View: Next message | Previous message Next in topic | Previous in topic Next by same author | Previous by same author Previous page (May 1999, week 1) | Back to main OPERA-L page Join or leave OPERA-L Reply | Post a new message Search Options: Chronologically | Most recent first Proportional font | Non-proportional font ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 23:47:19 +0000 Reply-To: "H.E.Elsom" Sender: Discussion of opera and related issues From: "H.E.Elsom" Subject: La Navarraise/Oedipus Rex, Bloomsbury Theatre, 4May99 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" La Navarraise: Garrido Timothy Dawkins Anita Lore Lixenberg Ramon John Upperton Araquil Salvador Parron-Comus Bustamente Simon Wilding Rizo James Gower Fera Christopher Ovenden Director Leah Hausman Music director Jonathan Gill Oedipus Rex: Chorus Deryck Hamon, Chris Ovenden, James Gower Oedipus Bjorn Arvidsson Creon/Messenger Timothy Dawkins Jocasta Anya Kubrick Shepherd John Upperton Director Leah Hausman Music director Jonathan Finney Palace Opera Palace Opera started out in 1993 with a successful Dido in Holland Park, and followed it with Hansel and Falstaff, which went down well on balmy summer evenings in Holland Park but didn't quite work in the Queen Elizabeth Hall. This double bill is a complete departure for them. Not only does it consist of comparatively rarely performed works, which risk being "interesting". It is also completely serious and not open to the sort of light-hearted "entertaining" touches that characterized at least Hansel and Falstaff. Leah Hausman clearly got the measure of both works, however, and the result was a genuinely engaging double bill full of effective, simple contrasts and resonances. La Navarraise, written by Massenet in 1894, is an outstandingly well-crafted, totally derivative short verismo opera. Set in Spain during the Carlist wars of the mid-nineteenth century, which are impossible to explain but were old-fashioned in their brutality, it is the story of the doomed love between a soldier, Araquil, and Anita, a Navarraise orphan. She murders the enemy soldier to get the price of her dowry. Araquil thinks she's betrayed his side and goes off to find her, only to be fatally injured himself; he finds out the truth, but dies in revulsion at her deed. She goes briefly mad and dies as well. Set in a military camp, it's a mush of Cav, Werther and Carmen, in a style that would like to evoke Goya or David, and perhaps points forward to D.W. Griffiths. Its main claim to fame is that it is scored with a lot of cannons. Queen Victoria said it was too noisy. This version, for a very reduced orchestra and no ordnance, was loud enough, but the arrangement used some very soggy tessitura in the strings, which somehow enhanced the impression of a pretentious silent movie score. But the production and performances were very well considered and effective. The set consisted of a flat backdrop of the town under seige, initially partly covered with a black curtain, which was raised as the light increased at dawn. The soldiers resembled genre paintings in their costumes and poses. The singers made enough of the music without going over the top in theatricality. They sang in French, but were generally very comprehensible. Simon Wilding as Bustamente sang sweetly in his love song as the soldiers wait for Araquil's return. Deryck Hamon was unpleasant as Remigio, Araquil's father who thinks Anita isn't good enough for him. (A touch of Traviata there as well...) Lore Lixenberg was intense in a controlled way as Anita, and very attractive, managing a couple of piercing high notes and a good scream at the end. La Navarraise is a work which there is only one way to do, and this production did it well. Oedipus Rex is much more demanding, as it is full of mythic and cultural resonance. Cocteau's libretto presents Sophocles' play complete, in the form of music-theatre numbers in Latin, with an arch narrator who dates the work firmly in the late 1920s. Stravinsky, aiming for profundity and power, keeps the whole thing static by setting it in the manner of an eighteenth-century Latin oratorio. The music is similar in approach, in places, to Pulchinella, but it's got a bit of Weill-like blues tonality as well. Anya Kubrick delivered Jocasta's number about the oracles plausibly enough as a cabaret number, ending up reclining on a table. The dark set was a classroom, with a lectern, tables and chairs that were all moved or thrown about. There was a blackboard covered in problems of all kinds (calculus, formal logic, statistics) plus a couple of quotes from Aristotle's Physics book 2, on chance and the automatic. The blackboard turned around at the end to reveal a mirror that reflects the cast -- the answer to the riddle of the sphinx is a human, and to the riddle of the oracle is Oedipus in particular. Bjorn Arvidsson has a pleasant, not quite incisive, voice but he acted well as Oedipus, getting his smugness and despair. Timothy Dawkins as Creon and the messenger gave a Handelian energy to their narratives. The chorus (which included Simon Wilding) created the action effectively with their singing. The unnamed narrator was very mannered and sinister, but he managed to be disturbing rather than ridiculous. Regards, Helen - H.E. Elsom he@helsom.demon.co.uk http://www.helsom.demon.co.uk/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to: Top of message | Previous page | Main OPERA-L page ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to the LISTSERV home page at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU.