On an musical underlay of brash modernity, Brett Dean's stirring Hamlet receives its Australian premiere at Adelaide Festival

Hamlet, Australian composer Brett Dean’s stirring new work commissioned by Glyndebourne Festival Opera - currently in its Australian premiere season at Adelaide Festival - liberally explores the psychological aspect of Shakespeare’s young Danish prince. Shakespeare’s Hamlet contains the immortal line penned a little over 400 years ago, “To be, or not to be”, so widely quoted and debated that, in those few shortest of words, we can expect to go round and round in circles for a long time to come deliberating over its meaning.

Act One, Scene One of Brett Dean's Hamlet, Adelaide Festival

Further broadening interpretations, the written word is able to wear multiple meanings when spoken. Perhaps they refer to the tussle between thought and action? Swiftly and concisely stated yes, but that’s the way it strikes me, these unadorned words that reflect the everyday ordinary conundrums humankind faces. Thus it is so for Shakespeare’s eponymous Hamlet, extraordinarily so, as he learns the ‘truth’ behind his father’s death from dead Old Hamlet himself, dramatically altering his psychological course and subsequent actions.

Dean’s Hamlet certainly has the potential to cement itself into the modern repertoire. It’s an unconventional piece, both musically and narratively, beginning with the famous soliloquy and it’s famous line chopped in half as “Or not to be” in a soundscape equally striking as it is unsettling. It’s a music-drama of sorts whose success will largely depend on a highly committed cast as skilled at acting as they are at operatic singing. It also requires the service of intellectual direction at the helm and a production concept that matches the score's brash melody-deficient modernity. Altogether, it points to a work that, like its germination, rests on taut collaboration.

That’s exactly what was witnessed at its Australian premiere on Friday night, an achievement in which powerfully nuanced performances are part and parcel of a production its entire creative team have fused marvellously to the text.

Allan Clayton as Hamlet

Shakespeare’s text it is, but condensed and rearranged from its three extant versions by Canadian librettist Matthew Jocelyn. It matters not that the reduced number of characters are often assigned lines belonging to another. What matters is that Jocelyn’s painstaking effort has resulted in a mostly lean, smooth and fluid two-act format that could easily be thought of as taking its cue from Hamlet’s own messed up, fractured circumstances.

Australian director Neil Armfield has built on it an insightful and compelling theatrical layer, one in which the surface formality and decorum of Elsinore breaks apart, light and dark are in flux and touches of humour counterbalance the unfolding tragedy. Opening with its delicately fenestrated neo-classical hall filled with familiar mid-20th century glamour and progressing through a series of fragmented revolves, deconstructions and spatial transformations, Australian theatre makers Ralph Myers’ sets and Alice Babidge’s costumes lend captivating support and a sense of immediacy. Adding revival lighting designer David Manion’s richly evocative moods that meet dramatic context head-on, it’s hard to imagine the whole mise en scène being more suitably realised.

Within these spaces, British tenor Allan Clayton leads a first-rate cast as young Hamlet (a good few of them, including Clayton, did the honours in Glyndebourne), brilliantly acting and singing his way through the Herculean demands of the title role. Without suggesting Hamlet is either mad of feigning to be, Clayton portrays a hyperactive misfit from the start, shabby in appearance and seemingly unintentionally irreverent of social norms. Clayton effectively balances vulnerability, reason and forthrightness on Hamlet’s vengeful path with an alluring, expressive and dynamic vocal outfit on a man you can’t but feel sympathy for.

Lorina Gore as Ophelia and Allan Clayton as Hamlet

Privileged son and daughter of power and - a not so far flung thought being entertained - incest, Clayton’s Hamlet also makes a perfectly plausible match for potent soprano Lorina Gore’s sensitively portrayed Ophelia. Gore’s nail-biting anxious and fidgety Ophelia helps to reinforce the grief Orphelia experiences after Hamlet declares, “I did love you once” before snowballing into the later tragic mad scene in which Gore writhes and suffers in mesmerising part sing-speak and heart wrenching operatic tradition - a performance highlight.

American Rod Gilfry’s suave, elastic and smouldering baritone befits a handsome but distrustful Claudius. Soprano Cheryl Barker is excellent as his new wife Gertrude, see-sawing between mother and wife, glorious in voice at the top with devastating darkness below. Robust British tenor Kim Begley suits up in a distinguished performance as the coercive and lordly Polonius and cool authority accompanies the mature and muscled tenor of Samuel Sakker’s imposing and sword-skilled Laertes, his son.

