The Siege of Calais, English Touring Opera, Hackney Empire, March 2013

This is stirring stuff. Although Donizetti’s L’assedio di Calais (The Siege of Calais) with its unsatisfactory third act is rarely performed, James Conway’s production, which eliminates Act III and its happy ending, is a revelation.

Rodin: The Burghers of Calais

This opera, which immediately followed Lucia di Lammermoor, deals with real historical events. In 1346, towards the start of the Hundred Years War, England’s King Edward III besieged Calais, and in 1347 the siege was still in place. The history is disputed but this opera is based on Pierre du Belloy’s patriotic 1765 play Le siège de Calais, where in order to raise the siege the king demands the city turn over seven of its leading citizens to certain death. Six volunteers, including the mayor and his son, come forth and their resolute bravery so impressed Edward’s mother Queen Isabella that she pleaded for their pardon. The king acceded and Rodin’s sculpture The Burghers of Calais, celebrating their selfless act, can be seen today in Westminster.

Aurelio in enemy territory, all images ETO/ RichardHubertSmith

In this production the action starts during the overture with the mayor’s son Aurelio foraging for food and being temporarily captured by the enemy. Towards the end he defiantly rejects the king’s demands for the slaughter of noble hostages, but his father Eustace insists on sacrifice lest everyone die of starvation. In the absence of Act III, though two of its better numbers are included in the first two acts, we see the six burghers trudging off to their death.

Aurelio with father, wife and baby

After the stage calls, cheers and bravos, just as everyone was starting to leave, the orchestra suddenly struck a lighter mood with ballet music from Act III, and we all stepped out into a cold night with a warm feeling of having seen a memorable performance of this little known opera.

Designs by Samal Blak, well lit by Ace McCarron, bring the action into the twentieth century, and Jeremy Silver’s conducting brought out the life and energy of Donizetti’s score. Eddie Wade, whom I last saw as a fine Gunther in The Ring, portrayed a noble mayor, and Paula Sides sang strongly in the soprano role of Aurelio’s wife. The chorus was excellent and there were fine performances from the supporting cast, Andrew Glover in particular.

Six honourable victims

But the singer that made this a knock-out was Australian mezzo Helen Sherman as Aurelio. Before she started singing, her convincing mannerisms and body language made me think she was a man, and she gave a stunning portrayal of the role. The defiant aria in Act I, and in Act II the duet with his wife, the rejection of the enemy, and the farewell aria to his baby were riveting. Helen Sherman’s mezzo voice is world class, and a glance at her website shows she is singing a huge range of different roles — I look forward to hearing her again.

Congratulations to the ETO. This is unmissable, and if it were in London for a second night I’d go again.

Performances continue on tour at: Exeter Northcott, 22nd Mar; Norwich Theatre Royal, 27th Mar; York Theatre Royal, 13th Apr; Snape Maltings Concert Hall, 20th Apr; Buxton Opera House, 27th Apr; Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, 2nd May; Warwick Arts Centre, 11th May; Perth Festival, Perth Theatre, 16th May; Cambridge Arts Theatre, 21st May — for details click here.

Così fan tutte, English Touring Opera, Hackney Empire, March 2013

If this were Shakespeare we might find our performers to be spirits melted into thin, thin air, for we know nothing about them. They are ciphers on which Mozart and his librettist Da Ponte created a piece of theatre at once frivolous and profound, expressing a joy, playfulness and inanity inherent to life itself. The music avoids easy resolution, and although the opera’s finale contains one, there is no redemption.

Guglielmo, Don Alfonso, Ferrando, all images ETO/ Robert Workman

Don Alfonso wants to teach his young friends Ferrando and Guglielmo a lesson, and bets them that their lovers Dorabella and Fiordiligi will surely prove unfaithful if given the chance. Helped by Despina the maid, he proves his point — as the title implies, they like others will all do the same. Considered at one time a heartless farce with heavenly music, Così fan tutte is now a staple in the Mozart repertoire and some reckon it to be one of the greatest operas ever.

