Scottish Opera, 01/12/2019
Mascagni : Iris
The Chorus of Iris
The Orchestra of Scottish Opera
Stuart Stratford
Mascagni is, of course, known as a one-hit wonder, that hit being Cavalleria Rusticana, whose popularity is as strong today as the night of its premiere back in 1890. As a consequence, though, we tend to forget the rest of his quite long career, and pretty well all of the other fourteen operas he penned. Speaking as someone who is actually acquainted with nine of those other operas, the reasons are not too hard to fathom why. The music is rarely the problem, but Mascagni clearly did not have a really strong eye for the dramatically functional. The libretti are a weak spot, over and over again.
Of all these operas, Iris is, to my mind, by far and away the best. In some respects, it's maybe even better than Cavalleria Rusticana, but it is badly let down by its text. It was staged in 2016 by Opera Holland Park, with Stuart Stratford, music director of both OHP and Scottish Opera, at the helm, and it was almost amusing to note the professional critics virtually squirming in their seats as they attempted to swallow what is, admittedly, a tawdry little tale. Fully staged, you can't really get away from it. Iris is a young girl (and we're talking Butterfly young, here, or more) whose beauty catches the eye of a rich, young, bored and debauched aristocrat, Osaka, who arranges for her to be kidnapped and brought to a brothel in the red-light district of Tokyo, where he attempts to seduce her. About the only good thing that can be said for Osaka is that he is not interested in an unwilling partner. Iris, naïve to a fairly unbelievable degree, is not compliant, so Osaka abandons her to the pimp who arranged the abduction, Kyoto, who determines to get something out of the whole business and puts her on display in the window of his brothel. She is found there by her blind father, who had come in search of her, and who publicly disowns and curses her. Distraught, she throws herself from a high balcony into an open sewer, where she takes three days to die, and undergoes an apotheosis as the sun greets her dying soul and transmutes it into flowers which rise to heaven.
And that is precisely where you have to understand that this is not actually meant to be a realistic story about child abuse, sexual slavery, the #MeToo era and all of the obvious things that the basic outline reveals. Yes, Mascagni and his librettist Illica (who also worked on Madama Butterfly, which post-dates Iris by six years) are condemning all of the above, but they are doing so in a very symbolical form, and the Japanese setting is a distancing agent, something so exotic (though very fashionable at the time) as to make it possible to consider the concepts in the abstract. The net result, however, is a work that has very little theatrical value, it is almost static, and what should be a searing drama simply lacks tragedy. On the other hand, there is page after page of utterly glorious music, with striking choral passages, highly original orchestration, and a flood of wonderful lyricism. The obvious conclusion is that Iris is probably best heard in a concert setting, where you can actually take it on board as part-oratorio.
Scottish Opera's concert operas have, to date, normally been semi-staged - music sung from memory, some form of costume, a scenic disposition of the principal roles, maybe a prop or two - and I think this one was meant to be as well, but as Stratford explained before the start, the entire cast has suffered colds or flu over the last couple of weeks, making any kind of constructive rehearsal almost impossible. Indeed, Helena Dix, who was to sing the title role, was finally unable to appear, and was replaced by another Australian soprano, Kiandra Howarth. I was sorry to miss Dix, of whom I've heard much good over the last couple of years, but I don't think we lost by the exchange. Howarth has a warm, vibrant timbre, clear and soaring, and my only query would be her power. Very occasionally, she would be swamped by the orchestra, but that was true of all the soloists and, frankly, even of the chorus, (which could maybe have done with another 20 or so singers) and tends to be an occupational hazard of concert performances of opera, where you are inevitably messing with the acoustic. Iris is the only character of the set who actually undergoes any kind of development, limited as it is, and Howarth made the most of it, making Iris as sympathetic as possible for a character whose naïveté can all too easily look like mental incapacity.
Things were a little less satisfactory on the tenor side; Ric Furman was a reasonably valiant Osaka, but the voice is not particularly beautiful, being a little reedy, and the Serenade, with its tricky chromatics, was slightly ragged. He came across better in the last part of Act 2, when Osaka, having rejected Iris, changes his mind on seeing her displayed on the street, and tries to lay claim to her again. Roland Wood gave one of the best performances I have heard from him as a robustly roguish, yet convincingly seedy Kyoto, despite having to fight off some roughness in the throat. James Cresswell was first-rate, stolid and sonorous, as Il Cieco, the blind father, unthinkingly selfishly possessive of his young daughter, while Aled Hall did a characteristically colourful turn as the Act 3 Rag-picker.
Apart from (in my opinion) being a little short on numbers, the chorus was excellent, clear and expressive, whether in the framing Hymn to the Sun, or the crowd numbers inside the story, and the orchestra was making the most of this intriguingly constructed score, with its plethora of 'special effects', notably the set of Japanese gongs, in frequent, and very striking use. Stratford, with the OHP run under his belt, was clearly extremely confident of the score, and let it take wing, for us to enjoy its sheer musicality and its inventiveness, regardless of the improbabilities of the libretto. Without a director trying to shoehorn the show into certain channels - let alone attempting to be wholly politically correct and avoiding cultural appropriation to boot - it's possible to appreciate the beauty of this music, and whatever its dramatic shortcomings, it is certainly worth getting to know.
[Next : 7th December]
The Chorus of Iris
The Orchestra of Scottish Opera
Stuart Stratford
Mascagni is, of course, known as a one-hit wonder, that hit being Cavalleria Rusticana, whose popularity is as strong today as the night of its premiere back in 1890. As a consequence, though, we tend to forget the rest of his quite long career, and pretty well all of the other fourteen operas he penned. Speaking as someone who is actually acquainted with nine of those other operas, the reasons are not too hard to fathom why. The music is rarely the problem, but Mascagni clearly did not have a really strong eye for the dramatically functional. The libretti are a weak spot, over and over again.
Of all these operas, Iris is, to my mind, by far and away the best. In some respects, it's maybe even better than Cavalleria Rusticana, but it is badly let down by its text. It was staged in 2016 by Opera Holland Park, with Stuart Stratford, music director of both OHP and Scottish Opera, at the helm, and it was almost amusing to note the professional critics virtually squirming in their seats as they attempted to swallow what is, admittedly, a tawdry little tale. Fully staged, you can't really get away from it. Iris is a young girl (and we're talking Butterfly young, here, or more) whose beauty catches the eye of a rich, young, bored and debauched aristocrat, Osaka, who arranges for her to be kidnapped and brought to a brothel in the red-light district of Tokyo, where he attempts to seduce her. About the only good thing that can be said for Osaka is that he is not interested in an unwilling partner. Iris, naïve to a fairly unbelievable degree, is not compliant, so Osaka abandons her to the pimp who arranged the abduction, Kyoto, who determines to get something out of the whole business and puts her on display in the window of his brothel. She is found there by her blind father, who had come in search of her, and who publicly disowns and curses her. Distraught, she throws herself from a high balcony into an open sewer, where she takes three days to die, and undergoes an apotheosis as the sun greets her dying soul and transmutes it into flowers which rise to heaven.
And that is precisely where you have to understand that this is not actually meant to be a realistic story about child abuse, sexual slavery, the #MeToo era and all of the obvious things that the basic outline reveals. Yes, Mascagni and his librettist Illica (who also worked on Madama Butterfly, which post-dates Iris by six years) are condemning all of the above, but they are doing so in a very symbolical form, and the Japanese setting is a distancing agent, something so exotic (though very fashionable at the time) as to make it possible to consider the concepts in the abstract. The net result, however, is a work that has very little theatrical value, it is almost static, and what should be a searing drama simply lacks tragedy. On the other hand, there is page after page of utterly glorious music, with striking choral passages, highly original orchestration, and a flood of wonderful lyricism. The obvious conclusion is that Iris is probably best heard in a concert setting, where you can actually take it on board as part-oratorio.
Scottish Opera's concert operas have, to date, normally been semi-staged - music sung from memory, some form of costume, a scenic disposition of the principal roles, maybe a prop or two - and I think this one was meant to be as well, but as Stratford explained before the start, the entire cast has suffered colds or flu over the last couple of weeks, making any kind of constructive rehearsal almost impossible. Indeed, Helena Dix, who was to sing the title role, was finally unable to appear, and was replaced by another Australian soprano, Kiandra Howarth. I was sorry to miss Dix, of whom I've heard much good over the last couple of years, but I don't think we lost by the exchange. Howarth has a warm, vibrant timbre, clear and soaring, and my only query would be her power. Very occasionally, she would be swamped by the orchestra, but that was true of all the soloists and, frankly, even of the chorus, (which could maybe have done with another 20 or so singers) and tends to be an occupational hazard of concert performances of opera, where you are inevitably messing with the acoustic. Iris is the only character of the set who actually undergoes any kind of development, limited as it is, and Howarth made the most of it, making Iris as sympathetic as possible for a character whose naïveté can all too easily look like mental incapacity.
Things were a little less satisfactory on the tenor side; Ric Furman was a reasonably valiant Osaka, but the voice is not particularly beautiful, being a little reedy, and the Serenade, with its tricky chromatics, was slightly ragged. He came across better in the last part of Act 2, when Osaka, having rejected Iris, changes his mind on seeing her displayed on the street, and tries to lay claim to her again. Roland Wood gave one of the best performances I have heard from him as a robustly roguish, yet convincingly seedy Kyoto, despite having to fight off some roughness in the throat. James Cresswell was first-rate, stolid and sonorous, as Il Cieco, the blind father, unthinkingly selfishly possessive of his young daughter, while Aled Hall did a characteristically colourful turn as the Act 3 Rag-picker.
Apart from (in my opinion) being a little short on numbers, the chorus was excellent, clear and expressive, whether in the framing Hymn to the Sun, or the crowd numbers inside the story, and the orchestra was making the most of this intriguingly constructed score, with its plethora of 'special effects', notably the set of Japanese gongs, in frequent, and very striking use. Stratford, with the OHP run under his belt, was clearly extremely confident of the score, and let it take wing, for us to enjoy its sheer musicality and its inventiveness, regardless of the improbabilities of the libretto. Without a director trying to shoehorn the show into certain channels - let alone attempting to be wholly politically correct and avoiding cultural appropriation to boot - it's possible to appreciate the beauty of this music, and whatever its dramatic shortcomings, it is certainly worth getting to know.
[Next : 7th December]