More or less joined at the hip and eventually by their shoelaces, the perfectly timed irradiant countertenors Rupert Enticknap and Christopher Lowrey added comic lightness as pawns in the King’s circle, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Jud Arthur digs deep into cavernous bass territory in a thrilling scene full of tension and shadows as a shirtless and brawny Ghost of Old Hamlet. Arthur follows up as Player 1, then literally pops up again as the matter-of-fact Gravedigger. And stalwart Australian baritone Douglas McNicol captures his loyalty for and gentle acceptance of his prince most sincerely as an older Horatio. Andrew Moran (Marcellus/Player 4), Beau Sandford (Player 2) and Norbert Hohl (Player 3) round out and compliment the quality cast with accordionist James Crabb squeezing out a good sound on stage during the play-within-a-play.

Rod Gilfry, Cheryl Barker, Christopher Lowrey and Rupert Enticknap

Under the exceptional command of conductor Nicholas Carter, the sonic diversity and depth of Dean’s score (as well as electronic sounds) were exposed with clarity to reveal its often frenzied, eerie and ominous elements, surely not a doddle for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra but the playing was secure. Also in force of numbers and positioned in multiple locations of the theatre, the State Opera Chorus and members of The Song Company’s refined singing added ethereal touches and atmospheric weight.

What Dean and his team have done with Hamlet is create a work that not only has a strong underlying pulse, but one that could easily be appreciated by those unfamiliar with opera. Act One is long but not uncomfortably so despite the likelihood of momentary lapses of concentration. Together with the shorter second act, the work is almost three hours long. Strangely, when it was all over, I imagined it being performed without interval. And then I felt confident I’d enjoy being enraptured by each segueing scene as Hamlet’s verse sang out its turbulent story.


Hamlet
A Glyndebourne Festival Opera Production
Adelaide Festival
Festival Theatre
Until 6th March, 2018


Production Photos: Tony Lewis 

An emphatically sung Turandot wrapped in a wild cocktail of colour makes a splash at San Diego Opera

Drunk on a wild cocktail of colour and extravagant visual detail, San Diego Opera’s new production of Puccini’s final opera Turandot, directed by Keturah Stickann, appropriately eschews aggrandisement and sets about telling its story for what it is - a dark fantastical tale with a part measure of frivolity.

Act One scene from San Diego Opera's Turandot

For this purpose, the creative designers contribute enormously in realising its exotic and mystical ancient Chinese world. Allen Charles Klein’s set design incorporates a large contorted dragon on which a pearl descends and Princess Turandot’s magnified eye magically spies from. A series of slanting steps appear lotus leaf-like, not an easy incline to navigate across, perhaps suggesting keeping the masses restricted in their movements. Willa Kim’s costumes are a riot of freely interpreted Chinese influences with a Cirque du Soleil vibrancy. And Lucas Krech’s punchy lighting begins in cool hues and eventually turns on a blazing spectrum of colour as the princess’s ice-heartedness melts away and the dragon within is tamed. 

Around 100 performers make up the mix on stage and Stickann musters and directs them with ardour, outdone only by a troupe of acrobatics who, in turn, are outshined by the three muck about imperial ministers Ping, Pang and Pong. And the four major leads - Lise Lindstrom, Carl Tanner, Angel Joy Blue and Brian Kontes - did a wonderful job at meeting the challenges Puccini wrote for their roles. 

Lise Lindstrom as Turandot

The whole forms a potent brew in which Turandot proclaims she is of the heavens and the three ‘P’s sing out to Calàf - the foreign prince who solves three cryptic riddles to win her in marriage - that she doesn’t really exist. Turandot may very well represent simply a symbol of entrapment and dominance, making the lofty monument she is often depicted as quite sensible after all. More softly approached, Stickann’s Turandot floats her imperious self amongst her people early on during the riddle ceremony that takes place well into Act 2 when she makes her first earthly and vocal appearance. It works well in setting up the frisson between the gallant but idiotically besotted Calàf, realised exceptionally by an aggressively passionate and the nobly-voiced tenor of Carl Tanner, and a formidable Turandot in the hands of star soprano Lise Lindstrom. 