Dorabella and Fiordiligi

This clever ETO production by Paul Higgins, with its simple but very effective designs by Samal Blak, juxtaposes reality with artificiality, allowing the audience to use its imagination. It all starts during the overture with a dumb play expressing hidden feelings and ambiguity, behind a gauze, and the same technique is used to great effect later in partially hiding a pair of lovers. Then at the end the performers quietly change positions on the stage during the sextet, reflecting the fluidity of their feelings, despite contrary protestations of outraged pride earlier in the opera.

Lovers in disguise

The lovers carried it all off with a delightful mixture of frustration and vivacity. Laura Mitchell and Kitty Whately as Fiordiligi and Dorabella, and Anthony Gregory and Toby Girling as Ferrando and Guglielmo all sang beautifully and I particularly liked Kitty Whately’s lyricism and the clear boldness of Anthony Gregory’s voice. Paula Sides as Despina was suffering from whiplash that presumably constrained her movements, but one would scarcely have known it, and her performance had a fine devil-may-care attitude showing the maid to be far more knowing than the shallow young ladies she serves. She drew great applause for her early Act II aria, and her singing, and that of the excellent Richard Mosley-Evans as Don Alfonso, was a delight.

Hearing this in Martin Fitzpatrick’s wonderful translation, with clear diction from the singers, provided an immediacy with no need for the intervention of surtitles, and James Burton in the orchestra pit brought out fine and well nuanced playing from the orchestra. Altogether an unadulterated joy.

Performances continue on tour at: Curve Theatre, Leicester, 11th Mar; Churchill Theatre, Bromley, 15th Mar; Exeter Northcott, 19th, 20th Mar; Norwich Theatre Royal, 25th Mar; The Hawth, Crawley, 2nd Apr; Lighthouse, Poole, 5th Apr; Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield, 8th Apr; York Theatre Royal, 11th Apr; Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, 15th Apr; Snape Maltings Concert Hall, 18th Apr; Gala Theatre, Durham, 22nd Apr; Buxton Opera House, 25th Apr; Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, 30th Apr, 4th May; Warwick Arts Centre, 8th, 9th May; Perth Festival, Perth Theatre, 18th May; Cambridge Arts Theatre, 23rd, 24th May; G Live Guildford, 27th May — for details click here.

The Emperor of Atlantis, English Touring Opera, ETO, Linbury Studio, October 2012

This extraordinary one-act opera was composed in the Nazi concentration camp Terezin (Theresienstadt), located in what is now the Czech Republic near the German border. Its composer Viktor Ullmann (1898–1944), born in a small town near the meeting point of what is now the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, was a serious musician who had studied in Vienna under Schoenberg. He and his librettist Peter Kien essentially completed their work in 1943, but the Nazis terminated it during rehearsals. The following year almost all the creative team and half the singers were sent to Auschwitz, where most of them met death before liberation in 1945.

The Prologue, all images ETO/ Richard Hubert Smith

One of the main characters in the opera is Death itself, whose eternal rights are being usurped by Emperor Überall of Atlantis, a thinly veiled representation of the mad German leadership. He commands everyone to fight until there are no survivors, but it is not so simple. A soldier and maiden find themselves quite unable to kill one another, and people are in limbo between life and death. Harlequin appeals to the emperor to cease, the Drummer (Eva Braun?) urges him on, but in a moment of introspection the emperor enters the mirror and meets Death. They do a deal — Death will resume his normal duties if the emperor will be the first to try out the new death. He agrees, and the suffering people can once more find release in the natural processes of the grim reaper.

