The Lighthouse, Royal Opera (Jette Parker Young Artists), 22 October 2015

Samuel Sakker as First Officer, Yuriy Yurchuk as Second Officer. David Shipley as Third Officer. All images: (C) ROH. Photographer: Clive Barda

 

 

Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House

Sandy, First Officer – Samuel Sakker

Blazes, Second Officer – Yuriy Yurchuk
Arthur, Third Office – David Shipley

Greg Eldridge (director)

Alyson Cummins (designs)
Warren Letton (lighting)
Jo Meredith (movement)

Southbank Sinfonia

Jonathan Santagada (conductor)

 

 

Peter Maxwell Davies’s chamber opera, The Lighthouse, made an excellent showcase for three singers from the Royal Opera’s Jette Parker Young Artists Programme. More to the point, they made an excellent case for the opera, which has been fortunate indeed in London over the past few years.

 

The opera, as I wrote when reviewing English Touring Opera’s 2012 production, has the gripping quality of a superior detective – and ghost – story. Inspired, as the cliché has it, by a true story, in this case an account from Craig Mair’s A Star for Seamen: The Stevenson Family of Engineers, the opera’s unsettling mix of courtroom drama, in almost modern televisual terms, and all-too-real (or is it?) Revelation-style apocalypticism presents both narrative and self-critique, verbally and musically. It makes sense out of, or at least deals with contradictory ‘truths’ – and the magpie tendencies, which yet synthesise, of Davies’s score lie at the heart of that achievement. Words and music from characters in ensemble come together to present something that may or may not be more or less truthful than what it is they and we think they are saying individually. The difficulties of the three men’s relationship – they have been penned together for several months – is menacingly conveyed, though not without affection either. Parody is present, of course, most evidently in the reimagination of the ballads – a street variety from Blazes and Sandy’s sickly drawing-room version – and hymns. Arthur is the sort of pig-headed Protestant fundamentalist who has always drawn Davies’s ire, but there is an element again of affection, such as memories so often bring in spite of themselves, as well as anger in Davies’s presentation and subversion of the hymn tunes. The rhythm of the closing automation – ‘The lighthouse is now automatic,’ we hear at the end of the Prologue – sounded as stubbornly memorable as ever in this performance from the Southbank Sinfonia and Jonathan Santagada.

 

Their performance had been a little hesitant at first. Indeed, a lack of definition at times, mostly from the strings, had made the Prologue drag somewhat. There were no such problems in ‘The Cry of the Beast’, in which the players and Santagada seemed very much in their element, a far more colourful and rhythmically alert performance. In that screwing up of dramatic tension, the orchestra seemed at one with Greg Eldridge’s period staging: straightforwardly presented, yet seething with menace later on. Alyson Cummins’s designs proved a major contributor, likewise Warren Letton’s lighting; in Eldridge’s words, he and his designer had ‘tried to capture the dichotomy between the naturalistic action and the heavy supernatural elements present throughout the score. In the world of the music everything is metaphor and this sis a theme that we have continued in our design. Everything on the stage … is physically real … but also serves a representative purpose that underscores a symbolic element of the story.’

 

Within that staging – that imprisonment, we might say – our singers brought the drama to life. Samuel Sakker’s lyric tenor covered an array of musico-psychological states as Sandy. He even pulled off the difficult trick of questionable singing – in the ballad – as character portrayal, rather than from inability to sing it ‘right’. Yuriy Yurchuk’s diction was on occasion a little occluded, yet for the most part his was a powerful performance as Blazes, again encompassing a good deal of musical and dramatic virtuosity (to refer to a concept the composer has suggested is necessary, and surely is). David Shipley’s Arthur was possessed of as well as by frightening fanaticism, all founded upon a splendidly deep bass voice. Interaction between all three soloists was convincing throughout. I look forward to hearing them again.
 

