Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci at English National Opera

Went to English National Opera on Friday night to take in the first new production of the season - Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci. I have been in love with the score from both of these one actors for quite some time and have seen several productions - including Franco Zeferelli's massive cast of what looked like a thousand production at the Metropolitan Opera. Also when I was at English Touring Opera we did a really intimate production of Pagliacci with a band of five that really conveyed the lyrical quality of the score accompanied with some beautiful Neapolitan songs. This new production is directed by Richard Jones who I am a big fan of - especially his production of The Trojans at ENO which recast the fall of Troy into the American idiom of the fall of Kennedy's Camelot and his chilling production of Hansel and Gretel. I am very excited that he will be coming to Glyndebourne again (with the imaginative designer Ultz) next summer with a new production of Falstaff.

Cavelleria is a good old fashioned revenge story set in Sicily (you might remember it was used by Coppola in Godfather Part 3 as the backdrop for all the revenge that went on at the end of the story as scores was finally settled - who could forget the poisoned pastries!). The story takes place on Easter morning and Jones sets it in a Sicilian social club - a box set with a small kitchen for teas and coffees. This box gives the production a claustrophobic feel and you do not get to the see the usual large church on the hill that the Easter morning village go towards in the glorious chorus praising the resurrection. Cav (as it is know with its partner Pag) is a true verismo opera - a movement that became popular with composers like Cav's Mascagni and in Puccini operas like Tosca - which attempts to give a slice of life with very little background to the story (no long Verdian or Wagnerian narratives of what has happened before as we hear in the later parts of the Ring and in Trovatore). The lead roles were song beautifully by Jane Dutton (Santuzza), Peter Auty (Turiddu) and Roland Wood was an excellent Onegin and Don Giovanni in past English Touring Opera productions blew me away as Alfio. ETO has two great new productions coming up this autumn - La Tragedie de Carmen and Rusalka and its worth a visit to the site to see some really good previews of both productions that will tour the UK starting in October.

Note: interesting parallels between Santuzza and another opera heroine set during Easter time Wagner's Kundry (sacrifice, redemption - note to self to research).

The second half of the evening was the reverse side of the coin -- Jones' Pagliacci recast this story which is said to have been based on a true story of an actor killing his cheating wife and lover on the stage during a performance - to the 1950's with a travelling troop of actors putting on a cheesy bedroom romp called "Ding Dong" - this is a production to be seen and I will not give too many of the staging away - it packs quite a punch with beautiful singing by Mary Plazas as Nelly and Geriant Dodd as the Kenny the head of the troop who sings the famous aria Vesti La Giubba (you know, Riddi Pagliacci!) in a dank regional theatre dressing room as he struggles to go on the stage after finding out his wife is having an affair. The star of both these productions in the ENO orchestra and chorus under the baton of Edward Gardener - who gets an incredibly powerful and poignant sound from them. A must see!!!! And I am looking forward to the new production of Handel's Partenope next week.
On the Tolkien front - I was very please to see in a London bookstore yesterday the new edition of Tales from the Perilous Realm with illustrations by Alan Lee - five stories (Roverandom, Farmer Giles, Tom Bombadil, Smith of Wooten Major and Leaf by Niggle) that I look forward to revisiting. Also, I have Tolkien Studies Vol 5 on the way.......so many books so little time.

Its been one month for me at Glyndebourne Opera - a truly amazing and innovative mecca in the rolling hills of the Sussex downs where we are in the process of launching the 2008 Glyndebourne On Screen programme - which will bring three Glyndebourne operas to cinemas in the UK, US and Japan in 5.1 high definition and surround sound - Hansel and Gretel, Giulio Cesare (with the excellent Danielle De Niese as Cleopatra) and Cenerentola coming to a cinema near you!!!
And for Richard Strauss lovers - I just sat through one earth shaking listening session of the glorious Renee Fleming's new recording of Strauss' Four Last Songs and other works - this is one for the IPOD and good to have more Strauss from Renee - she was born to sing his works!!!

Basta for now!!

The Hardest Working Opera Company in the UK

Its been a busy week for me and one that has been enriching and full of culture - for it was time for The Hackney Empire to host one of the most hardest working and best opera companies in the UK - English Touring Opera. ETO's spring 2008 tour is an exciting triple bill of three red hot opera's Donizetti's Anna Bolena - the first in a trilogy of operas he wrote about the Three Tudor Queens. Then a beautiful lyric American opera by Carlisle Floyd called Susannah based on the story of Susannah and the Elders from the Apocrypha set in the valleys of Appalachia in Tennesse and finally Mozart's drama giocoso of the man who sleeps with close to (or maybe more than) 10,000 woman and goes to hell - Don Giovanni.

I am a lover of bel-canto opera and one its greatest creations is the cabaletta (the fast paced ending to alot of the scenas you hear from the a term that means "as the horse runs" - it was Maria Callas (who was responsible for the revival of Donizetti bel-canto masterpieces like Anna Bolena) who said that an aria without a cabaletta is like sex without an orgasm! The story of Anna Bolena takes place in the waning years of Ann Boleyn's reign and after having just one child (a girl, the future Elizabeth I) and a sting of miscarriages Henry has grown tired with her and already has his sights on the next on - Jane Seymour (Giovanna in the opera). This opera beautifully directed by one of opera's most visionary directors, James Conway (General Director of English Touring Opera) conveys a sympathy for both Ann and Giovanna which culminates in a heart rending duet in the second act where Giovanna confesses to Ann that the King has seduced her. Brought up on trumped up charges - Ann is doomed to go to the block and as she awaits the final blow (from a French sword not an ax) we hear the canons of the wedding of Henry and Giovanna - Ann goes mad and (in the first of many mad scenes Donizetti wrote) she imagines its the day of her wedding to Henry and the block in front of her the altar. Simply stunning and James Conway has included as a stroke of genus the character of the young Mary Tudor (daughter of Kathrine of Aragon) who seems to always be in the room when Ann is in a suspicious situation and before Henry appears (shades of revenge by Kathrine on Ann?). There is also a wonderful tenor named Luciano Botelho as Percy who is definitely going to give Juan Diego Florez a run for his money!!!

Carlisle Floyd's Susannah is a morality tale that grew out of the McCarthy communism witch hunt error of the 1950's in America. I fell in love with this piece when I saw it at the Metropolitan Opera in New York with Renee Fleming and Samuel Ramey (indeed it was due to Renee Fleming that the MET decided to do this opera). It is replete with lyrical music (with lots of echos of Copland) and also heavy orchestration. In the English Touring Opera production - again directed masterfully by James Conway - soprano Donna Bateman plays Susannah Polk a young innocent girl in a very close knit Tennessee Community in Appalchia who is free spirited and longs, perhaps like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, longs to escape - in he first show piece aria - A'int it a Pretty Night - she dreams of going where the "folk speak nice" - but Susannah gets into trouble when she bathes in the river where next day the baptisms are going to occur - for to the town as come the preacher Olin Blitch (played with power by one of the best bass baritone's we have in the UK - Andrew Slater) who is going to save the sinful of the community. And not only does Susannah bath naked in the pond but several of the town elders she her and of course lust after her. She is banned from the community and becomes a victim to Olin Blitch who volunteers to save her soul and in the end falls prey to his own temptation (it reminded me of that American evangelist Jim Baker with his long suffering wife Tammy Faye and is very public affair with Jessica Hahn).

The third production was Mozart's Don Giovanni in a really interesting production by first timer to opera Jonathan Munby (who has directed for the RSC). The singing is fantastic and all three of the Don's women (Anna, Elvira, and Zerlina) are in top form and the production is set in 1930's Fascist Spain with the Don has a fascist soldier (I'm never quite sure who these characters are, what their backgrounds are, etc). Special mention for the tenor Eyolfur Eyolfsson as Don Ottavio the poor simp who follows Donna Anna around waiting for her to come around and gets to sing some of the most beautiful tenor aria's Mozart wrote.

English Touring Opera is one of the most hardest working opera companies in the UK - of very little resource they put these shows together and travel throughout the UK - this tour goes to Sheffield, Cheltenham, Exeter, Truro, Poole, Bexhill, Crawley, Wolverhampton, Buxton, Cambridge, Snape, Warwick, Durham, Durham and Perth - with shows are better than you'd see at some of the top opera house in the world. Bravo English Touring Opera long may you tour.

So now its back to Old Norse and my pile of Tolkien books blogging soon on Glyer's Company they Keep about the Inklings which I really enjoyed!!!

English Touring Opera's - A House in the Moon In Wolverhampton

Spent the last day up in Wolverhampton where English Touring Opera mounted a pioneering community opera project called A House on the Moon. Two hundred local community group members made up of students and adults performed an incredibly moving piece (called a transcontinental lunar fantasy) about the odyssey of refugees from one space to another with only the moon to guide them.

It was the creation of English Touring Opera's Artistic Associate Tim Yealland.

The curtain opened and two hundred children and adults were on the stage of the Wolverhampton Grand Theatre (when do u see 200 people all together on an opera stage!),

The production really showed the incredible talent and resources we have in the U.K. and the importance of creating opportunities for arts participation through active community engagement. It was a proud evening for all involved with the production and the start of what should be a very exciting series of relationships with community groups in the area.

Traveling through midlands you get a real sense of the beautiful country that inspired Tolkien's land of the Shire.