Drummer, Emperor, Harlequin

The staging by James Conway is simple and very effective, with Neil Irish’s elaborately garish costumes and tiny stage surmounted by curved parallel bars of iron reminiscent of the Auschwitz entrance sign. The singing was uniformly excellent with Robert Winslade Anderson as Death, Richard Mosley-Evans as the Emperor, Callum Thorpe as the Loudspeaker, and Paula Sides, Jeffrey Stewart, Katie Bray and Rupert Charlesworth as the Maiden, Harlequin, Drummer and Soldier.

Conducting by Peter Selwyn maintained the tension in this musically intriguing and extremely moving work that used only instruments available in the camp. It involves the Martin Luther hymn Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, which Bach later used as a source for his chorale cantata of the same name, and James Conway has prefaced the drama with another highly appropriate Bach cantata Christ lag in Todes banden (Christ lay in the bonds of death), which stresses the struggle between life and death.

Death and the Emperor

As the opera progressed I found myself drawn ever closer to seeing the madness that contaminated Europe not so very long ago. Unquestionably worth seeing, and the programme is good value for the director’s notes and the essay by David Fligg, let alone the other two operas (Albert Herring and The Lighthouse) on the ETO’s autumn tour.

Atlantis continues on tour at: Linbury Studio Theatre, 12th Oct – 8:00 pm; West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, 18th Oct – 8:15 pm; Alyth Gardens, London, NW11, 20th Oct – 7:15 pm; Exeter Northcott, 26th Oct – 8:15 pm; Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells, 29th Oct – 8:15 pm; Harrogate Theatre, 3rd Nov – 8:15 pm; Snape Maltings Concert Hall, 11th Nov – 4:00 pm; Great Malvern Priory, 14th Nov – 8:15 pm; Buxton Opera House, 17th Nov – 8:15 pm. For further details click here.

Xerxes, English Touring Opera, ETO, Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music, October 2011

Power and youthful passion are grist to the mill of Handel’s plots, and James Conway’s production is set on a World War II air base with Xerxes as the new ruler, whose enthusiasm for the Spitfire is matched by his infatuation for the lovely wartime nurse and singer Romilda. His brother, fighter pilot Arsamenes, is also in love with Romilda, and she and her younger sister Atalanta, both in love with Arsamenes themselves, are daughters of the military scientist Ariodates. His new bomb very nearly bounces on the stage when Xerxes grabs it in Act III, whooshing it around out of the grip of its inventor as if it were the great egg in Firebird, holding the heart of this ‘Barnes Wallis’-like magician.

Xerxes and Spitfire, all photos Richard Hubert Smith

Fantastical stuff, but using Nicholas Hytner’s modern translation it works rather well, and the singers shine with youthful energy. Jonathan Peter Kenny drives it all forward from the orchestra pit, and Julia Riley as Xerxes sings with wonderful clarity, portraying the king as a sleek-haired, pipe-smoking man who is quite sure of his own mind, yet rather facile in his passions. Rachael Lloyd sings with equal clarity as the foreign princess Amastris, who is promised to Xerxes, and her appearance as one of the foreign pilots seems entirely natural.

Arsamenes with Atalanta and Romilda

Setting the action in Britain, rather than Italy, Persia, or anywhere else, suits a composer who made England his home, and the backdrop showing part of the East Anglian coastline served the production well, imbued as it was with subtle changes of lighting, from reds to greens and blues. Along with occasional aircraft sounds and projections of their silhouettes, this simple production is a very effective backdrop for the singers, whose performances were of uniformly high standard. Laura Mitchell sang beautifully as Romilda, and she and Paula Sides as her sister Atalanta both gave fine performances, as did Andrew Slater, who was entirely convincing as their father the military scientist. Nicholas Merryweather added a distinctly disreputable touch as the rain-coated Elviro who flashes his ‘stockings from Paris’ to the ladies, and Clint van der Linde was a suitably masculine counter-tenor as the king’s brother Arsamenes.