Calàf is ascribed the lion’s share of vocal output, including the popularly enjoyed “Nessun dorma”, a reflection on his vow to reveal the secret of his name to Turandot as he awaits dawn, believing she will melt into his passion. As full of rich chiaroscuro and stirringly sung as it was by Tanner, it was a mere fraction of his overall exceptional performance. The impetuous prince in love, an empathetic heart for his father Timur, the deposed King of Tartary, and genuine grief at the loss of the slave girl Liù, Tanner calibrated both voice and acting astutely. And never could he not unleash the volume to sail over the full force of everything surrounding him on stage and in the pit.

Carl Tanner as Calàf 

Apart from slicing the air in terrifying and subtlety increasing force for each of the three riddles, Lindstrom, too, could garner inner might and produce the dizzying highly placed notes in deeply cut-sapphire succession, something she has perfected dozens and dozens of times on many of the world’s esteemed stages. Added to that was an armoury of gestures showing compete immersion in Turandot’s world, including a long and tense frozen stare she casts on Calàf as she shows the first hint of attraction.

Luscious soprano Angel Joy Blue, in her house debut, sang out a rapturous pair of arias as the loyal and in-love Liù in a beautifully nuanced performance. Brian Kontes used his appealingly shaped gravelly bass to great effect as old Timur. Tenors Marco Nisticò and Joseph Gaines infused a little camp lightheartedness to their ministry as Ping and Pang alongside baritone Joel Sorensen as a slightly less flamboyant Pong although, as the disenchanted trio, their Italian diction headed into loutishness and timing often waned.

Marco Nisticò as Ping, Joseph Gaines as Pang and Joel Sorensen as Pong

The massive San Diego Opera Chorus sang emphatically, as most of the evening was, although there were occasions when the sound was overwrought. On the other hand, and they don’t sing for long but, if they kept impressing any longer, the children’s chorus would have easily melted Turandot’s icy heart themselves with their deliciously silken tone. 

Conductor Valerio Galli rather cracked the whip on tempo so bar time, no pun intended, came around quickly. Twice! Nevertheless, the expertly played soundscape portrayed the score’s thrilling textures and eruptions of gusto excellently. In the end, the sum of all the parts came together admirably as Calàf saved himself from beheading, Turandot melted into his arms with a kiss and the contrived exoticism added its own spectacularity. Give it a great sing and that’s about as much as you’d expect from Turandot. Stickann manages to add a smidgen more for your viewing pleasure.

Turandot

Civic Theatre

San Diego Opera

Until March 4th 2018

Production Photos:  J. Katarzyna Woronowicz Johnson

Polish National Opera's quasi-balletic Eugene Onegin puts director Mariusz Treliński centre stage in Dubai

Following the shimmering, eye-catching theatricality of their 2005 production of Aida at Dubai Opera last week, Polish National Opera’s Eugene Onegin offered a poignant, thought-provoking and worthy contrast. Rich in symbolic detail, the production exudes a fresh and inventive style that has been part of the company’s collection for 16 years since it first premiered in 2002.

Olga Busuioc as Tatyana and Michał Partyka as Eugnen Onegin 

Directed to extract as much potency as possible from the text, esteemed Polish film, theatre and opera director, Mariusz Treliński, incorporates much into the storytelling of Tchaikovsky’s penetrating three-act episodic examination of unrequited love based on Pushkin's verse novel of the same name. In what appears to be a concerted interpretation of the expressive nature of Tchaikovsky’s libretto (for which original verses from Pushkin's work were used), Treliński’s Eugene Onegin is a poetically driven and simmering drama all the way through.

Sung with impressive and evocative use of the text, the beautifully shaped lustrous soprano of Olga Busuioc’s dreamy Tatyana and the deeply grained baritone of Michał Partyka’s arrogant, predator-like Onegin made a powerful pair in their disquieting depiction of love and rejection.

“Once more Onegin has crossed my path like a merciless ghost!” Tatyana expresses in the final act, shocked when Onegin reappears years after her being rejected by him. Created as a pivotal metaphor, the haunting, white-coated, silent figure of an old Onegin remained a constant and powerful presence on stage. Likewise nameless (he isn’t credited in the program), this silent actor interacted, coerced, toyed and attacked Tatyana in a captivating performance.

