Opera North, 09/11/2017
Ravel : L'enfant et les sortilèges
Janáček : Osud
Chorus and Orchestra of Opera North
Martin André
Opera North's "Little Greats" are a fascinating festival of six short operas, usually presented in double bills. To my knowledge, this is their second such exercise, the previous one being in 2004. It looked interesting at the time, but I wasn't in a position to explore it; this time, with these pieces by Ravel and Janáček on the bill, I decided not to miss it.
L'enfant et les sortilèges is a fascinating, magical piece, with a magnificent libretto full of whimsy and poetry by Colette, and Ravel's orchestral genius deployed in full force. It's also quite a delicate piece to stage, precisely because the context is so fantastical. A young boy throws a tantrum after having been scolded for laziness, and wrecks his surroundings. To his immense shock, everything around him, living creatures and inanimate objects alike, suddenly comes alive, and rebukes him, in one way or another, for his cruelty and callousness, and through this object lesson, he takes the first steps towards compassion and a greater maturity. It's the animated objects in the first part that can pose a problem; you want the audience to laugh, often, but you want it to laugh at the right time, and in the right way.
Annabelle Arden's choice here was to give the objects human avatars (more or less) rather than having the singers completely disguised as chairs, or a clock, or whatever is required. In this way, the Grandfather Clock steps out from inside the clock cabinet, or Fire emerges from a boiler. Most of this worked reasonably well, and Arden had remembered that Enfant was originally staged as part-ballet, and incorporated a good deal of well thought-out choreography (by Theo Clinkard). Most amusing in this way were John Graham-Hall and Ann Taylor as the Teapot and Chinese Cup, the former with his "spout" placed most suggestively, and the latter with two large pink cups equally evocatively displayed.
With the arrival of the combatively amorous Cats of Katie Bray and Quirijn de Lang, deliciously slinky both vocally and physically, the piece starts to take a darker turn as the Child thinks to escape to the outdoors and his Garden. Here, it's the animals and vegetation that take issue with the Child, and the representations are more straightforward here, with one rather interesting touch; the chorus looks like an assembly of homeless people, until suddenly, with the aid of a couple of green-painted tennis balls each, they turn quite convincingly into frogs. Rachel J. Mosley was seriously taxed by the Dragonfly, as if her voice didn't have enough power in the low register the character requires, and that was a pity, as it's the Dragonfly who launches the slow waltz that constitutes a large part of this second half. Taylor and Graham-Hall again, however, brought the Squirrel and the Tree-Frog vividly to life, and, quite appropriately, given the context tonight, it was impossible not to think briefly of Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen (which was premiered a year before Enfant).
Despite numerous charms to this production, and the performances, it was an uneven show on the whole. Wallis Giunta, as the Child, was a solid thread right through, as it should be, and the Child's aria "Toi, le cœur de la rose" was delivered with touching clarity and simplicity. Ann Taylor and John Graham-Hall were systematically excellent in all their parts, those mentioned above, as well as the Mother for Taylor, and a splendidly manic Arithmetic for Graham-Hall. Fflur Wyn was a respectable Fire (though why Arden burdened her with 80s "big hair" and shocking pink sweats escapes me), a good Princess, but a somewhat nondescript Nightingale. However, the Chorus was distinctly patchy, and the orchestra, though playing well generally, could not quite maintain the magic all the way through, and the whole seeming more episodic than it should be.
The story goes that Janáček was visiting a spa town in 1903 when he met the soprano Kamila Urválková, who proceeded to persuade the ever-susceptible Janáček into writing what was effectively intended to be a rebuttal to an opera written by a former lover of hers that had cast her into a poor light. Said lover was Ludvík Čelansky, rather better known as a conductor and the founder of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra than as a composer. If his opera Kamila is known, it's only in his home country. Janáček, on the other hand, had just finished Jenufa and was trying to get it performed (it would be, in 1904), and was on the lookout for new material. The core of the idea, about a composer writing an opera blaming his mistress for her rejection of him, is still there, but it's complicated by an unplanned pregnancy, an unhealthily possessive mother (of the girl), and a case of life imitating art imitating life that gets a bit out of hand.
