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| Too earthy |
REVIEW - MIDSUMMER MARRIAGE
Covent Garden By Helen Lawrence
TIPPET'S Midsummer Marriage, revived at Covent Garden in Graham
Vick’s 1996 production, is an opera of ideas. The music is
wonderful: full of life-enhancing energy, humour and charm, with
beautiful orchestral writing overflowing with melody.
It is set to his heavily symbolic libretto, a philosophical drama
about love, sex, renewal and rebirth. Two sets of young lovers are
put through various trials to discover the truth about themselves,
regain their love and find spiritual maturity. The Queen of the
Night figure is a capitalist: Tippett was a communist in the 1930s.
As a objector to World War II, he went to jail for his beliefs.
It needs to be staged in a timeless, transcendent place. Unfortunately
Vick’s concept keeps it earthbound in an English-idyll setting,
more reminiscent of a community picnic on Hampstead Heath, with
a hideous Disney-kitsch womb-like mystical orb at the end. Ron Howell’s
irritating choreography for the Ritual Dances, full of gauche writhing,
does it no favours. It also required more persuasive singing. Amanda
Roocroft as Jennifer looked lovely but was vocally effortful and
sometimes unsteady with a rather harsh edge on some high notes.
Will Hartmann as her fiancé Mark, a German with perfect English
but underpowered voice, was adequate. The outstanding singing came
from Russian mezzo Elena Manistina as Sosostris.
Richard Hickox (pictured), conducting, drew passion from the orchestra.
The chorus were in fine vocal form, giving the great choruses full
bodied tone.
Its ‘new age’ message should have resonance in our era,
but alas, Tippett’s most celebrated opera is playing to far
from full houses; a sad reflection of cultural life today.
Go for the no frills Butterfly
REVIEW - MADAME BUTTERFLY
Gatehouse By Jan Topoworoski
HAMPSTEAD Garden Opera have a nerve, putting Madame Butterfly
on the same day that curtain went up on the English National Opera’s
new production, directed by Anthony Minghella, of that same opera.
But the doughty HGO amateurs manage to pull it off even if, by comparison
with the Coliseum’s lavish offering, theirs is a more modest
production in nearly every sense.
Whereas the ENO uses Puccini’s music as background to a visual
display of beauty, the HGO gives us minimal staging so that we can
concentrate on the music.
Although those who know the opera will miss the percussion that
was supposed make the opera more ‘oriental’.
The Dionysus Ensemble played beautifully throughout, even though
the reduced strings were outnumbered, and at times drowned out by
the brass and woodwind.
Alastair and Anne MacGeorge perform wonders on the electric keyboard
recreating much of the orchestral parts that have been cut out.
It was held together almost from the moment of her first appearance
by Helen-Julie Johnson as the tragic Butterfly, seduced and abandoned
by the US Navy’s Lieutenant Pinkerton.
Matt Connolly plays the weak and callous Pinkerton with restraint,
while David Rose is a humane and thoughtful Sharpless, the US consul.
But it is Johnson who, after an uncertain start, dominates the production
with her singing and dramatic expression.
No china doll, she rides the emotional roller-coaster from love,
through despair, to tragedy, as Callas had done in the past.
It is impossible not to be gripped by her performance, and be drawn
into the inner torment of the abandoned woman who could only live
through her love.
HGO’s production is the one to go for. It faithfully recreates
Puccini’s moral drama of the affections, even if it lacks much
of his, in any case inflated, orchestration.
It runs Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate until November 13.
Guitarists explore the globe
THIS weekend sees the second concert of Sunday Sounds series
at the Shaw Theatre in Euston Road.
Guitarist duo Latino Ladino are Liat Cohen and Ricardo Moyano, will
be play music from Argentina and the Middle East. It includes famous
works by Granados (Valses Poeticks), Albeniz (Asturias) De Falla
(Serenate Espanola) and Bartok (Dances Roumaines). But alongside
recognised composers spring Troiani, Plaza, Domeniconi and Heiman
– hardly household names.
CLICK HERE FOR LISTINGS
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