Onegin, depicted as the sophisticated and intellectual gent, fiercely independent, cold-hearted and the generator of a trail of destruction - is he really so despicable? In a clever, perhaps ambiguous way, Treliński seems to punish him as harshly as society has marked him. Onegin sees life differently, he can see himself for who he is and, as for me, the more brutal the ghostly Onegin became, the more the creepy, black-coated real Onegin deserved our sympathy.

Michał Partyka as Eugene Onegin

Tatyana, seemingly receives less as she eventually becomes the stiff society wife of Prince Gremin and haughtily dismisses Onegin’s newly ignited passions. This third act’s parade of haute-couture fashions, elevated mechanical acting and Tatyana’s cemented aloofness, while all serving Treliński’s cause, nevertheless, felt less stabilising to the point of almost overwhelming music, voice and text. Overall, however, this regular use of angular, quasi-balletic style of acting, assisted by Emil Wesolowski’s choreography, added to the poetry of the drama.

Alongside the leading pair, rich and firmly supported mezzo-soprano Monika Ledzion as Tatyana’s outgoing sister Olga, and shiny tenor Pavlo Tostoy, as her unworldly and jealous boyfriend Lensky, sang with inspiring zealousness in sharing a touching contrast to Tatyana and Onegin. As Tatyana’s old attentive nanny Filippyevna, Anna Lubańska was a rich-voiced and robust presence while Joanna Motulewicz suitably and staunchly portrayed the pragmatic Larina, Tatyana’s mother and owner of the rural estate.

Sergii Magera’s short but excellent turn as a noble Prince Gremin came with a strong and glowing ember-toned bass and Aleksander Kruczek brought a little camp and colourful accompaniment and debonair flair with his warm and comforting lyrical tenor. As peasants, ballroom guests and aristocrats, the Polish National Opera Chorus kept in fine step but wavered in a disappointing show of harmony after such refined singing a week prior in Aida. Even Tchaikovsky’s score, expert as the musicians were, lacked integrated consistency when the full force of the Polish National Orchestra played under Andrei Yurkevich’s leadership. But the prominent willowy parts for woodwind were a pleasurable listen.

Act 2, Scene 1: The Ballroom of the Larin House, Eugene Onegin

And then there’s the apples, symbol of the forbidden fruit, in abundance on the Larina family estate. There was also the apple tree, a simple silhouetted cut-out that resembled dripping blood under which a chorus of maidens collected the apples in gentle dance and the scene at which Onegin delivered his sermon-like blunt rejection.

Treliński’s cinematic eye gave each episode intrigue as they unfold with ever-changing but slow-moving shifts. Boris Kudlička’s restrained set elements became especially effective under Felice Ross’ broad palette of vivid lighting. A gramophone used to accompany Olga and Lensky’s first-act dance places the story in the 1920s, helping to pinpoint Joanna Klimas’ part-austere, part-flamboyant and suitably demarcated costumes.

A great deal of satisfaction came from seeing Eugene Onegin in an interpretation that adjusts the lens on the titular character to give it quite a punch and shakeup. Marvellously sung as it was, it’s Treliński that stood centre stage in this instance.


Eugene Onegin
Polish National Opera Production
Dubai Opera
Until 22nd February


Production Photos: Teatr Wielki

Settling down to reflect great subtlety, a shimmering Aida opens at Dubai Opera

“Is that the one with the elephants?”, asked a colleague after I said I was off to see Verdi’s Aida at Dubai Opera. As far as I knew, there’d be no elephants but I guaranteed that having - amongst other strengths - a great exponent in the title role, Aida would be remembered for much more than an accompanying circus. That it did, with luxury casting in a shimmering production from Polish National Opera and directed with well-resolved sophistication by Roberto Laganà Manoli.

Act 2, Aida, Polish National Opera Production

American soprano Latonia Moore studded the evening with a powerhouse performance on Wednesday’s opening night in a role she has sung widely and gives stunning breath to. Moore’s vocal heft, dramatic colour and crystal diction all combined in a thoughtful and alluring account of the captured Ethiopian princess as the conflict between love and duty unfolded in the doomed love triangle with the Egyptian military commander Radamès (Rudy Park) and the pharaoh’s daughter Amneris (Anna Lubańska). There’s much to encapsulate in Aida’s interactions with her superior, lover and father but Moore makes each one a genuine and compelling expression of the slave-princess's circumstances.