Osud (usually translated as Destiny), although only about 90 minutes long, is actually in three acts - the big drawback of tonight's production was the time between the acts for scene-changing. The production really should have been designed to reduce this to a strict minimum, in order to maintain a certain amount of momentum. It was sung in English tonight, and assuming the translation conveyed as much the style of the original Czech as its meaning, it's clear enough that a large part of the problem is with its language, which is, to say the least, overblown. For a composer like Janáček, who made a point of setting texts in a natural style, the melodic line at least partly defined by the natural rise and fall of the spoken text, trying to set something so florid was going to cause problems, not in the music per se, but in its presentation.
Arden had an interesting way around that; since the opera is about an opera, she began it as if we were hearing that opera, not observing actual events. Every opera audience is accustomed to extravagant, and not always felicitous, libretti, opera is littered with them, and viewed in that light, Fedora Bartošová's florid style becomes tolerable. As a concept, it broke down somewhat in the last act, where we return to "present time", and are no longer "in" the opera, but it has lasted long enough to allow the final act to pass as well.
However, the other problem with Osud, that keeps it from the stage, is that it is too similar to Jenufa. There are too many musical parallels, and Jenufa is a masterpiece, without the drawbacks of Osud's convoluted plot and awkward libretto. Janáček's score is still frequently glorious, and the popular dances, the storm music, the psychological breakdown scene, they all work, and they were all very well done here, with chorus and orchestra in much better form than for the Ravel. Nevertheless, we've seen it all before, and better, in Jenufa, which relegates Osud to the rank of a curiosity.
John Graham-Hall undertook the taxing role of Živny, the composer, with commendable aplomb, though a little more 'ping' in the upper register would have been nice. Giselle Allen was a creamy-voiced Míla, his beleaguered love-interest, but the scene was well and truly stolen by a splendidly crazed turn from Rosalind Plowright, in very fine voice, as Míla's embittered and angry Mother. Also noteworthy was Peter Auty's impatient and sardonic Dr. Suda. A neglected masterpiece, Osud is not, but it has received a worthy and worthwhile outing in the hands of Opera North.
[Next : 18th November]
Janáček : Osud
Chorus and Orchestra of Opera North
Martin André
Opera North's "Little Greats" are a fascinating festival of six short operas, usually presented in double bills. To my knowledge, this is their second such exercise, the previous one being in 2004. It looked interesting at the time, but I wasn't in a position to explore it; this time, with these pieces by Ravel and Janáček on the bill, I decided not to miss it.
L'enfant et les sortilèges is a fascinating, magical piece, with a magnificent libretto full of whimsy and poetry by Colette, and Ravel's orchestral genius deployed in full force. It's also quite a delicate piece to stage, precisely because the context is so fantastical. A young boy throws a tantrum after having been scolded for laziness, and wrecks his surroundings. To his immense shock, everything around him, living creatures and inanimate objects alike, suddenly comes alive, and rebukes him, in one way or another, for his cruelty and callousness, and through this object lesson, he takes the first steps towards compassion and a greater maturity. It's the animated objects in the first part that can pose a problem; you want the audience to laugh, often, but you want it to laugh at the right time, and in the right way.
