Vaughan Williams: Riders to the sea Diana Burrell: The albatross (world premiere 10Jun97) Trinity College of Music Opera Group at Spitalfields Market Opera Riders to the sea Maurya Cora Newman Bartley Mark Hanford Cathleen Julie Leyland Nora Julie Partridge Conductor Anne Manson Designer Pamela McBain The albatross Hilda Pike Amanda Palmer Duncan Pike James Geer and Stephen Brown Davey Ward Stephen Bowen Alice Flint Lindsay Richardson Esther Ward Edel O'Brien Old Beattie Siobhan Mooney Barmaid Sarah Whyte Ted Flint Julian Smith Conductor Christopher Fyfield Designer Kyung-Hee Lee Director (both operas) Stephen Langridge This might have been a thoroughly miserable evening, given that both operas centre on a young man drowned at sea. It turned out much better. Riders to the sea is a straightforward setting of Synge's play, about women in Aran fatalistically waiting for their men to drown. The set was a cut away house, with a door that kept flying open with the wind (they just about got away with it -- the music helped). The costumes were authentic, red petticoats and shawls. Cora Newman gave a very moving performance as Maurya, the mother whose last surviving son wants to cross the sea before his lost brother's fate is known. (The action begins with her daughters trying to identify the clothes of a body washed up in Donegal, to see if they are their brother's.) Newman looked too young, inevitably in a student cast, and far too elegant in the red dress, as did the daughters. She conveyed wonder and fear, as she realised the meaning of her vision of her dead and living sons, rather more than the ground down weariness implicit in the play. But all the singers were very impressive, and after a wobbly start in the strings, so was the orchestra. (Spitalfields Opera doesn't have a pit or stage, and the space is unforgiving, though also superb when things go well, for instance with the magical bassoon solo in the prelude.) My main thought about Riders to the sea was, why add music to a perfectly good play? Vaughan Williams' pentatonic gloom smooths over the pain, and (for me) sentimentalizes the spirituality. I was wondering the same about Diana Burrell's setting of Susan Hill's story The albatross, which on paper looks like Brookside pretending to be Peter Grimes. Set in a seaside town (I think in north Norfolk), it's the story of Duncan, a nervous and not very bright young man, who cares for his cantakerous, seriously disabled mother. His friend Ted Flint tries to help him get out of himself, but when Ted is drowned in a lifeboat accident, Duncan loses it, kills his mother and burns the house down. The ending is open -- Duncan restates his dreams of escape and adventure, but the music is threatening, suggesting punishment or despair. While there was an element of kitchen sink in it (and some tedium), there was also a fair bit of powerful music drama. Burrell used two singers, dressed alike, for Duncan, one to speak and one to express his thoughts. This was a theatrical device rather than a musical one, though the two moments when the two Duncans sing in unison -- when he decides to kill his mother, and as he disposes of the body -- were highly effective. Duncan's crisis occurs at Ted's funeral, which his mother insists on attending, though she doesn't know whose it is, to annoy him. Burrell uses the rather cinematic device of Anglican hymns (with the organ cleverly emulated by the orchestra) interrupted with subjective discords in the percussion and wind for Duncan, and individual singers singing variant words aimed at him. Stephen Langridge's direction (outstanding throughout) made this something between Lang and Hitchcock, and very striking and disturbing in spite of the obviousness of the device. The performances were again very good. Amanda Palmer was seriously mean as Hilda, and delivered her spiky music in a way that made it almost physically (as well as emotionally) painful. A sort of very twisted queen of the night. James Greer got the tics and stammers exactly right as the "speaking" Duncan, and Stephen Bowen made some splendid bass sounds as the solid fisherman Davey Ward. The albatross was great for a student showcase like this, but I wonder what its target audience is. I suppose it's intended as a sort of contemporary verismo, and there are probably Brookie fans who see an opera now and again and would enjoy this one and perhaps be persuaded to try Peter Grimes as well. A different title might help, though I know Susan Hill has her admirers.