As a trio of singers who could effortlessly turn on the volume, Act 1, however, was characterised more by a ferocity than subtlety of voice. They did eventually settle, Moore more quickly so. By story’s airless end, within an impressive stylised pyramid as Aida and Radamès walk rearwards in embrace (a clever touch that avoided clumsy lolling death throes), it was easy to shower plaudits on all.

As a robust soldierly Radamès, Park plied through the music with an impressive burning fervour, completely absorbing in the middle and lower domain, though on occasion, a little overextended at the top. There’s little private time Radamès and Aida enjoy but Park and Moore created a formidable pair. The lovers' Act 3 scene outside the Temple of Isis, where Aida had waited to meet with Radamès, was bathed in a moving and richly concocted and thrillingly sung emotive rendezvous.

Most striking below the highest notes, and as much able to sing out with purity and suppleness of tone, Lubańska’s dark, luscious and meaty mezzo-soprano made Amneris a force to be reckoned with. As Aida’s rival, Lubańska’s snaky Amneris isn’t all fire and fury and she could suppress the volume and add remarkable depth of soul when needed. One of the night’s many highlights included Lubańska and Moore’s Act 2 encounter as Amneris draws a confession from Aida that she is in love with Radamès in "Fu la sorte dell'armi a' tuoi funesta". With the incensed Amneris standing tall against a grief-stricken Aida on her knees, power and pity were augmented superbly.

We don’t meet Aida’s father, the King of Ethiopia, until he is brought before the Egyptian people as a prisoner of war well into Act 2. Despite looking like a few years could be added to his makeup, from the first moments Mikołaj Zalasiński made his appearance as Amonasro, his warm, fluid and burnished baritone gushed forth with masterful ease in a near faultless, intelligently crafted depiction of an astute and commanding leader.

Gravelly bass Grzegorz Szostak, as the implacable High Priest Ramfis, tended to sing with more directness without lifting textures from his words. A the other bass, a notably warmer one, Łukasz Konieczny gave polished authority as the King of Egypt. In smaller roles, Jeannette Bożałek brought clear angelic radiance to her offstage Voice of the High Priestess and Adam Zdunikowski administered his notes solidly as the Messenger. For all its rich Verdian chorus work, the Polish National Opera Chorus, particularly the men - even more so the deep resonant purring basses - sang with huge appeal, in excellently balanced parts and wonderful evenness.

Threaded with its triumphant magisterial splendour and dreamy orchestral delicacies, Maestro Patrick Fournillier’s sensitive conducting - showing great care in allowing the singers to rise radiantly above the music - shaped a soundscape of beauty and coherency. At his service, the Polish National Opera Orchestra suffered a handful of opening night jitters that began with unsettling wheezing string playing in the overture but, overall, smoothness and crispness reigned.

Act 4, Aida, Polish National Opera Production

Under Laganà Manoli’s direction, the work’s juxtaposition of intimacy, conflict and pageantry were given eye-catching theatricality as part of the story’s ancient Egyptian setting. Responsible also for the sumptuous sets and costume designs, Laganà Manoli’s overarching control of the stage resulted in a multitude of memorable tableaux, including a tremendous grand spectacle for the Act 2 Triumphal Chorus and Grand March and the act’s finale as Radamès earns Amneris’ hand in marriage. For this, with no elephants or a live animal of any sort, he was assisted by Emil Wesolowski’s atmospheric choreography for an agile troupe of dancers featuring both angular and arabesque forms.

Lofty relief-cut golden and marble pillars framed the stage with two full-width flights of steps that allow ample scope for the large contingent of performers in all their intricately-robed exotic splendour. With hues of opalescent blue and aqua, two raised plinths - providing a focus for solo singing and that could be joined as one - as well as full-height imposing relief-cut golden doors that, when closed, aided more intimate moments, satisfied expectations of the monumental. Further depth was created when the rear wall opened and became a canvas for various projections, including a view out to the pyramids in an overall dazzling but dreamy effect.

Although the popularity of Aida is likely the result of its incorporation and marketability of spectacle, when the stars align in a production that searches the story’s human factors, conservatively approached or not, the effect is ever more overwhelming. In this instance, Laganà Manoli’s scheme succeeds all sides.