Handel cognoscenti may regret some of the cuts, but the youthful energy of the singers gives a sense of urgency to the performance, bringing on the dénouement with admirable despatch. Romilda and Amastris are finally united with the men they love, and the world can move on — after all, there’s a war going on.

After a further performance at the Britten Theatre on Oct 13, Xerxes tours to: Buxton Opera House, Oct 21; West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, Oct 26; Lincoln Theatre Royal, Oct 31; Harrogate Theatre, Nov 5; Snape Maltings, Nov 12; Exeter Northcott, Nov 18, 19; Malvern Theatres, Nov 24, 25.

Il Tabarro, and Gianni Schicchi, English Touring Opera, ETO, Hackney Empire, March 2011

Of the operas dealing with unfaithfulness in marriage, where a man kills his wife’s lover, the two that really get to me are Mascagni’s Cavalieri Rusticana, and Puccini’s Il Tabarro. The Puccini is a superbly dark and intense drama and, like his other operas, combines musical depth with gripping theatre. Moored on the Seine is a barge whose owner, Michele has lost the love of his much younger wife, Giorgetta after the loss of their baby a year before. While he manages the business and broods, she takes up with a handsome young stevedore named Luigi.

Luigi and Giorgetta, all photos by Richard Hubert Smith

The end is never in doubt, but in the meantime we hear about the frustrations of life. There are two other stevedores: Tinca who drinks because his wife goes with other men, and Talpa whose wife comes to the boat and tells Giorgetta of her dreams for a quiet retirement. At this point, Julie Unwin who sang Giorgetta with immense emotional power, launched into È ben altro il mio sogno! giving us the highlight of the evening, a wonderful cri de coeur for the romance of life in a Paris suburb. Two young lovers lighten the mood before the end when Luigi mistakes the lighting of Michele’s pipe for Giorgetta’s signal to come to the boat and meet her. When she finally reappears from below deck, she tries to make up with her husband and reminds him he once told her that everyone wears a cloak (tabarro) that sometimes hides happiness, sometimes something sad. “And sometimes a crime” is the response.

Michele lights his pipe, heralding the dénouement

Simon Thorpe gave us a sympathetic portrayal of Michele, with Charne Rochford handsome and strong-voiced as his wife’s lover. Tinca and Talpa were wonderfully portrayed by Andrew Glover and Arwel Huw Morgan, and with James Conway’s direction the whole cast worked tremendously well together. The designs by Neil Irish gave just the right sense of darkness and closeness, and while this was very much a team effort, Julie Unwin was assuredly the star — utterly convincing in her amorous frustration.

Gianni Schicchi was a fine way to end the evening, and Richard Mosley-Evans played the title role with great theatrical panache. This was enormous fun, with Paula Sides as Schicchi’s daughter, and Ashley Catling as her fiancé, along with Buoso’s ridiculously grasping family, the doctor, the lawyer and the witnesses.

Reading Buoso's will before Schicchi arrives

The whole thing came off very well indeed, and Paula Sides gave a lovely rendering of O mio babbino caro. The ending, with the fires of hell spouting up as if by accident from the boxes in the room, and the dead Buoso tumbling out of a cupboard, was a fitting finale to a fine evening’s entertainment, well conducted by Michael Rosewall in the orchestra pit.

Lauretta pleads with her father Schicchi: O mio babbino caro

After a further performance in London at the Hackney Empire on March 11, this pair of operas goes on tour to the following venues: Cambridge Arts Theatre, March 17, 18; Exeter Northcott, March 24, 25; Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells, March 28; The Hawth, Crawley, April 1; The Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, April 7, 8; The Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield, April 11; Snape Maltings Concert Hall, April 15; Norwich Theatre Royal, April 20; Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, May 3; Buxton Opera House, May 5; Hall for Cornwall, Truro, May 10; Lighthouse, Poole, May 13; Gala Theatre, Durham, May 16; Perth Festival, Perth Theatre, May 21; Grand Opera House, Belfast, May 26, 27.