The Enchanted Island, Metropolitan Opera live cinema relay, January 2012

Shakespeare’s Tempest with the lovers from Midsummer Night’s Dream thrown in, all to music by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, et al, with fabulous costumes, sets, and even mermaids. This enterprising creation by Jeremy Sams, following an original idea by the Met’s general manager Peter Gelb, is an innovative project that really succeeds, particularly in Act II.

Neptune's World, all images MetOpera/Ken Howard

When I first went to opera, back in the days before surtitles, I would avoid reading the synopsis, and enjoy the story as it unfolded, which for something like Tosca was absolutely thrilling. I did the same here, but found Act I overlong, and a bit confusing with these strangers from Dream appearing on Prospero’s Island — perhaps an extra intermission would have helped, but Act II was super.

Prospero and Ariel

Caliban and Sycorax

The singing from some of the cast was inspired, and as soon as Luca Pisaroni made his vocal entrance in the role of Caliban the performance moved into top form. He was terrific, and so was Joyce DiDonato as his mother, the sorceress Sycorax — here she is a real character, rather than an unseen one as in Shakespeare’s play. David Daniels made a wonderfully convincing Prospero, as did Lisette Oropresa as his lovely daughter Miranda, and Danielle de Niese was brilliantly cast as Ariel. Her body movements are flowingly musical and she is such a teasingly good actor. This was a hugely strong cast of principals, with wonderful performances from the lovers:  Layla Claire as Helena, Elizabeth De Shong as Hermia, Paul Appleby as Demetrius and Eliot Madore as Lysander. All were excellent and I thought the two ladies were vocally outstanding. These characters from Midsummer Night’s Dream arrive from the tempest commanded by Prospero, Ariel’s magic spell having gone awry, but Miranda’s future partner Ferdinand is yet to be found. Help is sought from Neptune, whose magnificent appearance in an underwater world complete with chorus and glorious floating mermaids was given vocal heft and buckets-full of gravitas by Placido Domingo. His intervention succeeds, and in Act II countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo made his entrance as Ferdinand singing with a lovely tone.

The lovers from Midsummer Night's Dream

Musically, Jeremy Sams has combined arias and recitatives from various sources, and created a remarkably unified whole, but then that is partly what those masters of the baroque did, poaching from their own earlier compositions. It was all played under the baton of baroque expert William Christie, in a stunning production by Phelim McDermott, who was responsible for the excellent Satyagraha I saw on stage at the English National Opera two years ago (and which was later a Met ‘live in HD’ relay). On this occasion, Julian Crouch was responsible for the clever set designs, and Kevin Pollard for the glorious costumes. Fine lighting by Brian MacDevitt and I loved the dance choreography by Graciela Daniele. Handel would surely have approved, though perhaps with some envy at modern technical abilities to create such an extravaganza. We may no longer have the castrati, but my goodness we have singers who can turn their vocal expertise to the baroque, and our modern lighting and stage effects are unbelievable. Mr. Sams’ creation could start a trend — I rather hope so.

Finally, Shakespeare returns as Prospero speaks those wonderful lines, Our revels now are ended … And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on …

The Pearl Fishers, English National Opera, ENO at the London Coliseum, June 2010

This is Bizet’s first staged work, written when he was 24, and performed here in a very attractive production by Penny Woolcock. More on the production later, but first a few words about Bizet. After a three year stint in Rome, he returned to Paris to be handed an opera libretto written by two old hands who, when they heard his score, regretted not having given him one of their better efforts. The libretto is indeed a bit weak, though some of the music is glorious and the tenor/baritone duet in Act I is justifiably famous. But that’s not the only fine piece of music in this opera, and the tenor/soprano duet in Act II was engagingly sung by Alfie Boe as the pearl diver Nadir, and Hanan Alattar as the priestess Leïla.

Entrance of the priestess in Act I

Before the start of this June 4^th performance we were told Ms. Alattar was suffering from a sore throat, but after a weak start she gained depth during the evening. Then, after Act I, it was announced that Alfie Boe had caught the sore throat, and after showing a heroic timbre to his voice in the first Act it looked as if we would be deprived of his talents. But he continued to perform strongly. Quinn Kelsey sang the role of Zurga the village headman, pacing himself for the bigger moments, and Freddie Tong was the high priest, but needed more vocal depth and stage presence.

In later years, Bizet judged this opera rather severely and it wasn’t revived after its first performances in 1863, until being restaged in Milan in 1886, more than ten years after his death. Unfortunately the original orchestral score was lost, and this performance was based on a recent reconstruction due to Brad Cohen, well conducted by Rory Macdonald with magnificent singing from the chorus. The Royal Opera will give a concert performance in October, conducted by Antonio Pappano, with Gerald Finley as Zurga, but don’t miss this ENO production for its visual impact.

Nadir swimming to meet Leïla

Penny Woolcock’s fine production, with sets and costumes by Dick Bird and Kevin Pollard, gave a beautiful context for the story. As soon as the first bars of the prelude come from the orchestra we are treated to pearl divers sweeping down to the seabed through clear blue waters, and then as Act I opens we see ramshackle dwellings for the local people, built on a hill overlooking the bay. At nightfall small lights come on and it’s magical. There are other enchanting moments such the duet between Nadir and Zurga when two local men hang out a tatty cloth behind which the visage of the goddess seems to emerge. Water is ever present, and the harbour waters are portrayed by a rolling silk on which a small skiff dips to and fro. In Act II when Nadir swims to the sacred enclosure to meet Leïla we see a projection of his amazing underwater swim, well worthy of a pearl diver. The beauty of the blue waters contrasts wonderfully with the poverty of the material world, giving just the right context for the people’s superstitious religious faith to hold sway.

