Silk Street Theatre
Owen Wingrave – Sonny Fielding
General Sir Philip Wingrave – Harry Jacques
Miss Wingrave – Lowri Probert
Mrs Coyle – Hannah McKay
Mr Coyle – Oliver Williams
Mrs Julian – Manon Ogwen Parry
Kate Julian – Gabriella Giulietta Noble
Lechmere, Narrator – Tobias Campos Santiñaque
Set designs – Laura Jane Stanfield
Costumes – Katie Higgins
Lighting – Zoé Ritchie
Video – Kamila Przybylsk
 |
| Images: David Monteith-Hodge Mr Coyle (Oliver Williams) and Owen Wingrave (Sonny Fielding) |
The Guildhall’s performances have long played an important role in London’s opera ecology, as well as offering invaluable opportunities to its students. Generalisations and comparisons are of limited value; every year is different and repertoire will grow out of the students available rather than being imposed upon them. Nonetheless, the works chosen for the Guildhall’s termly shows has tended to range more widely both than might be expected and than that of the other conservatoires (which, of course, very much have their own strengths). Henze, Hindemith, and Respighi have all featured alongside Mozart, Purcell, and others over the past few years. Britten is far from unfamiliar territory in this country, but Owen Wingrave is rarely seen anywhere. Hats off, then, to the Guildhall for staging it in a chamber orchestral reduction by David Matthews.
After a slightly shaky opening, the orchestra of young musicians gave a committed, even authoritative account of the score under Dominic Wheeler. Pacing convinced throughout. The music’s undeniable creepiness – a Britten trademark – shone through, as did its mechanistic progress. A flute solo here, a harp flourish there, Death in Venice-like percussion pervasive: these and more left one in no doubt as to the identity of the composer, though rarely at ever does he sound at his more inspired. Recorded children’s choir music, courtesy of the Cardinal Vaughan School’s Schola Cantorum, breathed life and death into evocation of the Wingrave family residence, Paramore. Martin Lloyd-Evans’s resourceful production moved from military academy to Paramore, taking in other locations with a refreshing absence of fuss. Things were played pretty straight, but none the worse for that. Occasional video additions enabled reference both to the outside world and to the family portraits of the house. Stage and musical direction were evidently conceived in collaborative sympathy.
 |
| Lechmere (Tobias Campos Santiñaque) |
Each of the young stage artists impressed in what is neither easy nor grateful music. In the title role, Sonny Fielding combined close attention to the text with a moral insistence that clearly impressed the Coyles, brought to life (insofar as the work permits) with skill and humanity by Oliver Williams and Hannah McKay. Lowri Probert’s rich mezzo was just the thing for the stubborn spinster Miss Wingrave, increasingly contrasted with the breakdown of Manon Ogwen Parry’s Mrs Julian and her more ideologically driven daughter Kate, here given a fine vocal and stage performance by Gabriella Giuletta Noble. Harry Jacques’s offered a creditable elderly general: not the easiest of tasks for a young singer. In many ways, the show was stolen by the lively Lachmere (and Narrator) of Tobias Campos Santiñaque, a properly animating presence in an opera that certainly needs one.
For the problem, I am afraid, lay squarely with the work itself. I have not read the Henry James short story on which the libretto is based, but on this evidence The Turn of the Screw must be a far superior adaptation, whether by Myfanwy Piper or Britten. For me, it is Britten’s finest opera, so there is no doubt that composer and librettist could work together well. Indeed, it is difficult to believe Owen Wingrave comes from the same team, let alone ultimately from James. Where, in the earlier work, musical process is certainly to the fore, it is meaningful and generative. Here, too often, one simply hears gears grinding and changing to no evident end. Much of the orchestral writing is desiccated and there is strangely little in the way of idiomatic, let alone inviting, vocal writing. Word-setting and even straightforward are often awkward (as opposed to merely mannered). Dramatically, the work is still more flawed: most ‘characters’ are barely such at all, only really coming into being at the close. Instead, people who mostly never change their mind simply exchange pre-formulated statements on war, which either we shall mostly agree with (in Owen’s case) or find absurd (most of the rest, with rare glimpses of something more equivocal and interesting from the Coyles and Lechmere).
 |
| Mrs Coyle (Hannah McKay) |
What might be done with the opera? Would making it more overtly topical help? Perhaps, although could one, really? One could doubtless set it in any number of current or recent ‘conflicts’, though I am not sure the concerns would translate. Most Londoners likely to be attending an opera are unlikely to be rabid militarists; they hardly need telling what they know already. Any number of Ukrainians or Russians, say, might with very good reason decide to flee conscription, but I am not sure so many would be making pacifist declarations at a military academy (or near enough) and angering their ‘old’ families. Perhaps it could be turned more evidently against Russian (or other) nationalism, I suppose, though its dramatic flaws would not be helpful. The other possibility, it seems to me, would be to take ‘pacifism’ as part proxy for homosexuality and other sexual repression, surely a subtext at least for what is going on here. That might actually unleash greater potential for production characterisation, though again the works’ flaws would remain.
Perhaps, then, Owen Wingrave simply
works better as a television opera. I can imagine things ‘said’ might work more
as reflections. Shots of the house, its portraits, its grounds and so on might
likewise work better on screen. Or perhaps not. None of this is intended as
criticism of a valiant attempt at revival. Anyone curious would be well advised
to make an effort this week; it is difficult to imagine another opportunity
coming our way soon. At the very least, you will encounter committed musical performances
in an operatic rarity.