Aida 
Polish National Opera Production
Dubai Opera
Until 17th February



Production Photos: Teatr Wielki

An accomplished Tristan and Isolde makes its mark from an increasingly ambitious Melbourne Opera: Herald Sun Review

Published in print in Melbourne's Herald Sun in edited form, 8th February, 2018


The determination and ambitiousness that percolates within an increasingly confident Melbourne Opera came in the form of a musically secure, vocally accomplished and exciting production of Tristan and Isolde at the Palais Theatre Monday night. Apart from a minor technical hitch that saw temporary loss of surtitles and background projections, not even the disastrous cancellation of Friday night’s opening (due to an indisposed Isolde) impeded the quality of professionalism on display.

Lee Abrahmsen as Isolde and Neal Cooper as Tristan

Following successful productions of Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, this gargantuan three-act work that explores love’s transcendental and intoxicating potency was an unequivocal achievement and one that positions the company high on a national level.

Blurring rationality and reason and tension between love and death, Wagner takes us to a space with music and drama in which plot gives way to mood and where the cogs of psychological states are surveyed in a story drawn from the medieval tale of the adulterous love between the Cornish knight Tristan and the Irish princess Isolde.

Directed with overall appealing clarity by Suzanne Chaundy, the work is imbued with intelligently conceived symbolic features that demarcate each act despite missing the potential to mine the fervency of the Act 2's central love duet. And though designs feature various beautiful stage pictures (sets Greg Carroll with digital artists Yandell Walton and Keith Deverell) incorporating Lucy Wilkins’ eclectic costumes and Lucy Birkinshaw’s evocative lighting, the execution doesn’t appear fully resolved.

In a career-defining performance, soprano Lee Abrahmsen exhibited an ever-burning radiance both in voice and presence as Isolde, convincingly navigating Isolde’s complex emotional paths and doing so with a markedly penetrating top and robust middle range. The blazing colour and expression Abrahmsen gave as she awaits Tristan to join her in concealed bliss in Act 2 continued the startling trajectory she set up in a hugely demanding and fine first act.

Sarah Sweeting, Steven Gallop, Neal Cooper and Lee Abrahmsen

As her Tristan, Englishman Neal Cooper was superb in utilising his heated and muscular-voiced tenor and well-calibrated acting to great effect, sharing an effectual chemistry with Isolde and supplying Act 3 with searing emotion as he longs for Isolde and yearns for death.

Regular soloists at Melbourne Opera and a strong male chorus provided sizable support. Sarah Sweeting’s dark-hued and intuitive Brangäne, Michael Lampard’s loyal Kurwenal and Jason Wasley’s suspicious-eyed Melot all slotted in with solid depictions of character and Steven Gallop’s sympathetic King Marke was excellent.

But bringing in the expert Wagnerian and English conductor Anthony Negus was what paid off most impressively with a ravishing account of Wagner’s sublime score, particularly its thrilling crescendos, and played with meticulous sensitivity by the near-90 assembled musicians of Melbourne Opera Orchestra.


Tristan and Isolde
Melbourne Opera
Palais Theatre
Until 7th February 2018
Robert Blackwood Hall, 10th February

3.5 stars

Production Photos: Robin Halls

An inventive and powerful re-imagining of Heggie and Scheer's Moby-Dick at Utah Opera

As well as celebrating its 40th season, much attention has fallen on Utah Opera recently as its new production of composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer’s 2011 operatic work, Moby-Dick, took to the stage. Based on Herman Melville’s far-reaching 1851 novel - not entirely well-received at the time but going on to become one of literature’s classic tales - Moby-Dick is a thematically fertile work that Heggie and Scheer generously capture in their compellingly interpreted opera.

In director Kristine McIntyre’s hands, it has been raised with affecting force, mild instructiveness and expressive clout. It’s the work’s first reimagining since it premiered at Dallas Opera in 2010 - then Adelaide in 2011 where I witnessed its grand swell of artistic power - and, in this reincarnation, stands as a glorious achievement for Utah Opera.

Roger Honeywell as Captain Ahab, Moby-Dick

An opera in which no romance plays out as part of its story, at its core is the idea of distorted perceptions and blind-sighted obsession, brought on by a vengeance that leads to an increased inability to act with either rationality or humanity. That alone indirectly gives the work much resonance in contemporary times in a free country perceived to be under the authority of misjudged and arrogant administration. When we perceive our own times, much can be attributed to the awful consequences of ill-suited individuals in power. Then again, that has always been.

