Robin Hood, The Opera Story, 27 February 2019 (world premiere)

Bussey Building, Peckham

The Merry Men (Oliver Brignall, Cliff Zammit Stevens, Nicholas Merryweather)
Images: Robert Workman

Robin Hood – Nicholas Merryweather

Joanna – Lorna Anderson

Marian – Siân Cameron

Little John – Oliver Brignall

Will Scarlett – Cliff Zammit Stevens

The Boy – William Barter-Sheppard

Polly Graham (director)

April Dalton (designs)

Claire Childs (lighting)

Berrak Dyer (conductor)

The Opera Story has given birth to a new opera by a young composer and young creative team each year in Peckham since it was founded, three years ago. Unable to attend previous productions, I was eager to hear what was made of Robin Hood, with libretto by Zoe Palmer and Rebecca Hurst, and score by Dani Howard. As with so many essays in the genre from Jacopo Peri’s Dafne onwards, an existing story has been taken and modified. Intrinsically, the idea has much to recommend it: delving beneath the surface of the legend to ask whether Robin Hood and his merry men really were – are – what they seem.


And so, Palmer, Hurst, Howard, and director Polly Graham present a contemporary (to us) political fable, in which a Bullingdon-style group of male politicians in tweeds profess concern for the poor and yet do something quite different; or so it initially seems. At a certain point, it became difficult (at least for me) to grasp quite what drives the plot. Is it that these were essentially posh boys (men-children)? Is it destruction to the environment, the Greenwood, threatened by property developer, Joanna, and defended by Robin’s sister, Marian? Is it paedophilia, the men having gone into the woods and killing a passing child, Joanna’s? Or is it (homosexual) love, Little John at a couple of points having declared himself Robin’s lover? There is nothing wrong with complexity, of course, with themes that intertwine; far from it. For the first two of the three acts, I found the libretto suggestive of how such ideas might coexist and conflict; in the third, resolution, such as it was, seemed a little contrived, the whole amounting to less than the sum of its parts. Perhaps it would have been better to have retained a little more of the ‘original’, so that the implied comparison and contrast would have meant more.

Marian (Siân Cameron)

Meanwhile, Howard’s score seemed to grow, more impressive in that third act than in what had gone before. Strangely, even bizarrely, tonal – post-minimalist, I suppose – it had seemed content earlier on just to offer a background to what was transpiring onstage, more interesting in the passages where it came closer to Britten in creepy mode, less so when it sounded as though it might have been written for a television series. A greater focus on ensemble writing in the third act paid dividends, though, perhaps indicative of greater confidence and flair acquired through the business of writing. There was no gainsaying the commitment of performances from a fine cast of singers, nor of that from the ten-piece ensemble (string quartet, double bass, flute, clarinet, trumpet, French horn, and percussion), incisively directed by Berrak Dyer. Oddly, the players sounded heavily amplified. Either that, or it was a very peculiar acoustic (always possible!) A pity, I thought.

Perhaps, then, it is better to think of this as a valuable workshop opportunity, from which all – those of us in the audience too – will have learned. Performances were excellent and, if I had my doubts about the work itself, there was certainly promise to be discerned. Whatever one’s thoughts on that, there was insight to be had both into the writing and performance of opera by those at an early stage in their careers and, just as important, into the success of so worthy an initiative. I look forward to seeing – and hearing – what The Opera Story brings us next.

La Tragédie de Carmen, Pop-up Opera, 25 September 2018

Asylum Chapel, Peckham

Carmen (Chloe Latchmore)
Images: Ugo Soffientini

Carmen – Chloe Latchmore

Don José – Satriya Krisna

Micaëla – Alice Privett
Escamillo – James Corrigan

John Wilkie (director)
Anna Bonomelli (designs)
Mark Ruddick (movement)

Don José (Satriya Krisna)

Few companies are so worthy of our support than Pop-up Opera. Last time I reviewed one of their performances, they were giving a free-of-charge Mozart double-bill the morning after their props and equipment had been stolen from a van. Now they are offering Peter Brook’s barebones version of Carmen, as arranged by him, Marius Constant, and Jean-Claude Carrière. Not that director John Wilkie and his team are content to offer that ‘straight’; they approach it with the imagination and interrogation one would expect, if not always receive, of any repertoire work. There are losses, of course, and I am not entirely convinced that the updating to 1939 at the close of the Spanish Civil War fits quite so well with Brook’s version. Not only, however, has it made me think – and continue to think; there were on this first night, in Peckham’s wonderful Asylum Chapel, some fine performances to enjoy irrespective of such questions.

We have no chorus, just four principals; we have no orchestra, just a piano. The desire to recapture something of the work’s original opéra comique intimacy is a long-held one, quite valid. Even for the vast space of Salzburg’s Grosses Festspielhaus, Simon Rattle recently spoke and worked in such terms, albeit with decidedly mixed results. At any rate, surely no one would really wish to substitute those dreadful recitatives for the dialogue now. Brook’s determination to return to Mérimée is furthered – trumped? – here by the staging. At the dawn of Franco’s fascist new world, Don José is a disgraced, traumatised soldier, blood on his mind and on his hands. Having killed the cabaret performer Carmen on the street, having thus accomplished something similar to what his former Nationalist forces have done to the country as a whole, he now relives the experience in a series of flash backs. Much is cut; the whole performance lasts for eighty minutes. Film projections of war and its aftermath essentially take the place of the chorus, so that a sense of the social is retained. We gain perhaps an even stronger sense of Fate, not only from Don José standpoint but also from the cards’ foretelling.