This excellent production continues until July 8 — for more details click here.

Satyagraha, English National Opera, ENO at the London Coliseum, February 2010

photo by Alistair Muir

This is an opera about Gandhi (1869–1948) and his belief in non-violent resistance. Violence is a word common to many languages, but non-violence is not described by a single word, so Gandhi invented one — satyagraha. It’s a Sanskrit word from two roots, satya meaning ‘truth’, and agraha meaning ‘holding firmly to’, giving the sense of holding firmly to truth.

The opera is in three parts, headed Tolstoy, Tagore and King. The first is named after the great Russian writer whose letters to the young Gandhi were a source of inspiration, until Tolstoy died in 1910. The second part is named after Rabindranath Tagore the great Indian writer, and first non-European winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. He and Gandhi had a great reverence for one another, and it was Tagore who used the honorific ‘Mahatma’ (meaning great soul) to refer to his friend. The third part is named after Martin Luther King, who was greatly influenced by Gandhi’s teachings, and remarked that, “Christ gave us the goals and Mahatma Gandhi the tactics”.

Despite these three parts referring to past, present and future, the libretto has no narrative in the conventional sense, and there are no surtitles, though it’s sung in Sanskrit. Words are occasionally projected, sometimes on an array of newspapers held up by the performers, and whole sentences occasionally appear on the backdrop. The libretto, like Glass’s music, is very repetitive, but I mean this in a good sense, and its insistent intensity provides a way of approaching the persistent minds of original thinkers like Gandhi, and others (Einstein, Galileo, Kepler, Akhnaten) about whom Glass has written operas.

This one about Gandhi reveals excerpts from his life, such as his early experiences as an Indian lawyer working in South Africa when he experienced racism at first hand. For example, the incident when he was attacked by a crowd of white settlers, and only rescued by the wife of the police superintendent, is vividly shown. Many years before Gandhi went to South Africa he had studied the law at University College London, where he acquired an interest in Buddhist and Hindu literature, and joined others in reading the Bhagavad Gita. Excerpts from this great poem are performed by giant puppets, battling one another in slow motion, the puppets themselves being constructed on stage from baskets and rolled up newspaper. This puppetry, and the masks that appear later, are glorious and enliven the rather static nature of the music. With excellent sets and costumes the whole opera becomes a slowly moving picture that changes, yet somehow remains the same, just like the music.

Stuart Stratford conducted it, keeping both orchestra and singers in unison, and bringing out the lyrical and rhythmic quality of Philip Glass’s music, while Gandhi was well sung and very calmly performed by Alan Oke. The absence of surtitles and clear narrative is unusual, but I found the whole work an uplifting experience. The production by Phelim McDermott, assisted by Julian Crouch who also did the marvellous set designs, along with excellent costumes by Kevin Pollard, and superbly subtle lighting by Paule Constable, has a rather ethereal quality, and as a friend of mine said, “I was left humming peaceful thoughts all the way home”.

Review — L’Amour de loin, English National Opera, London Coliseum, July 2009

If you like Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande you may love this opera by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, though I prefer music with more bite. It is a static, dreamlike creation lacking theatrical action, though that side of things was ably provided by director Daniele Finzi Pasca. He drew on his experience with Cirque du Soleil, and really did a terrific job, being responsible for the choreography and the lighting design, which was very colourful and clever. Each of the three principals was shadowed by two acrobats, and in that sense it reminded me of the recent Royal Opera production of Acis and Galatea, but this was so much better than Wayne McGregor’s nonsense that there was no comparison at all.

The story itself is based on a love poem by a famous troubadour from 12^th century Aquitaine, a period when such poems in the Provençal language dealt with amor de lonh (distant love). The original author was troubadour Jaufré Rudel, prince of Blaye in Aquitaine, and his work had the title La vida breve. There are three main characters: the troubadour Jaufré; a travelling pilgrim; and Cleménce the princess of Tripoli.

The prince is obsessed by the idea of an ideal love, and though his companions mock him, the pilgrim says he has met such a lady, and when he returns to Tripoli, tells Cleménce about the prince. She prefers to remain distant to avoid any suffering, but the prince wants to meet her, and makes the journey, albeit full of foreboding and indecision, from which he becomes seriously ill. By the time he arrives in North Africa he is close to death, and meeting her, dies in her arms, metaphorically consummating his love. She rages against fate and enters a convent, praying to one far away, whether God or her lover we know not.

The libretto by Lebanese-born writer Amin Maalouf is rather dreamy, like the music. For example as Jaufré travels by ship he asks the pilgrim, “Why is the sea blue?” and the pilgrim responds, “Because it reflects the sky”. “But why is the sky blue?” “Because it reflects the sea”. What are we to make of that — was it in the original by Jaufré himself?

Saariaho’s music is kind to the singers in the sense that they never seem to be battling with it, but easily singing over it, and I thought Faith Sherman did particularly well as the pilgrim. So indeed did Roderick Williams as Jaufré, and Joan Rodgers did well as Cleménce. This UK premiere, under the baton of music director Edward Gardner, presumably did justice to the composer’s intentions, but I have to say that I found it dull. The production however was extraordinary, and I loved the set designs by Jean Rabasse, and the costumes by Kevin Pollard, even if the pilgrim did look like an elf from Peter Jackson’s film version of the Lord of the Rings. The journey by ship was done against a wonderful background of swirling water projected onto a screen, with acrobats performing throughout the voyage. The only thing I didn’t like about the production was the small screen that two performers wheeled to the front of the stage from time to time, showing rather odd images — it was a distraction.