Commander of the whaling ship Pequod, Captain Ahab sails on a mission to murder Moby-Dick, the legendary Goliathan white whale that severed his leg on a previous expedition. After persisting in his maniacal bubble for month on end, both Ahab’s small whaleboat and the Pequod, an outstanding but sometimes sticky microcosm of cultural diversity, are struck and destroyed by the whale in a tragedy that points to irresponsible mass-murder of his crew as a result of ugly determination.

The integrity of Melville’s evocative, seductive and inventive style shines in Scheer’s text, guided by Heggie’s varietal and accomplished orchestral score that contains the dramatic, emotive, sensuous and mystic elements residing within it.

Conductor Joseph Mechavich’s especially sympathetic, caressing and noble handling of the score left no doubt that Heggie’s work has the potential to find a prominent place in the repertoire. If the reading demanded more, it would be in extracting the full brunt of waves of tumultuous sound that impact the musical landscape. It wasn’t as if the resources weren’t available. The 70-plus musicians of the Utah Symphony Orchestra at his disposal had the expertise and played superbly throughout its two acts.

Roger Honeywell, Musa Ngqungwana and Joshua Dennis

What is evident and achieved in McIntyre’s concept is a smart and clear-sighted effectiveness that elucidates the psychological aspect. Her vision is bolstered by designer Erhard Rom’s marvellous singular diagrammatic set of navigational maps and astronomical charts that wrap around and contextualise man in his universe, made all the more striking by Marcus Dilliard’s illustrative and detailed lighting. Rom imaginatively defines the Pequod by its main mast that provides a lookout and perch for a handful of poignantly performed arias and duets and a cutout whaleboat that swivels about as a vulnerable element on the sea. Jessica Jahn’s rigorously researched costumes both unite and individualise one and all in their roles and wear the grime of labour and time.

Importantly, the performance was sung with enormous strength and understanding in a work that heightens the complexity of drawn characters. In a commanding multifaceted portrayal, Roger Honeywell’s hugely buttressed tenor and dramatic application perfectly suited the obsessed Captain Ahab as he deteriorated into maniacal doom. Ahab is a demanding sing of seeming Wagnerian proportion and Honeywell effortlessly lasted the distance all the way to the final encounter with Moby-Dick’s huge menacing eye while embodying a captivating villain-hero ambiguity.

Honeywell was joined by all-round talented principals, including charismatic baritone David Adam Moore’s rational and austere first mate Starbuck, challenger to Ahab’s decisions and confronted with the moral predicament that comes as he points a gun at the unaware Ahab. Warm and honeyed tenor Joshua Dennis brings an endearing sensitivity to Greenhorn and poignantly closes the opera, as the novel begins, with “Call me Ishmael”.

Joshua Dennis as Greenhorn and Musa Ngqungwana as Queequeg 

Another formidable presence is broad cavernous bass-baritone Musa Ngqungwana’s empathetic Queequeg who brought many significant and touching moments - particularly alongside Dennis in their developing mateship - as did soprano Jasmine Habersham who impressed to no end when she sailed high above the crew in divine voice as young Pip. The happy-go-lucky second mate Stub and third mate Flask were characterfully created by rich baritone Craig Irvin and penetrating tenor Joseph Gaines respectively, with the sturdy and authoritative bass-baritone Jesús Vicente Murillo also impressing as a fitting Captain Gardiner.

They were surrounded by a hearty-voiced 30-strong chorus of seamen who brought great individuality and dynamism to their parts. Amongst them blended four athletic dancers who added well-considered choreographed muscularity to the picture.

The whole outfit supposedly has the capability to pack into two sea containers, therefore making it an easy task mounting in other houses the production has been co-produced with, and beyond. Next up, in March, Moby-Dick will be presented by Pittsburgh Opera with Opera San José, Chicago Opera Theatre and Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu also on the itinerary - a powerful work that has the ability to not only nourish a seasoned opera goer’s passion but, in its dramatic accessibility, also attract a newcomer’s attention. Thankfully, there are opportunities ahead to promote it.


Moby-Dick
Utah Opera
Capitol Theatre, Salt Lake City
Until 28th January, 2018.


Production Photos: courtesy of Utah Opera

Jonathan Miller's comeback contemporary hammed-up Così fan tutte revs up at Seattle Opera

Mozart and da Ponte’s La scuola degli amanti or The School for Lovers, the subtitle of the two-act opera buffa, Così fan tutte (1790), never fails to add a little playful but oft-unpalatable sting to the subject of love and courtship. Its story of fidelity put to the test is easily unchained from any locked-in historical setting but, guided by its blissful music that builds circumstance with emotive beauty and vitality, the key to its success lies in its ability to balance the comic with the poignant.