 

Escamillo (James Corrigan)

Carmen is thus not decentred, as one might have expected; even in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s brilliant rethinking for Aix, her initial decentring paradoxically gave new birth to as character rather than icon. She is rarely off stage and becomes perhaps more than ever a progenitor of that ultimate operatic femme fatale, Berg’s Lulu. Problems persist: is she merely a projection of male violence? Yet our sympathy is engaged, which is surely the crucial thing. Chloe Latchmore’s performance here proved quite mesmerising, whether in vocal terms or stage-presence. Satriya Krisna, Alice Privett, and James Corrigan all proved deeply impressive, in both ‘traditional’ and ‘reimagined’ fashion. To be more than a caricature, Escamillo needs something. Here his return to war and parallel trauma certainly offered food for thought. Berrak Dyer’s musical direction from the piano proved duly heroic, offering a window onto what we might have heard, what we thought we remembered, as well as what we actually did. Which, in a way, is what La Tragédie de Carmen, both ‘in itself’ and in this further reinvention sought also to do.



Il barbiere di Siviglia, Pop-up Opera, 21 June 2016

Images: Richard Lakos



 

Thames Tunnel Shaft, Brunel Museum, Rotherhithe

Rosina – Katie Slater

Count Almaviva – Ciarán O’Leary, Joseph Doody
Figaro – Leif Jone Ølberg
Bartolo – James Schouten
Basilio, Fiorello – Tom Asher
Berta – Emily Blanch

James Hurley (director)

Fiona Johnston, Kate McStraw, Clementine Lovell (producers)

Berrak Dyer (musical director, piano)
 

Having been ground down almost beyond endurance by the referendum ‘debate’, I was surprised and delighted to be picked up so splendidly by Pop-Up Opera’s Barber of Seville. The Thames Tunnel Shaft might not, on the face of it, have seemed an obvious venue for Rossini, but neither I, nor, I suspect, anyone else had any doubts, let alone complaints, once down the steps. The intimacy of the occasion more than compensated for any acoustical issues; my ears soon adjusted, and all that remained was to sit back and enjoy.

 

The performance was sung in Italian, with silent film-style titles projected on the wall (sometimes text and translation, sometimes translation, sometimes commentary, sometimes wittily and only vaguely ‘after’ the original). Soloists and piano (with a mercifully brief outing for deliberately-inappropriate synthesiser as Figaro’s guitar) well-nigh perfectly captured the often elusive essence of Rossini’s opera. In all but the best performances, it can readily seem over-extended, even tedious, the composer’s clever formulae all too quickly losing their sparkle. Not here; indeed, I am not sure I have witnessed a more committed performance. Berrak Dyer’s sterling work on the piano was such that I never missed the orchestra; indeed, in conjunction with those titles, the sound of the piano seemed especially apt. James Hurley’s stage direction and the work of a fine team of producers (see above) left nothing to be desired. Disguises were donned, simple props telling employed, but above all, it was the characters who came so vividly to life – both as opera buffa types, which is surely crucial here, but also with a degree of humanity that yet did not sentimentalise.

 

For that, of course, we have primarily to thank a highly talented cast of young sisters, all of whom I should more than happily see and hear again. Rossini’s technical demands held no fears for any of them, nor did the quicksilver stage action that must accompany, indeed incite, it. Katie Slater’s coloratura impressed greatly as Rosina; so did her knowing glances. Ciarán O’Leary, suffering from an allergy, nevertheless made the most of the first act as Almaviva, revealing a lovely tenor voice, and technique to match; having had to withdraw, he was ably succeeded by the similarly accomplished, eminently likeable Joseph Doody. James Schouten’s handsome baritone proved another joy to hear as Bartolo. Tom Asher – who, I have just noticed from the programme, hails from my home town of Rotherham, and is therefore necessarily a good thing – revealed excellent comic and musical talent as Basilio and Fiorello. Emily Blanch, long relegated to the sidelines in her role as Berta, nevertheless made the most of her aria, warmly received.



Figaro (Leif Jone Ølberg)

 

 

If I had to choose, though, my first prize would go to the outstanding Leif Jone Ølberg as Figaro. Ølberg inhabited the role at least as completely as any artist I have seen. His baritone voice is darkly attractive, seemingly effortlessly agile, capable of all manner of subtlety – and he can act. Such an energising presence would have melted even the sternest of hearts. If he were first among equals, though, that achievement would never have registered without so fine a sense of company from all concerned: on and off stage. The most heartening opera performances often to be found where you least expect them, even at the foot of a tunnel shaft.

For details of Pop-Up Opera’s nationwide tour, please visit their website here.