Dido and Aeneas/The Lighthouse, Royal Academy Opera, 16 May 2013

Sir Jack Lyons Theatre, Royal Academy of Music

Dido – Sarah Shorter

Belinda – Sónia Grané
Second Woman – Helen Bailey
Sorceress – Rozanna Madylus
First Witch – Tereza Gevorgyan
Second Witch – Irina Loskova
Spirit – Rosalind Coad
Aeneas – Samuel Pantcheff
Sailor – Ross Scanlon

Sandy, Officer 1 – Iain Milne

Blazes, Officer 2 – Samuel Queen
Arthur. Officer 3, Voice of the Cards – Andri Björn Róbertsson

John Ramster (director)

Jake Wiltshire (lighting)
Patrick Doyle (costumes)

Chorus

Royal Academy Sinfonia

Iain Ledingham, Lionel Friend (conductors)

 

Samuel Queen (Blazes), Andri Björn Róbertsson (Arthur) and Iain Milne (Sandy).
Pictures © Royal Academy of Music, May 2013

Not the most obvious of pairings, perhaps: Dido and Aeneas and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s The Lighthouse. One can certainly find connections if one tries, as director John Ramster valiantly did in his director’s note, especially with respect to the role of Fate. And of course one can make connections between most things if so inclined, when placed together. This, however, seemed more like an evening of two halves.

 

The performance of The Lighthouse was spectacularly good, at least a match for the recent English Touring Opera production, and arguably still more theatrically gripping. (How fortunate we are to have had two stagings in close succession!) There was not a great deal in the way of scenery; much was done with Jake Wiltshire’s brilliant – at some points, literally so – lighting, by turns suggestive of the lighthouse itself, the red eyes of the Beast, and much more. Ramster and his colleagues engendered a terrifying sense of claustrophobia and whatever horror – production, like opera, leaves matters tantalisingly unclear – it is that actually takes place. The sheer hell of being cooped up together, the promise of release having clearly been frustrated more than once, is conveyed viscerally, more by the characters’ interaction than anything external, and thus all the more powerful for it.

 

For that, of course, the three singers should claim a great deal of credit. Andri Björn Róbertsson struck Calvinistic terror into the heart as the hypocritical fundamentalist, Sandy. From the moment of saying grace, his sonorous deep bass, combined with charismatic stage presence, had one thinking of a perverted (anti-)Christ figure. His physical excitement during Blazes’ song, offered attempted release in more than one sense. Samuel Queen and Iain Milne presented a nicely ambiguous Blazes and Sandy, quite as impressive as actors as singers. Lionel Friend’s direction of the Royal Academy Sinfonia was quite beyond reproach; after a lacklustre showing in the first half (about which, more below), the orchestra sounded rejuvenated: precise, sardonic, and at times overpowering. The knife-edge balance between fatalism and human agency on stage was replicated, indeed engendered, in the pit. Quite outstanding!

 

What a difference a conductor makes, for Iain Ledingham’s direction of the same orchestra in Dido and Aeneas had been disappointing. Adopting that strange practice of having modern strings simply eschew vibrato, as if that somehow were enough to qualify as an ‘authentic’ performance, whatever that might be, Ledingham set the tone for what was to follow in the Overture: listless, hard-driven, and with sonority redolent of a school orchestra. (It was certainly not in any sense the players’ fault, as The Lighthouse demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt.) If only Friend had conducted both. Vocal performances were less impressive too, or rather they were in the title roles. After a shaky start, Sarah Shorter recovered well, but was so let down by Ledingham’s conducting that it was difficult to reach any proper judgement. Samuel Pantcheff sounded out of sorts as Aeneas; maybe he was under the weather. Not for the first time, though, Sónia Grané shone, this time as a mellifluous Belinda. Rozanna Madylus made for a nicely malign Sorceress, ably supported by weirdly snarling witches, Tereza Gevorgyan and Irina Loskova. Ross Scanlon almost threatened to steal the show as a wickedly camp Sailor.