Tuomas Katajala, Ginger and Marina Costa-Jackson and Craig Verm

There’s much to chew over in Seattle Opera’s vibrantly portrayed revival of director and designer Jonathan Miller’s production - premiered in 1995 at Covent Garden and previously seen in Seattle in 2006 - this time by director Harry Fehr in his company debut. It’s funny, and it should be, it’s daring, contemporary, sung with appealing character and hammed-up to the hilt. Fehr keeps the plot buzzing forward with bags of antics that his agile opening night cast did a strong show of, though precariously so, as it wasn't consistently transferred in attentiveness to ensemble singing.

Having been re-staged in many European and American opera houses, it even has the look of re-mountable ease. Once it gets underway, it gives neither high sophistication to nor a specific placing that the few props - a pile of cushions no end of free-falling takes place on, a mirror and a few period chairs and settee - couldn’t have achieved in front of an expansive off-white curtain as the first scene begins with. It’s in associate designer Cynthia Savage’s clever use of costumes that the contemporary, seamed with lashings of irky stereotypical flavour, is projected.

Marina Costa-Jackson and Ginger Costa-Jackson 

Adding to that, Johnathan Dean’s English captions are given a modern breath and tweaked with city-specific references to rev up the local audience. Born in Seattle, Starbucks gets a high recommendation as Despina steals a taste and mention of the hip neighbourhood of Ballard inspires the disguises to come.

As pupils in this school for lovers, the high-heeled glamour that sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella present is less than skin deep. They’re not particularly tasteful as they pursue life with their self-conscious, self-confident picture of celebrity fashioning. That makes a reasonable premise for not recognising their lovers in disguise, portrayed by two rather bumbling simps, Ferrando and Guglielmo, who come across rather more like skanky cashed-up bogans than hip.

Two pairs of lovers alternate through the season run. On opening night, sisters in real life, Marina Costa-Jackson and Ginger Costa-Jackson provide the panache and cheek that characterise Fiordiligi and Dorabella’s non-stop deployment of highly honed feminine ammunition. Both sopranos sing with richness and depth, Marina in luscious creamy tones, Ginger in darker tinted threads - and the two blend deliciously. Marina reels in one of the most vocally satisfying highlights with Act 1’s "Come scoglio" but an even more melting moment comes with deep canyons of heart in Act 2’s "Per pietà, ben mio, perdona".

As their lovers, Craig Verm is a muscular-voiced Ferrando who displays an easy soldierly brawniness in charismatic baritone form and tenor Tuomas Katajala gives warm lyricism and heated vibrato to Ferrando. In ensemble singing, however, the gents fared less agreeably with Katajala often roughing up the voice at the top and Verm sometimes lost in the distant soundscape.

Tuomas Katajala, Kevin Burdette and Craig Verm

Adroit and nimble bass Kevin Burdette’s precious Don Alfonso is somewhat the detention master, dressed like an undertaker and smugly orchestrating the plot that forces the wager with his two friends that their lovers won’t remain faithful. Despina the housemaid - PA in this case to the two vain sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella - is the well-experienced teacher. That role, often portrayed with insistence and tomboyishness is in good comic hands with pliant soprano Laura Tatulescu.

The Seattle Opera Orchestra played with taut expertise, beginning with the effervescent overture with particularly fine and filigreed detail emanating from the woodwind players. Conductor Paul Daniel - in his debut at a Seattle Opera - put the score elegantly on show for the ear but greater room for more pounce and adrenaline could have served to compliment the vitality on stage.

After the damage is done, with Don Alfonso winning his bet, the forgiveness that Mozart’s Così fan tutte bestows doesn’t clearly translate into a joyful reunion of the lovers in this contemporary adaptation. It seems to work well despite the foursome garnering little sympathy in their lesson - in this school, the penalty for self-obsession and shallowness is a little more harsh. The solos were superb enough. I only wish a little more attention was given to the brilliance of Mozart’s divine ensembles.


Così fan tutte
Seattle Opera
McCaw Hall
Until 27th February, 2018.

Production Photos: Tuffer and Philip Newton