place in a principality called Breughelland, named after the painter Pieter Brueghel, whose Triumph of Death seems to have been an inspiration. Ligeti originally wrote the music in 1975–77, collaborating on the libretto with Michael Meschke. It was written in German but intended to be flexible in its language and translated for performance. There was originally a fair amount of spoken dialogue, but much of this was removed in the revised version of 1996, which is what was performed here. Perhaps more should have gone, because some of the invective was unnecessarily unpleasant, including phrases such as ‘dog f…er’ and ‘arse l…er’. Is this really necessary in a work of art? Are there not other ways of expressing things that can carry the emotions by clever understatement? These particular phrases were uttered by the white minister and the black minister, who looked and performed like stock characters from a pantomime.

To understand this strange work I found it helpful to recall that Ligeti had shocking experiences as a young man. He was drafted into a Jewish labour battalion in 1944, and his close family was all sent to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Only his mother survived. The central character of the opera is Death in the person of Nekrotzar, sung here by Pavlo Hunka. His slave Piet the Pot was sung by Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, and the two lovers Amando and Amanda, who perpetually have sex together, were sung by Frances Bourne and Rebecca Botone. There is a court astronomer named Astradamors and his sadistic wife Mescalina, sung by Frode Olsen and Susan Bickley, and in the second part we meet Prince Go-Go, sung by counter-tenor Andrew Watts, and Gepopo, the chief of the secret police, sung by Susanna Anderson.

The action seems to lack a clear narrative, and I shall not go into a long exposition of the various scenes, but the production by Alex Ollé and Valentina Carrasco showed a variety of things going on, in and around a huge female corpse crouching on stage. The lighting by Peter van Praet was very clever as it threw some strange views on the corpse and even seemed to show its skeleton on occasion. Set designs were by Alfons Flores, and costumes, which I wasn’t wild about, by Lluc Castells. The production is being done jointly with the theatre La Monnaie in Brussels, the Gran Teatro del Liceu Barcelona, and the Teatro dell’ Opera di Roma. Baldur Brönnimann conducted and did a fine job with the orchestra. When I closed my eyes it sounded wonderful, but the grotesque action on stage was a distraction, and lovers of Ligeti might prefer a simple recording.