RCS, 26/01/2019
Puccini : Gianni Schicchi
Poulenc : Les mamelles de Tirésias
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Opera School
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Orchestra
Matthew Kofi Waldren
The Conservatoire is turning out a nice line in original double bills of opera these days. There was the Holst/Ullmann exactly a year ago, next month they're doing Dido and Aeneas with Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti (which, alas, I will not be there to see), and tonight it was a riotously comedic double of Puccini and Poulenc, an unlikely combination on the face of it, but which worked delightfully.
Director James Bonas staged Gianni Schicchi as a play-within-a-play. When you enter the auditorium (thick with smoke, which didn't seem quite appropriate), all there is on stage is what looks at first like an ambulant bric-a-brac stall. Then a group of scruffy-looking people in stained, old-fashioned long johns amble in, and starts unpacking the 'stall', and after a moment you realise you're looking at a raggedy troupe of strolling players, who go on to perform Gianni Schicchi for us. There are a few incongruities with this approach, notably that you get no notion of the differences in social class between the Donati family and Schicchi, which is such a significant part of the relationship between these characters. However, in the main, it worked, it was deftly produced, and the young cast got into it wholeheartedly. Vocally, it was a little uneven, with a sweet-toned but slightly pallid Lauretta from Stephanie Stanway, and an occasionally under-powered Zita from Fiona Joice, as against the vibrant Rinuccio of Seumas Begg (who also had the best Italian of the cast), and Arthur Bruce's strong, witty Schicchi, who had no need to request extenuating circumstances for his performance.
After the interval, however, we were in a different class of performance altogether, and it started with the orchestra. They had been good in the Puccini, lively and lyrical, under Matthew Kofi Waldren's direction, but right from the start of the Poulenc, there was more, there was the pure sound of the composer, completely unmistakable, vivid in a way the Puccini never quite managed. Poulenc's score is utterly mercurial, sardonic, sentimental, sly, mocking, melancholy, tender and tart, and the moods change with dizzying rapidity. Waldren and the orchestra were alive to every shade of the score, and that lifted everything else up accordingly.
It's the first time I've seen Les mamelles de Tirésias, and I think it's a waste of time trying to pin definitive meanings onto it. That only burdens down a piece that's meant to be provocatively ridiculous. Bonas's staging delivered it to the audience as it comes, a solemn and impassioned prologue, excellently delivered by Mark Nathan, making way for a bright, peppy, goofy production that owed a little something to Monty Python visually. Catrin Woodruff was outstanding as Thérèse, her gleaming soprano ideally suited to the part. Her French could perhaps have been projected a little more clearly, but her pronunciation was good, and there's no denying it's a difficult text. Alex Bevan was a good, clear, no-nonsense Husband, and the chorus, colourful in Tooty Frooties costumes, was first-class, distinct and precise. As the collected cast admonished the audience to "Make babies", which is the moral of the piece, the auditorium was gently showered with bubbles, a suitably frothy conclusion to a joyously entertaining evening.
[Next : 1st February]
Poulenc : Les mamelles de Tirésias
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Opera School
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Orchestra
Matthew Kofi Waldren
The Conservatoire is turning out a nice line in original double bills of opera these days. There was the Holst/Ullmann exactly a year ago, next month they're doing Dido and Aeneas with Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti (which, alas, I will not be there to see), and tonight it was a riotously comedic double of Puccini and Poulenc, an unlikely combination on the face of it, but which worked delightfully.
Director James Bonas staged Gianni Schicchi as a play-within-a-play. When you enter the auditorium (thick with smoke, which didn't seem quite appropriate), all there is on stage is what looks at first like an ambulant bric-a-brac stall. Then a group of scruffy-looking people in stained, old-fashioned long johns amble in, and starts unpacking the 'stall', and after a moment you realise you're looking at a raggedy troupe of strolling players, who go on to perform Gianni Schicchi for us. There are a few incongruities with this approach, notably that you get no notion of the differences in social class between the Donati family and Schicchi, which is such a significant part of the relationship between these characters. However, in the main, it worked, it was deftly produced, and the young cast got into it wholeheartedly. Vocally, it was a little uneven, with a sweet-toned but slightly pallid Lauretta from Stephanie Stanway, and an occasionally under-powered Zita from Fiona Joice, as against the vibrant Rinuccio of Seumas Begg (who also had the best Italian of the cast), and Arthur Bruce's strong, witty Schicchi, who had no need to request extenuating circumstances for his performance.
After the interval, however, we were in a different class of performance altogether, and it started with the orchestra. They had been good in the Puccini, lively and lyrical, under Matthew Kofi Waldren's direction, but right from the start of the Poulenc, there was more, there was the pure sound of the composer, completely unmistakable, vivid in a way the Puccini never quite managed. Poulenc's score is utterly mercurial, sardonic, sentimental, sly, mocking, melancholy, tender and tart, and the moods change with dizzying rapidity. Waldren and the orchestra were alive to every shade of the score, and that lifted everything else up accordingly.
It's the first time I've seen Les mamelles de Tirésias, and I think it's a waste of time trying to pin definitive meanings onto it. That only burdens down a piece that's meant to be provocatively ridiculous. Bonas's staging delivered it to the audience as it comes, a solemn and impassioned prologue, excellently delivered by Mark Nathan, making way for a bright, peppy, goofy production that owed a little something to Monty Python visually. Catrin Woodruff was outstanding as Thérèse, her gleaming soprano ideally suited to the part. Her French could perhaps have been projected a little more clearly, but her pronunciation was good, and there's no denying it's a difficult text. Alex Bevan was a good, clear, no-nonsense Husband, and the chorus, colourful in Tooty Frooties costumes, was first-class, distinct and precise. As the collected cast admonished the audience to "Make babies", which is the moral of the piece, the auditorium was gently showered with bubbles, a suitably frothy conclusion to a joyously entertaining evening.
[Next : 1st February]