 

Ramster’s staging of Purcell’s masterpiece presented a similar meeting between camp and stylisation, perhaps strongest in the choreographed dances. Maybe that match was an expression of his ideas concerning Fate; it would make a good deal of ‘Baroque’ sense on paper. However, I could not help but agree with my companion’s observation when, slightly ruing her inability to watch a Eurovision semi-final, she said that it was actually all to be seen here. Certainly the strange portrayal of the underwear-flashing witches did not seem so very distant from what one might have imagined unfolding in Malmö at the same time. Despite some fine offstage choral singing, I felt strangely unmoved by what should be one of the most tragic of all operatic final scenes. (‘Tristan und Isolde in a pint-pot’, was Raymond Leppard’s wonderful description of the opera.) No matter: it would have been worth travelling a long way for a performance such as we heard of The Lighthouse.

The Lighthouse, English Touring Opera, 11 October 2012

Linbury Studio Theatre

Sandy – Adam Tunnicliffe

Blazes – Nicholas Merryweather
Arthur – Richard Mosley-Evans 

Ted Huffman (director)

Neil Irish (designs)
Guy Hoare (lighting)
Oliver Townsend (costumes)

Aurora Orchestra
Richard Baker (conductor)

 

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s chamber opera, The Lighthouse, received a splendid performance from English Touring Opera, just as Viktor Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis did last week. At little more than an hour and a half, including an interval, this proved a far more satisfactory dramatic experience than the Royal Opera’s Götterdammerung on the main Covent Garden stage. (To be fair, that would not be difficult, and ETO’s performance was far better than merely preferable.)

 

The opera has the gripping quality of a superior detective – and ghost – story. Its Prologue sets up the situation as three naval officers answer questions concerning the disappearance of three lighthouse keepers, questions posed by a solo horn. As time goes on, their interrogation metamorphoses into something approaching reconstruction, the point we reach in the opera proper, in which the singers who have played the officers turn to play the lighthouse keepers – and, at the end, return to the guise of the officers, who may or may not bear guilt. Davies wrote the libretto as well as the score, composed for an expanded Fires of London ensemble, out-of-tune piano, banjo, and flexatone included.

 

Misunderstandings and the weird ways in which makes sense out of disparate, perhaps even mutually exclusive, ‘truths’ are finely portrayed musically and verbally as well as scenically. Words from the three characters come together to present something that may or may not be more or less truthful than what it is they think they are saying individually: a verbal magic square perhaps? Webern’s shadow is cast longer and more widely than one might expect. The instability of the three men’s relationship – they have been together for a good few months now – is menacingly conveyed, though not without affection either. Arthur is a different matter, or at least he seems to be, but there is certainly at least a hint of homoeroticism, especially in Ted Huffman’s excellent production, between Sandy and Blazes. Parody is present, of course, most evidently in the reimagination of the ballads – a street variety from Blazes and Sandy’s sickly drawing-room version – and the hymn tunes. (Arthur is clearly the kind of Protestant fundamentalist who has long drawn Davies’s ire.) The rhythm of the closing automation – ‘The lighthouse is now automatic,’ we hear at the end of the Prologue – is as stubbornly memorable as the New York traffic-jam sounds at the beginning of Stravinsky’s Agon, another work owing a great debt and repaying it handsomely, to the jewels of Webern. All of the way home and for some time afterwards I found it impossible to rid my head of its repetitions.

 

Both Huffman’s staging and Richard Baker’s conducting are excellent, equal in precision; so, unsurprisingly, is the expert witness of the Aurora Orchestra, as fine an ensemble of young soloists as one is likely to encounter. The simple set, faithful to the work, provides a suitably claustrophobic backdrop and indeed participant – who are the ghosts and where are they are? In the characters and/or our minds, or are they something more? – for the keenly directed drama to unfold. Guy Hoare’s lighting did its job very well indeed, especially when it came to showing the automated signals in the deserted, desolate house. Tenor Adam Tunnicliffe offered a sensitively sung performance of Sandy, both contrasting and blending well with baritone Nicholas Merryweather as Blazes. Richard Mosley-Evans presented a powerful portrayal of Arthur, alive to his daemons, and to the illusory and real strengths and weaknesses arising therefrom.

 

It is not merely that there was no weak length in the cast; these were performances that would have graced any stage. The excellent news is that they will grace a good few more stages, for after the Linbury performances, this production will be seen in Cambridge, Exeter, Harrogate, Bath, and Aldeburgh. For further details from ETO’s website, click here.