Annabelle Arden's choice here was to give the objects human avatars (more or less) rather than having the singers completely disguised as chairs, or a clock, or whatever is required. In this way, the Grandfather Clock steps out from inside the clock cabinet, or Fire emerges from a boiler. Most of this worked reasonably well, and Arden had remembered that Enfant was originally staged as part-ballet, and incorporated a good deal of well thought-out choreography (by Theo Clinkard). Most amusing in this way were John Graham-Hall and Ann Taylor as the Teapot and Chinese Cup, the former with his "spout" placed most suggestively, and the latter with two large pink cups equally evocatively displayed.
 |
| John Graham-Hall, Ann Taylor, Wallis Giunta (seated) Opera North, L'enfant et les sortilèges (© Tristram Kenton, 2017) |
Despite numerous charms to this production, and the performances, it was an uneven show on the whole. Wallis Giunta, as the Child, was a solid thread right through, as it should be, and the Child's aria "Toi, le cœur de la rose" was delivered with touching clarity and simplicity. Ann Taylor and John Graham-Hall were systematically excellent in all their parts, those mentioned above, as well as the Mother for Taylor, and a splendidly manic Arithmetic for Graham-Hall. Fflur Wyn was a respectable Fire (though why Arden burdened her with 80s "big hair" and shocking pink sweats escapes me), a good Princess, but a somewhat nondescript Nightingale. However, the Chorus was distinctly patchy, and the orchestra, though playing well generally, could not quite maintain the magic all the way through, and the whole seeming more episodic than it should be.
The story goes that Janáček was visiting a spa town in 1903 when he met the soprano Kamila Urválková, who proceeded to persuade the ever-susceptible Janáček into writing what was effectively intended to be a rebuttal to an opera written by a former lover of hers that had cast her into a poor light. Said lover was Ludvík Čelansky, rather better known as a conductor and the founder of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra than as a composer. If his opera Kamila is known, it's only in his home country. Janáček, on the other hand, had just finished Jenufa and was trying to get it performed (it would be, in 1904), and was on the lookout for new material. The core of the idea, about a composer writing an opera blaming his mistress for her rejection of him, is still there, but it's complicated by an unplanned pregnancy, an unhealthily possessive mother (of the girl), and a case of life imitating art imitating life that gets a bit out of hand.
Osud (usually translated as Destiny), although only about 90 minutes long, is actually in three acts - the big drawback of tonight's production was the time between the acts for scene-changing. The production really should have been designed to reduce this to a strict minimum, in order to maintain a certain amount of momentum. It was sung in English tonight, and assuming the translation conveyed as much the style of the original Czech as its meaning, it's clear enough that a large part of the problem is with its language, which is, to say the least, overblown. For a composer like Janáček, who made a point of setting texts in a natural style, the melodic line at least partly defined by the natural rise and fall of the spoken text, trying to set something so florid was going to cause problems, not in the music per se, but in its presentation.
Arden had an interesting way around that; since the opera is about an opera, she began it as if we were hearing that opera, not observing actual events. Every opera audience is accustomed to extravagant, and not always felicitous, libretti, opera is littered with them, and viewed in that light, Fedora Bartošová's florid style becomes tolerable. As a concept, it broke down somewhat in the last act, where we return to "present time", and are no longer "in" the opera, but it has lasted long enough to allow the final act to pass as well.
However, the other problem with Osud, that keeps it from the stage, is that it is too similar to Jenufa. There are too many musical parallels, and Jenufa is a masterpiece, without the drawbacks of Osud's convoluted plot and awkward libretto. Janáček's score is still frequently glorious, and the popular dances, the storm music, the psychological breakdown scene, they all work, and they were all very well done here, with chorus and orchestra in much better form than for the Ravel. Nevertheless, we've seen it all before, and better, in Jenufa, which relegates Osud to the rank of a curiosity.
 |
| Opera North, Osud (© Alastair Muir, 2017) |
John Graham-Hall undertook the taxing role of Živny, the composer, with commendable aplomb, though a little more 'ping' in the upper register would have been nice. Giselle Allen was a creamy-voiced Míla, his beleaguered love-interest, but the scene was well and truly stolen by a splendidly crazed turn from Rosalind Plowright, in very fine voice, as Míla's embittered and angry Mother. Also noteworthy was Peter Auty's impatient and sardonic Dr. Suda. A neglected masterpiece, Osud is not, but it has received a worthy and worthwhile outing in the hands of Opera North.
[Next : 18th November]